RETAILERS ARE STUCK IN THE MASK MIDDLE And I'm telling you, some kid at some store is going to get shot because people are acting like complete jerks about wearing a mask. I have expressed my hatred for wearing a mask (although now that I've switched to paper surgical style masks I can actually breathe) BUT I STILL WEAR THEM. If wearing a mask allows the economy to open and flourish, I'm going to wear a mask, just ask I've been wearing shirts and shoes for YEARS lest I be denied service. Business owners should NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE for the government's edicts to wear masks. And jeez louise ladies, y'all have acted like complete idiots during this whole mess.

OR THE SOCIAL DISTANCING POLICE EITHER Because a brawl broke out in an Arkansas restaurant over social distancing. Watch the insane video here.

ED HENRY GETS CANNED BY FOX NEWS This after a sexual misconduct complaint was lodged by a former employee. No details on the complaint are available, but Fox addressed this on the air, which is a big change from the way things used to be. Read about it here.

COLORADO BARS ARE CLOSED AGAIN And I'm not sure how these business owners are supposed to survive with this level of uncertainty. Now I am largely unaffected by this, as I don't know the last time I went to a bar only, but dang, this sucks for someone.

PROTESTERS MAY MAKE THE COST OF YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE GO UP And it's all because of a decision by DORA to force insurers to cover any injuries sustained during a "community protest". Now they stop at forcing insurers to cover stuff during a riot, but they don't clearly define when a community protest moves to a riot and when those injuries may not be covered. So why will this make your insurance go up? Because they have to charge more to EVERYONE when they are forced to plan for greater coverage. Read more here.

THE CHOP HAS BEEN INVADED Police have moved into the CHOP zone in Seattle and clearing out the entire area after two murders in the zone last weekend. I knew this was going to happen when protesters showed up at Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan's house last weekend. So CHOP is over.

SCHOOL CHOICE WON BIG AT THE SUPREME COURT YESTERDAY And the bigoted Blaine Amendments which have stopped states from funding parochial schools is on the ropes. The decision said that a Montana plan that gives tax credits to families who donate to a special education fund IS Constitutional even though it allows moneys to be funneled to religious schools. Now that we have that taken care of, expect a surge of Muslim schools in this country. That is what Freedom of religion really means. For the record, I have no issue with Muslim schools as long as they don't teach hatred of Western culture. We already have enough of that in our public schools now.

NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE ARE DYING OF COVID TO HELP JOE BIDEN WIN And here is a fun analysis of the media coverage declaring that a covid "time bomb" would prevent Trump's re election because the southern states that were huge for him are all going to have massive outbreaks. Except there's a problem. Not enough people are dying. As a matter of fact, my friend Joe shared this story from Houston, a hot bed of coronavirus right now, about how the Houston hospital system is ACTUALLY doing right now as opposed to what you might be seeing in the news. From the article:

“What you’ve been hearing is a report that we are at 97 percent or so capacity across the Texas medical center. At Houston Methodist, we’re somewhere in the low 90s right now in terms of capacity of ICU beds, but let me put that in perspective … June 25 2019, exactly one year ago … It was at 95 percent. We are highly experienced at utilizing our ICU beds for the sickest of the sick patients day in day out … and it is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s. That’s how all of us operate hospitals, and how all hospitals operate.”

“The capacity that’s being reported is base capacity … we have the ability to go far higher than that in terms of the ICU beds that we can utilize for COVID.”

“We have, across Houston Methodist, 24 hundred beds 330 or so of those are our ICU beds on a normal day, but there is an ability to flex beds back and forth. We can turn regular beds into ICU as we need to with appropriate staff, ventilators, and other equipment. We can turn many other areas in the hospital like some of the recovery areas, pre and post surgical areas, and places like that into ICUs.”

“We are seeing younger patients, we are seeing a shorter length of stay, we are seeing lower immortality, and we are seeing lower ICU utilization right now.”

“People need to come to the hospital when they have clinical issues … People need to come to the hospital or emergency department to receive care and not allow bad things to happen to them because they are somehow inaccurately afraid of coming to the hospitals. That’s a very key message.”

“The time is now, as Houstonians, to band together and act like the can-do Houstonians that we are, and do all of the right things, and that means every single person in the community needs to be wearing a mask when they’re outside of the home, they need to avoid leaving the home or avoid going to social places or places where they congregate together whenever possible, they need to keep socially distanced, they need to do obsessive levels of hand hygiene. We’ve done that for months in our hospitals and we keep our employees and patients safe. We can do that across other businesses, across our lives, and get this virus level back down.”

And those quotes are from hospital CEOs in Houston.

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