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| Demonstrators outside Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office at the Michigan State Capitol in April.Seth Herald/Reuters |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2062 - the wall of guns - Domestic Terrorists - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2010.10
24 DAYS - daily election countdown
For many years, progressives like myself have worked to remind bigots that while yes, some extremist Muslims are terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists (in fact, very few).
Now, we get to say that about right wing extremists.
Some right wing extremists are terrorists, domestic terrorists, but not all right wing extremists are domestic terrorists.
The corollary for this is that not all Trump supporters are bigots, but it seems that all the bigots in our country are Trump supporters.
That's today's thought for the shit show the dumpster fire, that our country has become
Trump tests positive for Covid. Trump is taken to the hospital when his blood-oxygen drops to critical levels. Trump receives the best care the country can buy, care that almost no one else can access, and then Trump proclaims himself cured of Covid, returns to the White House, and will now start holding in person rallies (though I expressed these events a little out of order for hyperbole but the list of events IS accurate).
We still do not know when Trump last had a negative test before he had confirmed positive tests on October first.
Welcome to the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE, wherein people in my home state of Michigan plotted to kidnap, put "on trial," and then EXECUTE the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
Images like the one below show the malice and rage bigots feel for a governor who is following science and trying to keep people in her state safe. And yet, she is compared to a tyrant and to the Führer of the Nazi party in Germany during World War Two. This is OUTRAGEOUS.
And yet there is still a pandemic.
People are dying.
People are still protesting police brutality and rising up for BLACK LIVES MATTER.
AND WE MUST ALL VOTE.
I try not to pander to people in how to vote. I want people to be informed and engaged and to vote their conscience.
I have made arguments before that any reasonable person of conscience cannot vote for some presidents (Reagan, George W. Bush), but that statement has never been more true. In the awful, vile, and heinous department, no one has set the bar as low as Donald Trump, who believes himself to be president.
He is not my president.
And I hope that in 25 days, he is not your president either.
We must vote like our lives depend on it.
Because they do.
Domestic terrorism |
Three years ago, the polling firm YouGov asked Americans whether they thought it could ever be justified for their political party to use violence to advance its goals. The overwhelming response was no. Only 8 percent of people said anything other than “never.” |
This year, YouGov asked the same question — and the share saying that political violence could be somewhat justified roughly doubled. The increase spanned both Democratic and Republican respondents. |
I thought of that alarming finding yesterday, after law enforcement officials charged 13 men with a violent plot that included storming the Michigan State Capitol and kidnapping Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Conservative groups have criticized Whitmer for her attempts to control the coronavirus by restricting normal activities. In April, President Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” |
Yesterday’s arrests are the latest evidence that a small but meaningful number of Americans believe that violence is the only answer to the country’s political divisions. “We’re seeing more and more citizens expressing openness to violence as more and more partisan leaders engage in the kinds of dehumanizing rhetoric that paves the way for taking violent action,” Lee Drutman, one of the political scientists who oversaw the YouGov poll, told me. |
Since May, more than 50 people have driven vehicles into peaceful protesters. Armed protesters shut down the Michigan legislature in May. Armed groups on the left and right have done battle in Oregon and Wisconsin. Extremists have attacked journalists, including an instance in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. |
“Political violence in democracies often seems spontaneous: an angry mob launching a pogrom, a lone shooter assassinating a president,” Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently wrote in The Washington Post. “But in fact, the crisis has usually been building for years.” She added, “This is where America is now.” |
It’s important to note that the problem is bipartisan — and also that it is not equally bad on both sides: The American right today has a bigger violence problem than the American left. Of the 42 killings by political extremists last year, right-wing extremists committed 38, according to the Anti-Defamation League. |
And top Republican politicians have encouraged violence in ways no prominent Democrat has. Greg Gianforte, a Republican congressman now running to be Montana’s governor, pleaded guilty to assaulting a reporter who asked a question he didn’t like in 2017. |
Trump, for his part, has encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies and has often refused to condemn violent white-supremacist groups, including during last week’s debate. Whitmer, speaking after the arrests yesterday, cited that debate: “Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, a call to action,” she said. |
Political scientists emphasize that the drift toward violence is not inevitable. When political leaders denounce violence, it often influences public opinion, research suggests. These denouncements are especially effective when leaders — or individuals — criticize their own side for engaging in violence. Condemning the other side is easy. |
“Outbreaks of political violence are a real threat,” Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth, has written. “Every person of good faith in either party must speak up.” |
For more on Michigan: The Detroit News reported that some of the plot’s conspirators met during a Second Amendment rally at the Michigan State Capitol in June. And one expert told The Detroit Free Press that Michigan “has always been a hotbed for militia activity.” |
CNN’s @jaketapper: “Sick and in isolation, Mr. President, you have become a symbol of your own failures. Failures of recklessness, ignorance, arrogance. The same failures you have been inflicting on the rest of us ... Get well and get it together" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/XXA5uC91Ea— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 4, 2020
A Big Dump of Awkward Sci-fi / Pulp Magazine Covers I find Hilarious
THE PANDEMIC
https://www.wonkette.com/gopers-now-taking-covid-seriously-following-trumps-diag-ahhh-who-are-we-kidding
Trump's regular supporters haven't started taking it too seriously either. Or maybe they don't know what they're supposed to do or think just yet, because he hasn't told them.
Via The Guardian:
Sean Patterson is not worried that Donald Trump has been hospitalized with coronavirus because he believes what the president tells him.
"It's a hoax. There's no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?" said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri – a stronghold for the president.
But then Patterson pauses and contemplates the possibility that Trump really does have Covid-19.
"If he's sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It's what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold," he said. "It's political. I don't trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump."
And sure, that'll probably work out for them just fine. Until it doesn't.
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.
WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS
Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.
This is also a good data site:
Last updated: October 11, 2020, 02:57 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
7,945,505
Deaths:
219,282
Recovered:
5,089,842
About Worldometer
Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.
Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
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| President Donald Trump waves from the back of a car in a motorcade outside of Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Sunday. Alex Edelman/Getty Images |
Trump Appears to Put People at Risk for COVID-19 to Wave at Supporters Outside Hospital
OCT 04, 20207:25 PM
President Donald Trump briefly left Walter Reed Medical Center late Sunday afternoon to wave to his supporters, who have been gathering outside the hospital to express their support. Trump left the hospital in an armored SUV and stayed in the car as he rode past a cheering crowd of supporters and waved. Trump was sitting in the back seat and appeared to be wearing a cloth mask. At least two Secret Service agents were in the car with him.
Video of the drive came shortly after Trump posted a brief video on his Twitter account in which he previewed the “little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” In the video, Trump thanked the staff at Walter Reed and said he had “gotten to meet” some “soldiers and first responders.” Months into the coronavirus pandemic, the president seemed to imply that only now that he’s living through it does he really understand the virus, saying he has “learned a lot” over the past few days. “I learned it by really going to school,” he said. “This is the real school. This isn’t the ‘let’s read the books’ school. And I get it and I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing.”
Some people, however, were quick to question whether Trump had really learned that much considering he may have exposed several people to the coronavirus due to his brief ride. One of the fiercest critics on Twitter was Dr. James P. Phillips, who is an attending physician at Walter Reed and characterized the drive as “insanity” for putting people at risk for no real purpose other than a photo-op. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” he tweeted. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. This is insanity.” Phillips noted in another tweet that considering the president’s SUV is also “hermetically sealed” to prevent against a chemical attack, the risk of infection inside the vehicle “is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.”
Footage of Trump’s supporters outside the hospital showed that many have not been wearing masks.
Trump's doctors held another press conference. One in which Dr. Sean Conley attempted to explain why he was being so extremely shady about whether or not Trump had supplemental oxygen yesterday, saying that he "didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction." I find this confusing. Did he think that the virus could hear him?
Dr. Brian Garibaldi, another member of Trump's medical team, says he's been doing great and they hope to release him on Monday.
That is certainly an interesting choice, given that days 5-10 of coronavirus are when things can really go downhill.
The doctors also revealed that, in addition to the anti-body cocktail and the Redemsivir he'd been treated with, Trump is now on his second dose of dexamethasone, a steroid usually reserved for the most severe COVID-19 cases.
On "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Trump spokesman Jason Miller actually had the freaking gall to claim — while Trump is currently hospitalized with COVID-19 — that he thinks Joe Biden wears the mask a little too much. He actually whined that he thinks Biden uses it as a "prop" because he wears it even when he's 20 or 30 feet away from the nearest person.
He said:
First of all, everyone does that. Because while sure, you might not be within close proximity of another person at a given moment in time, you might be in a minute. No one wants to pull their masks on and off every five seconds, because that is annoying.
Second, it's good that he's doing that! Seriously! He is promoting a positive behavior, which is what leaders are supposed to do. And sure, it's possible that Democrats are being more cautious than they need to be, but I think we'd all rather do that than get and spread coronavirus. It seems to have worked out better than the Republican way, at least.
In last night's debate between Jaime Harrison and Lindsey Graham, Harrison brought his own plexiglass shield in order to keep himself safe — as Graham had been in contact with Senator Mike Lee, who tested positive for COVID-19, and really, really should have been quarantining instead of doing a debate.
Harrison explained that he was being careful not just for himself, but for his family members. Harrison's great aunt died of COVID-19, alone in a hospital this past July.
Wow! Just look at these seven or so people who showed up to support Trump while he is ill!
You know, we always laugh at people for not “getting" what "Born In The USA" is about, but I actually think it's funnier that they are so into "God Bless The USA." Why? Because Lee Greenwood wrote like, the exact same song for Canada. And that seems like the kind of thing they really wouldn't like.
Dr. Brian Garibaldi, another member of Trump's medical team, says he's been doing great and they hope to release him on Monday.
"He has been up and around. Our plan today is to have him eat and drink, be up out of bed," Garibaldi said. "[I]f he continues to look and feel as well as he does today our hope is to plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the white house where he can continue his treatment course."
That is certainly an interesting choice, given that days 5-10 of coronavirus are when things can really go downhill.
The doctors also revealed that, in addition to the anti-body cocktail and the Redemsivir he'd been treated with, Trump is now on his second dose of dexamethasone, a steroid usually reserved for the most severe COVID-19 cases.
On "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Trump spokesman Jason Miller actually had the freaking gall to claim — while Trump is currently hospitalized with COVID-19 — that he thinks Joe Biden wears the mask a little too much. He actually whined that he thinks Biden uses it as a "prop" because he wears it even when he's 20 or 30 feet away from the nearest person.
He said:
We take it seriously. It's why we give everyone coming to rallies or events, we give them a mask. We check their temperature. You know, I would say that with regard to Joe Biden, I think too often he's used the mask as a prop. Mask is very important, but even if he's — he could be 20, 30 feet away from the nearest person and still have the mask on. That's not going to change anything that's out there. Also we've seen with — with Joe Biden, I mean, we can't all just stay in our basement for the rest of our lives.
First of all, everyone does that. Because while sure, you might not be within close proximity of another person at a given moment in time, you might be in a minute. No one wants to pull their masks on and off every five seconds, because that is annoying.
Second, it's good that he's doing that! Seriously! He is promoting a positive behavior, which is what leaders are supposed to do. And sure, it's possible that Democrats are being more cautious than they need to be, but I think we'd all rather do that than get and spread coronavirus. It seems to have worked out better than the Republican way, at least.
Harrison explained that he was being careful not just for himself, but for his family members. Harrison's great aunt died of COVID-19, alone in a hospital this past July.
You know, we always laugh at people for not “getting" what "Born In The USA" is about, but I actually think it's funnier that they are so into "God Bless The USA." Why? Because Lee Greenwood wrote like, the exact same song for Canada. And that seems like the kind of thing they really wouldn't like.
Three businesses in Charlotte, North Carolina are closing for a deep cleaning following a visit from Ivanka Trump, who visited them on Thursday. Both she and Jared Kushner tested negative on Friday, but sometimes an infection doesn't show up right away and they'd rather be safe than sorry.
Via Charlotte Business Journal:
"As a precaution, we will be performing a deep cleaning of Cherubs Café, Cotton Candy Factory and Bliss Gallery today. While our protocols have always exceeded the CDC Guidelines, we want to ensure the safety of our employees and customers," nonprofit Holy Angels posted on Facebook.
Plans are to reopen those businesses on Saturday.
"Rest assured that we have done our very best to protect our loyal customers and our dedicated employees," the post reads.
Holy Angels provides a full slate of services, from residential and medical to educational and employment, for adults and children with disabilities.
The White House knew about Hope Hicks testing positive on Thursday. This means that Vanky knew she could have been infected and decided "Eh, it's probably fine! I'll just go to these businesses that employ people with disabilities!"
Oh, and according to The Daily Beast, one of the businesses Ivanka visited was a facility that houses immunocompromised people and those with Down syndrome. So that's just great.
You know it's totally legit when he's posing at two different tables and a photographer just happened to be there when he switched it up.
And what important work was it that he was doing? Writing his name on a blank sheet of paper, in Sharpie.
So relentless!
Shockingly enough, there was a lot of political interference in the Trump Administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The subcommittee found that there were at least 47 separate incidents of political interference in the Administrations response to the coronavirus, including great hits like:
·Pressured health experts to adopt the Administration's talking points, even when they conflict with the science;
·Criticized, sidelined, and fired experts who insisted on sharing accurate scientific information with the public;
·Altered, delayed, and suppressed guidance and scientific reports on testing, protecting children, reopening schools, voting safely, and other topics;
·Authorized questionable virus treatments over the objections of scientists;
·Resisted efforts to ensure the safe development of a vaccine; and
·Diverted $265 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration for an ad campaign to "defeat despair and inspire hope" weeks before Election Day.
Sure, we know all of that stuff, but it's nice to have it all in one place.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
RANDOM
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/10/05/008207/google-and-facebooks-ad-business-might-not-survive-amazon
'Google and Facebook's Ad Business Might Not Survive Amazon' (medium.com)
"There's a relatively new, rapidly growing player in the online advertising world," warns Medium's new consumer technology site Debugger — taking a close look at the "Sponsored Products" listed first in the results of Amazon searches.
"Given its unique business model, its history of swallowing whole industries, and its sheer size, Amazon has the potential to massively disrupt the online ad world — and forever change tech."The success of online ads depends on how close a user is to buying something... Few companies, though, are more intimately connected to peoples' buying behaviors than Amazon. As of mid-2020, Amazon controlled nearly 40% of American e-commerce, and data from 2018 suggests that it may control as much as 94% in certain categories, like cosmetics and batteries. Overall, the company is forecast to control almost 5.5% of all retail in America in 2020 — especially as Covid-19 has forced consumers to do more of their shopping online...
And the ads are cheap. For one campaign, I paid just $249 to show my ad to 1,049,000 people. Ads are cheap because Amazon has a vested interest in driving more sales. The company collects a commission of between 6% and 20% on every item sold through the site. For every product I sold through a Sponsored Products campaign, Amazon was effectively getting paid twice — once for running the ad, and again for managing the sale of my product. This likely allows them to keep ad rates lower than those charged by their competitors. Ad prices may also be low because Amazon's ad program has relatively little overhead. To understand what you mean by the query "Lunch," Google has to run a massive, worldwide data-gathering program that peers into every aspect of your online and offline life, from the websites you visit to the humidity level in your home. That's expensive. In contrast, when you type something into an e-commerce platform like Amazon, you're telling the company exactly what you want to buy — no world-spanning surveillance program needed. Amazon has recently expanded its advertising program to Twitch (which Amazon owns), giving marketers the option to target the platform's younger audience...
In building AWS, Amazon also essentially ate Microsoft's lunch, stealing an industry it was expected to dominate right out from under it. By moving into the advertising world, Amazon could well do the same thing for ad-funded giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Advertising is largely a zero-sum game — the ad dollars currently flowing to Google and Facebook come largely at the expense of newspaper, magazine, and television ads. If the dollars start flowing to Amazon instead, the other tech giants could see a massive drop in their bottom lines.
That would have big ramifications for the advertising industry. But it would have an even bigger impact on tech. More than 70% of Google's revenue comes from ads. For Facebook, that number is 98.5%... [I]f Amazon decides to take on Google and Facebook directly, it could result in a fight that saps the strength of both tech giants, and ultimately kills off the emerging companies that rely on them for funding and talent. The impact on the tech industry could be massive, world-changing — and permanent.
"Given its unique business model, its history of swallowing whole industries, and its sheer size, Amazon has the potential to massively disrupt the online ad world — and forever change tech."The success of online ads depends on how close a user is to buying something... Few companies, though, are more intimately connected to peoples' buying behaviors than Amazon. As of mid-2020, Amazon controlled nearly 40% of American e-commerce, and data from 2018 suggests that it may control as much as 94% in certain categories, like cosmetics and batteries. Overall, the company is forecast to control almost 5.5% of all retail in America in 2020 — especially as Covid-19 has forced consumers to do more of their shopping online...
And the ads are cheap. For one campaign, I paid just $249 to show my ad to 1,049,000 people. Ads are cheap because Amazon has a vested interest in driving more sales. The company collects a commission of between 6% and 20% on every item sold through the site. For every product I sold through a Sponsored Products campaign, Amazon was effectively getting paid twice — once for running the ad, and again for managing the sale of my product. This likely allows them to keep ad rates lower than those charged by their competitors. Ad prices may also be low because Amazon's ad program has relatively little overhead. To understand what you mean by the query "Lunch," Google has to run a massive, worldwide data-gathering program that peers into every aspect of your online and offline life, from the websites you visit to the humidity level in your home. That's expensive. In contrast, when you type something into an e-commerce platform like Amazon, you're telling the company exactly what you want to buy — no world-spanning surveillance program needed. Amazon has recently expanded its advertising program to Twitch (which Amazon owns), giving marketers the option to target the platform's younger audience...
In building AWS, Amazon also essentially ate Microsoft's lunch, stealing an industry it was expected to dominate right out from under it. By moving into the advertising world, Amazon could well do the same thing for ad-funded giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Advertising is largely a zero-sum game — the ad dollars currently flowing to Google and Facebook come largely at the expense of newspaper, magazine, and television ads. If the dollars start flowing to Amazon instead, the other tech giants could see a massive drop in their bottom lines.
That would have big ramifications for the advertising industry. But it would have an even bigger impact on tech. More than 70% of Google's revenue comes from ads. For Facebook, that number is 98.5%... [I]f Amazon decides to take on Google and Facebook directly, it could result in a fight that saps the strength of both tech giants, and ultimately kills off the emerging companies that rely on them for funding and talent. The impact on the tech industry could be massive, world-changing — and permanent.
Raisey-raison writes from a report via The New York Times:The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists for their work on black holes, regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing -- no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light -- can escape. They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. Dr. Penrose proved that "black holes will form whenever the conditions are right," said Brown University physicist Sylvester Gates, incoming president of the American Physical Society. "It is almost an unstoppable process. That really was an astounding result."
The New York Times adds: "Working independently, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole."For what it's worth, Dr. Penrose was awarded half of the approximately $1.1 million prize and the second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez. "Dr. Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018," the report notes.
The New York Times adds: "Working independently, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole."For what it's worth, Dr. Penrose was awarded half of the approximately $1.1 million prize and the second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez. "Dr. Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, following Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018," the report notes.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2010.10 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1926 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.
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