I thought it would be a happy story about bats

I was in the mood for reading more about bats, so when this news story popped up in my news feed, of course I had to read it: Scenes From the Bat Cave. What else would you expect but a nice bit of natural history? It wasn’t. It’s about crappy greedy capitalistic humans in Florida.

The Rockledge Regional Medical Center reeks of raw sewage and bat guano. No one knew that bat shit was called “guano,” or that the pungent smell emanating from the fifth-floor intensive care unit had bat guano as a source, until last spring, when a delirious patient complained he was being attacked by a “giant grasshopper,” which turned out to be a bat, which turned out to be one of what four nurses told the Prospect was estimated to be at least five thousand more.

The exterminators alleged in court that Steward Health, Rockledge’s corporate owner, never paid them the $936,320 they were owed for “evicting” the bats from the hospital, which sits roughly eight miles southwest of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. And so when, a week or two before Christmas, the sinks on the second floor began backing up with thick, black gunk that smelled like feces of the human sort, the hospital’s in-house maintenance staff tried to handle the job themselves.

That’s the last we hear of the bats, and instead it’s all about the corrupt management of Steward Health, which apparently bought up a bunch of hospitals only to neglect them. They were in the business of scraping every penny of profit out of these places, and actually maintaining them would have meant less money for their corrupt corporate overlords, who had yachts to maintain instead.

In Massachusetts, where Steward was founded and owns nine hospitals, the company’s representatives have essentially ghosted the political class it wooed so effectively a decade ago, when de la Torre graced the cover of the Boston Globe Magazine and touted himself as the quintessential Obamacare success story. Over the past few weeks, Massachusetts politicians have railed against Steward, de la Torre, and his yachts, and Gov. Maura Healey last week instructed the company to leave the state “as soon as possible.”

They are leaving Massachusetts and moving to Florida, which has a more charitable climate for parasites and exploiters. Their hospitals there are a horror story — health care is ridiculously expensive, but do you think anyone is getting their money’s worth out of these toxic facilities?

Nurses provided the Prospect with dozens of photos and videos documenting maintenance problems at the hospital: water leaking out into the parking lot from one of the maintenance rooms, a giant oxygen tank sitting in the loading dock one nurse worries is “one drunk driver away from blowing the back wing of the hospital away,” the fourth floor “graveyard of broken beds” with unfulfilled work orders dating back to September, and sink after sink filled with black gunk, sealed off with “DO NOT USE” signs and months-old work orders. On the paper covering one of the sinks alleged on the work order to have a “terrible smell,” an employee had scrawled, “Fix me NOW!” and two others had playfully responded, “I’ve only been broke 2+ months! What’s the hurry?” and “NOT BEYOND STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS YET!”

Five of the building’s nine elevators have been nonoperational for the better part of the year, and only one or two of the working ones can properly accommodate a critical care patient. Paradoxically, this was an even bigger safety issue back before the bats were discovered, when patients who experienced complications during heart surgery needed to be shuttled up three stories to the ICU; now they can be raced down the hall to the relocated ICU, where half the sinks still have “Do Not Use” signs hanging over them.

Imagine how awful these places would be if they were in Canada rather than Florida. Somebody would be complaining about having to wait for service. Sewage filled sinks and bats fluttering about the ICU is a small price to pay for allowing rampant capitalism to flourish.

I’d rather read about bats than about selfish, greedy humans, I’m afraid.

The genocidal state of Israel

Just before we got shut down, I posted a video by Shaun that condemned all the atrocities committed by both sides in Israel and Gaza (it didn’t dissuade the Islamist fanatic who got us censored). Now I’m going to do it again. Cody thoroughly documents the genocide and lies perpetrated by the Israeli government.

It’s depressing. Don’t watch it you don’t want to be outraged by injustice.

It just affirms my concern that Israel has become an evil rogue nation. And we still send them arms?

Least surprising devolution ever

The Nazis are taking over the Republican party. Are you shocked?

Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year.

Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes.

But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.

At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Also, they’re theocrats who hate democracy.

In one of the most viral moments from this year’s conference, conservative personality Jack Posobiec called for the end of democracy and a more explicitly Christian-focused government. While Posobiec later said his statements were partly satire, many CPAC attendees embraced his and others’ invocations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

“Satire.” Heh. Right. A good question to ask when anyone makes the “satire” defense is “What were they satirizing?”

Shall we criminalize libraries?

We have a new villain (same as the old villain): librarians. West Virginia wants to make them liable to prosecution.

The West Virginia House of Delegates debated the merits of removing protections for public librarians and school librarians from criminal prosecution in the off chance a minor encounters books and content some consider to be obscene.
The House passed House Bill 4654 – removing bona fide schools, public libraries, and museums from the list of exemptions from criminal liability relating to distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter – in a 85-12 vote Friday, sending the bill to the state Senate.
HB 4654 would lift criminal liability exemptions from schools in the presentation of local or state-approved curriculum, and public libraries and museums displaying obscene matter to a minor when the child is not accompanied by a parent/guardian.

Are you surprised? Those nefarious librarians are probably plotting to commit evil acts like stocking children’s books that present sexuality in an informative and non-threatening way, and maybe they’ll even bring in people wearing women’s clothing to entertain kids and encourage reading. It’s all part of their wicked plan.

This prescient cartoon from more than 20 years saw the whole conspiracy developing.

Alabama doesn’t hate all science

The Alabama Supreme Court has decreed that human life begins at conception and that terminating a blastocyst is a crime. This decision came about because three people, rightfully upset at the accidental loss of some frozen embryos (a property crime) decided to escalate the loss into an immoral act of murder in order to get retribution…and now look what they’ve done. They took advantage of a technology that involves excess production of embryos, making those embryos themselves, and then turned around and took legal action to make sure no one else could use those reproductive technologies themselves. Thanks, guys.

Then, of course, one of the most backward states in the union has ignorant religious zealots on their court (whoa, can’t hold that against Alabama, since the federal court has the same problem) who then decided that a small collection of undifferentiated cells is a “child”. Alabama ranks 47th in the nation on overall child well-being, but now they can claim to be first in the nation for overall “child”/tissue/zygote well-being.

The Alabama ruling is the first to attribute human rights to a developing organism at such an early stage following conception. The ruling states that “unborn children are ‘children,’” and that frozen embryos should be afforded the same protection as babies under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, a national antiabortion organization, heralded the court for showing “moral clarity” in ruling that the unborn deserve the same rights as children.

“You have children being created in petri dishes at will and then destroyed at will and used for experimentation,” Rose said. “It’s not acceptable to leave human beings on ice. It’s not acceptable to destroy them. These are not commodities.”

You know who creates these “children” in petri dishes? Hopeful parents who can’t conceive otherwise. I guess people who want children under those circumstances are going to have to flee Alabama, if they can afford it. IVF is a fairly expensive procedure so it’s mostly well-off people who can afford it, so this is another of those laws that will selectively hurt the poor and middle class — the rich will be unaffected. That’s why it’s safe for the sanctimonious Christians to applaud this decision, since it won’t hurt their priesthood, yet.

Jennifer Lincoln, a board certified OB/GYN who practices in Portland, Ore., said she doesn’t think people understand how “scary” the Alabama ruling is. She raised a common scenario: A patient undergoing IVF has an egg retrieval that leads to the creation of multiple embryos, with the hope that at least one turns into a live birth. If successful, the remaining embryos remain frozen for possible future use — but not all may be used.

“If someone has five embryos left and they decide not to have any more kids and want those embryos destroyed — and someone in that physician’s office hears that, could [the doctor] be criminalized for being an accomplice in a crime?” Lincoln asked.

I said “yet” because every Xian fanatic is cheering this decision as another avenue to attack women’s reproductive rights. The anti-choicers are gearing up to use that precedent as a tool to oppose abortion rights in Florida. Declaring that a “child” exists the instant sperm meets egg is a nice bit of sophistry to justifying outlawing abortion…and also, eventually, contraception. Oh, look, a nice example of a “slippery slope”!

Now that Alabama’s supreme court on Friday took the remarkable step of declaring that frozen embryos are “children,” a conservative group is trying to derail an expected 2024 ballot initiative in Florida that would enshrine abortion rights in that Sunshine State’s constitution.

On Monday, a religious civil rights law firm alerted the Florida Supreme Court to the neighboring state’s recent ruling in an attempt to have the high court block the amendment from reaching voters as it currently stands.

Earlier this month, the conservative-leaning Florida court heard arguments on the proposed constitutional amendment. It will decide by April 1 whether to approve the language in the measure, which states, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Please note that these same black-robed dingbats who are wallowing in their self-righteous, superficial pretense of respect for human life are the same people who approve of the state experimenting with novel methods for executing prisoners. It did not go well.

Kenneth Smith, who survived an attempt by the state to execute him by lethal injection in 2022, was put to death Thursday evening in Atmore, the rural home to Alabama’s execution chamber near the Florida state line, Governor Kay Ivey’s office confirmed.

Smith, 58, was executed at 8:25 p.m. local time, according to a press release issued by the state Department of Corrections.

The execution took roughly 22 minutes, the Associated Press reported. He appeared to stay conscious for “several minutes” after the gas began to flow, shaking and writhing and sometimes pulling against the restraints of his gurney for more than two minutes, the wire service added.

See? Alabama does not oppose all technological advances. They just have to be technologies that kill the right people.

How much do you hate the gays?

You have to hate them an awful lot to be compelled to move from Canada to Russia, as this one family did. When asked why, the only reason the family patriarch gives is that there were just too many gay & trans people in Canada.

A Canadian family of eight sold their farm and moved to Russia. Why? They wanted to raise their kids in Russia’s morally superior environment.

“Well, Canada is not the same country it used to be,” said daddy in a video interview, “and we didn’t feel safe for our children there in the future anymore. There’s a lot of left-wing ideology, LGBTQ, trans, just a lot of things that we don’t agree with that they teach there now, and we wanted to get away from that for our children.”

But it didn’t take long for the immigrants to regret their decision. Their Russian bank accounts were frozen, and since the family doesn’t speak a lick of Russian, they have had trouble asking the morally superior Russian authorities to release their funds.

Wait. They don’t say specifically where he’s from, but he’s a Canadian farmer. He was raising his family on a vast empty plot of land raising wheat or sugar beets or something, in a community of fellow conservative Canadians. He probably never saw a gay or trans person in his daily life, so this is a problem that didn’t really affect him — he was just seething in his grand isolation, worrying that one of his many kids might turn out gay, so he packed up and moved to a country where it might be more socially acceptable to murder them?

Wow, he must really hate gay people. I’m sort of perversely impressed with his passion and commitment and self-destructive stupidity.

I also think more people with that attitude out to feel free to emigrate to Russia. Tucker Carlson, I choose you.

How did that get past Jeff Bezos?

Jeff Bezos’ pet newspaper actually posted something that would give the owner the heebie-jeebies — it reported that the economy is doing relatively well, that unemployment is below 4%, and the labor market is surging. Which even a billionaire would consider great, except that it reveals one of the mechanisms that is fueling the improvement.

Last year the public sector, which includes education, caught up with its pre-pandemic employment levels, after struggling for years with an understaffing crisis. More robust pay and benefits packages have made those jobs more attractive to workers.

Lindsey Rogers, 27, and her husband, Jared, public school teachers in Baker City, Ore., saw their household income double at the start of this school year, rising by around $48,000, because of mandated salary increases in their new union contract. Their school district in rural Eastern Oregon in previous years struggled to fill open positions, but started this school year without a single vacancy because teacher pay jumped significantly, said Erin Lair, superintendent of the Baker School District.

For the Rogers family, the pay increase means they can afford the $750-a-month child-care costs for their new baby.

“We sat down at a union meeting on Zoom, and they pulled up our new pay scale and it was life-changing,” Rogers said. “I was in shock. We were both in tears. We were going to be able to provide a great life for our kid. We were actually going to be paid like professionals.”

Shocking, I know. You mean people do want to work, they’d just like to get paid what they deserve? Revolutionary, if true.

You know, higher ed is also in the public sector, and I wonder when we’ll catch up. We’re understaffed and get occasional tiny pay raises that don’t keep up with inflation — I look forward to the day we get paid like professionals. That day will probably come the day after I retire, if at all.

We aren’t unionized, by the way.

Barbarians! Barbarians everywhere!

Texas is an evil state, with some of its powerful inhabitants relishing the opportunity to slice up immigrants with razor wire. I’m less worried about the immigrants than I am the existence of Texas Republicans.

But maybe I’m being unfair to Texas. After all, South Dakota, the state uncomfortably close to me, has a governor who is entirely sympathetic to the idea of slashing brown people with razor wire and wants to send the state’s national guard and a bunch of money to help out.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Wednesday that her administration is considering boosting its support for Texas’ efforts to deter immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, such as sending razor wire and security personnel.

The second-term Republican governor blasted conditions at the border in a speech to a joint session of the Legislature, a gathering she requested Monday after visiting the border last week. Noem, once seen as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has made the border situation a focus during her tenure.

South Dakota does not have any border with any other country, unless you count the People’s Republic of Minnesota. Maybe they could worry about Canada, except they do have a buffer state of North Dakota, but Mexico is not of any concern. The only southern immigrants they’ve got are being hired by the farming citizenry who like cheap labor. But this is Kristi Noem’s focus? I kind of suspect the motivation is more racism than defending the border.

Fortunately, the Oglala Sioux Tribe has a solid response to that.

At least one person in South Dakota did not appreciate Noem’s glib demagoguery. That person was Frank Star Comes Out, which is in fact his extremely cool name and not the title of a YA novel about a teenager coming to terms with his sexuality. (We checked.)

Star Comes Out is the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and he was infuriated by the naked xenophobia and obvious cry for Donald Trump’s attention as his search for a vice presidential candidate ramps up. So he penned a letter to Noem informing her that starting immediately, she is persona non grata on his tribe’s land.

Read the letter. It’s a point-by-point response to every claim Noem has made. President Star Comes Out sees right through her: “I don’t see our Indian people and reservations used as a basis to create a bogus border crisis just to help Trump get re-elected as President and Governor Noem his running mate as Vice-President.”

Only barbarians would consider drowning immigrants to be humane…and to be a good strategy for getting votes. Unfortunately, we have lots of barbarians all up and down this country.