A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
I just went outside to gaze on the Blue Moon, and it looked exactly like this, really bright !
If it makes you feel any better, Brooks & Shields both are predicting a Biden win, and Randy Rainbow gives us hope with his latest little ditty...thank goodness for that...love the comments Randy !
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – This Halloween is either the last of four presidential slasher movies, produced by notorious horror producer Donald John Trump, or it is the beginning of a new, 48-month national nightmare even more bone-chilling than the last.
The Ring is a 2002 film directed by Gore Verbinski. It is about a cursed videotape. When someone watches it, they die seven days later. The Ring remade a 1998 Japanese film, Ringu, which in turn was based on the 1991 novel of that name by Koji Suzuki.
The Trump administration since last February has been very much like The Ring. If you watch a clip of Trump or Pence or Scott Atlas lying about how you don’t need to wear a mask, or socially distance, and you don’t need a federal contact-tracing program, then some time after that you fall ill with a novel coronavirus. On average a thousand Americans a day are dying of the disease, a number that will rise sharply in the coming months given that cases are spiking to unprecedented levels. That is a 9/11 every three days. Donald Trump, Jr., says it is “nothing.” How much more horror can we take than that?
We have Roman Polanski (talk about horror) and his 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby. We’ve seen that picture, too, for four years. Racist old Fred (anti-) Christ Trump, investigated by the FBI for refusing to rent to African-Americans, sired an uber-racist spawn who would go on to make America hell for minorities and immigrants.
Then you have the Friday the 13th horror franchise. Jason Voorhees fell into Crystal Lake while at camp as a child, because the camp counselors sneaked off to make love. Ever after, the lake was cursed and becomes the scene of a whole series of grisly murders. Some of them are by a Jason who has become a swamp creature who wears a mask, but the cursedness of the site throws up other murderers, too (including Jason’s mother).
Back in the 1970s Big Oil realized that burning fossil fuels like gasoline was causing dangerous climate change. They liked making love to the billions of greenbacks they were raking in, however, far too much to release their findings to the public. They decided instead to cover them up, instigating disinformation campaigns and burying the truth in a swamp of deceit. They tried to ruin the lives and reputations of climate scientists like Michael E. Mann. The Republican Party and some Democrats, along with the Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia, made common cause with Exxon-Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and other petroleum giants in this effort to keep their black gold flowing and the money flowing in. They made the whole planet earth into a cursed swamp. Now the climate that they killed has reemerged as a mass killer, fomenting more frequent and more destructive wildfires in the American West and Australia and even the rain forest of Brazil, turbocharging hurricanes and cyclones, raising sea levels and flooding coastal plains and cities. Trump is sort of the climate-Jason incarnate, a creature of the cursed swamp who urges on the deadly burning of coal and other fossil fuels and whips up nature’s fury by pumping billions of tons of dangerous heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. His victims die horrifying deaths, burned alive, drowned, crushed by 150-mile-an-hour winds, and pulled into an angry, over-heated sea. Fueled by greed, Trump-Jason is a grisly mass murderer.
Then there is Brian de Palma’s 1976 Carrie, based on a work of Stephen King, about an awkward teen with paranormal powers who is cruelly teased until she unleashes her vengeance at the high school prom. Her mother is a religious fanatic who does not tell Carrie about having periods, and so the girl is shocked when she menstruates at school in the shower. The other girls, especially Chris Hargensen, make fun of her and throw tampons at her. Later they punk her by having a boy invite her to the prom, but maneuver her under a bucket of pig’s blood, which they pour on her. Carrie unleashes her telekinetic rage.
So Trump is Carrie, who was the butt of jokes by Barack Obama and Seth Meyers at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2011. “Tonight, no one will laugh at Carrie.” He may not have decided to run because of the humiliation, but he was angry, especially about Meyers’ routine, and he at least looked pretty insulted by Obama’s. Once elected president, Trump has been on a mission to use his paranormal powers (in his case, not telekinesis but world-class Lying) to undo every good thing that Obama ever did. Did Obama make peace with Iran? Trump put us on a war footing with Tehran. Did Obama make insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions and cover an extra 30 million people? Not for long, under Trump. Did Obama regulate coal-fired electricity plants to cut down on carbon dioxide? By God, trump would double the CO2 and bring back coal. Did Obama regulate the chemicals the big corporations put into our environment? Trump let them fill America up with any old poison they liked. The past four years has been one big remake of Carrie, with Trump as the humiliated teen who will have revenge for all the slights.
We can only hope that Tuesday’s election will be The Exorcist, and that Joe Biden can cast the demons of race hatred, white supremacy, religious bigotry, anti-science superstition and rapacious plutocracy out of the possessed body public of America."
~~~~~
We along with the environment have all been traumatized by Trump, how long will it take for us to recover? Here's a report to read at your leisure, longish but worth it:
Even though Bernie Sanders didn’t win the U.S. Democratic nomination and Jeremy Corbyn was beaten badly in Britain’s 2019 election, the movements their campaigns created will live on in left-wing politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
I just went outside to gaze on the Blue Moon, and it looked exactly like this, really bright !
If it makes you feel any better, Brooks & Shields both are predicting a Biden win, and Randy Rainbow gives us hope with his latest little ditty...thank goodness for that...love the comments Randy !
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – This Halloween is either the last of
four presidential slasher movies, produced by notorious horror producer
Donald John Trump, or it is the beginning of a new, 48-month national
nightmare even more bone-chilling than the last.
The Ring is a 2002 film directed by Gore Verbinski. It is
about a cursed videotape. When someone watches it, they die seven days
later. The Ring remade a 1998 Japanese film, Ringu, which in turn was based on the 1991 novel of that name by Koji Suzuki.
The Trump administration since last February has been very much like The Ring.
If you watch a clip of Trump or Pence or Scott Atlas lying about how
you don’t need to wear a mask, or socially distance, and you don’t need a
federal contact-tracing program, then some time after that you fall ill
with a novel coronavirus. On average a thousand Americans a day are
dying of the disease, a number that will rise sharply in the coming
months given that cases are spiking to unprecedented levels. That is a
9/11 every three days. Donald Trump, Jr., says it is “nothing.” How
much more horror can we take than that?
We have Roman Polanski (talk about horror) and his 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby.
We’ve seen that picture, too, for four years. Racist old Fred
(anti-) Christ Trump, investigated by the FBI for refusing to rent to
African-Americans, sired an uber-racist spawn who would go on to make
America hell for minorities and immigrants.
Then you have the Friday the 13th horror franchise. Jason
Voorhees fell into Crystal Lake while at camp as a child, because the
camp counselors sneaked off to make love. Ever after, the lake was
cursed and becomes the scene of a whole series of grisly murders. Some
of them are by a Jason who has become a swamp creature who wears a mask,
but the cursedness of the site throws up other murderers, too
(including Jason’s mother).
Back in the 1970s Big Oil realized that burning fossil fuels like
gasoline was causing dangerous climate change. They liked making love
to the billions of greenbacks they were raking in, however, far too much
to release their findings to the public. They decided instead to cover
them up, instigating disinformation campaigns and burying the truth in a
swamp of deceit. They tried to ruin the lives and reputations of
climate scientists like Michael E. Mann.
The Republican Party and some Democrats, along with the Russian
Federation and Saudi Arabia, made common cause with Exxon-Mobil, BP,
Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and other petroleum giants in this effort to
keep their black gold flowing and the money flowing in. They made the
whole planet earth into a cursed swamp. Now the climate that they
killed has reemerged as a mass killer, fomenting more frequent and more
destructive wildfires in the American West and Australia and even the
rain forest of Brazil, turbocharging hurricanes and cyclones, raising
sea levels and flooding coastal plains and cities. Trump is sort of the
climate-Jason incarnate, a creature of the cursed swamp who urges on
the deadly burning of coal and other fossil fuels and whips up nature’s
fury by pumping billions of tons of dangerous heat-trapping carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere. His victims die horrifying deaths, burned
alive, drowned, crushed by 150-mile-an-hour winds, and pulled into an
angry, over-heated sea. Fueled by greed, Trump-Jason is a grisly mass
murderer.
Then there is Brian de Palma’s 1976 Carrie, based on a work of
Stephen King, about an awkward teen with paranormal powers who is
cruelly teased until she unleashes her vengeance at the high school
prom. Her mother is a religious fanatic who does not tell Carrie about
having periods, and so the girl is shocked when she menstruates at
school in the shower. The other girls, especially Chris Hargensen, make
fun of her and throw tampons at her. Later they punk her by having a
boy invite her to the prom, but maneuver her under a bucket of pig’s
blood, which they pour on her. Carrie unleashes her telekinetic rage.
So Trump is Carrie, who was the butt of jokes by Barack Obama and
Seth Meyers at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2011. “Tonight,
no one will laugh at Carrie.” He may not have decided to run because of
the humiliation, but he was angry, especially about Meyers’ routine,
and he at least looked pretty insulted by Obama’s. Once elected
president, Trump has been on a mission to use his paranormal powers (in
his case, not telekinesis but world-class Lying) to undo every good
thing that Obama ever did. Did Obama make peace with Iran? Trump put
us on a war footing with Tehran. Did Obama make insurance companies
cover pre-existing conditions and cover an extra 30 million people? Not
for long, under Trump. Did Obama regulate coal-fired electricity
plants to cut down on carbon dioxide? By God, trump would double the
CO2 and bring back coal. Did Obama regulate the chemicals the big
corporations put into our environment? Trump let them fill America up
with any old poison they liked. The past four years has been one big
remake of Carrie, with Trump as the humiliated teen who will have revenge for all the slights.
We can only hope that Tuesday’s election will be The Exorcist,
and that Joe Biden can cast the demons of race hatred, white supremacy,
religious bigotry, anti-science superstition and rapacious plutocracy
out of the possessed body public of America."
~~~~~
We along with the environment have all been traumatized by Trump, how long will it take for us to recover? Here's a report to read at your leisure, longish but worth it:
Even though Bernie Sanders didn’t win the U.S.
Democratic nomination and Jeremy Corbyn was beaten badly in Britain’s
2019 election, the movements their campaigns created will live on in
left-wing politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Closer and closer are we to the pivotal hour...but now it seems Trump at the very last moment has changed his mind about wearing masks....and he brought Melania along with her big boobies too :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bruce Y. Lee of Forbes reports that a couple of days ago, the Trump White House put out a press release listing the administration’s scientific achievements. Number one on the list was “Ending the Pandemic.”
The Nazi genocidal maniac Adolf Hitler said, “Die Breite masse eines volkes fällt einer grosse lüge leichter zum opfer als einer kleinen” (“The broad mass of a people falls victim to a big lie more easily than a small one.”)
But I think even Nazi propagandists would have balked at the gargantuan Trump level of falsehood. Indeed, it is hard to think of an American president who told so titanic a lie since George W. Bush intimated that Iraq was two years away from having a nuclear weapon.
As the US enters the feared Second Wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the country faces a dark winter. In the past week, 500,000 Americans fell ill with COVID-19, with one being infected every 1.2 seconds. On Tuesday, 44,000 people were hospitalized in one day, a third more than in a typical mid-September day.
As Trump appointee Brett Giroir said forthrightly this week, this spike in transmission is not because of extra testing, contrary to the lie that Trump keeps telling.
The winter months worsen the transmission of infectious diseases because the cold forces people indoors, into close quarters where they are breathing, sneezing and coughing on one another. Despite all the irrational beach shaming in which the media engaged last summer, as Zeynep Tufekci noted, there were no big outbreaks traced to beaches. It was hanging out in bars and restaurants that was dangerous. Or in churches, singing and talking loudly. Indoors, for hours at a time. The novel coronavirus is a respiratory disease, which is spread primarily by other people breathing on you. Since a lot of people have the disease without knowing it, I think you just have to assume that any stranger you encounter could have it, and I would no more let people breathe on me in close quarters for many hours than I would let them spit on me. I have to say, I cannot understand it when I see Trump’s devotees crowded together at rallies without masks, sucking down potentially infected air that had just been in someone else’s moist lungs. This is a level of ignorance or recklessness that it is hard for me to fathom.
By the time Trump goes out of office, if he is defeated Tuesday, he may well leave behind a toll of nearly 500,000 dead Americans. In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed 675,000 Americans, a century ago before many of the advances of modern medicine. Trump’s studied inaction on the pandemic has teleported us back in time 100 years, leaving us as vulnerable to this pandemic as our ancestors four generations ago were to that one. In 1918, remember, there were no antibiotics, no knowledge of DNA, no quick blood tests, no MRIs, no television. Trump has us living with this pandemic as though we were still driving Model T’s and flying biplanes.
Nor is there any end in sight. Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that even with a vaccine, the country might not return to a semblance of normalcy until early 2022. I think he is assuming that Trump will lose when he says this. It is possible that with an erratic madman at our helm, we could go on suffering from the pandemic for years.
On Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows admitted, “We’re not going to control the pandemic.” When challenged as to why by CNN’s Jake Tapper, he replied that it is because it is a respiratory disease.
Me, I take away from it being a respiratory disease that I shouldn’t let people breathe on me, not that I should fatalistically risk being infected.
The Trump crew has fallen for a crazy Libertarian theory that you could let young people, who are less likely to fall seriously ill or die from the coronavirus, circulate freely and contract it, while keeping the more vulnerable elderly away from them. As Steven Albert, Professor and Chair of Behavioral and Community Health, University of Pittsburgh, argues knowledgeably, this policy does not work. It would likely kill a million people. And a lot of younger people would end up being ill and dying, because of the sheer scale of this irresponsible experiment with the lives of millions. He points out that this was essentially the Swedish approach, and it did not work. It isn’t even clear that you could ever get to herd immunity. It may be that people are only immune for a few months after contracting the disease, which would mean that herd immunity would always recede the way mirages of water do in the desert. Albert points out that vaccines are the only sure way to induce herd immunity.
As for the 4 other scientific achievements that Trump boasted of? Those were incredible falsehoods, too, as Lee notes at Forbes. Trump has slashed funding for science and has unleashed deregulated pollutants and billions of tons of carbon dioxide on the environment. At one point his EPA approved an insecticide that causes brain damage in babies.
Somehow, somewhere, you can be sure that all the death and destruction Trump has unleashed on us are making him and his cronies a lot of money."
~~~~~
Is it too late to do a Novena ? I was sorta ok this morning after two cups of chamomile tea...but as you know, the best realist of the pack brings us back down to earth as usual:
"For the second election cycle in a row, Pennsylvania’s 9 million voters will play a definitive role in the choosing of our next president. In 2016, Donald Trump eked out a victory in Pennsylvania by around 44,000 votes, or about 0.7 percent more than Hillary Clinton. The state’s 20 Electoral College votes were the vital piece to Trump’s eventual inside straight — Pennsylvania to Michigan to Wisconsin — which allowed him to win the White House while losing the popular vote.
Four years later, and matters for Mr. Trump have changed.
A pandemic that has taken the lives of nearly 230,000 people in the U.S. — and Trump’s incomprehensibly ham-fisted handling of same — hangs over the electorate like a pall of poison smoke. That pandemic has laid waste to much of the economy, stripping Trump of what was to be the hood ornament on his reelection campaign bus. Finally, he is not running against Hillary Clinton this time, and has been therefore unable to deploy the well-worn weapons of rhetorical misogyny that served him so effectively the last time.
Polling in Pennsylvania throughout the campaign season has been steady and relatively tight. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has enjoyed a six-point lead, give or take, for months now. None of the dramatic events during the campaign season moved those numbers much at all, a fact that held true nationally as well as locally.
After the polling debacle of 2016, when pollsters misjudged the numbers coming out of Pennsylvania right along with Michigan and Wisconsin, people are properly loath to put any faith in polling margins that could very well be fiction once again. One thing all the election pros are sure of, however, is the importance of Pennsylvania to Trump’s hopes for victory.
Joe Biden would love to win Pennsylvania, but he does not have to win it; if he does, and the numbers in the other swing states hold true within a margin of around 5 points, there are very few ways for him to lose the national election. If Trump fails to win the state, on the other hand, his chances of winning the Electoral College overall crumble to about two percent. He and his people know this, and have moved swiftly into the dark places of electioneering like an oil spill on a rocky beach.
“President Trump’s campaign in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania is pursuing a three-pronged strategy that would effectively suppress mail-in votes in the state, moving to stop the counting of absentee votes before Election Day, pushing to limit how late mail-in ballots can be accepted and intimidating Pennsylvanians trying to vote early,” reportedThe New York Times this morning.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been wreaking election havoc for weeks in Pennsylvania, due in large part to the fact that this is the first year the state has offered widespread early voting to all of its voters. The infrastructure to handle such an influx is wobbly in its newness, Trump’s campaign and legal teams located a number of pressure points to potentially exploit, and the resulting legal arguments made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
That’s when the weird and creepy intensified.
Pennsylvania Republicans sought to keep state officials from counting absentee ballots that come in after the polls close on November 3; many states are allowing this, given the mayhem being wrought by COVID. Republicans in North Carolina sought a similar injunction. In a bang-bang pair of rulings yesterday that thrilled Democrats, the high court allowed for votes in both states to be counted up to three days after Election Day.
Newly minted Justice Barrett did not join in the deliberations or render a verdict in either case. According to the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office, she simply did not have enough time to get appropriately up to speed on the specific issues of the cases. As these decisions came down 5-3, with Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas dissenting, Barrett’s presence would not have changed the outcome.
The weird and creepy came in the guise of Justice Alito, whose fury at people being able to have their votes count during a pandemic in an election the Republican could lose was, well, palpable. Two passages from his Pennsylvania dissent stand out.
This:
Although the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Petitioner’s request for that relief, we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today directing county boards of elections to segregate ballots received between 8:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020, and 5:00 p.m. on November 6, 2020. Nothing in the Court’s order today precludes Petitioner from applying to this Court for relief if, for some reason, it is not satisfied with the Secretary’s guidance.
… and this:
Although the Court denies the motion to expedite, the petition for certiorari remains before us, and if it is granted, the case can then be decided under a shortened schedule. In addition, the Court’s denial of the motion to expedite is not a denial of a request for this Court to order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if the State Supreme Court’s decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available.
… are deeply chilling indicators that the conservatives on this court have every intention of interfering with this election if they can, no matter how dangerous and destabilizing that interference could be. Justice Alito specifically states that ballots coming in after November 3 will be segregated from those arriving on time, and goes on to suggest that “a targeted remedy will be available” from the high court to throw those ballots out.
Note well: Alito is offering the Supreme Court to serve as a ballot-shredder for votes that were legally cast under the rules as they stand. He did not whisper this, but put his name to it in a public dissent, one that earned the signatures of Gorsuch and Thomas.
Justice Kavanaugh remained silent in both cases, but if a case that will decide the fate of the presidency comes to this court, one can assume Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett will fall in line with a pro-Trump ruling, which leaves Chief Justice Roberts as the wild card, and God help us all.
On Monday, the same court ruled 5-3 against allowing Wisconsin to continue counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, essentially deciding in the polar opposite direction of the Pennsylvania and North Carolina rulings. As if this were not unnerving enough, Justice Kavanaugh vomited up a farcical Trump-clone argument about the perils of nonexistent voter fraud, further stating that the court’s decisions should make sure we know who wins on Election Night. News network executives everywhere must have been thrilled, but there was no basis in law for Kavanaugh’s nonsense. For Supreme Court nonsense, however, there is no remedy.
As Pennsylvania goes on Election Day, so goes the nation… but the court cases that may be brought by the Trump campaign could come from Wisconsin, North Carolina, any number of other states, or all of them combined. The only remedy for this is a landslide victory for Joe Biden. If the Electoral College is out of Trump’s reach by the time poll closures cross the Mississippi River, with Pennsylvania in Biden’s hip pocket, it will all be over but the shouting. If not…"
~~~~~
Stay Safe Y'all...and start praying. Oh well, at least I didn't swear this time.
Closer and closer are we to the pivotal hour...but now it seems Trump at the very last moment has changed his mind about wearing masks....and he brought Melania along with her big boobies too :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bruce Y. Lee of Forbes reports
that a couple of days ago, the Trump White House put out a press
release listing the administration’s scientific achievements. Number one
on the list was “Ending the Pandemic.”
The Nazi genocidal maniac Adolf Hitler said,
“Die Breite masse eines volkes fällt einer grosse lüge leichter zum
opfer als einer kleinen” (“The broad mass of a people falls victim to a
big lie more easily than a small one.”)
But I think even Nazi propagandists would have balked at the
gargantuan Trump level of falsehood. Indeed, it is hard to think of an
American president who told so titanic a lie since George W. Bush
intimated that Iraq was two years away from having a nuclear weapon.
As the US enters the feared Second Wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the country faces a dark winter. In the past week,
500,000 Americans fell ill with COVID-19, with one being infected every
1.2 seconds. On Tuesday, 44,000 people were hospitalized in one day, a
third more than in a typical mid-September day.
As Trump appointee Brett Giroir
said forthrightly this week, this spike in transmission is not because
of extra testing, contrary to the lie that Trump keeps telling.
The winter months worsen the transmission of infectious diseases
because the cold forces people indoors, into close quarters where they
are breathing, sneezing and coughing on one another. Despite all the
irrational beach shaming in which the media engaged last summer, as
Zeynep Tufekci noted, there were no big outbreaks traced to beaches. It
was hanging out in bars and restaurants that was dangerous. Or in
churches, singing and talking loudly. Indoors, for hours at a time.
The novel coronavirus is a respiratory disease, which is spread
primarily by other people breathing on you. Since a lot of people have
the disease without knowing it, I think you just have to assume that any
stranger you encounter could have it, and I would no more let people
breathe on me in close quarters for many hours than I would let them
spit on me. I have to say, I cannot understand it when I see Trump’s
devotees crowded together at rallies without masks, sucking down
potentially infected air that had just been in someone else’s moist
lungs. This is a level of ignorance or recklessness that it is hard for
me to fathom.
By the time Trump goes out of office, if he is defeated Tuesday, he may well leave behind a toll of nearly 500,000 dead Americans.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed 675,000 Americans, a century ago before
many of the advances of modern medicine. Trump’s studied inaction on
the pandemic has teleported us back in time 100 years, leaving us as
vulnerable to this pandemic as our ancestors four generations ago were
to that one. In 1918, remember, there were no antibiotics, no knowledge
of DNA, no quick blood tests, no MRIs, no television. Trump has us
living with this pandemic as though we were still driving Model T’s and
flying biplanes.
Nor is there any end in sight. Dr. Anthony Fauci warned
that even with a vaccine, the country might not return to a semblance
of normalcy until early 2022. I think he is assuming that Trump will
lose when he says this. It is possible that with an erratic madman at
our helm, we could go on suffering from the pandemic for years.
On Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows admitted, “We’re
not going to control the pandemic.” When challenged as to why by CNN’s
Jake Tapper, he replied that it is because it is a respiratory disease.
Me, I take away from it being a respiratory disease that I shouldn’t
let people breathe on me, not that I should fatalistically risk being
infected.
The Trump crew has fallen for a crazy Libertarian theory that you
could let young people, who are less likely to fall seriously ill or die
from the coronavirus, circulate freely and contract it, while keeping
the more vulnerable elderly away from them. As Steven Albert,
Professor and Chair of Behavioral and Community Health, University of
Pittsburgh, argues knowledgeably, this policy does not work. It would
likely kill a million people. And a lot of younger people would end up
being ill and dying, because of the sheer scale of this irresponsible
experiment with the lives of millions. He points out that this was
essentially the Swedish approach, and it did not work. It isn’t even
clear that you could ever get to herd immunity. It may be that people
are only immune for a few months after contracting the disease, which
would mean that herd immunity would always recede the way mirages of
water do in the desert. Albert points out that vaccines are the only
sure way to induce herd immunity.
As for the 4 other scientific achievements that Trump boasted of? Those were incredible falsehoods, too, as Lee notes at Forbes.
Trump has slashed funding for science and has unleashed deregulated
pollutants and billions of tons of carbon dioxide on the environment.
At one point his EPA approved an insecticide that causes brain damage in
babies.
Somehow, somewhere, you can be sure that all the death and
destruction Trump has unleashed on us are making him and his cronies a
lot of money."
~~~~~
Is it too late to do a Novena ? I was sorta ok this morning after two cups of chamomile tea...but as you know, the best realist of the pack brings us back down to earth as usual:
"For the second election cycle in a row, Pennsylvania’s 9 million
voters will play a definitive role in the choosing of our next
president. In 2016, Donald Trump eked out a victory in Pennsylvania by
around 44,000 votes, or about 0.7 percent more than Hillary Clinton. The
state’s 20 Electoral College votes were the vital piece to Trump’s
eventual inside straight — Pennsylvania to Michigan to Wisconsin — which
allowed him to win the White House while losing the popular vote.
Four years later, and matters for Mr. Trump have changed.
A pandemic that has taken the lives of nearly 230,000 people in the
U.S. — and Trump’s incomprehensibly ham-fisted handling of same — hangs
over the electorate like a pall of poison smoke. That pandemic has laid
waste to much of the economy, stripping Trump of what was to be the hood
ornament on his reelection campaign bus. Finally, he is not running
against Hillary Clinton this time, and has been therefore unable to
deploy the well-worn weapons of rhetorical misogyny that served him so
effectively the last time.
Polling in Pennsylvania throughout the campaign season has been
steady and relatively tight. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has enjoyed a
six-point lead, give or take, for months now. None of the dramatic
events during the campaign season moved those numbers much at all, a
fact that held true nationally as well as locally.
After the polling debacle of 2016, when pollsters misjudged the
numbers coming out of Pennsylvania right along with Michigan and
Wisconsin, people are properly loath to put any faith in polling margins
that could very well be fiction once again. One thing all the election
pros are sure of, however, is the importance of Pennsylvania to Trump’s
hopes for victory.
Joe Biden would love to win Pennsylvania, but he does not have to
win it; if he does, and the numbers in the other swing states hold true
within a margin of around 5 points, there are very few ways for him to
lose the national election. If Trump fails to win the state, on the
other hand, his chances of winning the Electoral College overall crumble
to about two percent. He and his people know this, and have moved swiftly into the dark places of electioneering like an oil spill on a rocky beach.
“President Trump’s campaign in the crucial battleground of
Pennsylvania is pursuing a three-pronged strategy that would effectively
suppress mail-in votes in the state, moving to stop the counting of
absentee votes before Election Day, pushing to limit how late mail-in
ballots can be accepted and intimidating Pennsylvanians trying to vote
early,” reportedThe New York Times this morning.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been wreaking election havoc for weeks in Pennsylvania, due in large part to the fact that this is the first year
the state has offered widespread early voting to all of its voters. The
infrastructure to handle such an influx is wobbly in its newness,
Trump’s campaign and legal teams located a number of pressure points to
potentially exploit, and the resulting legal arguments made it all the
way to the Supreme Court.
That’s when the weird and creepy intensified.
Pennsylvania Republicans sought to keep state officials from counting
absentee ballots that come in after the polls close on November 3; many
states are allowing this, given the mayhem being wrought by COVID.
Republicans in North Carolina sought a similar injunction. In a
bang-bang pair of rulings yesterday that thrilled Democrats, the high
court allowed for votes in both states to be counted up to three days after Election Day.
Newly minted Justice Barrett did not join in the deliberations or
render a verdict in either case. According to the Supreme Court’s Public
Information Office, she simply did not have enough time to get
appropriately up to speed on the specific issues of the cases. As these
decisions came down 5-3, with Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas
dissenting, Barrett’s presence would not have changed the outcome.
The weird and creepy came in the guise of Justice Alito, whose fury
at people being able to have their votes count during a pandemic in an
election the Republican could lose was, well, palpable. Two passages from his Pennsylvania dissent stand out.
This:
Although the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected Petitioner’s request
for that relief, we have been informed by the Pennsylvania Attorney
General that the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued guidance today
directing county boards of elections to segregate ballots received
between 8:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020, and 5:00 p.m. on November 6,
2020. Nothing in the Court’s order today precludes Petitioner from
applying to this Court for relief if, for some reason, it is not
satisfied with the Secretary’s guidance.
… and this:
Although the Court denies the motion to expedite, the petition for
certiorari remains before us, and if it is granted, the case can then be
decided under a shortened schedule. In addition, the Court’s denial of
the motion to expedite is not a denial of a request for this Court to
order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if
the State Supreme Court’s decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted
remedy will be available.
… are deeply chilling indicators that the conservatives on this court have every intention of interfering with this election if they can, no matter how dangerous and destabilizing
that interference could be. Justice Alito specifically states that
ballots coming in after November 3 will be segregated from those
arriving on time, and goes on to suggest that “a targeted remedy will be
available” from the high court to throw those ballots out.
Note well: Alito is offering the Supreme Court to serve as a
ballot-shredder for votes that were legally cast under the rules as they
stand. He did not whisper this, but put his name to it in a public
dissent, one that earned the signatures of Gorsuch and Thomas.
Justice Kavanaugh remained silent in both cases, but if a case that
will decide the fate of the presidency comes to this court, one can
assume Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett will fall in line with a
pro-Trump ruling, which leaves Chief Justice Roberts as the wild card,
and God help us all.
On Monday, the same court ruled 5-3 against allowing Wisconsin to
continue counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, essentially
deciding in the polar opposite direction of the Pennsylvania and North
Carolina rulings. As if this were not unnerving enough, Justice
Kavanaugh vomited up a farcical Trump-clone argument
about the perils of nonexistent voter fraud, further stating that the
court’s decisions should make sure we know who wins on Election Night.
News network executives everywhere must have been thrilled, but there
was no basis in law for Kavanaugh’s nonsense. For Supreme Court
nonsense, however, there is no remedy.
As Pennsylvania goes on Election Day, so goes the nation… but the
court cases that may be brought by the Trump campaign could come from
Wisconsin, North Carolina, any number of other states, or all of them
combined. The only remedy for this is a landslide victory for Joe Biden.
If the Electoral College is out of Trump’s reach by the time poll
closures cross the Mississippi River, with Pennsylvania in Biden’s hip
pocket, it will all be over but the shouting. If not…"
~~~~~
Stay Safe Y'all...and start praying. Oh well, at least I didn't swear this time.
"The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a news release on Monday asserting that the Trump administration had put a stop to the coronavirus pandemic — a dubious claim given that the nation is seeing its highest rates of new cases being reported since the crisis began.
In a release titled “Trump Administration Releases Science and Technology Accomplishments from First Term,” the OSTP purported that President Donald Trump had achieved many feats when it came to promoting science.
“President Trump has solidified America’s standing as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation the world has ever seen…. We have achieved a proud record of results, and under President Donald Trump’s leadership, science and technology will continue to inspire us, unite us, and guide us to ever great progress,” OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier said.
Among the Trump administration’s supposed accomplishments, the document celebrated the president and his staff for “ending the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease,” the release said.
Those comments, however, come within just a few days of the coronavirus pandemic reaching its highest levels yet, in terms of new diagnoses being made, demonstrating that the accolades are wildly incorrect.
The seven-day average of new cases being reported daily is at an all-time high, showing 68,767 new infections as of last Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracking of the virus. The last time numbers were that high was back in July.
On both Friday and Saturday, more than 83,000 new cases were reported, with Saturday’s total being the highest single-day number of new diagnoses recorded since the pandemic began (Friday being the second-highest).
The Trump administration’s claims that the virus has been defeated are patently false for another reason: Members of his own executive staff continue to get infected with coronavirus. Most recently, at least five members of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff have tested positive for COVID-19.
Trump has expressed frustration over the continued focus on the pandemic in the news, deriding the media as “losers” earlier this week for reporting on the record-high rates. Trump also called the reports on the growing number of infections “a Fake News Media Conspiracy” in a tweet on Monday.
The president’s angst has been noted in his campaign stops as well, where he has made it a point to belittle the media for reporting on the pandemic, oftentimes by repeatedly saying “COVID” into the microphone while making his complaints. Trump’s grievances have been noticed by former President Barack Obama, who, while campaigning on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, suggested Trump was upset in part because the virus was getting more media attention than him.
“What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on Covid,” Obama recently opined. “He said this at one of his rallies. Covid, Covid, Covid, he’s complaining. He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage.”
The Trump administration’s supposed accomplishments in promoting science during his four years in office have previously been questioned by a number of notable and reliable sources, including Scientific American, which, for the first time in its 175-year history, endorsed a presidential candidate (Biden) in reaction to the anti-science approach Trump has demonstrated.
“The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science,” the publication’s editors wrote in September in explaining its unusual decision to endorse a candidate.
Beyond the “most devastating example” of coronavirus, Scientific American also cited the president’s refusal to accept climate change as a reason for its unusual decision to speak out against a second Trump term.
“In his ongoing denial of reality, Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to mitigate it,” the editors wrote. “The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms, wildfires and extreme flooding.”
" Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has been telling a conspiratorial story about the media and the coronavirus.
"The story goes like this: The media had always said that people who survived a Covid-19 infection would be immune from the virus for life. But once he, Trump, got infected and survived, the media started claiming immunity only lasted for months.
"And until I came along -- you know, you used to hear you have immunity for life, right? As soon as I had it and got better, they were not too happy about that...It was supposed to be for life; when it was me, they said it's only good for four months, okay? Okay. Anybody else it's for life, with Trump they said it's four months. So they brought it down now, immunity, from life to four months," Trump said at his Tuesday rally in Lansing, Michigan.
Trump told a similar story at his Tuesday rally in Omaha, Nebraska: "But because it was me, the press said, 'No, it's not for a lifetime. It's only for four months. The immunity is only now for four months.' They brought it down, right? It was always gonna be for a lifetime, now it's four months."
Trump said much the same thing at a Wednesday rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, this time adding that "they've changed the whole medical standard" because of his own infection.
Facts First: Trump's story is false. In the months before Trump tested positive for Covid-19 in early October, numerous major media outlets had reported that scientists were not yet sure how long survivors might have immunity. While we can't definitively say there was no media report whatsoever from before Trump's infection that had claimed survivors would get lifetime immunity, it was certainly not widely reported that survivors were immune for life.
A CNN fact check in July concluded: "It remains unclear if those already infected with the virus are immune to any reinfection. Additionally, it's unknown how long any sort of immunity would last." A CNN story in mid-August was headlined, "Are you immune to Covid-19 for three months after recovering? It's not clear." And CNN wrote in August about a Nevada man who was infected with the virus twice -- quoting Mark Pandori, the director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, as saying: "After one recovers from COVID-19, we still do not know how much immunity is built up, how long it may last, or how well antibodies play a role in protection against a reinfection."
Even upbeat media stories about optimistic findings about immunity noted that the facts had not been conclusively settled.
For example, an August article in the New York Times said that "scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the coronavirus for months are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of newstudieshas found." But that piece continued by saying that "researchers cannot forecast how long these immune responses will last."
The Washington Post also made clear in August that "researchers are still trying to understand what immunity to the coronavirus will look like" and that "much remains to be seen."
NBC wrote in September about an Icelandic study finding that some Covid-19 survivors had antibodies for four months. But the article proceeded to say that "it's unclear whether the antibodies will protect people from being reinfected." The article quoted a professor who said, "What we don't know is really the million-dollar question: How do these antibodies reflect immunity against this virus and inhibition of this virus."
And ABC included the immunity question on an August list of "unanswered medical questions about coronavirus," saying that "we still don't know how long immunity lasts."
~~~~~
So, you may be interested in this recent study pertaining to "immunity", with video...I have to go soak my knee:
"The White House’s Office of Science
and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a news release on Monday
asserting that the Trump administration had put a stop to the
coronavirus pandemic — a dubious claim given that the nation is seeing
its highest rates of new cases being reported since the crisis began.
In a release titled
“Trump Administration Releases Science and Technology Accomplishments
from First Term,” the OSTP purported that President Donald Trump had
achieved many feats when it came to promoting science.
“President Trump has solidified
America’s standing as the most scientifically and technologically
advanced nation the world has ever seen…. We have achieved a proud
record of results, and under President Donald Trump’s leadership,
science and technology will continue to inspire us, unite us, and guide
us to ever great progress,” OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier said.
Among the Trump administration’s
supposed accomplishments, the document celebrated the president and his
staff for “ending the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“From the outset of the COVID-19
pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage
scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and
government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease,” the release
said.
Those comments, however, come within
just a few days of the coronavirus pandemic reaching its highest levels
yet, in terms of new diagnoses being made, demonstrating that the
accolades are wildly incorrect.
The seven-day average of new cases being reported daily is at an all-time high,
showing 68,767 new infections as of last Sunday, according to Johns
Hopkins University’s tracking of the virus. The last time numbers were
that high was back in July.
On both Friday and Saturday, more than 83,000 new cases were reported, with Saturday’s total being the highest single-day number of new diagnoses recorded since the pandemic began (Friday being the second-highest).
The Trump administration’s claims
that the virus has been defeated are patently false for another reason:
Members of his own executive staff continue to get infected with
coronavirus. Most recently, at least five members of Vice President Mike
Pence’s staff have tested positive for COVID-19.
Trump has expressed frustration over the continued focus on the pandemic in the news, deriding the media as “losers” earlier this week
for reporting on the record-high rates. Trump also called the reports
on the growing number of infections “a Fake News Media Conspiracy” in a
tweet on Monday.
The president’s angst has been noted
in his campaign stops as well, where he has made it a point to belittle
the media for reporting on the pandemic, oftentimes by repeatedly saying
“COVID” into the microphone while making his complaints. Trump’s
grievances have been noticed by former President Barack Obama, who,
while campaigning on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Joe
Biden, suggested Trump was upset in part because the virus was getting
more media attention than him.
“What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on Covid,” Obama recently opined. “He said this at one of his rallies. Covid, Covid, Covid, he’s complaining. He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage.”
The Trump administration’s supposed
accomplishments in promoting science during his four years in office
have previously been questioned by a number of notable and reliable
sources, including Scientific American,
which, for the first time in its 175-year history, endorsed a
presidential candidate (Biden) in reaction to the anti-science approach
Trump has demonstrated.
“The evidence and the science show
that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he
rejects evidence and science,” the publication’s editors wrote in September in explaining its unusual decision to endorse a candidate.
Beyond the “most devastating example” of coronavirus, Scientific American also
cited the president’s refusal to accept climate change as a reason for
its unusual decision to speak out against a second Trump term.
“In his ongoing denial of reality,
Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming
that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to
mitigate it,” the editors wrote. “The changing climate is already
causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms,
wildfires and extreme flooding.”
" Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has been telling a conspiratorial story about the media and the coronavirus.
"The
story goes like this: The media had always said that people who
survived a Covid-19 infection would be immune from the virus for life.
But once he, Trump, got infected and survived, the media started
claiming immunity only lasted for months.
"And
until I came along -- you know, you used to hear you have immunity for
life, right? As soon as I had it and got better, they were not too happy
about that...It was supposed to be for life; when it was me, they said
it's only good for four months, okay? Okay. Anybody else it's for life,
with Trump they said it's four months. So they brought it down now,
immunity, from life to four months," Trump said at his Tuesday rally in Lansing, Michigan.
Trump told a similar story
at his Tuesday rally in Omaha, Nebraska: "But because it was me, the
press said, 'No, it's not for a lifetime. It's only for four months. The
immunity is only now for four months.' They brought it down, right? It
was always gonna be for a lifetime, now it's four months."
Trump
said much the same thing at a Wednesday rally in Bullhead City,
Arizona, this time adding that "they've changed the whole medical
standard" because of his own infection.
Facts First: Trump's
story is false. In the months before Trump tested positive for Covid-19
in early October, numerous major media outlets had reported that
scientists were not yet sure how long survivors might have immunity.
While we can't definitively say there was no media report whatsoever
from before Trump's infection that had claimed survivors would get
lifetime immunity, it was certainly not widely reported that survivors
were immune for life.
A CNN fact check
in July concluded: "It remains unclear if those already infected with
the virus are immune to any reinfection. Additionally, it's unknown how
long any sort of immunity would last." A CNN story in mid-August was headlined, "Are you immune to Covid-19 for three months after recovering? It's not clear." And CNN wrote in August
about a Nevada man who was infected with the virus twice -- quoting
Mark Pandori, the director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory,
as saying: "After one recovers from COVID-19, we still do not know how
much immunity is built up, how long it may last, or how well antibodies
play a role in protection against a reinfection."
Even upbeat media stories about optimistic findings about immunity noted that the facts had not been conclusively settled.
For example, an August article
in the New York Times said that "scientists who have been monitoring
immune responses to the coronavirus for months are now starting to see
encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of newstudieshas found." But that piece continued by saying that "researchers cannot forecast how long these immune responses will last."
The Washington Post also made clear in August
that "researchers are still trying to understand what immunity to the
coronavirus will look like" and that "much remains to be seen."
NBC wrote
in September about an Icelandic study finding that some Covid-19
survivors had antibodies for four months. But the article proceeded to
say that "it's unclear whether the antibodies will protect people from
being reinfected." The article quoted a professor who said, "What we
don't know is really the million-dollar question: How do these
antibodies reflect immunity against this virus and inhibition of this
virus."
And ABC included the immunity question on an August list of "unanswered medical questions about coronavirus," saying that "we still don't know how long immunity lasts."
~~~~~
So, you may be interested in this recent study pertaining to "immunity", with video...I have to go soak my knee:
