 |
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-usw-union-biden-light-trump-hotel-bat-light-20201018-qim4bh56njaxlnod6spryr5wku-story.html |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2076 - Biden Harris Bat Signal - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE FOR 2010.24
10 days - the daily election countdown
This "bat signal" on the Trump Tower in Chicago is classic.
I love it.
Great stuff follows plus a new semi-curated round up of stories.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/10/21/meet-the-midwestern-women-steelworkers-who-put-a-pro-biden-bat-signal-on-trump-tower/
A group of women used a projector to shine a massive Biden/Harris logo across Trump Tower and other Chicago spots early Saturday.
Between 4 and 7 a.m., the group of four women also shined the light on the walls of the Chicago Theatre, the Art Institute of Chicago, Wrigley Field and famed hot dog stand Wiener’s Circle. They took photos and moved on to another city to continue the project.
The Women of Steel group are behind the nighttime “batlight” tour, which aims to spread voter awareness and bring attention to their preferred candidates, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The women are part of the United Steelworkers union, North America’s largest industrial union.
Tamara Lefcowitz, who works for the health care sector at the union’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, is participating in the tour. It began in September and participants plan to hit 25-30 cities before the election Nov. 3.
Lefcowitz said the project is a fun way to get out the message that voting in the upcoming election is important for the lives of steelworkers while activating union members across the country in a pandemic-friendly way.
“We represent essential workers who have been out there risking their lives since the beginning of the pandemic,” Lefcowitz said. “What we are doing is something fun, but the reason we are doing it is deadly serious — it’s literally life or death for our members.”
The headline from Vox accuses Trump and his campaign for stunning hypocrisy in regards to the alleged corruption of Hunter Biden and by proxy Joe Biden.
And that's putting it mildly.
With Trump, it's all about projection. He projects everything. "Lock her up"? Is really "Lock me up." Or "Tony Fauci is a disaster" is really "I am a disaster." And "the Biden family is corrupt" is really "my family is very corrupt as are my business dealings."
Donald Trump is the first president in modern history to refuse to divest from his business interests upon taking office. As a result, he reportedly took in at least $73 million from foreign sources during his first two years in office, creating an unprecedented tangle of conflicts of interest with countries like the Philippines, India, and Turkey that are home to Trump-branded buildings.
Meanwhile, Trump’s adult sons — who said before his inauguration that they’d stay out of politics to avoid conflicts of interest — serve as key political surrogates for their father while running the family business, which has benefited from Trump’s presidency both directly and indirectly.
Somehow, none of this has stopped the president or his family from making his closing reelection case about corruption. Not his, mind you, but the flimsily supported idea that Joe Biden committed crimes by letting Obama administration foreign policy be influenced by his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.
Various aspects of these allegations have been debunked before (more on that later), but Trump’s attacks have nevertheless been echoed by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
These stories are so toxic, flimsy, and so obviously false that even reporters at the NY Post, the only "journalistic" outlet to air them, balked at having their names anywhere near this stewing pile of offal.
Videos are circulating of a white supremacist group planning paramilitary training, but they are not like terrorists or anything.
CNN contacted Nazzaro by email to ask him about the recordings. He didn’t deny being a leader of the group, though he did push back on it being characterized as a white nationalist organization.
“The Base is a survivalism and self-defense network. Our objective is sharing knowledge and training to prepare for crisis situations,” Nazzaro told CNN in an email. “The Base is not a neo-Nazi organization or a terrorist group. We do not encourage violence beyond self-defense situations.”
Oh okay, no worries folks, it’s just a glorified self-defense class.
But at least justice is working in Utah as the state-based DOJ charges 21 alleged members of White Supremacist gangs with drug and weapons trafficking crimes.
Like in schools in Georgia (because of course Georgia) in which Tik Tok users suggested "hang them all" in regards to black people and "burn their skin," though the real smart Tik Tokker doesn't know much and used "there" instead of "their."
“It tells me there’s a lot of division in this country still. Racism still exists, and they’re getting taught it at home,” he said. “Nobody’s born a racist. It’s getting taught at the house.”
Brian Noyes, Chief Communications Director for Fulton County Schools, sent a statement to AJC confirming the investigation had been launched and condemning hate speech.
“Hate speech must end,” the statement said. “Our country and community are changing and challenging this type of behavior. Fulton County Schools is working to foster a positive and respectful environment that embraces the strength inherent in our diversity.”
In Michigan, a terminally-ill man put proof to the thing we have been saying about vote as if your life depends on it. Helped to the polls by his family, he cast his all important vote (against Trump) and then he died.
Trump hopes to win the presidency or indefinitely stall any transfer of power by tying up the election results in the Supreme Court, and THE ENABLER IN CHIEF, Bill Barr, toady who somehow gets to run the Department of Justice while suckling at Trump's demon tit.
We as a people, even the other republicans who are not onboard with watching democracy destroyed need to oppose this heinous shit with all of our collective might.
Barr is the single most important figure on Trump’s transition team, but the transition in question is not the democratic transfer of power. It is the transition from republican democracy to authoritarianism. Because of his suave, courteous, even jovial demeanor and intellectual acumen, and his long record as a member of the pre-Trump Republican establishment, it seems superficially plausible to look to Barr as the one who might ultimately seek to restrain Trump and protect the basic institutional and constitutional order. All evidence—including ProPublica’s report on October 7 that the Department of Justice has now weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections by allowing federal investigators “to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election”—points in the opposite direction.
 |
| https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/10/16/trump-rejects-california-request-for-wildfire-assistance-1325891 |
MEANWHILE, in the America where we all live, Trump is a petty bully who won't help Americans in Democrat run states even if they are devastated by wildfires from federal land with poor forest management that was caused by decreased funding from his administration.
Isn't there a dozen reasons every day to send a direct Twitter message of "fuck you" to that slug thing occupying our house, the People's House?
And then, it's okay to be racist and sexist for humor. Obscene mocking is a new political strategy when senatorial colleague of Kamala Harris makes fun of her name for cheap laughs.
Police in Wisconsin have cut ties with a domestic violence organization because they put a BLACK LIVES MATTER sign in their window.
“If we want to end intimate partner violence and sexual violence, we must grapple with our country’s long history of racism, slavery, genocide, and colonization,” a letter posted to the organization’s Facebook page on Sept. 30, read. “We hope you will join us in breaking the cycle of trauma created by racism and violence.” Eight days later, Barron County voted to strip the organization of $25,000 in funding for 2021, the Post reports.
Last month, my team of civil and human rights lawyers filed a lawsuit demanding that the city of Tulsa and other defendants repair the damage they did in causing a public nuisance with their destruction of Greenwood in 1921, their continuing failure to rebuild what they had destroyed and their audacity in seeking to reap and, in fact, continue reaping benefits from their destructive acts. The lawsuit seeks redress for the wanton destruction of the Greenwood community and economic and social justice for the thousands of descendants of the original victims of the Massacre. The racist attack obliterated a thriving Black community of more than 10,000 souls—two of whom are still with us today.
These two remaining heroes are 105-year-old Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle and 106-year-old Mother Viola Fletcher, two of the plaintiffs in the reparations lawsuit against the city. Last week, Mother Randle helped us make history by participating in the first-ever court deposition related to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, conducted by video due to the pandemic. Under oath and in the presence of the attorneys representing the same entities that destroyed Greenwood, Mother Randle boldly told her story of how the Massacre and the continued oppression of Black Tulsans ever since negatively impacted herself, her family, and the greater Greenwood community. Mother Fletcher followed suit by giving an equally powerful testimony.
These two extraordinary centenarians shared stories that have waited 99 years to be told, proving once again that Black women are stronger than they should ever have to be.
Trump’s Attack on Fauci Is Unbelievably Idiotic
First the president got the pandemic wrong. Now he’s picking a fight with the guy who got it right.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, Fauci said that masks, because of their effectiveness and limited supply, should be reserved for health care workers who had to interact with infected people. Trump later misrepresented this hesitation to suggest that Fauci doubted masks were effective. Reporters reminded Trump that since March, Fauci and other health officials had agreed on the value of masks. But Trump continued to insinuate, falsely, that the science was uncertain. “Dr. Fauci said, ‘Don’t wear a mask,’ ” the president recalled in a TV interview last month. “You get all these different messages.” At a White House briefing on Sept. 16, Trump alleged that early on, Fauci “didn’t like the concept of masks.” On Sept. 29, in a debate with Joe Biden, Trump claimed that Fauci had “said very strongly, ‘Masks are not good.’ ” Fauci never said any such thing. He always supported masks in concept.
When reporters asked about their disagreements, Trump said Fauci was wrong and unreliable. This undercut the president’s simultaneous boasts that Fauci agreed with him on some questions. In an ABC News town hall on Sept. 15, Trump bragged: “Dr. Fauci said that we we’ve done a really good job, and we didn’t mislead anybody. He came out with that statement, which I appreciate. But whether it’s Dr. Fauci or anybody else, a lot of people got it wrong.” Trump didn’t seem to notice or care that his third sentence gutted his first.
Nor did Trump bother to get his story straight. In a July interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, he discounted Fauci as “an alarmist.” Seconds later, he accused Fauci of having failed to take the virus seriously. “Dr. Fauci at the beginning said, ‘This will pass. Don’t worry about it,’ ” the president lied.
Trump peddled obvious fabrications. Administration officials have reported, for instance, that he reluctantly banned travel from China in late January only after Fauci and other advisers recommended it. Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, has confirmed this on video. But Trump keeps insisting that he imposed the ban “long before Dr. Fauci and everybody else asked me to do it.” On Monday, at a rally in Arizona, Trump claimed that Fauci had told him, “No, no, don’t close it to China,” and that Trump had replied, “I’m sorry, doctor … I’m closing it.” On Tuesday, Trump spiced up the story, telling Fox News viewers that Fauci had said, “Let the people from China that are heavily infected, let them come in.” All of this is fiction. It’s not even plausible dialogue.
Trump’s Taxes Show the President Has an Awful Lot of China-Linked Financial Interests
President Donald Trump’s compulsion to accuse others of what he himself stands accused of continues unabated in the 2020 race, with Trump trying to tar Joe Biden as somehow in the pocket of China. Trump has painted Biden’s son Hunter, unironically, as an opportunist profiteer trying to get rich off his father’s position and stature. Hmm … sound familiar? Now, down in the polls and desperate, Trump has gone all-in on this approach, and his allies in the Senate have obliged by elaborating on Trump’s fabulist version of events, issuing a report saying Hunter Biden “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman as part of his web of connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.” Which candidate are we talking about again?
This video following was in yesterday's post, but it's good enough the repeat.
#CommanderInChief
The Lincoln Project presents our music video for "Commander in Chief" by Demi Lovato
1,358,968 views•Oct 15, 2020
#CommanderInChief… Honestly… If I did the things you do, I couldn’t sleep”
Demi Lovato put it best. That’s why we’re proud to present this new music video for #CommanderInChief.
Millions of Americans are voting right now. Pitch in now to help us reach them: https://lincolnproject.us/commander-in-chief/
WE MUST ALL DO THIS!!! GROWTH MINDSET!!!
Donald Trump Cuts Short ‘60 Minutes’ Appearance, Threatens To Post Interview Before It Airs
UPDATE, 3:19 PM PT: President Donald Trump blasted 60 Minutes and correspondent Lesley Stahl after he abruptly cut short a planned series of appearances on the show.
His latest tweets suggest that he did not think the interview went well.
Trump wrote on Twitter, “I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about…
“…Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!”
The White House has agreed that they were taping the interview for archival purposes only, according to a CBS source.
Trump did a sitdown with Stahl but then bailed out on a planned walk and talk and joint interview with Vice President Mike Pence.
At a rally on Wednesday evening, Trump told supporters, “You have to watch what we are going to do to 60 Minutes. You are going to get such a kick out of it. Lesley Stahl is not going to be happy.”
PREVIOUSLY, 1:58 PM PT: President Donald Trump tweeted out a video of 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl going maskless at the White House, after he cut short a planned appearance on the program.
Although Trump sat for an interview, set to air on Sunday, a source said he left without doing a planned walk and talk and a joint interview with Vice President Mike Pence. CNN first reported on the drama surrounding the appearance.
Trump on Tuesday afternoon tweeted, “Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come.”
According to people familiar with the interview, the image is from immediately following the sitdown with Trump, and she had been talking to the CBS team who had all been tested. Stahl had a mask on “leading into the interviews as appropriate.”
Stahl in May disclosed that she had been hospitalized for COVID-19, just as Trump was earlier this month.
The interviews with Trump and Pence are part of a package of stories on 60 Minutes slated for Sunday that looks that the 2020 presidential contenders. Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will also appear on the episode. Biden taped his interview with Norah O’Donnell on Monday.
The interviews with the presidential and vice presidential contenders have been a tradition for 60 Minutes in the past few cycles. Stahl announced the plans for the segments during Sunday’s broadcast.
Trump was last on 60 Minutes for a sit-down interview with Stahl in 2018, just before the midterm elections.
President Pandemic Continues Cross-Country Covid-Palooza Tour
Voters overwhelmingly believe Donald Trump has not only bungled his response to COVID-19, but that he's not taking the pandemic seriously. Still, the president continues to hold all-you-can-infect maskless moron rallies across the country. He refuses to listen. This is why suburban women hate him.
A most bizarre demonstration of Trump's recklessness came during his super-spreader event Friday in Macon, Georgia. State Rep. Vernon Jones, who's still technically a Democrat but has endorsed Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention, dove into the packed crowd of open-faced fools and surfed the waves of coronavirus. He's since been dubbed “Captain Covid" —although he doesn't wear a mask and his only superpower is the ability to look at himself in the mirror without weeping.
Jones could be hospitalized by Election Day, so Trump should encourage him to bank that early vote ASAP.
Trump also defied public health guidelines before thousands of supporters in Muskegon, Michigan on Saturday. Still eager to court that suburban lady vote, he viciously attacked Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who rightwing dirtbags plotted to abduct and possibly murder. The so-called “law and order" president has repeated the terrorists' accusations and demands: He's claimed Whitmer wants to be a “dictator" and that she should "open up the state," even though COVID-19 cases there are surging.
The president has called his COVID-paloozas “peaceful protests," yet if people at an actual Black Lives Matter rally called for vigilante justice against elected officials, the police would release the tear gas and hounds.
TRUMP: Now you got to get your governor to open up your state. Okay? And get your schools open. Get your schools open. The schools have to be open, right?
It might help if the president didn't hold super-spreader events and actively discourage the wearing of masks. Or he could just raise a lynch mob. He'll always take the most repugnant option.
MAGA MOB: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
This should never stop making you sick to your stomach.
TRUMP: Lock them all up.
MAGA MOB: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
Sunday, when CNN's Jake Tapper confronted Lara Trump about this gross moment, she claimed her father-in-law was “just having fun at a Trump rally." Lara Trump is a solid representative from the League of Sociopathic Women Voters, but that's not a compelling percentage of the 2020 electorate. Most women aren't down with the commander in chief promoting stochastic terrorism.
Trump also barfed more racism about Joe Biden shipping undesirables to the suburbs.
TRUMP: Would you like a nice low-income housing project next to your suburban beautiful ranch style house? Generally speaking, no. I saved your suburbs — women — suburban women, you're supposed to love Trump.
Women voters just adore men who don't appreciate their actual needs and who inexplicably refer to themselves in the third person.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, where Trump held another rally this weekend, 4,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported just on Friday and officials have opened a field hospital to handle demand in the northeastern part of the state. But, hey, Trump is back in fighting form, and that's all that matters to him. The 'rona is so yesterday!
TRUMP: I wish you had a Republican governor because, frankly, you've got to open your state up. You've got to open it up.
Wisconsin is currently “opened up," because a judge has blocked Democratic Governor Tony Evers's efforts to stop exactly what is happening right now.
"I'm not a big shutdown believer," Trump said in an interview with WTMJ-TV ahead of the rally. "We give masks to everybody at the rally, but the rallies again are outdoors."
This fool's own CDC guidelines state very clearly that his rallies are the highest risk for spreading the coronavirus. They are large in-person gatherings "where it is difficult for individuals (who are mostly unmasked) to remain spaced at least six feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area."
When Trump himself had COVID-19, we were supposed to wish him well because that's how morally upstanding people behave. However, I was always afraid that if Trump fully recovered, he'd run around claiming the coronavirus was just man flu. This will cost people their lives. Trump learned nothing from his brush with mortality. He's a version of Scrooge who woke up on Christmas morning determined to be worse than ever. He'd fire Bob Cratchit because he heard his wife said mean things about him. Donald Trump is irredeemable. So, it's up to us to get rid of him.
Fifteen days to go.
[Rev / Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
Does Trump Actually WANT His Followers To Kidnap Gretchen Whitmer?
Yesterday, at his rally in Muskegon, Michigan, Donald Trump announced to a thrilled public that he was dismissing Mike Pence as his running mate and replacing him with JFK, Jr, who it turns out is not dead after all. Then Elvis popped onstage and sang a few bars of "Are You Lonesome, Tonight?" before they all walked off into the sunset, only to find themselves at the Nighthawks diner a few hours later, in order to drink some coffee and solidify their plans for the mass arrests expected to happen this week.
Ok, no. That did not happen. And a few people are upset about that.
"Now I am disheartened and broken, and wondering if all of this was a lie."
An "imbarisment" indeed.
What did end up happening at the rally, however, was that Trump told the crowd that they needed to tell Governor Gretchen Whitmer to stop trying to do things to control the spread of the novel coronavirus:
"You gotta get your governor to open up your state, okay? And get your schools open. Get your schools open. The schools have to be open, right?"
The crowd responded with their traditional chants of "Lock Her Up!" — which one might consider in poor taste given the fact that a bunch of militia members had recently been arrested for their plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer in a PT Cruiser.
Did Trump admonish them? He did not! In fact, he responded by saying "Lock 'em all up."
"Lock 'em all up." Just for the record, Gov. Whitmer isn't the only public official to have faced a kidnapping threat lately. The Wichita, Kansas police recently thwarted an attempted kidnapping of the city's mayor by a musician who calls himself Cathead and was very upset about having to wear a mask. The FBI also says they recently foiled a kidnapping attempt against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Apparently these people think that if they successfully kidnap a mayor or Governor, the mask mandates go away automatically — or that it's gonna be some kind of Patty Hearst type situation where they convince the person they kidnapped to side with them.
But whatever they think is going on, it's probably best not to encourage them.
Gov. Whitmer, understandably, was pretty wigged out by the chanting, saying on Sunday that "It's got to end," because "It is dangerous, not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans."
Trump's surrogates, naturally, are defending him. Lara Trump, speaking to Jake Tapper this morning, explained that he was just "having fun" at a Trump rally, which she described as a "fun, light atmosphere" where people just sometimes casually chant about locking up their political enemies. Like you do.
Trump advisor Jason Miller told Fox New Sunday that the president has "absolutely no regrets" about his rhetoric, saying "I think the fact of the matter is that many residents of Michigan are pretty frustrated with the governor. They want to see the state open back up."
Mind you, these are the people who have been sobbing for two years now over the fact that Maxine Waters said to confront Trump administration officials when they see them out on the town and tell them to stop separating families at the border. They still have not let it go, and Lara Trump even referenced it in her interview with Tapper. Maxine Waters, by the way, did not encourage anyone to lock up Trump administration officials and there are simply not enough smelling salts in the world to revive the Right if she had.
It would, of course, really be super great if Donald Trump could just refrain from encouraging his followers to chant about locking up his political enemies, at least while we know there have been multiple kidnap threats. But that's just who he is, and he's not going to change.
[Reuters]
How Are Republicans Trying To Ratf*ck The Election? Let Us Count The Ways
Republicans around the country are trying their hardest to stop people from voting and stop ballots from being counted. This is, of course, nothing new for the party of voter suppression, but this year's fuckery is basically on steroids, what with all of the fighting over absentee and mail-in ballots. So we thought we'd give you a little round-up of the various ways the GOP is trying to ratfuck our democracy — and the ways our federal courts is allowing it to happen.
I would say “enjoy," but it's pretty much all bad.
Michigan
Yesterday, a Michigan appellate court ruled that all absentee ballots in the state must arrive by 8 pm on Election Day in order to be counted, reversing a lower court's ruling that had extended the deadline. It also reinstated the state's ban on allowing third parties to turn in their ballot to election officials. Because why make it easier for people to vote during a deadly pandemic?
In September, Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens had ruled that absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day must be counted if they arrive within two weeks of the election. Although Judge Stephens had found “unrefuted evidence" that the pandemic had slowed down USPS service (not to mention that fuckwad DeJoy), the appellate court decided those things “are not attributable to the state" and just decided to ignore the actual facts of what is happening in our country right now.
Although an untold number of voters will not have their ballot counted as a result of this ruling, the judges decided that that doesn't mean they lost their right to vote absentee.
Although those factors may complicate plaintiffs' voting process, they do not automatically amount to a loss of the right to vote absenteeUh-huh reaction gif
The appeal, naturally, was brought by the Republican Michigan legislature, because there's nothing the GOP loves more than ratfucking elections.
As of now, it's unclear whether or not state Democrats will appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Texas
There's always something or another going on in Texas. This time, it's about masks.
Texas does have a statewide mask mandate ... kind of. But the July 2 rule exempted "any person who is voting, assisting a voter, serving as a poll watcher, or actively administering an election[.]" Because why NOT just kill people who are trying to exercise their fundamental right to vote?
Back in July, voting rights organizations filed the suit against Governor Greg Abbott, arguing that the state's election policies effectively forced voters to choose between protecting themselves from COVID-19 or voting.
The trial court dismissed the lawsuit, but this week, the Fifth Circuit reinstated the part of the case that focused on poll workers being exempted from the mask mandate. Now, the Texas federal district court will have to determine whether it's a violation of one of the few remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act to give “members [of a protected class] less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice."
And that's not all! The Fifth Circuit also jumped in this week to say that it was totally fine for the state to allow only one absentee ballot dropbox per county, despite the disproportional impact that would have on older voters, disabled voters, low-income voters, and voters of color.
Great.
Eye roll gif
Ohio
Remember that great voting rights win in Ohio that we told you about last week?
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is on a mission to ensure that it's as difficult as possible for voters living in the state's largest cities and counties to vote. He has limited ballot dropbox locations to one per county, regardless of the county's population, size, or geographic makeup. This has the result of suppressing the vote in places like Cleveland's Cuyahoga County, where millions of people will only have access to one dropbox in a high-traffic area.
Last week, a federal district court blocked LaRose's order, finding it unconstitutional because of its impact on voters in highly populated counties.
Unfortunately, now the Sixth Circuit has stepped in.
The Sixth Circuit, possibly the worst, most right-wing activist federal circuit court in the country, issued a stay of the district court's order, stopping it from being enforced until the appellate court has had a chance to decide the case.
By issuing a stay, the court has essentially already decided the case.
The Sixth Circuit is, of course, also known as the only federal circuit court to rule against marriage equality. Just yesterday, it reinstated some bullshit trap laws in Kentucky, in blatant violation of existing Supreme Court precedent, to pave the way for our new fascist Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. So yeah, they're just great.
Well done again, assholes.
Wisconsin
Ah, Wisconsin. Republicans in Wisconsin have never seen a voter suppression tactic they didn't love. And this year is no different.
Like always, it's Republicans versus Democrats, with Republicans trying to fix the election. This time, the state GOP is trying to get the state to throw out absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day. The district court court judge ruled that absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day should be counted, as long as they arrive within 6 days of the election. It also required the state to waive its rule that poll workers live in the county they're working in and offer electronic delivery of absentee ballots to voters who didn't receive them in time.
After a ruling from the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court allowing state Republicans to appeal the order, the Seventh Circuit issued a stay stopping it from going into effect — and now, SCOTUS will get the final say.
This week, several groups of voters, Wisconsin Democrats, and the Democratic National Party asked the Supreme Court asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the district court's order, to allow more people to vote. Justice Kegstand, who oversees orders from the Seventh Circuit, indicated that there would be a ruling by Friday; however, as of Saturday morning, it's still crickets. Though this Supreme Court hates voting rights pretty much more than anything else, so I'm not holding my breath for them to step in on the side of democracy.
Updates from other states
- In North Carolina, Republicans are trying to get the state to throw out some 10,000 absentee ballots. A state appellate court is set to hear arguments in that case next week.
- In Arizona, the Ninth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Navajo Nation, seeking an extension for mail-in ballots due to slow USPS service on the reservation.
- In Indiana, the Seventh Circuit ordered that mail-in ballots must be received by noon on November 3 to be counted, overturning a district court order that allowed ballots post-marked by Election Day to be received until November 13.
So that's a lot of bad news
Yeah, sorry about that.
Look, we already know that Donald Trump and the GOP are going to do whatever they can to ratfuck the vote this year. What we need to do is clear: get out the votes for Democrats in such huge numbers that the election is ratfuck-proof.
Please: be a voter!
Pusheen the cat saying to vote
[ AP / Jurist / Yr Wonkette / 6th Cir. Appellate Blog / SCOTUSblog ]
THE PANDEMIC
Trump Says “We’re Rounding the Turn” the Same Day the U.S. Approaches Record Number of New Coronavirus Cases
President Donald Trump’s has adopted a new line on the coronavirus: “We’re rounding the turn.” Trump has deployed this rosy the-finish-line-is-in-sight status report on the stump and in Thursday night’s presidential debate. “We’re rounding the turn,” Trump said during the debate. “We’re rounding the corner. It’s going away.” Very little Trump says about the pandemic is based in reality: He has repeatedly peddled unproven treatments as miracle cures, he’s downplayed the numbers, and there was the light and bleach fiasco that we won’t even go into again, and on and on. So characterizing the country as “rounding the corner” is, somehow, one of the less explicitly absurd things this president has said about a disease that has wrought havoc on American life. It’s obviously false, even dangerously so, but feels more normal somehow, like a politician fudging rather than a lunatic suggesting you drink motor oil to get rid of your cold.
White House TV Radiologist Leads Nation Toward Miraculous Quarter Million Dead From Coronavirus
 October 20, 2020 |
Good morning. Trump goes after Fauci. Thursday’s debate will feature some muting. And we look at the current wave of the virus. |
A virus update, in three charts |
Let’s check in on the state of the coronavirus this morning, with help from three charts. Here’s the first: |
|
As you can see, the number of new virus cases in the U.S. is surging — and not far from this summer’s peak. You’re probably familiar with versions of that blue line. It is the most common metric for tracking the virus. |
The rising line mostly reflects reality: The virus is surging, especially in the Upper Midwest. Cooler weather is leading to more indoor activity, which often leads to new cases, and many Americans seem tired of pandemic restrictions. |
But you’ll notice that the red line on the chart — the number of Americans currently hospitalized with virus complications — looks less bad. It has risen lately, but it is not close to its peak. |
Why? Partly because the number of virus cases is not actually rising as much as the official case numbers suggest. |
That brings us to chart No. 2: |
|
The U.S. is conducting a lot more tests than in the summer or spring. More widespread testing means that the official numbers are capturing a larger share of new virus cases than earlier this year. |
“We have probably gotten better at finding cases, as testing capacity has increased, and so we can’t directly compare the size of the waves based on case counts alone,” Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins University told me. “That’s a good development.” |
The third chart also suggests some encouraging news: |
|
Even as case numbers have soared and hospitalizations have risen, deaths have held fairly steady. |
That’s happened as many older people — who are most vulnerable — have been careful about avoiding exposure. A greater share of current new cases is among young Americans. |
The quality of virus treatments is also improving. Remdesivir, dexamethasone and monoclonal antibodies all seem to help, as my colleague Donald G. McNeil Jr. points out. Just consider how quickly both President Trump and Chris Christie recovered, despite their age and underlying health risks. |
The full picture: There are some silver linings. The statistics on new virus cases that get so much attention are somewhat exaggerating the severity of the current outbreak, because of the rise in testing. And treatments have improved, reducing the death count. |
But the virus’s toll has still been horrific — and worse than in many other countries. More than 220,000 Americans have died, and hundreds of people are still dying every day. |
The overall situation is also getting worse, as the hospitalization numbers make clear. In some states, hospitals are almost full, and the virus continues to spread. “I’m just waiting to see if our community can change our behavior,” Debra Konitzer, the top health officer in Oconto County, Wis., recently said. “Otherwise, I don’t see the end in sight.” |
As Donald McNeil says, “The fall wave has just begun.” |
| THE VIRUS |
|
|
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.
ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
Deaths:
Recovered:
 |
 |
BLACK LIVES MATTER AND POLICE BRUTALITY
PORTLAND
A Portland-based program has Black grandmas reviving and passing on recipes. Using online resources, “Grandma’s Hands” is connecting Black grandmothers to share family recipes and food traditions with future generations. There are currently 12 grandmothers involved, holding regular video calls for 30-40 participants, with produce from local farmers of color, delivered to those learning from the grandmas. (Civil Eats)
New findings show “recent” earthquake activity approx. 20 miles from Portland. Evidence discovered from a paleoseismic trench dug across the 37-miles long Gales Creek faultline west of Portland, suggests earthquakes occurred there 8,800, 4,200 and 1,000 years ago — or about every 4,000 years. If the full fault were to erupt in a seismic event, the result could be a magnitude 7.1 to 7.4 earthquake that would pose significant seismic hazard to the Portland metro area. Feeling anxious about living along the Cascadia subduction zone? Check out these resources for how to prepare yourself. (Science Daily / Phys.org)
VARIOUS AND SUNDRY
What If the Government Ran a Social Network? (theguardian.com)
The proposed platform would connect the community without harvesting data in the way Google and Facebook do, and could rely on the wide reach of the ABC across local, regional and national communities, as well as the trust the invested in the institution by the public. "An ABC platform which engages the community, allows for a genuine exchange and influence on decision making, and applying principles of independent journalism and storytelling would provide real value to local communities starved of civic engagement," the report says. "[We should] develop viable alternatives to Google and Facebook, such as national online social platform hosted through the ABC..."
The report argues the arrival of the mandatory news code is a chance to push back against the profit or surveillance imperative of the tech giants and look for alternatives. "Google and Facebook's response to the ACCC mandatory news code has placed in stark relief our national over-reliance on them," the director of the Australia Institute's Centre for Responsible Technology, Peter Lewis, said. "This analysis shows that two global corporations that play a dominant role in our civic and commercial institutions are prepared to threaten to withdraw those services to protect their own commercial self-interest."
Voyager Spacecraft Detect An Increase In the Density of Space Outside the Solar System
[...]
One theory is that the interstellar magnetic field lines become stronger as they drape over the heliopause. This could generate an electromagnetic ion cyclotron instability that depletes the plasma from the draping region. Voyager 2 did detect a stronger magnetic field than expected when it crossed the heliopause. Another theory is that material blown by the interstellar wind should slow as it reaches the heliopause, causing a sort of traffic jam. This has possibly been detected by outer Solar System probe New Horizons, which in 2018 picked up the faint ultraviolet glow resulting from a buildup of neutral hydrogen at the heliopause. It's also possible that both explanations play a role. Future measurements taken by both Voyager probes as they continue their journey out into interstellar space could help figure it out. But that might be a long bet to take.The findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It's Official: Solar Is the Cheapest Electricity In History (popularmechanics.com)
Carbon Brief (CB) summarizes the annual report with a lot of key details. The World Energy Outlook 2020 "offers four 'pathways' to 2040, all of which see a major rise in renewables," CB says. "The IEA's main scenario has 43 [percent] more solar output by 2040 than it expected in 2018, partly due to detailed new analysis showing that solar power is 20 [to] 50 [percent] cheaper than thought." The calculation depends on financing figures compared with the amount of output for solar projects. That means that at the same time panel technology gets more efficient and prices for basic panels continue to fall, investors are getting better and better financing deals."Previously the IEA assumed a range of 7 [to] 8 [percent] for all technologies, varying according to each country's stage of development," explains CB. "Now, the IEA has reviewed the evidence internationally and finds that for solar, the cost of capital is much lower, at 2.6 [to] 5.0 [percent] in Europe and the US, 4.4 [to] 5.5 [percent] in China and 8.8 [to] 10.0 [percent] in India."
Mathematics and sex | Clio Cresswell | TEDxSydney
Mathematics and sex are deeply intertwined. From using mathematics to reveal patterns in our sex lives, to using sex to prime our brain for certain types of problems, to understanding them both in terms of the evolutionary roots of our brain, Dr Clio Cresswell shares her insight into it all.
Dr Clio Cresswell is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at The University of Sydney researching the evolution of mathematical thought and the role of mathematics in society. Born in England, she spent part of her childhood on a Greek island, and was then schooled in the south of France where she studied Visual Art. At eighteen she simultaneously discovered the joys of Australia and mathematics, following on to win the University Medal and complete a PhD in mathematics at The University of New South Wales. Communicating mathematics is her field and passion. Clio has appeared on panel shows commenting, debating and interviewing; authored book reviews and opinion pieces; joined breakfast radio teams and current affair programs; always there highlighting the mathematical element to our lives. She is author of Mathematics and Sex.
TEDxSydney is an independently organised event licensed from TED by longtime TEDster, Remo Giuffré (REMO General Store) and organised by his General Thinking network of fellow thinkers and other long time collaborators.
TEDxSydney has become the leading platform and pipeline for the propagation of Australian ideas, creativity, innovation and culture to the rest of the world.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/10/25/0239229/does-python-need-to-change
Does Python Need to Change? (zdnet.com)
Python is the top language according to IEEE Spectrum's electrical engineering audience, yet you can't run Python in a browser and you can't easily run it on a smartphone. Plus no one builds games in Python these days. To build browser applications, developers tend to go for JavaScript, Microsoft's type-safety take on it, TypeScript, Google-made Go, or even old but trusty PHP. On mobile, why would application developers use Python when there's Java, Java-compatible Kotlin, Apple's Swift, or Google's Dart? Python doesn't even support compilation to the WebAssembly runtime, a web application standard supported by Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, Fastly, RedHat and others.
These are just some of the limitations raised by Armin Ronacher, a developer with a long history in Python who 10 years ago created the popular Flask Python microframework to solve problems he had when writing web applications in Python. Austria-based Ronacher is the director of engineering at US startup Sentry — an open-source project and tech company used by engineering and product teams at GitHub, Atlassian, Reddit and others to monitor user app crashes due to glitches on the frontend, backend or in the mobile app itself... Despite Python's success as a language, Ronacher reckons it's at risk of losing its appeal as a general-purpose programming language and being relegated to a specific domain, such as Wolfram's Mathematica, which has also found a niche in data science and machine learning...
Peter Wang, co-founder and CEO of Anaconda, maker of the popular Anaconda Python distribution for data science, cringes at Python's limitations for building desktop and mobile applications. "It's an embarrassing admission, but it's incredibly awkward to use Python to build and distribute any applications that have actual graphical user interfaces," he tells ZDNet. "On desktops, Python is never the first-class language of the operating system, and it must resort to third-party frameworks like Qt or wxPython." Packaging and redistribution of Python desktop applications are also really difficult, he says.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2010.24 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1940 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment