At the risk of creating an in-thread zombie, I’m quoting the following from this post by @Smapti in July of 2022:
… If you want a taste of what Washington is like outside of the Puget Sound metropolis, go about 30 miles south of Olympia on I-5 and look for the Uncle Sam billboard which has been displaying far-right whack-a-doodle talking points ever since the current owner’s father got peeved at the Eisenhower administration for running the freeway through the middle of his land.
Why? Because according to the Seattle Times, the billboard is being sold (along with the land it sits on). It will — or at least may — be interesting to see what, if anything, will change about the messaging.
People did take medicine that was formulated to be used as a horse dewormer. And calling it that under that circumstance is warranted. The FDA (and other public health authorities) even criticized people along those lines.
Classifying ivermectin in general as a “horse dewormer” is not accurate though. And casually referring to the drug itself as a horse dewormer, as if that is its only usage, is misleading.
And as I said earlier, it can be incredibly dangerous if used over the counter, or purchased for a formulation not intended for humans. And it doesn’t do jack shit for Covid, which isn’t a parasite.
It also reminds me of when people at my own agency started griping during the pandemic that we weren’t putting antibacterial soap in the bathrooms of our offices, so washing our hands won’t be effective. (This was in the comments section of a news article written on one of our agency’s intranet pages.) I replied that Covid isn’t a bacteria, it’s a virus, so an antibacterial soap won’t be any more effective and people should wash their hands thoroughly just as the CDC was instructing us to.
Of course, then there were (later) people complaining about the handwashing warnings, because it turns out that hands aren’t actually a significant vector for covid. Which ignores the facts that, first of all, at the start of the pandemic we didn’t know that; second, that it was a reasonable guess, given that hands are a major vector for many other diseases including flu; third, that we really do want to limit the spread of those other diseases, too, as much as possible, and fourth, it doesn’t hurt anyway.
Yes, washing your hands is just good public health practice regardless of which particular disease you’re most concerned about at the time. I was already pretty decent about it before the pandemic, but during the pandemic I got into such a habit that I do it many times a day and it has continued today. At least one good thing happened from that experience.
(Not that I’m compulsive about it; just after I use the bathroom, or go outside, or handle something that’s visibly dirty, or right before I prepare and/or eat food, etc.)
I don’t wash my hands with ivermectin though. That would probably be expensive. (It can be over $200 an ounce, I’ll just use Softsoap thanks.)
In reality it was to introduce a measure to authorize the FTC to go after ticket-scalping.
Which sounds like it might actually be a good thing, so I can only wonder how Trump and his cronies are going to fuck it up and make things worse. Maybe put a “Woke Tax” on it.
Oddly enough, from what I can tell it’s one of the few agencies that DOGE hasn’t really messed with.
ETA: Nope, I’m wrong. They did target the FTC. But just parts of it.
Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition both got cut down, I guess because they might get in the way of Musk and other billionaires exploiting people. And their equal opportunity and diversity areas got axed as well (of course).
But, after USAID was shut down, DOGE moved a bunch of FTC people in there.
I’m guessing that they like the parts of the FTC that can be weaponized against their enemies and are shaving off the rest.
Huh. That’s a bit surprising for a district that red. Maybe there is hope after all.
No, that is not unbelievable. It is entirely too believable these days. In some instances, one might even say expected.
The level of open bigotry these days is breath-taking. To the point I need supplementary oxygen to read the news these days.
Apparently whoever said that never met my customers who had a common habit of sneezing and/or coughing in their hands then licking their fingers to pull bills out of their wallet prior to paying me. Although hands might not be a common vector for covid the mucus and saliva on them were.
As I’ve mentioned before, Victoria Spartz is my representative.* I had some hope for her once; while she was certainly conservative, at one time she didn’t seem to be so out there as some of the hardcore MAGA types. She was born in Ukraine, and when the invasion originally occurred, she called it a “genocide” and called Putin “a crazy man.” She was present when Biden signed the first bill to provide aid to Ukraine.
Apparently the threat of being primaried from the right has convinced her that opinions and actions like that are far too woke, because she does appear to have gone full MAGA. She voted against aid to Ukraine last year, and has pretty much supported Trump in all things since his re-election.
That is to say, I live in her district. She does not represent me in any meaningful sense.
I seem to recall Ed Meese (Reagan’s AG) saying that the accused had no presumption of innocence, because if they were innocent they wouldn’t be accused.
