 Well folks, we have a Herman Cain award to give out today. For those of you unaware, Herman Cain awards are given out to folks who are anti-vax, anti-mask and ultimately end up getting sick or dying because they refused to take COVID-19 seriously and vaccinate themselves. And today we have a doozy. So this headline basically says it all, anti-mask Florida GOP bookkeeper dies of COVID leaving party without access to finance software. His death also opened up a firestorm of conspiracy theories from other local Republican Party officials. That headline is going to break my brain, but I mean this is certainly deserving of a Herman Cain award and the details of this story are just, it's not surprising at this point in the pandemic, but his death, the way that it affected other people in the party and their response, it truly is astonishing. Salon explains after spending months railing against COVID-19 precautions and criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci, a Republican Party official in Florida passed away this week, leaving his county-level GOP organization without access to critical financial accounts. Greg Prentis, 61, served as accountant for the Hillsborough County GOP and also chaired the organization's Committee for Election Integrity. A software engineer by trade, Tampa Bay's local patch outlet reported that he built and maintained the local Republican Party's campaign finance software last year and was responsible for filing its monthly reports to the Federal Elections Commission. FEC filing from the surviving members of the organization claims that Prentis died without sharing login information for these accounts or any sort of instructions for how to use them. The letter also tells the regulatory agency it will likely need more time to complete a report on its August fundraising numbers and foreshadows trouble compiling the local party's financials for future months as well. In addition to his rule compiling the Hillsborough County GOP's financials, Prentis spent most of the past year fearmongering about COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates, and other pandemic safety measures, like many other conservatives in public life. He took aim in particular at the White House COVID-19 advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, writing on Facebook that America needed to end Fauciism. He also argued that we need more socialist distancing than we do social distancing. It sounds like we actually need more social distancing after all. This is just a crazy, crazy story. This doesn't seem like a dumb person, right? This is an individual who designed this software and he may be a Republican and I think that Republicans and conservatives in general are inherently flawed in their thinking, but this isn't like a dumb person. This is someone who's relatively competent and yet he refused to get the vaccine and he died. Now, Herman Cain Awards tweets out, not a fan of mask mandates, refuses to get vaccinated, wants to end Fauciism, catches COVID-19, lasts 24 hours. We honor former Florida GOP official Greg Prentis with the Herman Cain Award. And that really is well earned. And I should add that the Herman Cain Awards, like I don't necessarily believe that the goal is to be callous. The goal is to point out how your actions have consequences. And if anything, the Herman Cain Awards should serve as a reminder to people how effective the vaccines are. It's not people who are vaccinated who are taking up the ICUs in hospitals across the country. It's unvaccinated people who usually post COVID-19 misinformation, anti-vax misinformation on their Facebook accounts. I've browsed the Herman Cain Awards subreddit, which I've been told is the idiot cousin to the Darn Awards. And some of the memes that are shared by people who won Herman Cain Awards and want to die, I've seen these memes shared by my IRL friends. I've seen them posted to Facebook, former coworkers, friends, and it's just a matter of time before, you know, I see someone get a Herman Cain Award who I know in real life. I mean, we're all at some point at the rate we're going, going to know someone who wins a Herman Cain Award. And I want to prevent that. Nobody wants to give out Herman Cain Awards. But I think it's necessary to raise awareness about how people not getting vaccinated. They're playing with fire. They're rolling the dice with their own lives. Now the circumstances surrounding his death are even more bizarre because there was a bunch of conspiracy theories and accusations against the hospital that he was at by his Republican colleagues. And this is truly weird. Prentice's death has also opened up a firestorm of conspiracy theories from other local Republican Party officials, including one who called COVID-19 a medically engineered virus and suggested without evidence that his death was the result of wrongdoing on behalf of the hospital he was being treated at. Jason Kimball, a fellow Hillsborough County GOP member and close friend of Prentice, even suggested that Tampa General Hospital was performing intubations illegally, patch reported. Kimball, whose LinkedIn profile says he is a pharmacy technician at a local Walmart, called the procedure a high fatality protocol in comments to the Tampa City Council. ER and ICU doctors are criminals and murderers Kimball wrote on Facebook. They intubate everyone and stick them on a ventilator for no reason, just out of precaution as the doctor told me, without consent from the family, Tampa General Hospital is evil. At least one council member interrupted his comments to denounce the conspiracies. Well, there's that at least one person denounced the conspiracy theories. What do you want the doctors to do? If these people don't have oxygen, they're going to get intubated. It's not like these doctors and hospitals are sitting there, you know, laughing, going whoa, as they intubate more and more people, they're just following procedure. There's not much you can do for someone when they get to that point. And their initial instinct isn't to reflect on their stance towards this pandemic. Their instinct is to attribute blame to the hospital, to doctors, the people who tried to help him. Rather than thinking, oh, well, you know, maybe this should be a wake up call and maybe I should get vaccinated. No, they think, oh, these doctors killed him. It's just they're always moving the goalpost and it doesn't really matter how many wake up calls and how many Herman Cain Awards are awarded to people. They're still like once your mind is set, it's going to take a lot to actually convince you it has to come from someone who they trust. And I just usually, you know, your social circles all going to have the same opinion on this. So, I mean, I don't know what to say. The best that we can hope for is we share stories like this and we share the Herman Cain Awards with people whenever somebody wins it in hopes that maybe we'll begin to get through to people. But at this point, I mean, time may be running out. I don't know what to say. I don't want people to die, especially if their death is preventable. Even if they're Republicans and I disagree with them, that doesn't mean that I think that they should be killed, right, or die. I want them to be saved. Perhaps later, we can rehabilitate them and they can move away from their conservative views. But I'm not cold. I don't want them to die. But I mean, I have to be honest, my sympathy for these people is running out. Because at this point in time, with all of the available data we have, if you don't get the vaccine, I mean, I don't know what you expect. You're just stupid at this point. You're stubborn. And your stubbornness is going to lead to you dying. So I just, I don't know what else to say. Stop being fucking stupid. Get the vaccine. It's what's best for you. You're not getting the vaccine because I want you to, to appease me. Get the vaccine for yourself. You're not owning the libs by not getting the vaccine. You're only fucking yourself over. And I'll leave that there.