Month: August 2021

Donald Trump has contracted coronavirus and been vaccinated against it, but it’s long been clear many of his supporters are against vaccinations. Much of that is his doing, of course, as he downplayed the dangers of coronavirus and held back about mask mandates and other mitigation efforts while in office and after his term ended.

Regardless of his own personal dealings with the virus, many of his biggest supporters are anti-vax and have fought against mask use and other safety measures. And that was made very clear on Saturday when Trump was actually booed at his own rally for talking about vaccines and their efficacy.

Appearing very wet in Alabama on Saturday night, Trump told his supporters to “take the vaccine” and actually saw some people booing him for it.

“That’s okay, that’s all right. You got your freedoms. But I happened to take the vaccine,” Trump said, walking his comments back after he heard boos. “But you do have your freedoms, you have to maintain that, and you got to get your kids back to school.”

The rant is classic Trump, meandering through a very brief encouragement to get vaccinated before wondering about their effectiveness and concluding “but it does work.” Trump told the crowd that they would be “the first to know” if Trump’s vaccine doesn’t stop another breakthrough case, whatever that means, but it’s a brief look at just how severe the anti-vax sentiment is among Trump supporters.

The Chicago Bears are going to start their season in Los Angeles against the Rams with Andy Dalton as their starting quarterback. That is the decree of head coach Matt Nagy, despite a fan base that is desperate to see rookie Justin Fields be handed the reins.

This has been the plan all along, but as the preseason rolls along, Dalton’s performance has not been particularly inspiring and Fields has provided enough glimpses into his immense talent to get the Bears faithful very excited about his prospects and impatient at the idea of someone else starting the season under center. This all reached a fever pitch on Saturday when the Bears hosted the Bills in their second preseason game of the season and got thoroughly trounced by Buffalo, who started ex-Bear Mitchell Trubisky to rub salt in the wound.

The scoreboard in a preseason game isn’t all that important, but seeing Trubisky carve up the Bears (20-of-28, 221 yards, 1 TD, 0 INTs) while Dalton mostly struggled to get anything going with the Chicago offense pushed fans over the edge. They booed and chanted Justin Fields’ name, giving the rookie a standing ovation when he finally entered the game in the third quarter. After the game, the rookie made clear that he wasn’t thrilled with that response, calling it “disrespectful” to Dalton and hoping that Bears fans would cheer whoever was on the field (via NBC Sports Chicago).

“I really think it’s kind of disrespectful to Andy, them cheering my name out like that,” Fields said. “Just cheer him on, you know? That’s not helping Andy play better, to cheer my name. That’s not doing none of that.

“My advice to them would be just cheer whoever’s on the field.”

Dalton played all of the first half and finished 11-of-17 for 141 yards, 1 TD, and 1 INT, but 79 of those yards came on one TD pass and the offense stalled on the first few drives of the game — Dalton had a clever quip that he didn’t hear any boos after the touchdown, so as long as he produces he’s not worried about it. It wasn’t entirely on Dalton, as the offensive line issues for the Bears have been very apparent, but that also has underscored for some why Fields should play. Fields was 9-of-19 for 80 yards through the air, making a couple terrific downfield throws but likewise struggling to consistently move the ball passing. The difference, though, between he and Dalton was his 46 yards rushing on four attempts, all scrambles that helped extend drives and pick up first downs.

There are two schools of thought with a young quarterback and a bad offensive line, and there’s merit to both. One is that if he misses on processing what he sees at the line, it could lead to disaster — as we saw when he failed to go hot on an overload blitz on Saturday and took a scary helmet-to-helmet shot.

On the other hand, Dalton is not mobile enough to extend plays and avoid pressure in the same way as Fields, which leads to faster checkdowns or throwaways in order to get the ball out of his hands. The rookie, instead, has a serious weapon in the form of his legs and that too was on display on Saturday.

Both arguments have validity, and it’s clear that, at least in the beginning, Nagy is choosing to start the veteran and keep his rookie on the bench to learn a bit more before throwing him into the fire with a shaky offensive line. However, Fields’ request that Bears fans will accept that if the offense struggles under Dalton will likely go unheard, even if the plan is somewhat understandable.

SZA’s musical releases have been far and few since she graced the world with her classic debut album, Ctrl. At one point the singer went two years without a single, a streak that ended with the release of “Hit Different.” She quickly followed up that single with “Good Days,” a track that grew to be her most successful track as it entered the top-10 of the singles chart. Since both efforts, things have quieted done a bit for the singer, outside of her “Kiss Me More” collaboration with Doja Cat, but it looks like things could change soon.

Early Sunday morning, SZA took to Twitter to share three new songs with fans, titled “I Hate You,” “Joni,” and “Nightbird.” The songs were shared to a Soundcloud account the singer created, one separate from the official one she has. In a tweet, she defined the release of the records as “dumping random thoughts” and promised to share more “word vomit” in the future. Additionally, a fan asked her if she can “start Sza Sunday’s and drop random thoughts once a week,” to which the singer replied “Yes .”

Another fan thanked her for the new records but also requested another song fans have patiently waited for. “We love you but we also love Shirt,” they wrote, speaking about her presumed next single, “Shirt.” The singer gave a comforting response and simply wrote, “She nex.”

You can listen to the three songs above.

The Delta variant of coronavirus continues to ravage the world, and in the United States the south is unquestionably a virus hot spot as large portions of the population refuse to get vaccinated. Recent days have seen a number of news stories emerge about people who had publicly railed against masks and vaccines.

A number of conservative radio hosts have died of COVID after casting skepticism on mitigation efforts or even being skeptical of the pandemic’s existence. But the biggest is Phil Valentine, a Tennessee radio host who mocked vaccines with a parody song. His death was announced by his station on Saturday.

According to the Daily Beast, Valentine had a late change of mind about the vaccine while on his death bed. But he spent a lot of time in life downplaying the risks of the virus and the efficacy of vaccination.

Though Valentine downplayed the efficacy of vaccines and even went so far as to record a parody song mocking them, he reversed his opinion while in the hospital, advising his family members to get the jab.

He had said of the vaccine, “I have a very low risk of A) Getting COVID and B) dying of it if I do. Why would I risk getting a heart attack or paralysis by getting the vaccine?” He also said at the time that he had been taking the anti-parasite medication ivermectin, which is meant for animals.

This is a tweet, for example, that Valentine sent out last month.

His last retweet, in fact, is pretty grim as well.

The disconnect between what conservatives are saying about coronavirus and the reality of dealing with it is jarring. And the more it continues, it seems inevitable that more stories like this will continue to make headlines.

Kendrick Perkins and Draymond Green pretty clearly do not like one another. Perkins was a pretty vocal critic of USA Basketball before it ended up winning a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and in the aftermath, he was on the list of people Green seemed to greatly enjoy calling out after the team ascended to basketball’s mountaintop. Green also made it a point to mention Perkins on IG Live after the game while he and Kevin Durant were walking to a press conference.

Well apparently, any beef that exists between these two is real enough that Perkins wants Green to back all of this up. Perkins appeared on the Road Trippin‘ podcast and made clear that he’d be down to step into the ring with Green, although he has some skepticism that Green would want to do the same.

“He’s not even my former teammate, but he feel like that I talk sh*t, and I feel like he talk sh*t, is Draymond Green,” Perkins said. “Like, if I had to get in the ring and really put these paws on somebody, it would be Draymond Green. But I really think he don’t want that smoke, and history tells me he really don’t want that smoke.”

The safe bet is that this is never going to happen, but hey, with how many national TV games the Warriors have next season, maybe Draymond and Perk will cross paths sometime.

Saturday night was supposed to be a celebration in New York City, but severe weather ruined the party in a big way. New York’s Central Park was the site of a “homecoming” concert that featured a slew of entertainers. The “We Love NYC” event, held during a still-ongoing pandemic, had another issue to deal with on Saturday night as hurricane Henri approaches the east coast of the United States. As the star-studded concert played out on Saturday, outer bands of the storm caused some severe weather in New York. And after reports of lightning strikes, the concert was abruptly ended and the 60,000 attendees were told to leave immediately.

So immediately, in fact, that the show ended right in the middle of a Barry Manilow song. Video airing on CNN on Saturday saw Manilow performing until a man came on stage and cut him and his band off, then an announcement told people to seek shelter amid inclement weather.

Manilow was right in the middle of performing “I Can’t Smile Without You” when the camera panned to a suddenly-worried crowd and the music stopped. An announcement told the crowd to “please seek shelter for your safety” because of lightning in the area, and chaos ensued as people raced out of the park ahead of the storm.

The concert was about halfway finished when the storm hit the city, and acts like Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Patti Smith and Elvis Costello never saw the stage. Manilow did sing again, though: for Anderson Cooper on CNN.

It’s a disappointing end of the concert for sure, though it certainly was called off for good reason.

Hopefully every made it out of there safely and prepares for the storm coming through this weekend.

Facebook has attempted to change the narrative about its reputation as a place where misinformation runs rampant among its users, but it’s finally had to admit that anti-vaccine and coronavirus misinformation has been some of the most popular pieces of content on the site in recent months.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Facebook acknowledged as much after a week where it shared some information about what’s popular on the social media network. Earlier in the week, Facebook detailed some of the most shared and liked content on the site in the months of April and June of 2021, highlighting that instead of right-wing pundits that content was about Aaron Rodgers and online CBD. But that disclosure made skeptics wonder why the company wasn’t sharing information about other months.

And on Saturday, Facebook revealed details about what was popular during other months of the year: coronavirus misinformation.

Facebook said Saturday evening that an article raising concerns that the coronavirus vaccine could lead to death was the top performing link on its platform from January through March of this year, acknowledging the widespread reach of such material for the first time.

It also said another site that pushed covid-19 misinformation was also among the top 20 most visited pages on the platform.

All this comes weeks after president Joe Biden said that Facebook was “killing people” by spreading misinformation not properly moderated by Facebook. The article has full details about what Facebook revealed, but it’s another reminder that the site has amplified some of the worst parts of anti-vaccine skepticism that’s prolonged the pandemic and helped keep wide swaths of the population unvaccinated despite overwhelming evidence that it’s safe, effective and life-saving for millions of people.

[via Washington Post]

Roosevelt Roberts was just seconds away from dropping what was likely to be a decision loss to Ignacio Bahamomdes, who had weathered a strong start and bloodied face from his opponent to dominate all three rounds with stiff kicks and overwhelming pressure. But Roberts’ night went from bad to much worse when Bahamomdes refused to settle for the decision victory and unleashed a hellacious spinning wheel kick for the knockout during the prelims at UFC Vegas 34 from the UFC APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Bahamomdes has quickly risen to become a fan-favorite since joining the UFC after his second-round knockout of Edson Gomez as part of Dana White’s Contender Series in November 2020. After a tough split decision loss against John Makdessi in April, Bahamomdes bounced back with a massive win and one that should earn some extra cash in the form of a fight-night bonus.

For Roberts, a fellow Dana White’s Contender Series alum, it’s been a rough go since his last win a submission victory in May 2020. He now has lost two of his last three fights, with his lone loss coming in the form of a no contest when Kevin Croom’s victory was overturned thanks to a positive marijuana test.

Alex Jones and already made it clear that his conspiracy-addled InfoWars was involved in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, and this week a member of InfoWars was charged over their involvement.

Jones was in Washington along with a number of conspiracy theorists in January, where he claimed he led a crowd to the Capitol. Among them was another host for InfoWars, Owen Shroyer, who saw charges for his actions there this week. Shroyer actually announced on the show that a warrant was out for his arrest.

“There’s a lot of questions, some I have answers to, some I don’t,” he said. “I plan on declaring innocence of these charges because I am.”

According to the Associated Press, Shroyer will face charges of disorderly conduct and entering a restricted area of the Capitol.

Authorities say video shows Shroyer marching to the Capitol from the Ellipse shortly before the building was breached, telling the crowd “today we march for the Capitol because on this historic January 6, 2021, we have to let our Congressmen and women know, and we have to let Mike Pence know, they stole the election, we know they stole it, and we aren’t going to accept it!”

…

Authorities say Shroyer was vocal in advance of Jan. 6 about stopping the certification of the Electoral College vote. The day before the riot, he spoke at Freedom Plaza, declaring: “Americans are ready to fight. We’re not exactly sure what that’s going to look like perhaps in a couple of weeks if we can’t stop this certification of the fraudulent election … we are the new revolution! We are going to restore and we are going to save the republic!” according to the court papers.

As the AP notes, Shroyer is the second InfoWars employee to see charges from the January 6 insurrection attempt, as a video editor was also arrested earlier in the year.

The process leading up to the release of Kanye West’s Donda just got a little bit more interesting. On Saturday, the rapper posted a screenshot of a cryptic text message he sent to a group chat with eight other people, one of which included Pusha T. The message found the Yeezus rapper preparing for a battle of some sort.

“I live for this,” Kanye wrote. “I’ve been f*cked with by nerd ass jock n****s like you my whole life. You will never recover. I promise you.” Kanye sent the message at 12:28 pm on Saturday, and while it’s unclear who the rapper is targeting, fans certainly have their theories as to who he’s talking about.

Many believe that Drake is at least one of the “nerd ass jock n****s” Kanye is referring to. The rapper’s Instagram post came hours after Drake’s guest verse on Trippie Redd’s “Betrayal” was released. On the track, Drake raps, “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know / Forty-five, forty-four (Burned out), let it go,” seemingly referencing Kanye and Pusha’s age, both being 44.

Drake adds, “Ye ain’t changin’ shi*t for me, it’s set in stone / Rollin’ stones, heavy stones (PinkGrillz) / Precious stone, let me make my presence known.” Fans believe that the group message screenshot is a warning of some sort of retaliation Kanye has in store for the diss.

You can read the group chat text message in the post above.