To those adults who feel not wearing a mask or getting the Covid vaccine is their choice, as a healthcare working can I have a choice not treat you?

You may think the debate about mask wearing in schools doesn’t affect you, because you don’t have children in school. But if you go anywhere teachers and children go, for example the grocery store or drug store, you certainly are affected. The virus doesn’t get neatly locked in a school building at night. Major health facilities recommend masks be worn in schools, yet locally they are considered optional. Contact all school board me need and administration and ask to support mask wearing. Protect the staff, the children and our whole community.

After contracting COVID-19 in July, conservative radio show host Phil Valentine has passed away at age 61 from virus complications. Before his death, Mr. Valentine regretted his decision not to get vaccinated. While not a rabid foe of the vaccine, he stated that he thought he was in the low risk category for infection. Whatever his political stance was, it’s a shame he died. This shows us that whether one is a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or what have you, COVID-19 makes no distinction, and getting vaccinated is the right thing to do for all Americans.

All the right wing media can talk about is Afghanistan. Not one word about Trump’s deal with the Taliban. Nothing about how Covid is advancing in red states, or the January 6th investigation or their attempts at suppressing voting. Just like a good magician, look over there not over here.

Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden have tried their best not to talk negatively about Trump and his tenure in the White House. You can imagine what they could say! In spite of the traditional discipline most presidents have displayed, Trump has shown no respect for our current president. Consider Trump’s comments regarding Afghanistan. We should not be surprised at Trump’s lack of respect for tradition or the office of the presidency. If nothing else he is consistent in his toxic behavior. That is the reason he lost. It is also the reason he should never be allowed to serve again!

Republicans and the pundits at Fox News are ignoring anything and everything that Trump ever had to do or say about Afghanistan. But now even former Trump staffers are admitting that Trump and obsessively anti-immigrant Stephen Miller made it next to impossible for Afghans to get visas, no matter how much they had done for the U.S. war effort.

Thank you to every serviceman from pilot to infantry that is evacuating Americans and Afghans. What you are doing is saving the lives of future generations.

If this Afghanistan fiasco ever gets truly investigated, I do believe sleepy Joe my be going to go to jail! Or, it may be like Benghazi — end up being swept under the rug!

A brazenly partisan Kentucky Supreme Court has effectively eliminated Governor Andy Beshear’s ability to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, which he has so far been doing with some success. It’s not because Beshear’s policies have been unreasonable. It’s because Beshear is a Democrat, and the Republican-dominated court wants to teach him a lesson. And the lesson? Don’t oppose Kentucky’s holy trinity of Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, and Donald J. Trump. If people die, so what. It’s votes that count. And loyalty to King Trump.

My body my choice when it comes to vaccine not abortion. It is okay to deny service to gay people but not those who refuse to vaccinate. It is acceptable to hurt police with flagpoles if you don’t like fair democratic election, but you must go to jail if protecting rights of minorities. If you believe these double standards are okay, you are a hypocrite.

Efforts are unfortunately succeeding in several Republican-controlled states to suppress the vote by making it harder to register, limiting the number and shifting the locations of voting precincts, purging voter rolls, complicating absentee voting, attacking voting by mail, and other anti-democratic tricks like controlling who counts ballots. But what should scare the bejeebus out of every American, whether Democrat or Republican, are their efforts to empower legislatures to declare an election “fraudulent,” overturn the results, and declare the winner themselves — even if that candidate clearly lost the election. This is the kind of thing the conservatives on the Supreme Court decided, back in 2013, that racism was “no longer a problem” in America when they effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Just listen to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick blame the surge in COVID-19 in Texas on black Texans, who comprise only about 12% of the entire population of the state, fewer than 50% of whom are fully vaccinated. Now tell me again how there is “no systemic racism in America.” This is a blatantly racist rant, by the second most powerful elected official in Texas, and is full of lies, false information, and undisguised racial prejudice.

Republicans insist on putting the insurrectionists in the same category with the mostly peaceful protesters of police shootings. They are two different categories that deserve different punishments. The peaceful protests didn’t turn violent until the planted Proud Boys showed up to create chaos.

Read more at www.post-trib.com/opinion.