Aug 222020
 
 August 22, 2020  Posted by at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Steve Schapiro Robert Kennedy US Presidential Campaign 1968

 

Coronavirus Pandemic Could Be Over Within Two Years – WHO (BBC)
Dr. Birx: November In-Person Voting As Easy As Going To Starbucks (JTN)
Where’s Tulsi? (RT)
This Year’s DNC Was 2016’s DNC on Steroids (Savage)
The Truth About The Post Office Controversy (Patel)
Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda (Ray McGovern )
Fighting Russia Has Become An Existential Necessity For NATO – Lavrov (RT)
AG Barr Throws Cold Water On Possible Edward Snowden Pardon (ZH)
What A Nation Cut Off From The Rest Of The World Looks Like (Saxo)
Alan Rusbridger: Assange Case Is Worrying For All Journalists (PG)

 

 

Passing 800,000 deaths globally is a sad milestone again, but US new cases had their best week since the end of June, so that’s a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Postmaster

 

 

Not sure every single person will see this as a reassuring message.

Amazing how little the man has to say who pretends to aid the entire world. When PPE corruption is one of your main talking points…

Coronavirus Pandemic Could Be Over Within Two Years – WHO (BBC)

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) says he hopes the coronavirus pandemic will be over in under two years. Speaking in Geneva on Friday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Spanish flu of 1918 took two years to overcome. But he added that current advances in technology could enable the world to halt the virus “in a shorter time”. “Of course with more connectiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading,” he said. “But at the same time, we have also the technology to stop it, and the knowledge to stop it,” he noted, stressing the importance of “national unity, global solidarity”.


The deadly flu of 1918 killed at least 50 million people. The coronavirus has so far killed almost 800,000 people and infected 22.7 million more. Dr Tedros also responded to a question about corruption relating to personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, which he described as “criminal”. “Any type of corruption is unacceptable,” he answered. “However, corruption related to PPE… for me it’s actually murder. Because if health workers work without PPE, we’re risking their lives. And that also risks the lives of the people they serve.”

Read more …

Well she actually said “If you go into Starbucks in the middle of Texas and Alabama and Mississippi that have very high case rates..” But then, in states with lower case rates it should be even safer…

Dr. Birx: November In-Person Voting As Easy As Going To Starbucks (JTN)

The doctor coordinating the White House Coronavirus Task Force says she believes it will be safe for voters to go to the polls in November. “Well, I can tell you it has been safe for me to go to Starbucks and pick up my order,” Dr. Deborah Birx told Just The News in an interview when asked about in-person voting. Birx has been traveling the country by car and one of her practices is to visit as many Starbucks as she can in an attempt to gauge whether people are wearing masks and socially distancing. She said her coffee experiences in states that have higher than normal COVID-19 cases, has led her to a conclusion about voting. “If you go into Starbucks in the middle of Texas and Alabama and Mississippi that have very high case rates, then I can’t say that it would be different waiting in line in the polls,” Birx said.

Of course, she cautions that masks must be worn and social distancing must be adhered to. “I know there’s a way but you really do have to pay attention,” she added. Birx spoke Friday afternoon at the White House on a myriad of topics. While much of the discussion centered on vaccines and a potential timetable for a return to normal, she also revealed something personal: she’s been a victim of harassment and threats via technology. “I do get death threats, and I get text messages that are horrific,” she said. “I get stuff sent to my home where my daughters are that is shocking and their phones get shocking messages. All of that has been happening since March.”

In a way, Birx has a thankless job as she tries to navigate not just the reality of a deadly virus but the political realities as well. Most of the criticism has come from liberal Democrats who have criticized her for not doing enough to set the record straight on some of the president’s medical claims. Birx, who has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades, said she will soldier on. “You just have to stay true to your own personal values,” she said. “I’ve never been asked to cross that line. I believe when people look back that they’ll find out that I personally never crossed that line.”

Read more …

The Tulsi treatment is the state of the DNC in a nutshell. Cancel culture at its finest, advertized as unity. And Bernie, AOC, Tulsi swallow it all.

Where’s Tulsi? (RT)

This week’s Democratic virtual gathering to nominate the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket for the November election was a triumph of party centrism over the progressive wing. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given a whopping 90 seconds to nominate Bernie Sanders in a technical procedure, and no members of her ‘squad’ were given the stage. Instead, a parade of speakers from both parties told Americans that replacing Donald Trump with Biden was the single most important task at hand. One other party outsider was noticeably absent at the convention. Tulsi Gabbard, the representative for Hawaii, was snubbed despite remaining in the primary race right until Biden’s imminent victory and winning two delegates.

In those metrics, she performed better than VP nominee Harris herself. Yet Gabbard “was not invited to participate in any way”, she confirmed on Twitter. Frankly speaking, she would have been welcomed at the convention about as gladly as evil witch Maleficent at the birthday party of Sleeping Beauty. Once considered a rising political star and given the same duty to nominate Sanders in 2016 as AOC this year, Gabbard has become a pariah in her own party over the past two years. Apparently, the Democratic leadership would rather give a platform to someone who helped lie the country into the 2003 Iraq invasion than to a woman who calls for an end to forever wars, some commenters noted. During the campaign, Gabbard stepped on quite a few toes. Going after Harris’s prosecutorial record was arguably the moment the California senator’s bid for presidency went sideways.

Guest of honor Pete Buttigieg, described by Biden as the future of the party, would probably not appreciate her either. After all, after he brought up her infamous trip to Syria during a debate, Gabbard gave him a lecture on the importance of talking to your adversaries. [..] The redbait smearing of Gabbard began early in her campaign. In February 2019, NBC declared her a “Russian favorite” based on the opinion of New Knowledge, the shady firm best known for fabricating a ‘Russian influence campaign’ during the 2017 Senate special election in Alabama. In October, the same attack was launched from the very top of the party establishment, as Hillary Clinton claimed the Kremlin was “grooming” Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate.

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1296591920538550273

Read more …

“As the country’s social fabric is torn apart by evictions, record unemployment, and mass death, they decided to hold a virtual prayer circle for Republican senator John McCain.”

This Year’s DNC Was 2016’s DNC on Steroids (Savage)

Save a few protests from frustrated Sanders delegates, the convention was a pristine spectacle of celebrity-driven, limousine liberalism at its most cartoonish and out of touch. No one expected a politician like Clinton to remake herself as a populist figure. But the four-day elite love-in — hosted, no less, at a convention center bearing the name of one of the world’s biggest banks — was so dripping with Ivy League pretension and Hollywood glam that it looked more like an awards show than a democratic appeal to the citizens of a republic. November was still three, potentially perilous months away, and — despite a year of unexpected populist insurgencies from both the Left and right — Democrats were already measuring the drapes for an indefinite future residency in the White House.

When November finally did come, their complacency would be punished with the single greatest political upset in modern history. In more ways than one, this year’s DNC evoked an ominous feeling of deja vu. True enough, the context is very different. This time, Donald Trump is the incumbent president and America is in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Contra Clinton, the party’s nominee was merely the final centrist standing among what was this time a vast field of candidates rallying to neutralize Sanders — and, unlike its last standard-bearer, he was more the establishment’s measure of last resort than its first choice.

Notwithstanding these differences, the parallels between this week’s convention and the gilded spectacular of 2016 are difficult to overlook. Yet again, Democrats are headed into a consequential election with a Wall Street–friendly ticket raking in millions from financial concerns and doing its utmost to signal it has minimal interest in honoring key campaign pledges.

As in 2016, party leaders feel they can openly flaunt their contempt for a progressive left that has nowhere else to go while putting their chips on anti-Trump Republicans and conservative suburbanites (to that end, John Kasich and Colin Powell were featured prominently on the schedule while the Democrats’ brightest star got just over one minute).

With the state of the country inarguably worse than it was in 2016, this formula somehow looks even more out of touch than it did four years ago. During a moment of national reckoning with racism and police violence following the brutal murder of George Floyd, Democrats opted to give the architect of stop-and-frisk a prime-time speaking slot. As the country’s social fabric is torn apart by evictions, record unemployment, and mass death, they decided to hold a virtual prayer circle for Republican senator John McCain. Despite giving a speech that exceeded most expectations, their tribune is a candidate whose ability to win is privately doubted even by the people who proved most critical to his nomination.

Read more …

“With universal mail-in voting, the government would mail ballots to everyone, regardless of whether they request them.”

The Truth About The Post Office Controversy (Patel)

Do we really have to worry about the Postal Service? That’s the latest faux controversy to dominate our political debate. It’s a sign of our times that even the mail system isn’t without controversy. As usual, there’s plenty of blame to go around on how we got into this mess. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s reasonable to presume we need more absentee voting. Packing voters into overcrowded indoor polling places with long lines is not a good idea. Our government and politicians of all stripes have a duty to promote free and fair elections whether in person or absentee. That shouldn’t be a controversial idea. At the same time, there are legitimate concerns about universal mail-in voting.

Absentee voting is different. With absentee voting, a specific voter requests his or her specific ballot to vote by mail. That system has been used for years and — especially in the states doing it best — it works pretty well. Universal mail-in voting is different. With universal mail-in voting, the government would mail ballots to everyone, regardless of whether they request them. Some places even allow for “ballot harvesting,” where a third party can collect ballots for many people and file them in bulk. This system has not traditionally been used widely, and it raises legitimate concerns over voter fraud. A 2018 North Carolina congressional election was in fact overturned after a state probe found that a Republican operative illegally collected ballots with forged signatures and filled in votes.

The Postal Service controversy falls in the midst of the very legitimate debate. We should all be able to agree that to the extent mail-in voting is used — the absentee variety would be my preference — the Postal Service has to be able to handle its role to ensure a fair election in a reasonable time frame. The Postal Service — which is supposed to operate independently based on funding from the postal fees it charges — has been losing money for years. Due to email and other forms of communication, we send about 30% fewer letters each year than we did just a decade ago. To combat this, the Postal Service has been reducing its operating costs. That all makes sense. Now comes the controversy part. There are three drivers contributing to it. Two are self-inflected by the Republicans, and one — likely the biggest — is being driven pretty disingenuously by the Democrats.

First, it would have made sense to pause some Postal Service operating cuts as it became more and more clear after COVID-19 that we were going to rely more on the mail this election cycle than in any other. Taking mail sorting machines out of service and cutting back on mailboxes that are less used may not be the best moves when you know the mail will be crucial for a national election. A pause in operating cuts makes sense in case the equipment is needed for real, substantive reasons — to ensure a fair and timely election — and also to induce confidence among the American people that our sacred right to vote will not be abridged due to the pandemic. This is exactly the justification the Postal Service provided this week when they finally announced such a pause. It was, of course, too late to stem the controversy.

Second, as is the case with so many controversies of this era, President Donald Trump did not do himself any favors with his comments on the matter. Trump said he opposed more money for the Postal Service because without that money, “You can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.” The president is not wrong to question universal mail-in voting, but his statement that he was going to unilaterally in effect stop it through a holdup of postal funds only added fire to Democrats’ claims that he was against taking steps to have a fair election during the pandemic.

Read more …

Read of the day. Excellent. Where it all comes together.

Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda (Ray McGovern )

The Best Defense… is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of its study — call it “Mueller (Enhanced)” — and the propaganda fanfare — come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message. One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he expects “developments in Durham’s investigation hopefully before the end of the summer.”

FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying on the president. The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example.

But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks. The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness — particularly with regard to Covid-19 — he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious.

So, the stakes are high — for the Democrats, as well — and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition (as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale (“enhanced” or not). Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM — and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch “Mueller Report (Enhanced)” and catapult the truth now with propaganda, before it is too late.

Read more …

NATO is not capable of fighting Russia. But it can wage a one-sided domestic disinformation war.

Fighting Russia Has Become An Existential Necessity For NATO – Lavrov (RT)

Confrontation with Russia has become the sole reason for NATO’s existence, and this encourages instability in Europe, creating artificial dividing lines on the continent. That’s according to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. The veteran diplomat told the Moscow daily Trud that everyone knows there are no real threats to security in Europe but that NATO needs to invent them in order to keep itself relevant. Lavrov also drew attention to the fact that Russia has repeatedly proposed measures to reduce tensions and reduce the risk of incidents on the continent. “Now, just like during the Cold War, fighting Russia on all fronts, including information and propaganda, has become the alliance’s reason for existence,” he explained.

“NATO has deployed extensive resources on the eastern flank, near our borders, including conducting exercises and improving military infrastructure.” “The alliance continues to expand its area of military and political influence, inviting all new countries under its ‘umbrella’ under the pretext of protecting them from Russia,” he added. Lavrov further explained that the alliance adheres to the line of “containment and dialogue” in relations with Russia, although “as a result, there is practically no place for a real and open dialogue on pressing problems.” In the same interview, the foreign minister accused Ukrainian authorities of not hiding their desire to use the conflict in the Donbass to preserve European Union sanctions pressure on Russia, by not fulfilling their obligations under the Minsk Agreements.

According to him, Kiev takes advantage of the fact that the EU continues to link the issue of improving relations between the bloc and Russia with the implementation of the Minsk agreements, to which Russia is not a party. “Alas, this artificial and short-sighted link persists to this day – to the great satisfaction of the Kiev authorities, which not only do not fulfill their obligations under the Minsk Package of Measures, but also make no secret of their desire to use the unresolved conflict to maintain sanctions pressure against Russia,” Lavrov said.

Read more …

If Barr continues to fiddle on the Durham report, Trump may do it anyway.

AG Barr Throws Cold Water On Possible Edward Snowden Pardon (ZH)

Once again President Trump’s anti-establishment and ‘anti-deep state’ instincts look like they’ll be promptly reigned in by those around him. He shocked leaders in Congress and within his own administration when one week ago he mused openly in a New York Post interview that maybe Edward Snowden should be pardoned. In follow-up he said at a press briefing last Saturday “There are many, many people – it seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things.” And further that: “I’m going to take a very good look at it.” The president raised eyebrows and anxiety across the D.C. beltway with his unprecedented remarks.

“There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that,” he had initially told NY Post, before adding: “Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don’t know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.” This immediately raised hopes among those that hail the NSA leaker as a whistleblower who exposed deeply unconstitutional surveillance of the domestic populace that he might one day soon see freedom. But now Attorney General William Barr is throwing cold water on such a bold prospect, saying to the Associated Press on Friday that he’d be “vehemently opposed” to any initiative to pardon Snowden, who remains on the run from US authorities – but given asylum in Russia.

If he were to return to the United States he would face severe charges related to the Espionage Act and spilling of state secrets, which would certainly bring life imprisonment. “He was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people,” Barr said in the new comments. Interestingly, Trump’s own view as expressed years ago was that Snowden was a “traitor”. Barr’s latest comments frame Snowden’s actions as motivated by money and fame, and not of out of a sense of patriotism or concern for upholding the Constitution: “He was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We can’t tolerate that,” Barr added firmly. Recall that last year the DOJ under Barr fought to ensure that Snowden wouldn’t see any money generated from US sales of his tell-all book Permanent Record.

Read more …

Japan has been quiet, it’s true.

What A Nation Cut Off From The Rest Of The World Looks Like (Saxo)

Earlier this morning, there has been a couple of Japanese data releases. Japanese consumer price inflation was unexciting with a rate at 0% YoY. While we see some relative price changes in many countries, the basic story for the moment is that inflation will remain low in most countries. In addition, Japan National Tourism Organization has published its latest data regarding the flow of foreign visitors in July. Basically, it shows what a nation cut off from the rest of the world looks like. The flow of foreign visitors in Japan published by Japan National Tourism Organization is out this morning. The country was supposed to welcome an unprecedented number of Olympic fans from all around the world just about now, but the pandemic has turned everything upside down.

Arrivals of foreign visitors plunge 99% YoY in July, at 3,800 individuals (slightly up compared to the previous month, when it stood at 2,600 individuals). For the sake of comparison, at the beginning of the year, the country recorded more than 2.6 million foreign visitors in a month’s time. Whilst the country expected to draw around 40 million visitors this year, the final number for 2020 might fall to 7-8 million at best, which would represent a drop of 80% compared to the target. Over the past years, the contribution of travel and tourism to GDP has significantly increased, to reach 7% in 2019, on the back of government’s incentives to promote foreign tourism via marketing push overseas and eased visa requirements.


The COVID-19 constitutes a serious setback for the government’s hopes for tourism and it is unlikely that the recent campaign to spur domestic tourism launched on July 22 will offset losses generated by the drop in the flow of foreign visitors. Considering the number of new COVID-19 cases has sharply increased since mid-July and that many countries at global level are facing the acute risk of second wave, the country is not expected to reopen to foreigners anytime soon and will probably postpone initial plans to let foreign students and businessmen return.

Read more …

Well, speak out then. A lot louder than this.

Alan Rusbridger: Assange Case Is Worrying For All Journalists (PG)

Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said the ongoing US extradition case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “disturbing” and “has worrying implications for all journalists”. And he has said it is “surprising” that more don’t share his concerns. While Assange has garnered support from a range of campaigning groups for his plight, the response from journalists and the news industry in the UK has been relatively muted. Rusbridger was editor of the Guardian for 20 years, leaving in 2015. Under his editorship the paper worked with Wikileaks on the 2010 Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and, a few years later, the Snowden Files. [..] Any charges against Assange relating to journalistic activity, such as the publishing of material in the public interest, “should be dropped”, Rusbridger told Press Gazette.

[..] Rusbridger said that while Assange had done things he can’t defend, and which “stray beyond the conventional definition of journalism”, the Australian is not “all good or all bad”. “When you stand back and say, well, whatever we think of Assange, what he is being targeted for is the same or similar as many journalists have done, then it’s surprising to me that more people can’t see that this case has worrying implications for all journalists” Rusbridger said the precedent set by the UK of allowing someone to be extradited for prosecution under another country’s official secrets laws could ultimately be used by regimes to target British journalists who report on sensitive information about foreign powers. “It’s quite a disturbing thing that we should send somebody to another country for supposedly breaking their laws on secrecy. If journalists are not concerned by that, then I think they should be,” he said.

“The danger here is that if everyone sort of shrugs and leaves Assange to his fate and this sets some kind of judicial precedent, then the next time… a journalist on the Sunday Times writes about a secret Israeli weapons system, as has happened in the past, the Israelis say ‘well actually that breaches our Official Secrets Act, under the Assange precedent we now ask for this person to be returned to our country so we can prosecute them’. “You could see how what seems like a sort of tangential case involving somebody that I know lots of journalists don’t really regard as a proper journalist suddenly becomes something that has set a very alarming precedent.”

On the question of whether Assange is a journalist, Rusbridger said he was “one of these complicated figures that we’ve never had to deal with before the 21st Century” and had “many identities”. He said Assange clearly did “some things that are journalistic”, pointing in particular to the Collateral Murder video that showed a US air attack in Iraq that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters media workers. “Any newspaper would have been thrilled to run that story,” said Rusbridger. “It was a really, truly shocking story in the public interest. “So that was clearly journalism, but [Assange is] also an activist, he’s a publisher, he’s a kind of impresario, he is a whistleblower, he’s a kind of information anarchist, and so that that makes him very difficult to categorise or to work out what our attitude to him is.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the process.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle August 22 2020

Viewing 20 posts - 1 through 20 (of 20 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #62440

    Steve Schapiro Robert Kennedy US Presidential Campaign 1968   • Coronavirus Pandemic Could Be Over Within Two Years – WHO (BBC) • Dr. Birx: Novem
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 22 2020]

    #62441
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Steve Schapiro Robert Kennedy US Presidential Campaign 1968   •

    Gee, they played hardball with the Kennedy’s…
    Today is the new version, with gibberish, disguised as content. Softball 2020’s style.

    Today we laud the bright and shinny; burying the substantive…
    That picture sparked many emotions of that time for me; but history has not been kind to the 60’s… and for many good reasons…

    There is still freedom out there; but, you must know what it is you really want…

    #62442
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Well, now that wearing face-masks is so widely mandated and accepted, unlike during the very uncertain and anxious primary-season of this year, I think it should be okay to show up to City Hall to early vote the way I normally do. And I’m pretty sure the city clerk’s office will have hand-sanitizer ready in abundance for people who are coming in to fill out their ballots for the election.

    #62443
    wwoofbum
    Participant

    “…afraid of the dark.”

    Is it not racist to make fun of ‘anti-racism’ ???

    #62444
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    NATO

    Back in July US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said [….the role of NATO is to…] “avoid peace in Europe”

    While he meant to say ‘avoid war in Europe’ the idea that NATO’s purpose is to prevent peace in Europe makes much more sense!

    #62446

    At this point NATO’s purpose is to justify the existence of NATO.

    #62447
    zerosum
    Participant

    What should be first. L OR M

    (Lies or Mail)
    (Tropical Storms Laura, or Marco)
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/21/florida-gulf-hurricanes-nhc-forecasts-two-tropical-depressions/3406310001/
    Two Gulf hurricanes at the same time? Tropical Storms Laura, Marco have formed
    Kimberly Miller
    Doyle Rice
    USA TODAY NETWORK
    ———–
    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/513208-trump-holds-private-funeral-service-for-brother-robert-trump-at-white
    President Trump on Friday held a funeral service for his late brother, Robert Trump, in the East Room of the White House.

    #62448
    zerosum
    Participant

    Lies
    https://www.insider.com/lawyer-for-cop-george-floyd-case-say-he-killed-himself-2020-8

    A lawyer for one of the former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s death said he planned to argue in court that Floyd “killed himself” by dying of a fentanyl overdose and an underlying heart condition.

    #62449
    generic
    Participant

    Trump-neutered?: Herd immunity might turn out to result in herd infertility.

    Chinese doctors are recommending fertility tests for young men who have had Covid-19. This makes sense. The testes have large numbers of ACE2 receptors, and the testes are referred to as “immune privileged.” This means that the testes have a reduced immune activity for the purpose of protecting sperm from damage by the immune system. Some specialists have referred to the testes as the ideal virus receptacle. By contrast, the intestines have many more ACE2 receptors, but they have a very strong immune function.

    Scans of asymptomatic or mild Covid-19 patients, after recovery, have shown lung or heart abnormalities. The data so far is insufficient to show the effects on the testes, but the testes could show very serious damage even if the damage to heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys is mild. The original SARS-1 virus was found to damage the testes. A number of viruses, like the mumps and zika viruses, are known to take up residence in the testes and cause atrophy. I’ve already seen one report of shrinkage in the testes caused by Covid-19.

    Symptoms could be a loss of production of testosterone and sperm as well as breast enlargement and erectile dysfunction. Adolescent boys may fail to develop normal male sex characteristics.

    If young men want to go to Covid parties and hang out in loud over-crowded bars, they may later find out they have been Trump-neutered. That could be considered normal Darwinian selection to remove stupidity genes from the gene pool. But the serious consequence is that they are also likely to spread the virus in the general population.

    The female reproductive system has very few ACE2 receptors, and is therefore considered immune to Covid-19. Unfortunately, the virus has several other doors to enter human cells. So it is too early to conclude for certain that the female reproductive system is safe. Even if it were, the virus might compromise the blood flow to the uterus and ovaries.

    We live in a state of serious ignorance about the damage done by the novel Corona virus. Perhaps a couple of decades will be required to understand all the implications of this virus. Many serious viruses, like smallpox, yellow fever, and plague, are known primarily by the case fatality rate. Others, like polio, are known primarily for their disability consequences. We don’t currently know how the novel Corona virus will be seen in the years to come.

    #62450
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/22/usps-house-vote-bill-preventing-changes-and-providing-25-billion/3400617001/

    House returns from recess to vote on additional $25 billion for United States Postal Service
    Nicholas Wu
    USA TODAY
    WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is set to return early from its recess and pass legislation Saturday preventing any further changes at the United States Postal Service and providing $25 billion in funding ahead of an expected surge in mail-in ballots in the November election.

    The Democratic-controlled body will likely pass the legislation, but it faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Louisville Courier-Journal Tuesday he was doubtful a bill only addressing the Postal Service could pass the Senate. The White House said Friday it would veto the bill, calling it an “overreaction to sensationalized media reports.”

    House Republicans leadership said they would tell members to vote against what they called a “conspiracy theory bill.” But some House Republicans support the bill. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., is a cosponsor. And Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., said in a statement Friday he would vote for the bill because “now is not the time to jeopardize USPS operations or delay services.”

    #62451
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    “With universal mail-in voting, the government would mail ballots to everyone, regardless of whether they request them.”

    Good summary by Patel, thanks for posting it. The question that still needs to be answered is who is universal mail-in mail directed to?

    Data is required for any mailing to occur. Will universal mailing include only voter registration data? If so, then it is not truly “universal”. In my mind, universal mailing (as it is being misunderstood) would be like sending 3 ballots to a Resident or a Voter at 123 Main Street, CA, 12345. It is a GENERIC mailer, not directed to a named receiver. In that case, fraud would very likely be an issue – who would support that?

    Note that voter data files are not perfect and that marketplace utilizes many tools to groom data (update, clean, address change). Accurate Voter registration data is a hot commodity!

    Like everything else, the President is unable to discern the difference between a circus (universal mailing to the millions) and a targeted mailer to all on the registered voter roles – which would include BOTH Dems and Repubs. It is far more fun to whip up the uninformed over a charge of fraud before it happens.

    #62452
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Don’t be ridiculous: nobody knows how to be embarrassed anymore. To be embarrassed there need to be rules, morals, norms. All that is our sworn enemy.

    “The deadly flu of 1918 killed at least 50 million people.”

    War has killed lots of people. You don’t like war do you? In they use cars in war. Cars are war. That is to say, mentioning 1918 is a blinding white-hot non sequitur.

    Okay, math, calc.exe nobody wants: 1.8B people in 1918. That means equivalent, (to nothing, since Covid is nothing like the 1918 flu, not being, you know, actually dangerous) is 222 Million deaths today. That is what St. Fauci, WHO, CNN, everybody said when it started. All life on earth will end. A new black plague has happened, so radical, it will change the economy, life on earth, social structure for 1,000 years. It didn’t. You can’t find it on a chart. The curve is so flat, there are zero deaths in NY. But their over-reacting lockdown sure is trying to kill life on earth: all poor, working, and minority life.

    So what’s 800k vs 222M? 277. 277 times more deadly. What is that? Well, it’s the difference between the top cause of death (cardiovascular) or accidentally wandering into a war and dying. Which we don’t have. And that’s just the difference between a REAL disease, like 1918, and a disease which has the death rate of the common cold among people over 70. The difference between daily life and Covid is 1000x times greater.

    Dr. Birx: November In-Person Voting As Easy As Going To Starbucks (JTN)

    What mask-and-distance studies is she citing? Is she against the June 6 research of the American Association of Physicians? If so, shouldn’t she start suing them?

    do get death threats, and I get text messages that are horrific,”

    So…she’s a person on the internet. Got it.

    You just have to stay true to your own personal values,”

    I wonder what any of those values are. Apparently not sticking to CDC research findings.

    PS, the safest states were apparently the states that ignored everything they said. Coincidence is not causation, however, her friend Mr. Fauci liked the results in NY best: i.e. most deaths on planet earth, 6,000 – 20,000 nursing home patients intentionally dead. Greatest medically applauded mass-murder since ye olde eugenics days. But since we’re super-cool, and those guys were evil, Cuomo-is-from-our-side, those 20,000 people didn’t die. QED.

    AOC nominated Bernie instead for “procedural reasons.” No one can seem to explain to me what the mechanics of this “procedure” is. No one even asks. They all ran away to look at fireworks. But yes, every NeoCon but Bolton endorsed the DNC, and they expect the Radicals and Progressives to be all in, breathless as a bride in anticipation of voting for a guy Kamala says is a racist and rapist. Don’t know what they’re doing, but since they don’t need to WIN the election to be put in office now, it hardly matters. Watch the vote-tangling test runs they did in NJ with 20k votes lost, and you’ll see exactly what’s planned.

    This Year’s DNC Was 2016’s DNC on Steroids (Savage)”

    Ever-smaller bubble, ever-more out of touch. Everyone thought that death-grip on Twitter, banning all comers without the Party UniOpinion would savage the opposition and give them complete, dictatorial control. Instead, turns out they only gaslight themselves into a padded room, babbling like Baghdad Bob. Who knew? I mean, except I guess every TV show and movie villain ever who says, “No! It’s impossible! This can’t be happening! My beautiful plan!” As the thousand things he thought himself too important to bother with all bite his tyranny and arrogance. As Laura Loomer is elected. I find the story boring and 2-dimensional though. Letting everyone talk on media leads to much more interesting heroes as well as villains. As we are humans, we are neither: the dividing line runs through all our hearts.

    Well, if at first you don’t succeed, do it all the same, but harder. The problem with the upcoming Post Office plan – I mean besides that everybody knows and Pelosi told Trump’s military intel planners months ago – is that they’ve alienated so many people by adding Joe, Kamala, and every NeoCon still breathing, that if Trump says there’s a landslide, and he’s arresting them all for resisting the results, the Left will neither know, nor care. They want Joe, Kamala, and Pelosi locked up as much or more than he does.

    “no one knows at this point how far Trump will go.”

    This is interesting, since he seems to be enthusiastically concede that they committed grave felonies or even treason. Yet somehow prosecuting these grave, well-documented threats to the Republic and all democracy is a bad thing. A political thing. Oh heavens, we couldn’t prosecute CRIMES! That might be political! Funny ol’ opinion there. The crossing of opinions reflects how much every thought we have now is built on a raw material of universal lies. It’s not really: it’s very, very simple. You can’t spy on opposition candidates. If you do, and there’s no reason, you fall on your sword and go directly to jail.

    “US extradition case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “disturbing” and “has worrying implications for all journalists”

    Well, there aren’t any journalists, so I wouldn’t worry. Just go watch the fireworks and don’t ask questions.

    House returns from recess to vote on additional $25 billion for United States Postal Service”

    Well, that plus the $10M they already had and weren’t using, and you can bet that nothing will happen, the narrative will remain shrill until Feb 1. …When everyone will forget there is a USPS at all. But voting down $25M really? We waste more than that on Ice Cream for the Speaker of the House.

    With universal mail-in voting, the government would mail ballots to everyone, regardless of whether they request them.”

    This is of course silly and ill-advised, as described by a state (OR) that took decades to get it running. So they mail me a ballot, but I’m going in person, so…what? I vote twice? My roommate votes against me when I’m not looking? Thousands of wrong ballots have already arrived most of this year, even before now. Many to wrong states. We have no signature or other checks, and it couldn’t be easier than to lose mail in a district you don’t like, grab mail at a city’s apartment blocks, or tamper easy as a (bucket of water) in the wide-open ballot boxes they just hammered into the lawn at the end of the road. Ain’t nobody watching. If you can steal a 2,000-pound statue, I’m sure you can lose a few ballots in a box that has fewer cameras than Epstein’s cell. Absentee has most of those issues closed. There are few, and you don’t know who they are, so you can’t collect them (although they do tamper with the overseas Army vote, being GOP), it has to be requested, so you CAN’T show up in person, it has only one, certain address, and so on. Even so, it’s certainly to be less reliable than in-person, where parties station their own watchers, as Bernie’s opponents were surprised by in Iowa and had to hot-foot it and do some quick ‘splainin’. Media never reported or followed any of that ‘splainin. Trump used a cat laser and they all forgot.

    And why? The DNC position is that mail-in voting won’t work because of the Post Office. But they demand a vote they argue will never work anyway? Whiskey Tango. National Hero Birx and Patron Saint Fauci say there’s no problem. The DNC isn’t put off a single instant, doesn’t even take a breath. There Is No Alternative to the voting we say won’t work!

    Right. Okay. Whatever. We all know what’s going on. I imagine even the Left knows what’s going on, and the only difference is, they hate you more than the Right, and follow the rules less, with more deadly violence. So think about your plan carefully. We have the Rule of Law not to protect ME, not to protect gun owners, not to protect the strong: we have them to protect criminals FROM me, from good people, from men who, if attacked, will lop your hand off for said shoving, looting, stealing, and finish lunch. The Law they desperately want erased protects THEM, not us. Think carefully.

    #62453

    When they draw those maps of brains, where is politics? I’m thinking maybe not the brain at all, but somewhere halfway down.
    I went to the farmer’s market this morning and saw two- and three- year olds wearing masks. Masks are bad enough- masks on toddlers is sheer evil. Of course, I also saw a cartoon-themed kiddie mask on the sidewalk- I want to vote for that toddler.

    No. Male fertility was already tanking. Covid (TM) is not the reason. The “novel” (TM) magical coronavirus is the only one left in the diagnosis toolbox, so go ahead and believe it.
    “Data is the new oil”? Your medical data was off-limits, so of course, it’s the data the pharmers want most of all.
    How hideous mankind is! O cowardly new world, that has such people in ‘t!

    #62454

    “The celestial object known as 2018VP1 is projected to come close to Earth on November 2, according to the Center for Near Earth Objects Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory….The chance of it hitting us is just 0.41%, data show.” from the un-esteemable CNN.
    At only 6.5 feet across, it still poses a greater danger to most people than Covid.

    #62455
    redshift
    Participant

    Is it not racist to make fun of ‘anti-racism’ ???

    Not if it’s of the woke type which is not real anti-racism.

    #62456
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    While most are busy blaming everything and everybody, for today’s rolling disasters across the planet; Gaia abides in the depths, foreign to the majority, and not unerstood by the rest.
    For the few paying attention and not distracted, there is nothing untoward.
    Nature (Gaia) is simply following the rules; physics’ at work…
    We human’s, with rare exception, justify, rationalise, blame, and deny; and then; refuse to see that which is in front of our face…

    #62457
    teri
    Participant

    “Universal” mail-in ballots go to registered voters. It is not some random mailing to “Our Neighbor” or “Postal Customer” at 123 Main St, Anywhere, USA.

    Your article about voting by mail comes from The Daily Caller, a right wing website founded by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel. Patel, who wrote this particular article on voting by mail, was a chief policy advisor to Dick fucking Cheney. The Daily Caller denies climate change and publishes articles from white supremacists. They are not rated well on sites that check for accuracy and honesty in reporting.

    The below is another article regarding “universal” vote-by-mail procedures. It is not written by someone affiliated with Fox News or Tucker Carlson or the Libertarian/Teabagger Party, so you probably don’t want to bother reading it.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/15/donald-trump-slams-universal-mail-voting-few-states-planning/3333957001/

    #62470
    zerosum
    Participant

    I remember when
    stacks of income tax forms were stacked up in the post office for people to gab and fill.
    There were no problems.

    “Absentee ballots, by the way, are fine,” Trump said Thursday. “But the universal mail-ins that are just sent all over the place, where people can grab them and grab stacks of them, and sign them and do whatever you want, that’s the thing we’re against.”

    #62481
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @zerosum

    The President’s quote shows me he has zero understanding. No one is promoting the mailing of ballots to everyone. This is about the mailing of ballots to all REGISTERED VOTERS – Dems and Repubs – without them having to request it. Ballots would be directed to named recipients – there would be no stacks for people to grab.

    #62483
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    Good article teri.

    It clearly explains what I have been saying – the “universal” mailing situation that our President is screaming about is false news. His idea of “universal” mailing is NOT what States are doing – no State would do this! Mailing ballots to ALL registered voters, including to those who have not requested one, is a different strategy.

Viewing 20 posts - 1 through 20 (of 20 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.