In the months since March, many Americans have habituated to the horrors of the pandemic. They process the election’s ramifications. They plan for the holidays. But health-care workers do not have the luxury of looking away: They’re facing a third pandemic surge that is bigger and broader than the previous two. In the U.S., states now report more people in the hospital with COVID-19 than at any other point this year—and 40 percent more than just two weeks ago.
Emergency rooms are starting to fill again with COVID-19 patients. Utah, where Nathan Hatton is a pulmonary specialist at the University of Utah Hospital, is currently reporting 2,500 confirmed cases a day, roughly four times its summer peak. Hatton says that his intensive-care unit is housing twice as many patients as it normally does. His shifts usually last 12 to 24 hours, but can stretch to 36. “There are times I’ll come in in the morning, see patients, work that night, work all the next day, and then go home,” he told me. I asked him how many such shifts he has had to do. “Too many,” he said.
Grey Kitty, by C.M. Cooper
Hospitals have put their pandemic plans into action, adding more beds and creating makeshift COVID-19 wards. But in the hardest-hit areas, there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and other specialists to staff those beds. Some health-care workers told me that COVID-19 patients are the sickest people they’ve ever cared for: They require twice as much attention as a typical intensive-care-unit patient, for three times the normal length of stay. “It was doable over the summer, but now it’s just too much,” says Whitney Neville, a nurse based in Iowa. “Last Monday we had 25 patients waiting in the emergency department. They had been admitted but there was no one to take care of them.” I asked her how much slack the system has left. “There is none,” she said.
The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question.”
Thursday Reads
Posted: November 19, 2020 Filed under: just because 12 CommentsGood Morning!!
Today is another agonizing day in the ongoing disaster of the dying Trump Administration. We still have to make it through another 62 days until he has to leave the White House. Long after that day, we’ll be paying the price for Trump’s godawful reign.
Yesterday, deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. passed a quarter of a million. The New York Times: The Coronavirus Has Now Killed 250,000 People in the U.S.
The United States passed a grim milestone on Wednesday, hitting 250,000 coronavirus-related deaths, with the number expected to keep climbing steeply as infections surge nationwide.
Experts predict that the country could soon be reporting 2,000 deaths a day or more, matching or exceeding the spring peak, and that 100,000 to 200,000 more Americans could die in the coming months.
Just how bad it gets will depend on a variety of factors, including how well preventive measures are followed and when a vaccine is introduced.
“It all depends on what we do and how we address this outbreak,” said Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University professor of environmental health sciences who has modeled the spread of the disease. “That is going to determine how much it runs through us.”
Back in March, when the virus was still relatively new and limited mainly to a few significant pockets like New York, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, predicted that it might kill up to 240,000 Americans.
It has now passed that mark, with no end in sight.
Since the very beginning, preventive measures like wearing masks have been caught up in a political divide, and that remains the case today, as the Trump administration resists beginning a transition of power to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and cooperating on a pandemic strategy….
There is always a lag in deaths, compared with the rate of infection and hospitalizations, and with the latter measure now hitting records every day — 76,830 Americans were hospitalized on Tuesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project — the death toll is certain to go on rising.
Also from The New York Times: States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst Outbreaks. Click on the link to see explanatory charts.
Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford….
The index comes from Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, where researchers track the policies — or lack thereof — governments use to contain the virus and protect residents, such as contact tracing, mask mandates and restrictions on businesses and gatherings. Researchers aggregate those indicators and assign a number from 0 to 100 to each government’s total response….Most states imposed tight restrictions in the spring even if they did not have bad outbreaks then. After reopening early, some Sun Belt states, including Arizona and Texas, imposed restrictions again after case counts climbed. Now, Midwestern states have among the worst outbreaks. Many have also done the least to contain the virus.
When cases first peaked in the United States in the spring, there was no clear correlation between containment strategies and case counts, because most states enacted similar lockdown policies at the same time. And in New York and some other states, “those lockdowns came too late to prevent a big outbreak, because that’s where the virus hit first,” said Thomas Hale, associate professor of global public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, who leads the Oxford tracking effort.
A relationship between policies and the outbreak’s severity has become more clear as the pandemic has progressed.
“States that have kept more control policies in a more consistent way — New England states, for example — have avoided a summer surge and are now having a smaller fall surge, as opposed to states that rolled them back very quickly like Florida or Texas,” Mr. Hale said. “I think timing really matters for the decisions.”
The worst outbreaks in the country now are in places where policymakers did the least to prevent transmission, according to the Oxford index. States with stronger policy responses over the long run are seeing comparatively smaller outbreaks.
Iowa, North Dakota, and Utah have finally mandated masks, but the Governor of South Dakota is still resisting.
The Guardian: Kristi Noem rigidly follows Trump strategy of denial as Covid ravages South Dakota. Noem has been sucking up to Trump for a long time, and she is still doing it even though he lost the election.
The actual lives of many South Dakotans could depend, in turn, upon that decision given the terrifying surge of Covid-19 cases that is battering the state under Noem’s contentious leadership. South Dakota has been listed by Forbes as one of the 10 most dangerous states in the Union, all of them in the Midwest.
Coronavirus in South Dakota is running at an intensity only surpassed in the US by its neighbor North Dakota. The state has an alarming positivity rate of almost 60% – nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected – second only to another neighbor, Wyoming.
Viewed through the lens of cases and deaths, South Dakota is also at the top of the league table. More than 66,000 South Dakotans have contracted the disease and at least 644 have died, a number likely to rise as hospitals reach breaking point.
Amid this devastating contagion, Noem is rigidly sticking to the strategy she has adopted since the pandemic began. It consists of a refusal to accept mask mandates and repeated denial of the science around the efficacy of wearing masks; resistance to imposing any restrictions on bars and restaurants; no limits on gatherings in churches or other places of worship; and no orders to stay at home.
While the statistics are clear – the virus is running wild in South Dakota – Noem has turned a public health emergency into an issue of “freedom” and “liberty”, consistently lying about the trajectory of the disease under her watch. “We’re doing really good in South Dakota. We’re managing Covid-19,” she has said.
She has also embraced the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid, even after it was proven to be ineffective and potentially dangerous.
If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Since the start of the pandemic, Noem has consciously adopted the posture of a mini-Trump, following the president’s every move in the handling of the health crisis.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Meanwhile, Trump is hunkered down in the White House, tweeting and trying to find some way to steal the election.
Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair: As His Bogus Election Fraud Charges Go Up in Flames, Trump goes into Hiding.
Still yet to concede to Biden, Donald Trump and his allies are continuing to hold up his successor’s transition team, putting America’s national security at risk and threatening to complicate the rollout of the forthcoming COVID vaccine while his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, fights his hopeless legal battle against the election results. (It isn’t going great.) Giuliani, working his first federal case in nearly two decades, wasn’t much sharper in court than he was in the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot the day the race was called for Biden. His arguments—a tangle of easily disproved lies and already-debunked conspiracy theories—seem exceedingly unlikely to succeed, something he may be aware of himself. According to the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, Giuliani has privately suggested his real strategy isn’t so much to land a long-shot victory in court, but to push the fight to Capitol Hill by getting officials in key states to refuse to certify the results. GOP members of the board of canvassers in Wayne County, Michigan, tried to do just that Tuesday, voting against certifying the election results there, with one official saying she’d sign off on other jurisdictions but not Detroit, a majority Black, Democratic-voting city. But after public outrage, the board reversed course and unanimously certified the results later that night.
With Giuliani losing his games of 3-D and regular chess, Trump’s campaign and legal teams have reportedly been thrown into disarray, with backstabbing and chaos and power struggles. Trump himself, meanwhile, has been pretty much AWOL since he lost the election. He’s only made two public appearances—showing up late to Arlington National Cemetery on November 11 to spend 10 minutes at a Veterans Day ceremony; remarks touting recent progress on the COVID vaccine—since his despotic rant in the briefing room of the White House on November 5, when he baselessly alleged a massive voter fraud conspiracy was being perpetrated against him.
“It feels like bunker mentality,” an administration official told CNN on Tuesday. Indeed, the Trump White House these days has been more like Grey Gardens, with the reclusive president emerging only to play golf at his nearby Virginia club. Appearing to have largely abandoned his presidential duties, to the extent he ever sought to fulfill them, Trump’s only activities of late have been settling scores with insufficiently loyal officials—Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official in the Department of Homeland Security, became the latest purge victim after defending the integrity of the election—and wailing on and on about voter fraud on Twitter, which has slapped a warning label on a majority of his posts in recent days.
Click the link to read the rest.
Today those Michigan Republicans are trying to take back their votes to certify the election. The Washington Post: Wayne County Republicans ask to ‘rescind’ their votes certifying election results.
In affidavits signed Wednesday evening, the two GOP members of the four-member Wayne County Board of Canvassers allege they were improperly pressured into certifying the election and accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to audit votes in Detroit.
“I rescind my prior vote,” Monica Palmer, the board’s chairwoman, wrote in an affidavit reviewed by The Washington Post. “I fully believe the Wayne County vote should not be certified.”
William Hartmann, the other Republican on the board, has signed a similar affidavit, according a person familiar with the document. Hartmann did not respond to a message from The Post.
Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat and the board’s vice chairman, told The Post it’s too late for the pair to reverse course, as the certified results have been sent to the secretary of state in accordance with state rules. He lashed out at the Republicans over their requests.
“Do they understand how they are making us look as a body?” he said. “We have such an amazing and important role in the democratic process, and they’re turning it on its head.”
This has gone way beyond ridiculous. I have to wonder if this country will ever return to any kind of normality. At the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum writes: The World Is Never Going Back to Normal. Other countries are learning to live without America. Biden can’t restore the pre-Trump status quo.
In the hours and days after American news networks declared him the victor on November 7, President-elect Joe Biden received congratulatory tweets and statements from American allies around the world. Even Fox News sounded excited by the list of well-wishers, who, the channel noted, included “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and Spanish President Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón.” Biden himself made a point, on November 9, of calling the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain to thank them in return. A few days later, he spoke with the leaders of Australia, Japan, and South Korea too.
Had it not been for the intervening four years, the tweeted congratulations would have seemed entirely unremarkable, nothing more than the predictable pleasantries so common to global diplomacy in the era before Donald Trump. Readouts published by Biden’s transition team noted, for example, that “the President-elect underscored that the United States and Australia share both values and history”—boilerplate cliché, unless you remember that President Trump’s first call with the then–Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, ended in a nutty argument about refugees. According to the readout of a call with South Korea’s leader, Moon Jae-in, America’s president-elect “thanked President Moon for his congratulations, expressing his desire to strengthen the [two countries’] alliance as the linchpin of security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.” This was also pretty boring, unless you remember that Trump publicly mused about withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea—a move that would have left the country vulnerable to invasion from the North….
And yet there was something misleading about all of these statements and compliments, for after the Trump era, there can be no return to normal. None of America’s relationships, with either our friends or our enemies, is the same as it was four years ago. None of the major diplomatic institutions, international or domestic, is the same either. Some on the Biden team, veterans of the Obama administration, will be tempted to restart relationships and reboot old plans as if nothing has happened. That would be a mistake.
Since 2016, America’s international reputation has been transformed. No longer the world’s most admired democracy, our political system is more often perceived as uniquely dysfunctional, and our leaders as notably dangerous. Poll after poll shows that respect for America is not just plummeting, but also turning into something very different. Some 70 percent of South Koreans and more than 60 percent of Japanese—two nations whose friendship America needs in order to push back against Chinese influence in Asia—view the U.S. as a “major threat.” In Germany, our key ally in Europe, far more people fear Trump than fear Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
More stories to check out:
Slate: Does Anyone Really Want to Do This After Every Election for the Rest of Our Lives?
The New York Times: Threats and Tensions Rise as Trump and Allies Attack Elections Process.
The Washington Post: As defeats pile up, Trump tries to delay vote count in last-ditch attempt to cast doubt on Biden victory
Politico: Could GOP states ignore voters and send Trump delegates to the Electoral College?
Laurence Lessig at USA Today: State legislatures do not have the power to veto the people’s choice in an election.
Jonathan Mahler at The New York Times on whether Trump should face prosecution.
Raw Story: Mueller prosecutor explains why Biden will be forced to indict Trump whether he wants to or not.
Kurt Bardella at USA Today: Biden’s top unification task: Expose Trump team wrongdoing, restore trust in government.
AP: Biden approaches 80 million votes in historic victory.
Hang in there, Sky Dancers! Take care of yourselves and please take a minute to let us know how you’re doing today. We love to hear from you.
Tuesday Reads: “While the Rest of Us Die”
Posted: November 17, 2020 Filed under: just because 23 Comments
1897, from Retrospective Exhibition of Wada Eisaku
Good Morning!!
Last night I watched a fascinating, disturbing program on Vice TV, “While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America’s Shadow Government. It was the first of a series of six episodes about the U.S. Government’s secret plans to save elite government officials in the event of a nuclear attack or other massive global disaster. Like maybe an out-of-control pandemic that overwhelms the health care system and kills millions of people? Here’s a trailer:
The series is based on a book by Garrett Graff: Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die.
From Variety: Vice TV Sets Debut of ‘While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America’s Shadow Government’ With Jeffrey Wright.
Based on the book by Garrett M. Graff, the six-part series exposes the U.S. government’s flawed plans to protect its citizens. The show unpacks America’s national security spending on hidden underground cities, a secret air force and a plan to suspend democracy in order to serve the interests of the elite class.
The series features interviews with political figures including former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure, Protection and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke, and national security experts Malcolm Nance, Elizabeth Goitien and Paul Rieckhoff. It will be narrated by “Westworld” star Jeffrey Wright.
“The events of this last year have laid bare the economic, political and health inequities at the core of American society,” said Graff. “Our hope with ‘While The Rest Of Us Die’ is to show Americans how those inequities are central to the way our supposedly egalitarian society and democratic government operates. From Puerto Rico to COVID-19 to Black Lives Matter, America has long treated some American lives as more worthy than others. This isn’t new, and in fact, in the seventy years since the Cold War, the U.S. has long prioritized spending trillions of dollars in the wrong places in the wrong ways, a problem that has been felt from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of American cities.”
By Françoise Vadon
Take a look at what Trump has been up to lately. He decapitated the top leadership of the Department of Defense, and he apparently has been fantasizing about how he can unleash destruction on the world before his lame duck period ends.
The New York Times: Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program.
President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday.
A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Wednesday that Iran’s uranium stockpile was now 12 times larger than permitted under the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump abandoned in 2018. The agency also noted that Iran had not allowed it access to another suspected site where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.
Mr. Trump asked his top national security aides what options were available and how to respond, officials said.
After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.
Mr. Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president.
Georgette Agutte, Marcel Sembat lisant, 1910-20
Trump also wants to pull U.S. troops out of foreign conflicts without any serious planning for the consequences. The New York Times: Trump Is Said to Be Preparing to Withdraw Troops From Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.
President Trump is expected to order the U.S. military to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia by the time he leaves office in January, using the end of his time in power to significantly pull back American forces from far-flung conflicts around the world.
Under a draft order circulating at the Pentagon on Monday, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be halved from the current deployment of 4,500 troops, officials said.
In Iraq, the Pentagon would trim force levels slightly below the 3,000 troops that commanders had previously announced. And in Somalia, virtually all of the more than 700 troops conducting training and counterterrorism missions would leave.
Taken together, the cuts reflect Mr. Trump’s longstanding desire to stop shouldering the cost of long-running military engagements against Islamist insurgencies in failed and fragile countries in Africa and the Middle East, a grinding mission that has spread since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the president’s aspirations have long run into resistance, as his own national security officials argued that abandonment of such troubled countries could have catastrophic consequences — such as when the United States pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011, leaving a vacuum that fostered the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It would be great for us to get out of these endless wars, but doing so without planning for what happens next could lead to disaster, and it would also interfere with Joe Biden’s ability to deal with these conflicts in more serious ways than Trump is capable of.
Camille Pissarro Jeanne Pissarro reading, 1899
And then there’s Trump’s attempted coup.
Historian Federico Finchelstein at The Washington Post: What the history of coups tells us about Trump’s refusal to concede.
Historically across Latin America, when constitutionally elected leaders were denied their legitimate mandate, there was just one word for it: coup. Just think of the emblematic cases of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973) and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) — both democratically elected leaders who were toppled by the military. In other cases, such as in Uruguay in 1973, Peru in 1992 and Venezuela in 2017, presidents decided to ignore the law and attempted to stay in power indefinitely via self-coup.
A coup against a democratic regime can be defined as any political action by state actors that aims to either maintain or take over power by unconstitutional means. In short, there is a coup when military renegades or democratically elected leaders suspend the democratic process.
This definition — and global history — is why Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his electoral defeat and his refusal to initiate a transition of power has alarmed so many, and led some to question whether a coup was in progress.\To be sure, Trump’s clumsy attempts to deny President-elect Joe Biden’s win already look to be failing. But his actions — denying and attempting to overturn the results of the election and getting top Republicans and Attorney General William P. Barr to indulge these dangerous efforts — are still symptoms of the fragility of American democracy at this moment.
And this is exactly why we should be talking about the history of coups: how they happened and, most importantly, how they have been stopped. Trump’s refusal to concede is an attack on the state and democratic government. While his actions may be dismissed as merely tantrums, the history of dictators in Latin America over the past century suggests the need to take this dangerous moment seriously.
Read the whole thing at the WaPo.
Porfiry Lebedev, Morning News, 1950s
Keep in mind that the continuity of government plans discussed in the Vice documentary give Trump vast powers to declare martial law and take other dictatorial actions in case of a national emergency. Remember Trump has already declared a national emergency in the case of the coronavirus pandemic–which he and his thugs are deliberately exacerbating.
Case in point: Scott Atlas. The Washington Post Editorial Board: Scott Atlas’s rabble-rousing will lead to illness and death. He should be fired.
Scott Atlas is a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, nor an epidemiologist. As President Trump’s leading adviser on the coronavirus pandemic, he continues to make statements that will cause more illness and death. He ought to be fired immediately.
“We are in the worst moment of this pandemic to date,” she said in words that could apply to the entire country. “The situation has never been more dire. We are at the precipice and we need to take some action because as the weather gets colder and people spend more time indoors, the virus will spread, more people will get sick, and there will be more fatalities.”
Dr. Atlas has frequently belittled lockdowns and pandemic restrictions, saying they have deleterious knock-on effects and are unnecessary, and that only the “vulnerable” need protection. Of the Michigan restrictions, he wrote on Twitter: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp.” So, while the governor was desperately trying to save lives by slowing the virus transmission, Dr. Atlas was urging people to disobey and revolt. This is incendiary talk, especially since the governor was the target of a kidnapping plot foiled by the FBI before the election. Dr. Atlas later insisted he would never encourage violence and was talking about voting and peaceful protest.
Poul Friis Nybo, (1869-1929) A favorite author
But the damage was done. His message was that people should ignore the governor and resist the pandemic restrictions, as Mr. Trump did with his “LIBERATE” tweets in April. If Dr. Atlas’s advice is followed, more people will get sick and die. The nation is engulfed in coronavirus infections; the spread is extremely alarming, with more than 100,000 new cases every day since Nov. 4. The tidal wave of disease is stressing hospital systems to their limit and all but ensures that deaths will be increasing in the weeks to come.
Trump’s disinformation campaign against public health recommendations has convinced many of his followers that the virus either does not exist or is not dangerous.
On Saturday, South Dakota nurse Jodi Doering had a night off and decided to tweet about what she was seeing as her state. Doering’s tweets were about COVID-19 patients who are literally dying from contracting the virus but still do not believe that the virus is real, or that they have it. She explained how sad and frustrating it was to watch people in such angry denial, furious that this hoax was being perpetrated on them, only to “stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends.” On Monday, Doering was on CNN to talk about her experience. It was tragic and eye-opening.
In the interview, Doering explained that she really hadn’t expected her tweets to go viral like this and was not blaming the victims of this virus or making a political statement. She was just reporting on some of what she was seeing. She explained she just became so sad thinking about the many patients she has seen who are in such denial and so angry that they are missing out on what is in many cases their final chances to speak with their families before passing away. And because Doering is an adult and a professional, she held CNN’s Alisyn Camerota’s hand to explain to her that she didn’t take the anger of her patients personally. “I think it’s just a belief that it’s not real and nursing happens to be on the receiving end of that. And that’s okay. That’s where we’re there for. It’s just, in the bigger picture, when you try to reason with people, can I call your family, your kids, your wife, your friend, your brother? And they say, no, because I’m going to be fine,” it really hits hard.
She said that since they first started seeing cases of COVID-19 in March, while they have gotten better at treating and alleviating some of the cases, they cannot defeat the surges in the virus and the political bullshit that comes with fighting against basic public health protections like social distancing and wearing masks.
The pandemic is certainly a national (and global) emergency at this point, and Trump is actively making it worse. Will he use it to exert dictatorial powers that are available to him? Maybe. Maybe not.
Okay, I’m probably just catastrophizing and none of this will end up leading to a Trump dictatorship. But he can do immense damage over the next couple of months until Biden’s inauguration. I’m just putting this out there for your consideration.
Let me know what you think, and as always, please take care of yourself and those you love today and always.
Monday Reads: ‘And the people stayed home’
Posted: November 16, 2020 Filed under: just because | Tags: January 21 is coming!!!! 20 Comments
Jessica Boehman, Illustrated Print, Bedtime Stories, Girl with kid, bear, fox
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’d like to introduce you to something shared with me by an old friend of our longstanding blog/Hillary community shared on her Facebook page. It’s amazing how long we’ve endured the last 12 years with so many of us still quite close and I still get so much from each and every one of you.
“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
“And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
“And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”~Kitty O’Meara
Kitty O’Meara’s poem and message have gone viral. You can see why when you read even excerpts from it. Writer’s Digest introduces the author to us here at this link with the title “Kitty O’Meara: Finding Joy and Community in a Pandemic”
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
The inspiration to take time with their lives and choose ways to use their gifts that will allow them to feel the joy and healing power of creating goodness, beauty, kindness, and community in the world. And I hope that the book will underscore for readers that we have been given one planet to tend and love and that our well-being is dependent upon hers.
And h/t to BB we have some advice from Anderson Cooper who knows what it’s like to lose a parent at a very young age.
So, I’m supposed to do a face to face lecture with an Executive EMBA class on December 12th and I’m looking at this and wondering why they want to see me the first day of class. I had planned to zoom all my lectures. This graphic is pretty daunting and I wonder what it will look a month from now when I face that task.
And there’s good and bad news about another Vaccine–this time from Moderna--that seems to be quite effective. It’s not going to come quick enough for this uptick. It’s also going to have a hell of a time being distributed. And most importantly, it’s still technically not tested over a long period of time which means we have no idea how long it lasts. It’s also in need of a few more control groups like children.
“Lore finds the Star” from “Lore and the Little Star”. Jessica Boehman
But, as some one who used to do a lot of consulting with small business to improve their product I know a lot about supply chain management and these vaccines look like a nightmare compared to the kinds of things I’ve worked with.
This is from Kris Alexander writing at the Daily Beast: “I Was a Military COVID Planner. The Vaccine Rollout Is Going to Be a Nightmare.”
Given this isolation and lack of resources, the vaccines themselves present a logistical challenge alone that borders on the impossible for rural America. The Pfizer vaccine, now the leading contender, will require ultra-cold storage of at least -94 degrees Fahrenheit and two rounds of shots. Another leading vaccine candidate from Moderna also requires cold storage, albeit not to the same extent, according to the company. Typically, hospitals and large clinics have this capability. Small towns lacking even the most basic health clinics do not.
To deploy the Pfizer vaccine or any other one, health planners will have to figure out a way to deliver it to rural areas while maintaining its required temperature long enough to ensure that the population receives both doses. This scene will be repeated all across small-town America. This presents a big risk: An uncoordinated federal roll out of vaccines requiring ultra-cold storage could leave state and local governments competing for resources much like they were competing for PPE earlier in the pandemic.
Trump has indicated that the military will be the savior here, but the military has its limits. At NORTHCOM, we knew that we could surge military medical and logistical resources to hotspots, but we couldn’t blanket the country with them. Plus, Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and ongoing purge at the Pentagon could delay and disrupt whatever plans the Department of Defense is developing.
And there is another potential limiting factor here. When a vaccine becomes widely available, the military may be strained taking care of its own and deploying the vaccine to troops and their families around the globe. So despite the promises of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the literal Cavalry may not be coming, at least not as quickly as we might like.
And then there’s more shenanigans even though the Trumpist Regime is beginning to come to terms with its end.
But, for right now let’s recognize what it means to be safe at home for those of us that have that luxury. We should also remember that much of the financial help for the first wave is disappearing.
President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office in January. But with both the House and the Senate back at work now, Washington has time to take up a problem that can’t wait until next year, with the expiration of assistance programs created with the CARES Act in March.
The extension of unemployment benefits and the weekly $300 bonus payment are set to expire by Dec. 31 unless Congress can agree on another stimulus bill that could include a second economic stimulus check for $1,200.
“The November Before You Came,” colored pencil, pencil, gauche, and water soluble graphite. Piece by Jessica Boehman.
So, I guess my thought for the day is that we’re going to all be hunkering down again which is necessary because so many states and people did not do it earlier. But just as we all start trying to face the inevitable the person were supposed to be able to forget sends his troops out to harass his ordained enemies. “Top Trump coronavirus adviser tells Michigan to “rise up” against new restrictions”.
Dr. Scott Atlas, a close adviser to President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, encouraged Michigan residents to “rise up” after Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced more stringent restrictions on schools and businesses to mitigate a surge in coronavirus cases.
In response to a tweet outlining the new order from Whitmer, a Democrat, Atlas tweeted Sunday “the only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.”
So, I’m in acceptance mode. I just got a replacement yoga mat–fancier and more cushioned but still quite purple–to replace the one some one borrowed and never returned last year at the beginning of the first shut down. I am now on Medicare. I have a Silver Sneakers fitness program which includes Zoom Yoga and I intend to use it.
I’m planting more perennial herbs and some bulbs so that spring will be a bit cheerier. I’m hoping my Dr kids get the vaccine soon. They likely need it more than any one even though they do no work directly with COVID patients. I’m hoping my youngest can donate convalescent plasma when her symptoms end and that her best friend who is a Covid ICU nurse gets the vaccine and doesn’t wear out. At least they’re in states with sane governors and cities with good mayors, like me. For that, I am grateful.
I am also grateful for you my sweet community of 12 plus years. If we’re going to stay home, we have each other and here to share. I’m trying to take Anderson Cooper’s advice as well as that of Jessica Boehman.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night
He was something to observe
Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing stretching every nerve
Had to listen had no choice
I did not believe the information
(I) just had to trust imagination
My heart going boom boom boom
“Son,” he said “Grab your things,
I’ve come to take you home.”
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: November 14, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020 presidential election, coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump, Doug Burgum, health-care workers, hospitalizations, Joe Biden, Kristi Noem, North Dakota, South Dakota, Trump Death Cult, Trump denial of election results, vaccines 20 Comments
Cat and Butterfly by Diane Hoeptner
Good Morning!!
The coronavirus pandemic is worsening by the day, and the Trump administration refuses to do anything about it. Yesterday, the defeated “president” emerged from his hidey hole for an appearance in the former Rose Garden. He proceeded to falsely claim credit for the Pfizer vaccine and pretend that the election is still undecided.
Maeve Reston at CNN thinks Trump is beginning to accept reality: Trump wavers between reality and election fiction with eye on his legacy during Rose Garden vaccine address.
President Donald Trump had an eye on his legacy as he strode to the microphone in the White House Rose Garden Friday and touted the administration’s “unequaled and unrivaled” efforts to help produce a coronavirus vaccine through Operation Warp Speed. Then, for a brief moment, he seemed close to acknowledging the reality that his presidency is almost over.
“I will not — this administration will not be doing a lockdown,” Trump said, speaking for the first time in a week as coronavirus cases in the US shatter records and hospitalizations are surging. “Hopefully whatever happens in the future — who knows which administration it will be — I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
It was a fleeting shift in tone suggesting that the reality of President-elect Joe Biden’s substantial win is seeping into Trump’s psyche even as he and his advisers publicly deny it.
By Midori Yamada
The Democrat now has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 as a result of wins in two longtime Republican states, Arizona and Georgia, CNN projects — far above the 270 threshold that Biden needed to clinch the presidency. But the indisputable math has not prevented the President from continuing to try to whip up outrage among his supporters on Twitter with unfounded accusations that the election has been stolen from him.
Friday’s speech in the Rose Garden was a portrait of a President clinging to power as his legal challenges to the election results crumble around him, mindful that he ought to show Americans what he’s been doing with the power of government as he spends his days tweeting conspiracy theories about lost or deleted votes in the midst of a pandemic that is coursing through the United States.
Except he isn’t really doing anything about the most pressing problem facing the country–the pandemic. Philip Bump at The Washington Post: Trump also refuses to admit he lost the fight against the coronavirus.
“Case levels are high, but a lot of the case levels are high because of the fact that we have the best testing program anywhere in the world,” he said. “We’ve developed the most and the best tests, and we test far more than any other country. So it shows obviously more cases.”
This is false for a variety of reasons. The most obvious misstatement is that the current surge in new cases, leading to 1 in every 350 Americans contracting the virus in the past week, is solely a function of more testing. In reality, the number of new cases during this surge (which began around Sept. 12) has easily outpaced the increase in the number of tests being conducted. The rate at which tests are coming back positive is more than 9 percent at the moment, twice what it was a month ago.
It’s also important to remember that the United States has conducted so many tests because we’ve had to. Countries like South Korea effectively contained the virus and therefore didn’t have to keep testing hundreds of thousands of people a week. It’s our failure to contain the virus that necessitates a broad deployment of testing….
Menagerie, by Jane Lewis
“The federal government has 22,000 beds immediately available for states and jurisdictions that need additional capacity,” Trump said Friday. “But we think that it’s going to start going down possibly very quickly. We’ll see what happens. But with the vaccine, you’ll see numbers going down within a matter of months. And it’ll go down very rapidly.”
There’s no indication that the need for hospital capacity is going to go down quickly. It’s also not clear where that federal capacity is or how states can access it. It may be the case that the vaccine will drive down new infections and hospitalizations, but even limited distribution of the vaccine is weeks away. For most Americans, it’s months away, and cases are surging now.
Read more at the WaPo.
As I wrote in a comment yesterday, I think Trump should be prosecuted for negligent homicide. At Alternet, via Raw Story, Cory Fenwick writes: The Trump plan for mass death is unfolding before our eyes.
On Friday, the COVID Tracking Project reported that the number of positive coronavirus infections in the last day had reached 170,000, the highest record ever and a number that was, just a few months ago, hard to imagine. It’s now our daily reality, and it’s likely to only get worse.
Other figures are just as frightening. Hospitalizations — one of the clearest signs of the seriousness of the out break —have reached a new high at 69,000, according to the project. Deaths are at a disturbing 1,300, though that rate is almost certain to spike in recent weeks following the more recent spike in cases. And as the newest and largest wave yet engulfs the country, reports have begun to appear of hospitals being overwhelmed with patients, which is almost certainly a precursor to a spike in the case fatality rate.
by Jane Hoptner
It’s our horrifying new status quo, and one that experts and observers have been warning would unfold this fall for months. But the ming-boggling truth is that for the Trump administration, everything is pretty much going as planned.
Ever since the first wave in the spring, President Donald Trump has seemed increasingly drawn to the so-called (and, indeed, misleadingly named) “herd immunity” approach to the pandemic. On this approach, you reject government restrictions meant to stop people from getting the virus. What advocates of this strategy believe is that it’s best that more people get the virus, because eventually, enough people will have had it, they’ll immune, and life will return to normal.
Click the link to read the rest.
This piece by Ed Yong at The Atlantic is a must read: ‘No One Is Listening to Us.’ More people than ever are hospitalized with COVID-19. Health-care workers can’t go on like this.
There’s much more at the link. I hope you’ll take the time to read it.
It’s so sad to see North Dakota, my birthplace and the state where my parents were born and raised, experiencing such a terrible health emergency. USA Today: The Dakotas are ‘as bad as it gets anywhere in the world’ for COVID-19.
South Dakota welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors to a massive motorcycle rally this summer, declined to cancel the state fair and still doesn’t require masks. Now its hospitals are filling up and the state’s current COVID-19 death rate is among the worst in the world.
White Persian Cat, by Feridun Oral
The situation is similarly dire in North Dakota, with the state’s governor recently moving to allow health care workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 to continue working if they don’t show symptoms. It’s a controversial policy recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a crisis situation where hospitals are short-staffed.
And now — after months of resisting a statewide mask mandate — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum changed course late Friday, ordering masks to be worn statewide and imposing several business restrictions.
“Our situation has changed, and we must change with it,” Burgum said in a video message posted at 10 p.m. Friday. Doctors and nurses “need our help, and they need it now,” he said.
Both North and South Dakota now face a predictably tragic reality that health experts tell USA TODAY could have been largely prevented with earlier public health actions.
Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is still resisting. Sioux Falls Argus Leader: If Joe Biden enacts mask mandates, lockdowns, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem won’t enforce them.
The office of Gov. Kristi Noem said in a statement to the Argus Leader Friday that the first-term governor, who’s risen to stardom in the Republican party for her hands-off approach to managing the pandemic, has no intention of using state resources to enforce any federal COVID-19 orders.
“It’s a good day for freedom. Joe Biden realizes that the president doesn’t have the authority to institute a mask mandate,” said Ian Fury, communications specialist for Noem. “For that matter, neither does Governor Noem, which is why she has provided her citizens with the full scope of the science and trusted them to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved-ones.”
Famous last words?
Amaryllis and Cats, by Elizabeth Blackadder
More stories to check out today:
The New York Times: It’s Traumatizing: Coronavirus Deaths are Climbing Again.
Katlyn Polantz at CNN: Trump had a very bad Friday in court with his election cases. They’re headed for more action next week.
Politico: ‘Purely outlandish stuff’: Trump’s legal machine grinds to a halt.
The Washington Post: Federal prosecutors assigned to monitor election malfeasance tell Barr they see no evidence of substantial irregularities.
NBC News: QAnon’s Dominion voter fraud conspiracy theory reaches the president.
The Daily Beast: How Trump’s Voter Fraud War Room Became a Fart-Infused ‘Room From Hell’
Reuters: President-elect Biden, denied classified intel briefings, to bring in national security experts.
Susan Rice at The New York Times: Here’s How Trump’s Stalling Risks Our National Security.
The Washington Post: Defense secretary sent classified memo to White House about Afghanistan before Trump fired him.
The New York Times: Christopher Krebs Hasn’t Been Fired, Yet.
Have a nice weekend, Sky Dancers!
Friday Funky Fee Fee Reads: Cry Baby Cry!
Posted: November 13, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections 17 Comments
Portrait of Marcelle Roulin December 1888 by Vincent van Gogh –
Good Day Sky Dancers!
This is the kind’ve headline I’ve been waiting to read! From Raw Story: ” ‘The president is humiliated’ and doesn’t want to be seen in public: CNN’s John Harwood.” Who’s the snow flake now?
CNN White House correspondent John Harwood on Friday said that President Donald Trump has not spoken in public for the past eight days because he’s simply too embarrassed about his defeat at the hands of President-elect Joe Biden.
While talking with CNN host Jim Sciutto, Harwood explained why the president has completely disappeared from the public eye even though the novel coronavirus pandemic has been setting records for infections and hospitalizations over the last week.
“The president is humiliated by the outcome,” Harwood explained. “He understands that he has lost the election, but he does not want to face that music publicly, so he’s been hiding out in the White House, hasn’t been talking before cameras as he typically does every day for a week now.”
Harwood also said that the president is desperately trying to maintain some kind of relevance in the public eye, which is why he’s trying to convince his supporters that the election was stolen from him.
“He’s throwing up these bogus lawsuits which aren’t going anywhere, which are getting tossed out of court as fast as he files them to try to string this out,” he said. “He’s fundraising for his political action committee as well as his legal fund, and he’s trying to create… a sense of grievance going forward so he will have something to rally his supporters around.”
Helene de Septeuil
Mary Cassatt, 1889
We always knew it was around white grievance. But what about people dying and suffering from the pandemic? How about all those understaffed and overworked healthcare providers? What about all the children separated and orphaned by this President at the border? Then, there’s all that pandemic aid to people and businesses about to expire? Is any one home in the Republican party to work on that?
This is exactly what former President Obama says about this situation via Politico “‘There’s damage to this’: Obama slams GOP for lining up behind Trump’s fraud claims. The president’s campaign has continued to mount legal challenges in several states aimed at reversing the election’s outcome.” Even when Trump does nothing, he does harm to the country.
Former President Barack Obama said in a new interview that it “has been disappointing” to see congressional Republicans remain supportive of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and his refusal to concede the 2020 White House race to President-elect Joe Biden.
“There’s damage to this,” Obama said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that is set to air in full this weekend. “Because what happens is that the peaceful transfer of power — the notion that any of us who attain an elected office, whether it’s dog catcher or president, are servants of the people, it’s a temporary job, we’re not above the rules, we’re not above the law — that’s the essence of our democracy.”
Obama also described the fraud allegations leveled by GOP lawmakers as disingenuous, saying that “they obviously didn’t think there was any fraud going on, because they didn’t say anything about it for the first two days” after Election Day, when the results in some key swing states were still unsettled. The election ultimately saw Democrats lose seats in the House of Representatives and underperform in competitive Senate races across the country, even as Biden clinched the presidency.
Still, Trump’s campaign has continued to mount legal challenges in several states aimed at reversing the election’s outcome, and congressional Republicans have broadly endorsed those efforts. Only a handful of Senate Republicans have acknowledged Biden as president-elect, although a growing number of top GOP senators have begun calling for Biden to receive intelligence briefings as part of the transition process the White House is working to slow.
More irregular, selfish stuff from the guy who lost while the world and the country danced and celebrated in the streets. What on earth will the kids reading history books a hundred years make of this?
Susan Comforting the Baby (no.1)
Mary Cassatt
c.1881
Meanwhile, the fallout continues. This horrifying news comes via WAPO : “More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel”,
More than 130 Secret Service officers who help protect the White House and the president when he travels have recently been ordered to isolate or quarantine because they tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with infected co-workers, according to three people familiar with agency staffing.
The spread of the coronavirus — which has sidelined roughly 10 percent of the agency’s core security team — is believed to be partly linked to a series of campaign rallies that President Trump held in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation.
The outbreak comes as coronavirus cases have been rapidly rising across the nation, with more than 152,000 new cases reported Thursday.
El niño del pichón (1901), de Pablo Picasso
Alex Parene of The New Republic calls Trump’s current behavior–and those of fellow Republicans–a Coup. “A Coup Is a Coup, It’s still an illegitimate power grab, even if Republican operatives are only doing it to protect Trump’s fragile ego.”
“They all know he lost,” the former Republican strategist Tim Miller said of other Republicans, “and they are lying about it to protect his little feelings.”
The knowledge that Trump lost apparently extends to the White House, and even the president himself, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Trump understands that the fight isn’t winnable,” the paper wrote, but its source described the president’s “feelings” as “let me have this fight.”
Before the election, Trump seems to have expected the same level of unflinching support from the institutions of the conservative movement that George W. Bush received in 2000, with the entire conservative media and legal apparatuses working to ensure that the ballot box would be no obstacle to his reelection. Instead, he ended up with a legal team led by a man most recently in the news for a creepy appearance in the sequel to Borat. And Rupert Murdoch—if we can guess his intentions through the actions of Fox News—has seemingly cut bait, trying to ease his audience into accepting that Trump has lost the election.
But, apparently believing it would be too cruel to cut Trump off from his institutional support base completely, conservatives decided to arrange for him a sort of Make-a-Wish Foundation version of Bush v. Gore. Before he is out of his misery, everyone will expend a lot of energy creating the appearance of challenging the results of the election in order to appease the president.
One issue arising from that scheme is that creating the appearance of challenging the results of the election in order to appease the president requires actually challenging the results of the election, in real life. The Trump campaign has filed numerous actual lawsuits in actual courts, and it is still weighing, reportedly, an insane strategy of suing to delay vote certification in certain states in the hopes that Republican state lawmakers decide to try appointing pro-Trump electors. As Ford wrote, such schemes are unlikely to work. But even if the conservative operatives behind these efforts are only going through the motions of seizing power, without any real expectation of success, they are still trying, however feebly, to seize power.
Felix Schlesinger, The New Dress,
Susan Glasser at The New Yorker explores this further: “Is This a Coup, or Just Another Trump Con? A post-election report from Minsk-on-the-Potomac.”
At times, during this unnerving week in America’s capital, it has felt as though we were watching events unfold in Minsk or some other dictator stronghold where elections are not stolen the day votes are cast but in the weeks afterward, as the defeated President holes up in his palace, defying reality and increasingly urgent crowds in the streets. Here in Minsk-on-the-Potomac, Trump has been perpetrating the Big Lie, claiming the election was stolen from him and apparently persuading millions of Americans to go along with this evidence-free fantasy. Biden, so far, has urged calm. It’s an “embarrassment,” he told reporters Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, where he continued to plan his transition, took congratulatory phone calls from world leaders, and appointed a White House chief of staff. The official line from Biden has been clear and simple: concession or no concession, Trump will have to leave office at noon on January 20th, and that is that.
But is it? That we are reduced to even asking this question is a defeat for the United States and a win not only for Trump but for all the Trumpists to come, who will forever have the example of a President of the United States flouting the most basic principle of American democracy: accepting the election results and the consequences that come with them.
Ah, yes! Those Consequences!
But, less we lose hope The NYT reminds us: “As Soon as Trump Leaves Office, He Faces Greater Risk of Prosecution. The president is more vulnerable than ever to an investigation into his business practices and taxes.”
President Trump lost more than an election last week. When he leaves the White House in January, he will also lose the constitutional protection from prosecution afforded to a sitting president.
After Jan. 20, Mr. Trump, who has refused to concede and is fighting to hold onto his office, will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the president’s family business and its practices, as well as his taxes.
The two-year inquiry, the only known active criminal investigation of Mr. Trump, has been stalled since last fall, when the president sued to block a subpoena for his tax returns and other records, a bitter dispute that for the second time is before the U.S. Supreme Court. A ruling is expected soon.
Mr. Trump has contended that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Mr. Vance is entitled to the records, and he uncovers possible crimes, Mr. Trump could face a reckoning with law enforcement — further inflaming political tensions and raising the startling specter of a criminal conviction, or even prison, for a former president.
But then, Trump is just the least of our worries. We have a Congresswoman that things the QAnon thing is real even though it’s short life appears to be over as a conspiracy. And then there’s this Congressman who thinks we fought World War 2 to defeat socialsim.
But worse than any of these congress critters is this terrible Judge with a Life time appointment to SCOTUS. This is from Mark Joseph Stern writing for Slate “Sam Alito Delivers Grievance-Laden, Ultrapartisan Speech to the Federalist Society. The justice railed against COVID restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, and the alleged persecution of conservatives.” The Republican party is still knee deep in demonstrably against the democratic and secular values that this country was founded about. Plus, they hate people that don’t look or act like them even if they have no reason to participate or be a voyeur to it.
These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself defied the basic principles of judicial conduct.
For instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a “constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.
Alito also warned of a broader, ongoing assault on religious liberty. “In certain corners,” he alleged, “religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Alito condemned the Obama administration’s “ protracted campaign” and “unrelenting attack” against the Little Sisters of the Poor, which refused to submit a form to the federal government opting out of the contraceptive mandate. The group alleged that submitting this notice burdened its religious exercise. Alito also disparaged Washington state for requiring pharmacies to provide emergency contraception—which, he claimed, “destroys an embryo after fertilization.” (That is false.) Finally, Alito rebuked Colorado for attempting to compel Jack Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.* He noted that the couple was given a free cake and supported by “celebrity chefs.”
It would be nice to think we could be less watchful given Trump’s exist from the world stage and back on to the stage of fools. The problem is that he left a lot of fools there making decisions that could wreck our lives including the ones caught up in conspiracy theories dating way way back. The old Roman empire event a Roman Religion and now the Republicans want the American Empire to embrace the one they made out of thin air too.
We’re not quit ready to run any victory laps down here in New Orleans. We’re making calls in to Georgia now try to ensure Mitch McConnell’s future damage will be limited. Down here in the South you learn the losers never admit they lost and never quit.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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