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October 24, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: AOC, Assange, Covid19, curfew, diabetics, face masks, FBI, Obamacare, Russophobia, Tesla, transition, Tulsi Gabbard, YouTube 37 Responses »
Henri Matisse Le Bonheur de Vivre 1906
• Russian Data Reveals Diabetics Ten Times More Likely To Catch COVID19 (RT)
• Kremlin Says US Elections Have Become "Competition In Russophobia" (ZH)
• MSM Beat The Bidens To Declare Laptop Leak 'Russian Disinformation' (RT)
• Millions Of Insurance Plans Were Cancelled Due To Obamacare (JTN)
• FBI, GSA Undermined 2016 Transition By Sharing Private Trump Team Records (JTN)
• Differences in How Democrats and Republicans Behave on Twitter (Pew)
• If Trump Wins, My Profession Is Done: Pollster (RT)
• Bleeding Out (Jim Kunstler)
• AOC Blasts Republicans For Calling Her AOC (JTN)
• YouTube Is Selling So Many Political Ads It Has Run Out Of Videos For Them (ZH)
• European Data Considers Coronavirus Risk in Greece Mainly Low to Medium (GR)
• Tesla, Ordered To Recall 30,000 Cars In China, Blames 'Driver Abuse' (LAT)
Tulsi Gabbard Daniel Ellsberg
"A whistleblower cannot get a fair trial"
What's worse: ..coronavirus could be causing "an entirely new form of diabetes."
Diabetics are 10.3 times more likely to develop Covid-19, and their symptoms are more severe and life-threatening, with over a quarter of all infected patients already suffering from the illness as a pre-existing condition. That's according to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who told officials that coronavirus is especially dangerous for those suffering with the common metabolic disorder. "In patients with diabetes, Covid-19 infection is 10.3 times more common," Golikova explained. "Patients with diabetes experience the disease more severely, and more frequently develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, as well as respiratory failure, [requiring] artificial ventilation and, unfortunately, [experiencing] higher mortality."
According to Golikova, 27 percent of all infected patients have diabetes among their comorbidities, and this is often complicated by increased glycemia. As of the start of 2020, 5.1 million people in Russia had a diabetes diagnosis. She noted that the risk is even higher in patients with high blood pressure. Curiously, earlier this week, American Covid-19 patient Mario Buelna experienced exactly the opposite situation – he developed diabetes for the first time, having contracted coronavirus. According to his doctors in Mesa, Arizona, Buelna's diabetes was triggered by Covid-19. Speaking to London-based news agency Reuters, Dr. Robert Eckel, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, thinks that coronavirus could be causing "an entirely new form of diabetes."
"..competition in Russophobia has become a constant in all US electoral processes, regrettably."
This week's perhaps overly dramatic announcement Wednesday night by the heads of multiple federal agencies – foremost among them Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe – alleging new major efforts by Russia and Iran to interfere in the US presidential election formed a key question and talking point by debate moderator Kristen Welker Thursday night. Welker even referenced as somehow undisputed and settled "truth" the now debunked "Russian bounties" story. Over a month ago the Pentagon and other intelligence heads concluded after an exhaustive investigation that there's simply no evidence to suggest Russian military intelligence paid Afghan fighters to target Americans.
Russia was certainly paying attention to the debate and was not amused. The Kremlin on Friday blasted what it said was "Russophobia" at the center of the debate. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Friday that "competition in Russophobia has become a constant in all US electoral processes, regrettably." "We are fully aware of this and can only express regret," he added as quoted in TASS. "After all, probably, it is the American electorate who is the target audience of these debates, that is, common Americans. It is up to them to decide who won the debate, not us," the spokesman said. Indeed the American public is by and large likely growing tired of the endless Russia scapegoating too.
Corporate droid Kristin Welker says the laughable claim that Iran emailed threats to US lawmakers was "confirmed" by the same intel officials who made it up. Biden then spouts the discredited tale about Russian bounties, leading Trump to brag of arming Ukraine. National dementia.
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 23, 2020
"Joe Biden is supposed to deny and deflect attention from damaging information. He's a politician, after all – it's his job. The press is supposed to do the exact opposite."
It's not the media's job to cover for Joe Biden. Yet the New York Times and its ilk have fallen over themselves to call the damaging leaks "Russian disinformation," while also awkwardly publishing the FBI's denial of the claim. As President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden geared up to debate on Thursday night, the cable TV commentariat wondered how Trump would bring up the "laptop from hell." Recovered from a Delaware repair shop last year and handed to Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani, the laptop – which allegedly belonged to Joe's son, Hunter – contained a tranche of emails that implicated the Biden family in numerous foreign graft schemes, all while Joe was in the White House.
Before the debate kicked off, the New York Times quoted the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as saying: "No concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation," and the FBI as seconding this claim. For the Times, it was a dramatic turnaround. Just days earlier, before the FBI and DNI could weigh in, a headline in the nation's paper of record read, "Is the Trump campaign colluding with Russia again?" Quoting only a Senate Democrat, the Times alleged that Giuliani had been cultivated as an "asset" by the Kremlin, and "any information proffered by Rudy Giuliani is likely compromised." The Washington Post sang from the same hymn sheet, using the usual anonymous "former officials" to tie Giuliani to Russia.
Even before the media settled on Russia as the culprit, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called the scandal "made up" and a "hokey story," while NBC's Hallie Jackson described it as "dubious" and "questionably sourced." As the Times and Post rang the Russia alarm last week, neither the FBI nor DNI had commented on the laptop. DNI John Ratcliffe would do so on Monday, and the FBI followed suit a day later. In fact, as these articles hit the presses, the only people who had fingered Russia for the stunt were a collection of Biden's aides and advisors, who gave no evidence to support their claims. The Biden campaign itself didn't embrace the Russia excuse until several days later. It's one thing to cover a candidate sympathetically. It's another to work as his preemptive press corps. Joe Biden is supposed to deny and deflect attention from damaging information. He's a politician, after all – it's his job. The press is supposed to do the exact opposite.
But Biden can make the claim uncontested that number is zero.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said during Thursday night's debate that nobody lost their health insurance plans when Obamacare was fully implemented, but millions of individuals had their insurance policies cancelled at the time. A RAND Corporation study estimated that 5.9 million people lost their insurance plans due to Obamacare's rules and regulations. Obamacare is the 2010 health care law crafted by former President Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president for both of his terms. Obama was heavily criticized at the time for telling Americans that if "you like your plan, you can keep your plan," which turned out not to be the case. Politifact rated Obama's promise the "lie of the year" in 2013.
Trump and Biden each were asked Thursday night how they would handle health care policy if the Supreme Court invalidates Obamacare's individual mandate in the upcoming California v. Texas case. "What I'm going to do is pass Obamacare with a public option. It will become Bidencare. The public option says in fact if you do not have the wherewithal, if you qualify for Medicaid and you do not have the wherewithal in your state to get Medicaid, you're automatically enrolled, providing competition for insurance companies," Biden said. Biden rejected the idea that he wants to eliminate private insurance. "Not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under Obamacare. They did not lose their insurance unless they chose they wanted to go to something else," he said.
In response, Trump said Biden's health care plan would amount to socialized medicine, given that the federal government would run the public option.
Bernie Biden
For years, Joe Biden fought to cut your Social Security and Medicare—a fact which Joe falsely denied last night. This video (Joe Biden's own words) was created by Bernie Sanders earlier this year to expose Joe Biden's atrocious record and egregious lies! pic.twitter.com/womMTc70RP
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2020
This is the most severe of all. This is also why they complain in advance about Trump not doing a peaceful transition. Because they themselves did not.
A Senate report released today claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the General Services Administration undermined the Trump transition team in 2016 by sharing private Trump team records in violation of an agreement between that team and the GSA. The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and Mueller's office "secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J. Trump's presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc."
"They did so," the report continues, "despite the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the General Services Administration…—the executive agency responsible for providing services to both candidates' transition teams—that those records were the transition team's private property that would not be retained at the conclusion of the transition." The report states that officials at the GSA proactively called the FBI and offered to retain Trump transition team records following the controversy surrounding Michael Flynn's resignation as national security adviser in early 2017. The agency informed neither the White House nor Trump for America of that decision. Those records would eventually make their way to Mueller's office, the report says.
"At bottom," the report continues, "the GSA and the FBI undermined the transition process by preserving Trump transition team records contrary to the terms of the memorandum of understanding, hiding that fact from the Trump transition team, and refusing to provide the team with copies of its own records." "These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and those doubts have consequences," the report adds. "Future presidential transition teams must have confidence that their use of government resources and facilities for internal communications and deliberations—including key decisions such as nominations, staffing, and significant policy changes—will not expose them to exploitation by third parties, including political opponents."
Amanda Milius The Plot Against the President
Important Film: Amanda Milius explains how @PATPmovie exposes the greatest political scandal in our country's history and why it is important for all Americans. Watch it at https://t.co/p6JifeK4SD. #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/GZoz2DN8gv
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) October 23, 2020
And guess who gets censored?
Most U.S. adults on Twitter post only rarely. But a small share of highly active users, most of whom are Democrats, produce the vast majority of tweets. The Center's analysis finds that just 10% of users produced 92% of all tweets from U.S. adults since last November, and that 69% of these highly prolific users identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. A number of factors contribute to this phenomenon. Previous Twitter analyses by the Center have found that the platform contains a larger share of Democrats than Republicans. And in addition to being more prevalent on the site in general, the 10% most active Democrats typically produce roughly twice as many tweets in a month (157) as the 10% most active Republicans (79).
Across both parties, those who use Twitter differ in several ways compared with non-users. For instance, Twitter-using Democrats and Republicans alike tend to be younger and have higher levels of educational attainment compared with members of each party who do not use the platform. Although nearly identical shares of Republican Twitter users (60%) and non-users (62%) describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative, Democrats who use Twitter tend to be more liberal than non-users. Some 60% of Democrats on Twitter describe their political leanings as liberal (with 24% saying they are "very" liberal), compared with 43% among those who are not Twitter users (only 12% of whom say they are very liberal).
Beyond posting volume, Democrats and Republicans also differ from each other in their actual behaviors on the platform. For instance, the two accounts followed by the largest share of U.S. adults are much more likely to be followed by users from one party than the other. Former President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) is followed by 42% of Democrats but just 12% of Republicans, while President Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) is followed by 35% of Republicans and just 13% of Democrats. Many other popular accounts are followed primarily by those who identify as either Democrat or Republican. However, a small number of the most-followed accounts on Twitter (mostly popular celebrities or entertainers) are followed by similar shares of U.S. adults belonging to each party.
I don't think so. If it didn't happen in 2016, why would it now?
Polling guru Frank Luntz has admitted that if Donald Trump wins re-election, his "profession is done." Though polls show Joe Biden in the lead, Luntz and his colleagues are hedging their bets and preparing to be shocked… again Democratic candidate Joe Biden is leading President Donald Trump by up to 10 points nationwide. Yet polls can be wrong, and for all the talk of a Biden "landslide" in the media, Trump's supporters likely remember 2016, when their candidate pulled off a shock victory against Hillary Clinton, despite being given only a seven percent chance of winning by the New York Times two weeks before election day. Should Trump once again dispatch his Democratic challenger, the polling industry is finished, Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News on Thursday.
"Well, I hate to acknowledge it, because that's my industry," he told Fox anchor Bret Baier. "But the public will have no faith. No confidence. If Donald Trump surprises people… my profession is done." Luntz insists that his polling is accurate this time, and that Biden will win. However, undecided voters may be leaning toward Trump. As the two men faced off in the final presidential debate in Tennessee on Thursday night, Luntz organized a focus group of undecided voters. After the showdown, a majority of these voters were leaning toward backing Trump. They described him as "controlled," "poised," and "surprisingly presidential," while Biden was thought of as "vague," "elusive," and "defensive."
Luntz is a longtime critic of Trump, and a recently released email – found on Hunter Biden's now-infamous laptop – apparently showed him massaging his predictions in favor of Biden back in 2012, when the then-VP was debating Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan. Luntz appeared to confirm the email's authenticity in a tweet, but denied it was any kind of bombshell, saying he's known the Biden family since the 1990s. However, if a Biden-friendly pollster, backed by his latest focus group, is publicly opening the door to a potential Trump victory, the election gurus may not be as confident in their figures as they let on.
"Is Hillary ironing her purple pantsuit up in Chappaqua, awaiting the emergency call from her DNC?"
"The difference between you and me," Mr. Trump said to the ever more ghostly Joe Biden, fading mentally late in the action on the debate stage, "is that I'm not a politician and you are, and you're a crooked politician." Millions watching this spectacle might not have noticed, due to the media's near-complete blackout of news detailing the Biden family's adventures in systematic global moneygrubbing, but the Democratic candidate for president has political Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever of credibility, now gushing out of every pore and orifice.
Twitter and Facebook may try to squelch the story, but the evidence is all over the Internet now, like blood on a crime scene, in verifiable emails, texts, Snapchats, memoranda, and bank records that Ol' White Joe Biden is at the center of a decades-long influence-peddling spree, selling his personal services to China, Russia, Ukraine, and any other country seeking favors in US government policy, and that this slime-trail of grift disqualifies him from holding high office as much as the irreversible rot of his cognitive abilities.
The "Laptop from Hell" affair has twelve more days to play out before the November 3 vote and the Democratic Party is in a terrible jam. Do they ask Mr. Biden to step aside, or do they keep running with him while the barrage of allegations and hard evidence pours down on them like so many mortar rounds on a besieged bunker? It's obvious now that one way or another, voters are actually being asked to elect Kamala Harris president — but who asked for her? Only the disgraced and disabled head of the ticket, Joe Biden, desperate for a non-white running mate. Elsewise, she was so disliked by voters that she skulked out of the Iowa caucuses, ending her own run. Is Hillary ironing her purple pantsuit up in Chappaqua, awaiting the emergency call from her DNC?
The early 2020 impeachment gambit has finally blown up in the Democrats' faces, too, as it's now obvious the phony furor over Mr. Trump's phone call to Ukraine President Zelensky was ginned up to smother any inquiry into Hunter Biden's $83,000-a-month services to the Burisma gas company and its crooked chief, Mykola Zlochevsky, with help from then US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and several of her staff, as well as then Secretary of State John Kerry.
On to more important matters.
Her name is a mouthful, so Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became AOC. In fact, she calls herself AOC. "Team AOC is hiring!" she wrote on Twitter in August, for instance. But the first-term Democratic Socialist from New York bristles when Republicans call her AOC, as President Trump did during Thursday night's debate with Joe Biden. "I wonder if Republicans understand how much they advertise their disrespect of women in debates when they consistently call women members of Congress by nicknames or first names while using titles & last names when referring to men of = stature. Women notice. It conveys a lot," she wrote on Twitter.
"AOC is a name given to me by community & the people. Y'all can call me AOC. Government colleagues referring to each other in a public or professional context (aka who don't know me like that) should refer to their peers as 'Congresswoman,' 'Representative,' etc. Basic respect 101," she added. Twitterers pointed out that President Trump calls nearly all of his opponents, regardless of gender, by nicknames — some not so nice. Trump calls Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) "Pocahontas" for her false claims that's she's Native American. He calls Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who falsely claimed to have fought in the Vietnam War, "Da Nang Dick." Jeb Bush was, of course, "Low Energy Jeb." Then there's "Crooked Hillary," "Lyin' Leakin'James Comey," "Jeff Flakey," "Head Clown Chuck Schumer," and "Mad Maxine Waters."
So AOC isn't all that bad, is it? "You do this all the time, referring to 'Trump' or 'Pence,'" Fee Online contributor Brad Polumbo wrote on Twitter. "Just *stop* with the endless self-victimization. It's pathetic and tiring." "Yes, names like Crying Chuck Schumer and Crazy Bernie are super sexist," wrote another. In fact, AOC has another nickname for her and three colleagues — "The Squad," which includes Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). That's who Trump referred to in Thursday's debate. "They know nothing about the climate," Trump said, referring to AOC's "New Green Deal" environmental plan. "I mean, she's got a good line of stuff, but she knows nothing about the climate. And they're all hopping through hoops for AOC plus three. Look, their real plan costs $100 trillion."
And one Twitterer pointed out that AOC isn't even a nickname: "AOC is not a nickname, they're your initials. JFK is also not a nickname. The FBI, again, is not a nickname. You can maybe say that Trump should've still used your official title, but Obama was also referenced sans title, and you don't see him whining about it on Twitter …"
"..commercial ads have been "anemic".."
While social media makes its best attempt at trying to get Joe Biden elected by censoring stories about his son, YouTube is facing another dilemma: the platform is so inundated with political ads it has nowhere to put them. As advertising campaigns flood the platform, YouTube has "struggled" to place the ads in front of the desired audience for each, according to Bloomberg. Interestingly enough, YouTube is experiencing the shortage most in "critical swing states", where ad prices have doubled as a result. This, obviously, makes political advertising far more lucrative for Google, who saw ad revenue fall this year and will announcing its earnings next week.
Cat Stern, media director for Lockwood Strategy Lab, a digital campaign agency focused on Democratic candidates and progressive advocacy organizations, told Bloomberg: "There's a crunch. All political advertisers are buying in the same states, to similar audiences." YouTube viewers have risen during the pandemic and while commercial ads have been "anemic", political ads have spiked heading into November 3. In highest demand are the ads that users aren't allowed to skip through. There are also ad "reservations" for YouTube's most popular videos that are in high demand. Reid Vineis, vice president of digital at Majority Strategies, a Republican political ad firm, said: "The reserves tend to be gobbled up by well-funded campaigns."
While this occurs, other less-well-funded campaigns have turned to platforms like Hulu and Roku to run their ads. Some states, like Iowa, are usually entirely sold out on YouTube. Tim Cameron, co-founder of FlexPoint Media, said: "A lot of late money that's coming on board — it's difficult to find anywhere to put it." At some points, YouTube has been unable to place up to 75% of the amounts that people are willing to spend. YouTube didn't comment for Bloomberg's article, but the article notes that a "code yellow" was assigned to Google's staff regarding the inability to place ads, meaning Google was increasing the resources it was deploying to try and solve the issue.
We have a mask mandate now. And a curfew.
According to data released by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on Friday, much of Greece is at a "low" or "medium" risk level for Covid-19. The ECDC records the epidemiological burden across Europe, and classifies either entire countries or regions, depending on their coronavirus risk level. Unlike much of Europe, excluding areas of Central and Northern Europe, which is considered high-risk, much of Greece is at low or medium risk. The regions of Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, Epirus, are at medium risk, and areas of Central Macedonia belong to the high-risk category. Southern Greece, Eastern Macedonia, and Thrace are all considered very low risk areas.
All European countries, except for Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Estonia, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are considered "stable" by the ECDC, are in a situation of "great epidemiological concern" in terms of the virus. Although the stable countries may report an increase in cases, like Greece, they are still considered to have a relatively low risk level for young and healthy citizens. Older people and those who belong to vulnerable groups in these stable countries are still considered to be of high risk, however. Despite their stable designations, the situation regarding Covid-19 in the six countries should be carefully monitored, as the virus can spread quickly, increasing the countries' risk level, according to the authorities.
Best business model: always blame your customers.
Tesla Model S and Model X owners have complained about potentially dangerous flaws with suspension systems at least since 2015. On Friday, the Chinese government took action — and the company responded by blaming the country's drivers. China's State Administration for Market Regulation ordered a recall for about 30,000 Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured at Tesla's Fremont, Calif., plant and exported to China. The affected cars were built from 2013 to 2017. Model S and Model X vehicles sold in the U.S. and Europe were built at the same factory using the same suspension systems. More than 250,000 were sold worldwide. The traffic safety regulator for the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said Friday afternoon it is "aware of the Tesla recall due to suspension problems in China.
At this time, the agency has not received significant complaints related to these issues in the United States. The agency is in contact with Tesla and monitoring the situation closely, and will not hesitate to take action to protect the public against unreasonable risks to safety." A spokesman declined to say what marks a complaint as significant. [..] in a letter sent by a Tesla attorney to NHTSA on Sept. 4, the company blamed Chinese drivers for the problem, said there was no safety issue, and said it didn't plan to issue a recall outside China.Tesla owners at the Tesla Motors Club forum have been complaining about suspension issues since at least 2015, complaints that continue to this day. Many report that a ball joint connected to a control arm comes loose.
"Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter."
Emotions Trump
How could I love this latest video from Damon Imani more?pic.twitter.com/bOJCe7lXej
— Mad Trunalimunumaprze (@mad_liberals) October 23, 2020
October 23, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:21 am Finance Tagged with: Balding, Bobulinski, debate, face masks, Greece, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Russia, Senate, Snowden, Trump 16 Responses »
Pablo Picasso Nude, Green Leaves and Bust 1932
• Senate Demands Hunter Biden Turn Over A Mountain Of Evidence (ZH)
• Biden Campaign Implies Hunter's Ex-Biz Partners Are Russian Assets (ZH)
• Bobulinski's Statement In Full (DM)
• Report on Biden Activities with China (Balding)
• Fourth Turning Election Year Crisis (Jim Quinn)
• Iran Diplomatic Protest Over 'Absurd' Accusation Of US Election Meddling (RT)
• Asia Suffering 'Worst Recession In Living Memory' (BBC)
• The Women Who Brought Down Greece's Golden Dawn (G.)
• What Evil Lurks (John Michael Greer)
• Mask-Wearing Study Rejected By Journals Not 'Brave' Enough To Publish (RT)
• Climate Scientists Fly "Significantly" More Than Other Researchers (BNE)
• Edward Snowden Granted Permanent Residency In Russia (RT)
Inevitably, everyone thinks their side won the debate. Here's a few Twitter polls, but it would be no problem finding some that point in the opposite direction. Because journalism has died in America.
The real winner:
12 days. Where is Hunter?
Senate investigators have demanded that Hunter Biden turn over a mountain of evidence following bombshell emails and text messages which appear to show he and his business partners engaging in an international influence-peddling scheme while his father was Vice President of the United States, according to CBS News' Catherine Herridge – who brought receipts as usual. "According to recent reports that published emails allegedly from your client's laptop, the Committees have identified your client as an individual involved in one or more of these business arrangements or financial transactions," reads a Wednesday letter from Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley.
"As part of the ongoing efforts to validate and verify the information in those emails, the Committees request that your client provide all records related to any of your client's business dealings—including, but not limited, to bank records, wire transfers, account balances, gifts, business transactions, travel records—with Joe Biden, James Biden, Ye Jianming, Chi Ping Patrick Ho, Zang Jian Jun, Gongwen Dong, Mervyn Yan, Gabriel Popoviciu, or any other associates regarding CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd or any other transactions related to business in Romania, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Czech Republic, or any other countries." Biden's lawyers have until Friday to comply.
Over the last week, alleged emails, text messages and compromising photographs from Hunter Biden's laptop and his former business partners reveal that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter's business dealings, and appears to have directly profited from them. The deals span several countries, from Ukraine – where Joe was 'introduced' to a representative from energy giant Burisma before strong-arming the Ukrainian government into firing their chief prosecutor who was investigating the company, to China, where a top Chinese official offered the Biden family a $5 million "interest-free" loan, to Russia, where Hunter took $3.5 million from the former mayor of Moscow's ex-wife.
Tucker Hunter
"This isn't Russian propaganda, this is real." — Tucker Carlson pic.twitter.com/FL8SU9Ybkz
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 23, 2020
"..if the Biden campaign says that the Hunter scandal is "Russian misinformation," then his ex-business partners must be Russian operatives.."
Ahead of tonight's presidential debate, the Biden campaign has drawn a red line in the sand on the Hunter Biden pay-for-play scandal, insisting that "If we see tonight from Donald Trump these attacks on Vice President Biden's family, I think we need to be very, very clear that what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation." To review – the undisputed contents of a laptop alleged to be Hunter Biden's were published by the New York Post last week – after a Delaware computer repair shop owner saw troubling content on at least one laptop dropped off by Biden (who signed a work order). In addition to photos of Hunter with a crack pipe in his mouth and what Rudy Giuliani said are numerous pictures of young girls in compromising situations and one which is "out-and-out pornography," Hunter's alleged laptop, which the Biden camp hasn't disputed the authenticity of, contains evidence that Joe Biden was deeply involved in Hunter's international business dealings, contrary to past claims of non-involvement.
And while pundits and 'former intelligence officials' say this smells like a Russian disinformation operation – there is exactly zero evidence that it is. Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, explicitly stated that the laptop "is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign," while the FBI – which sat on the laptop evidence for a year (which would have exonerated Trump and immediately ended the impeachment proceedings) also said it's not a Russian op. But wait, there's much more… Forget the laptop for a second. Two ex-business partners of Hunter Biden's have released text and email evidence, along with formal statements, attesting to Joe Biden's involvement in Hunter's business dealings. Ergo, if the Biden campaign says that the Hunter scandal is "Russian misinformation," then his ex-business partners must be Russian operatives, no?
Five days in the basement to come up with a plausible excuse and they defaulted to this??? https://t.co/h6DDGoEmmY
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) October 22, 2020
Tony Bobulinski will hand over a ton of evidence to the Senate Committee(s) today.
My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine. This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.
I am the grandson of a 37 year Army Intelligence officer, the son of a 20+ year career Naval Officer and the brother of a 28 year career Naval Flight Officer. I myself served our country for 4 years and left the Navy as LT Bobulinski. I held a high level security clearance and was an instructor and then CTO for Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. I take great pride in the time my family and I served this country. I am also not a political person. What few campaign contributions I have made in my life were to Democrats. If the media and big tech companies had done their jobs over the past several weeks I would be irrelevant in this story. Given my long standing service and devotion to this great country, I could no longer allow my family's name to be associated or tied to Russian disinformation or implied lies and false narratives dominating the media right now.
After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries. I believe, hands down, we live in the greatest country in the world. What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to 'the Big Guy' in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other 'JB' referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe's brother.
Hunter Biden called his dad 'the Big Guy' or 'my Chairman,' and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I've seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I've seen firsthand that that's not true, because it wasn't just Hunter's business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line. I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.
The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me — it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn't and wouldn't do that to their partners. I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts so I can go back to being irrelevant — and so I am not put in a position to have to answer those questions for them. I don't have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China. God Bless America!!!!
Bobulinski
Tony Bobulinski: "I have heard Joe Biden say that he has never discussed business with Hunter. That is false… At my approximately hour-long meeting with Joe that night, we discussed… the Biden family's business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar." pic.twitter.com/JBk0jx0f38
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) October 22, 2020
Can't do this justice in the Debt Rattle format. Christopher Balding -certainly not a Trump supporter- has received a report from his Chinese connections (not the gov't). Zero Hedge has a good write-up.
Lost among the salacious revelations about laptop provenance is the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures. A report by an Asian research firm raises worrying questions about the financial links between China and Hunter Biden. Beginning just before Joe Bidens ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors. Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who's who of Chinese state finance.
It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter's firm. In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.
The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to "…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government." Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter's investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping's right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo. Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all. A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter's stake being worth in excess of $50 million.
"..a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits.."
"The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II." – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
[..] The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, as their never-ending coup attempt against a duly elected president attests, will be the catalyst for the next vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. For the last four years the Russiagate coup has dogged Trump, as Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Mueller and a myriad of lesser co-conspirators have propagated the Big Lie to cover-up their traitorous actions of trying to overthrow Trump.
An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public. Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits. Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth. Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations." – Aldous Huxley
A perfect example of this is my local ABC news affiliate doing an hour long broadcast last night with absolutely no mention of the Hunter Biden – Joe Biden pay for play scandal. The truth dies in silence. The left-wing media dominated by six mega-corporations and social media billionaire titans (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey) have colluded with other left wing billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg) and the traitorous Deep Staters (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton) to bring down a sitting president and now to memory hole proof of Joe Biden corruption and his son's illegal dealings with foreign enemies.
"Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country's elections. The world has been witnessing US' own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level.."
Tehran has denied that it is trying to interfere in the US presidential contest, arguing that unlike Washington, it doesn't involve itself in foreign elections. Curiously, the US says Iran is both trying to damage and help Trump. Iran summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who serves as a diplomatic go-between for the two rivals, to file a formal complaint against Washington's "baseless" claim that the Islamic Republic has been meddling in the upcoming election. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced on Wednesday that Iran and Russia have allegedly obtained US voter data as part of a purported plot to "communicate false information to registered voters" in hopes of "causing confusion" ahead of the American electoral contest. He went on to claim that Iran was behind a series of threatening emails that were sent to Democratic voters, apparently in an attempt to "intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump."
A spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations dismissed the allegations as completely unfounded and quipped that Tehran would never mirror Washington's own tactics. "Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country's elections. The world has been witnessing US' own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level," Alireza Miryousefi said. He described the claims as "absurd" and said Tehran has no interest in trying to influence the outcome of the contest between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. "The US must end its malign and dangerous accusations against Iran," the spokesman added.
The 2020 election has been fraught with allegations of foreign meddling, following debunked claims of Russian "collusion" with the Trump campaign in 2016. US intelligence agencies have accused Tehran, Moscow and Beijing of trying to tip the scales for their purportedly preferred candidates. Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that Russia has not taken any concrete actions to interfere in the election, but instead has only secured access to some voter information "just as they had in 2016."
Anywhere but China.
Asia Pacific is set to recover from its worst recession in living memory, the IMF says. Growth forecasts for the region have been downgraded again, this time from -1.6% to -2.2% for this year. However, the glimmer of hope is for a bounceback of almost 7% next year, according to the IMF. China will play a big part in the region's growth next year, with its latest data showing continued recovery from the downturn caused by the virus. But there are still many black clouds on the horizon as countries, including India, the Philippines and Malaysia, continue to battle with Covid-19 infections. "The scars will be deep," said the IMF, pointing to lower investment which will have a knock-on effect by the middle of the decade.
Not only are economies in the region dealing with the fallout from the pandemic, but they are also affected by the US-China trade war, and the growing hostilities between the two economic superpowers. Speaking to BBC's Asia Business Report on Thursday, Jonathan Ostry, the IMF's acting director for Asia and Pacific, said: "This is something, for a very export-orientated region, that is going to be a big risk going forward. "We worry about decoupling of major technology hubs – not just in China and the US but more broadly, which would have the affect of diminishing hi-tech trade leading to inefficient production." Earlier this week, China released its data for the July to September quarter which showed economic growth of 4.9% compared to the same quarter last year. China is seen as "a rare positive figure in a sea of negatives" by the IMF.
Real girl power. Love it.
Behind the bench, before her mostly male audience, as the marathon trial of Golden Dawn entered its last act, supreme court justice Maria Lepenioti did what she has done every week: she kept the peace. It has not been easy. Emotions have often run high. Even as the curtain was about to come down on proceedings with a ruling on whether those convicted should be jailed pending appeal, the Greek judge, both laconic and low-key, has had to pull off an extraordinary balancing act presiding over a case that has put more Nazi leaders and sympathisers in the dock than at any time since Nuremberg. In her court every word has counted. There has been no tolerance for the extreme rhetoric that fuelled the neo-fascist group's spectacular rise. Nor for jibes from the other side.
"Day after day, session after session, she has managed to keep the harmony," says Giota Tessi, a reporter with the centre left Syntaktwn paper who has observed the proceedings almost since they began in April 2015. "Her knowledge of the case file is incredible. She has been a model of restraint but she has also been very aware of the weight of the moment." Historians will look back at the women who played a seminal role in Golden Dawn's downfall. Under Lepenioti's seemingly expressionless gaze, the three-member tribunal has gone where many in Greece had formerly feared to tread. After its landmark verdict that the far-right, ultra-nationalist party was a criminal organisation bent on extinguishing enemies real or perceived, sentences have been delivered that will almost certainly ensure its leadership remain behind bars for years to come.
The party's founder, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and the tattooed macho militants who comprised his inner circle, all received 13-year prison terms. With the last chapter in the story of Europe's most violent political force finally written, it will not be lost on the protagonists that punishment, in the end, was meted out by a woman. "It's undeniable that in this case justice was female," said Maria Stratigaki, professor of gender studies at Panteion University, noting the number of female prosecutors and investigators who also participated in drawing up the dossier against Golden Dawn. "For a party whose ideology is based on male supremacy, whose worldview is so militaristic, it's humiliating and will hurt." [..] "Justice stepped in where others should have stepped before," Stratigaki told the Guardian. "And our justice system is full of female judges because it is they who do better at exams and rise to the top."
Haven't posted any Archdruid in quite a while.
First we need to encounter Shadow #3, the one that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung anatomized in so troubling a fashion. Jung, as I hope most of my readers are aware, started out as a disciple of Sigmund Freud but broke with him in 1913 over basic disagreements over the nature and meaning of the unconscious mind. To sum those up very briefly, Freud insisted that the unconscious was simply the instinctual, animal mind—the id, in Freudian terms—which was mostly interested in sex, and had to be disciplined and controlled by the ego in obedience to the conscience, the voice of the superego.
Jung found in his own work with himself and his patients that the unconscious mind could not be summed up so simply, and at first saw the unconscious as containing two layers. One of them consisted of those things the ego didn't want to recognize in itself, and so was entirely personal in nature: the personal unconscious, as Jung called it. The second layer consisted of contents that were not personal, had never been conscious in the first place, and formed the deep structure of the human psyche. This layer he termed the collective unconscious.
Until the start of the 1930s—that decade again—that was Jung's basic theory. What happened then was that he traced the roots of the conscious self and the personal unconscious right down into the collective unconscious. The basic structures of the collective unconscious, he came to see, were the archetypes: a set of roles or functions that were hardwired into the human mind at a deep level, and served as expressions in consciousness of the basic biological instincts we inherit from our animal ancestors. Once you reach a certain stage of sexual maturity, for example, your mind is hardwired to look for a lover: that's one of the most obvious archetypes, the one Jung called the anima or animus (depending on your gender and sexual orientation).
For all practical purposes, once it's triggered by some complex set of psychological stimuli, the anima or animus functions as a prolonged case of beer goggles, projecting itself onto the other person and making them look just like the woman or man of your dreams, no matter how faint the resemblance might be in the eyes of your friends. That's how all archetypes work: they scoop up the relevant contents of your mind, constellate them (that is, fit them into the archetypal pattern), and project that onto the nearest available target. What Jung came to realize as he pursued his investigations into archetypes is that what he'd been calling the conscious self and the personal unconscious were also archetypes. Who you think you are is a construct made up of all the things you think you ought to be, constellated around the archetype Jung called the ego.
Mask mandates will come forward everywhere as a big issue.
A large-scale study in Denmark that sought to determine if masks help stop the spread of Covid-19 has been rejected by several prestigious journals. The authors hinted that their findings were inconvenient to the status quo. The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Medical Association Journal all turned down the paper, Danish media reported on Thursday. The study, which began in late April, involved 6,000 Danes, half of whom were asked to wear masks at all times in public places. The other half were selected as a control group and were instructed not to cover their faces. After a month, participants were tested for Covid-19 as well as for antibodies against the virus. The study's researchers have remained tight-lipped about their findings, but they've dropped plenty of clues that suggest it was the paper's conclusion, not its methodology, that led to the journals' rejections.
"We can't start discussing what they are dissatisfied with. For if so, we must also explain what the study showed. And we do not want to discuss this until it has been published," Christian Torp-Pedersen, professor and chief physician at the research department at North Zealand Hospital, told Denmark's Berlingske daily. [..] Denmark currently requires masks to be worn on public transport, as well as in bars and restaurants when patrons leave their table. There is a raging debate worldwide over mask mandates that purport to halt the transmission of coronavirus. Japanese researchers recently published a study that found that masks can offer some degree of protection from airborne Covid-19 particles, but noted that even professional-grade face coverings can't completely eliminate the risk of contagion.
Curiously, at the start of the pandemic, many health officials and organizations urged against widespread mask use in the general public, describing such policies as ineffective. For example, in a March interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Covid-19 task force, insisted there was no reason for seemingly healthy people to be "walking around in a mask." At the time, his views reflected a wide consensus among medical institutions and professionals, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US surgeon general. Fauci, the WHO, and the CDC later reversed their recommendations and supported mask mandates. However, many have argued that there is still inadequate data to support mandatory mask-wearing. Deborah Cohen, the medically qualified UK correspondent of BBC2's Newsnight, reported in July that the WHO committee reviewing the organization's mask recommendation was motivated by political lobbying, not new scientific evidence.
Got to love it.
The large, international survey of more than 1,400 university researchers was carried out by the UK Centre for Climate and Social Transformation (CAST), which is coordinated by Cardiff University. A follow-up experiment with more than 350 researchers found that providing information about the impacts of aviation and support for workplace policies increases intentions to fly less. The large-scale study—the first of its kind to survey climate academics about their travel for conferences, fieldwork and meetings—is published in the journal Global Environmental Change. Director of CAST Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, who led the study, said the findings were "unexpected" but said it also suggested "knowledge alone is not enough" to tackle global warming.
"Our findings highlight that climate scientists, like many other professionals, can struggle to square their environmental commitments with competing professional and personal demands, and academia itself is not doing enough to change this culture," she said. "Crucially, our research demonstrates the need for policies and ways of working to encourage and enable low-carbon travel and use of virtual alternatives—something which is already happening in light of COVID-19. "Travel restrictions have required businesses, including universities, to replace a lot of physical travel with virtual interaction, such as online conferencing. These virtual options can be just as effective as face-to-face meetings, but at a fraction of the cost, as well as being more accessible for those with caring commitments."
Flying is one of the most carbon-emitting actions and there have been growing calls from both within and outside the research community for scientists, and in particular climate researchers, to do more to curb their flying so their crucial message on the need to reduce aviation emissions is not undermined. This study found "significantly" higher levels of flying among climate change researchers for work than researchers from other disciplines. The data indicated climate experts take about five flights per year, while non-climate researchers took four. Climate and sustainability experts conduct more fieldwork, but even accounting for this, their international travel was still higher. It also found that levels of flying rose with job seniority.
More good news from Moscow.
Seven years after he landed in Moscow and received sanctuary from Washington's attempts to silence him, US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted a Russian permanent residency permit. Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since 2013 when he blew the lid off unprecedented mass surveillance operations conducted by US Intelligence. The Americans have demanded his extradition to face charges for violating the Espionage Act ever since. "Snowden was granted an open-ended residence permit earlier today," his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena said Thursday.
The 37 year-old former CIA and NSA contractor faces the prospect of up to 30 years in prison if convicted but his extradition is unlikely any time soon, especially given his newly-minted residency status. Lately, the whistleblower has been engaged in a battle over royalties from his memoir 'Permanent Record,' published last September. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the US government may seize the $5.2 million in book royalties Snowden garnered from sales of the book.
October 11, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:54 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Covid19, face masks, FBI, FISA, Gold Star Families, pollsters, Russiagate, superspreaders, Supreme Court, Trump 10 Responses »
Paul Wolff Frankfurt Opera House 1934
• It's A 2-Point Race, Not 16 (WE)
• Biden Says Voters Don't Deserve To Know If He Would Pack Supreme Court (JTN)
• Beltway Republicans Want Trump to Drop The "Russiagate" Issue (sundance)
• Biden Misquotes Trump on Gold Star Families (FactCheck.org)
• 50 Richest Americans Now Worth More Than Poorest 165 Million (ZH)
• Most Voters Believe FBI Should Be Prosecuted For Role In Russia Probe (JTN)
• EU Agrees Common 'Traffic Light' System For Coronavirus Travel (R.)
• New Italy Mandate Requires Face Masks At All Times When Outside (JTN)
• Schools Aren't Super-Spreaders (Oster)
The Plot Against the President
The Person Who Made This Movie's (Amanda Milius) Father made a movie that you probably heard of
"RED DAWN"pic.twitter.com/DXmG8b4eHR
— Rich Higgins (@RichHiggins_DC) September 29, 2020
Pollsters, like much of the press, don't care about their credibility. They're political instruments.
Add John Zogby to the growing number of Democratic pollsters questioning major media surveys showing a double-digit lead by Joe Biden over President Trump. "It's closer than you think," according to Zogby, who's own John Zogby Strategies survey puts Biden's lead at two points, 49%-47%. In his latest podcast with son and pollster Jeremy Zogby, John Zogby said that polls showing a bigger Biden lead are using a bad model, one that includes far too many Democrats. His model follows the partisan turnout in 2016 that was about 34% Republicans and about 38% Democrats. "We believe that is a more accurate reflection of the turnout model," he said. But others showing a big Biden lead over-weigh Democrats. "Now some of the polls that have come out, I find troubling," he said, citing CNN, Fox, and YouGov.
They give an average 15-point advantage to Democrats. CNN had it a 16-point lead. "I'm a Democrat," he said, but "I just don't don't think the sampling is accurate." While the elder Zogby didn't cite a reason other pollsters are showing a bigger Biden lead, his son Jeremy did — Biden bias. "To me, it's only two things. It's deliberate, or it's a projection of bias, and I would go with the latter," he said in their weekly conversation, The Zogby Report. "If you live in an area, and you live in an echo chamber, and most of your friends think a certain way, a lot of times the echo chamber effect is that you tend to project, 'How could people think such a certain way, clearly, for example, the president is out of mind, and he's bad for this country, he's bad for the world, so of course people are going to turn out in droves for Biden.' I'm afraid that that's what's happening, a projection of bias in the data," he said.
John McLaughlin, of McLaughlin & Associates, recently sent a memo to the president titled "Skewed media polls," and said the media is trying to rig the election and suppress the GOP vote by making it look like a Biden runaway. In it, he wrote, "The latest skewed media polls must be intentional. It's clear that NBC, ABC and CNN who have Democrat operatives like Chuck Todd, George Stephanopoulos and other Democrats in their news operations are consistently under-polling Republicans and therefore, reporting biased polls. They continue to poll adults or registered voters that skew away from likely voters. So instead of the 33% Republican turnout which actually happened in 2016, they are reporting polls on only 26%, 25% or even 24% Republicans.
"You'll know my position on court-packing the day after the election.." What a curious thing to say. But who attacks him on it? He gets away with it.
".. the moment he answers that question all headlines will be about his stance." No, the same press who don't ask it now will not write about it after.
During a trip to Las Vegas, a reporter confronted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on if he would pack the court, in which he replied that voters don't deserve to know. A KTNV reporter told Biden the number one thing viewers have asked in the past couple days is if he would choose to pack the court. "Well you've been asked by the viewers who are probably Republicans who don't want me continuing to talk about what they're doing to the court right now," Biden responded Friday. "Well, sir don't the voters deserve to know…?" reporter Ross DiMattei asked.
"No they don't…. I'm not gonna play his game, he'd love me to talk about, and I've already said something on court packing, he'd love that to be the discussion instead of what he's doing now," Biden said. Last year during the Democratic primary, Biden claimed to oppose packing the court, something some of the other candidates supported. "You'll know my position on court-packing the day after the election," Biden said in Phoenix on Thursday, explaining that the moment he answers that question all headlines will be about his stance.
Asked if voters deserve to know if he would pack the Supreme Court, Biden says "No, they don't deserve" to. pic.twitter.com/uig5d14tsH
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 10, 2020
In whose interest is this?
While it might seem frustrating to see republicans and conservatives demanding that President Trump stop talking about the greatest act of sedition and usurpation, within our Constitutional Republic in the history of our nation, this espousal by Andrew McCarthy is factually a very wide-spread opinion within the DC beltway:
Take the intents in their best possible light, and the basic premise is that no-one cares about the abuses of power that took place. National Review article by Rich Lowry is here. I have shared by own thoughts on this matter several times; and despite knowing this issue may not/will not drive the 2020 election; in my own contemplation I keep coming back to this central question: How can this be ignored? "… How does the office of a U.S. president; and more importantly the republic itself; survive a coordinated coup effort involving all three branches of government; while simultaneously those in charge of exposing the corruption fear the scale is too damaging for them to reveal?" What are your thoughts?
Did he say really crazy things? Factcheck says no.
Bartiromo, Oct: 8: And you said it was a blessing in disguise. Trump: A blessing in disguise. I'm — I'm glad because I'm the leader. And I can't be like Biden where I hang out in a basement every day. Sure, he — if I wanted to hang out in a basement, I wouldn't catch it, but I meet a lot of people and I have to. I'm the president of the country. I can't hang around in a basement. So, I figured there would be a chance that I would catch it. Sometimes I'd be with — in groups of — for instance Gold Star families. I met with Gold Star families. I didn't want to cancel that. But they all came in and they all talked about their son and daughter and father.
And, you know, they all came up to me and they tell me a story, Maria. It was really amazing actually, beautiful but sad. And they come up and they tell me a story about my son, sir, was in Iraq or he was in Afghanistan. And sir, he did this and he did that and then he charged in order to save his friends. And yes, sir, he was killed but he saved his friends. He's so brave, sir. And they tell me these stories and I can't say, "Back up, stand 10 feet." I just can't do it. And I went through like 35 people and everyone had a different story. I could also say don't tell stories. They're telling the story of their son who just died or daughter — Bartiromo: Right.
Trump: — or husband who just died in a war or recently died, you know, mostly over the last 10, 12 years but some very recent. And I can't back up, Maria, and say, "Give me room, I want room. Give me 12 feet, stay 12 feet away when you talk." They come, they come, within an inch of my face sometimes. They want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I'm not telling them to back up. I'm not doing it. But I did say it's like, you know — it's obviously dangerous. It's a dangerous thing I guess if you go by the COVID thing. But I'm thinking — Bartiromo: Yes. Trump: Look, I look at the numbers. I figured that you probably — that probably at some point I'd catch it and I'll get better. That's what happened. I've caught it.
Perversity.
If readers want more evidence that the current economic system is rigged towards the working poor, well, look no further: New Federal Reserve data shows how these monetary wizards exacerbated the wealth gap during the virus pandemic via unprecedented quantitative easing programs. Never before has the Fed unleashed so much monetary stimulus in a given quarter (2Q20) to shield the economy from the virus-induced downturn. The result is a "K-shaped" recovery, disproportionately affecting low-wage service workers and households of color, while billionaires, cent millionaires, and millionaires added record wealth. The Fed's monetary interventions resulted in surging stock and other asset prices, while those who owned no assets did not participate in the "V" recovery.
Earlier this week, Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PwC published a new report that showed the wealth of the world's 2,189 billionaires jumped to a new record high of $10.2 trillion in July, surpassing the $8.9 trillion record at the end of 2017. It was only when the world's central banks aggressively expanded their balance sheets, beginning in March, that the rich got richer… Bloomberg notes that the Fed data shows the top 1% of Americans are worth $34.2 trillion, while the poorest 50%, around 165 million people, control about $2.08 trillion, or less than 2% of all household wealth. Meanwhile, the 50 wealthiest people in the country are worth almost $2 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, up $339 billion from the start of 2020. Tesla's Elon Musk is a prime example of a billionaire who saw his wealth rapidly increase this year, up $75.6 billion year-to-date, to $103 billion.
Covid-19 has exacerbated the already worsening inequality issues in the U.S. If it's monetary or fiscal, the transmission of stimulus has primarily flowed to society's wealthiest. The rich got richer, and the working-poor got poorer. Tens of millions of working poor households were handed lousy $1,200 checks, with many folks still without jobs, depleted emergency savings, food insecurity issues, and millions at risk of eviction. The wealthiest 1% saw their wealth erupt earlier this year as they own about 50% of all stocks and mutual funds. The top 9% own about a third of stocks, which means the top 10% of Americans own about 88% of stocks.
The takeaway from this is how few people know they lied to a FISA court.
A near-majority of voters say FBI agents and leaders should be prosecuted for their role in the Russian collusion conspiracy theory, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen. Among the voters, 46% said FBI officials should be criminally charged over the scandal, while only half that number — 23% — said they shouldn't. Thirty percent were unsure. The survey of 1,200 Registered Voters was conducted by Rasmussen using a mixed mode approach from October 1-3, 2020.
In a related Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen, just one-third of voters were aware that the FBI lied to a judge to obtain wiretaps against 2016 Trump campaign associates. When asked, 33% of voters said it was "true" that FBI agents lied to a judge to obtain warrants against Trump campaign affiliates. A fifth of all voters — 21% — found the allegation to be "false," while 46% were unsure. The results indicate that relatively few voters are aware that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith earlier this year admitted to falsifying an email used to obtain a wiretap against 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
As if that solves any problems.
European Union countries agreed on Friday to a common "traffic light" system to guide them on COVID-19 testing or quarantines on EU tourists and other non-essential travellers during the pandemic.It aims to end a confusing patchwork of restrictions across Europe and to bring back free movement of people, one of the key principles of the EU, within the 27-nation bloc when conditions allow. The system would lead to more "predictability and transparency" when travelling under COVID conditions in the EU, a spokesman for the German EU Council presidency said, calling it an important step forward.
The guidelines, which were backed by a majority of EU governments and will be formally adopted next week, advise that restrictions should be non-discriminatory, proportionate and limited to what is necessary. Under the plan, regions across the European Union will be designated green, orange or red, based on the degree to which the virus is under control, and grey if data is insufficient. The idea is that all countries will grant access to visitors from green zones. The European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control will provide weekly updates to assign the colours.
Based on its current assessment, with COVID-19 cases spiking across Europe, few areas would qualify as green – most of eastern Germany, parts of the Nordic and Baltic countries, Cyprus, certain regions of Bulgaria and Greece and one zone in Italy. While individual EU countries are free to determine their own measures, they will be encouraged to be consistent, for example setting the same measures for all red zones. A green status will apply to regions with fewer than 25 infections per 100,000 people in 14 days and where the percentage of positive tests is below 4%. Red means infection rates of 50 or more and positive tests of 4% or higher or infection rates of over 150 even with a low positive test rate.
"..masks and protective gear.." What other gear does he mean? Look, if people wear just anything on their faces nobody gets protected. That's just signalling.
I just bought a whole bunch of KN95 masks for the people working at the social kitchen in Athens. They are at risk. And if I can do that, your government can also.
But this is just plain nonsense. The risk of getting infected outside is not zero, but still negligible.
Protesters gathered in Rome on Saturday to show their anger over the country's mask mandates among other continuous COVID-19 rules as infections across Italy and Europe are on the rise. Demonstrators expressed their frustration over harsh virus mandates that have not stopped since the beginning of the pandemic, including a new order that calls for all Italians to wear face masks while outside or else they could face a fine up to 1,000 euros ($1,200). "From now on, masks and protective gear have to be brought with us when we leave our house and worn. We have to wear them all the time unless we are in a situation of continuous isolation," Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said.
There were two different anti-mask protests on Saturday in the city, according to AP News. The 'march for freedom' event rallied Italians together to show their government disapproval and concerns for the democracy and economy. There have been 350,000 confirmed cases of the virus in Italy and 36,140 deaths. Most of the recent cases in the country are asymptomatic, and are detected through increased testing.
Smart girl.
In early august, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school of 1,000 kids could expect to see 20 or 30 people arrive with COVID-19 during week one. Many assumed that school infections would balloon and spread outward to the broader community, triggering new waves. On social media, people shared pictures of high schools with crowded hallways and no masking as if to say I told you so.
Fear and bad press slowed down or canceled school reopenings elsewhere. Many large urban school districts chose not to open for in-person instruction, even in places with relatively low positivity rates. Chicago, L.A., Houston—all remote, at least so far. It's now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going (those photos of hallways don't count), and the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be a major spreader of COVID-19. Since early last month, I've been working with a group of data scientists at the technology company Qualtrics, as well as with school-principal and superintendent associations, to collect data on COVID-19 in schools.
Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That's about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. Even in high-risk areas of the country, the student rates were well under half a percent. School-based data from other sources show similarly low rates. Texas reported 1,490 cases among students for the week ending on September 27, with 1,080,317 students estimated at school—a rate of about 0.14 percent. The staff rate was lower, about 0.10 percent. These numbers are not zero, which for some people means the numbers are not good enough.
But zero was never a realistic expectation. We know that children can get COVID-19, even if they do tend to have less serious cases. Even if there were no spread in schools, we'd see some cases, because students and teachers can contract the disease off campus. But the numbers are small—smaller than what many had forecasted. Predictions about school openings hurting the broader community seem to have been overblown as well. In places such as Florida, preliminary data haven't shown big community spikes as a result of school openings. Rates in Georgia have continued to decline over the past month. And although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I've read many stories about outbreaks at universities, and vanishingly few about outbreaks at the K–12 level.
Maps actual sizes
Here is a very chirpy animation explaining the distortions of #map projections. Source: https://t.co/l55EEH8wv1 pic.twitter.com/3qsfGRnHQq
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) June 5, 2018
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Incompetence "R" Us
September 26, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 5:42 pm Finance Tagged with: Big Pharma, face masks, HCQ, incompetence, lockdown, Sputnik V, vaccine, Vitamin D, zinc 20 Responses »
Dora Maar Model in swimsuit 1936
I'll try one more time, if only to show you that me heart's in the right place. Yes, lockdowns work, and so do facemasks. But that doesn't mean all lockdowns or facemasks or requirements for either work all the time. The UK was very late with its first lockdown, and let in a million people through their airports without testing them. After they did lock down, another 100,000 came in, no testing.
And now people there say lockdowns don't work. Have you seen this report, or that report? Sorry, but I don't have to. A virus spreads by jumping from host to potential host. Keep them apart and it can't spread. I don't need a "scientific" probe to figure that one out. The principle of a lockdown works, but that's still only half the story.
The facemask thing is a little more complex perhaps. But it's complicated only because various governments have neglected to do the one thing they should have: make sure they have the best facemask ready for everyone, the one mask that is proven to be effective, preferably mass-produced in their country/state/territory. But have you seen N95 facilities being erected where you are?
Now the entire world is walking around with masks that they all can see offer little protection, and mostly where they have little effect. Moreover, I see lots of people here in Athens who washed them with their underwear and wear them again the next day, because they've been told they have to cover their face with something anything. But that's not how this works. What little protection those blueish masks that are everywhere offer, is gone once you wash them. What's left is merely symbolic.
And as for the well-meaning crowd that make their own masks, stop trying, those things don't do a thing and they make you look stupid. There are actually norms and data and whatnot for this, and putting your panties on your face does not comply with any science whatsoever. It's just scaring people, and we have enough of that, thank you. Non-woven masks work best, that mean anything to you?
The droplets that the virus hitchhikes on to get from one host to another are way too small to be stopped by granny getting creative with her bathroom curtains. But it's not you, it's your government which should have had an N95 mask production facility in place months ago.
They should also have mass-produced vitamin D, and zinc, because these cheap elements would have decreased the new cases, and the severity of them, by probably half. But no western government that I know of has even mentioned the role of these cheap supplements in the COVID story.
How odd is that? It appears to be in line with the hydroxychloroquine story, which went from "It will kill you!" when Trump first mentioned it in public, to "It's not effective" in Fauci's terminology. But medical doctors I'm talking to still maintain it works, and perhaps more importantly, continue to treat their infected patients with it.
Sort of the same thing goes for the western Big Pharma attempts to get a vaccine, there were 239 of those trials last time I counted. But there's never been a vaccine for any of the many coronaviruses, and not for lack of trying. Unless you count the Russian Sputnik V, developed in a fundamentally different way from the western ones, but that wouldn't make Big Pharma any profits, so we all choose to just ignore and discard it.
It's "funny" to see how all those politicians like the power to tell people what to do, lock them down etc., but when their measures don't work, and that's the case all over Europe, they blame their people and never themselves. I haven't seen even one say, I'm sorry, I failed, I step down. Instead they all talk about doing more of what didn't work. More lockdowns. Hey, you failed, move over!
In countries like Britain and Holland, they're so busy trying not to explain how and why they still didn't have enough PCR testing capacity 9 months into the pandemic, that they completely fail to see that PCR is the wrong testing method to use on a grand scale. Holland has "identified" 5 rapid testing options and needs until November for their "experts" to find the best one.
Meanwhile they have a "rapid test test" facility where doctors and nurses apply the tests, which should cost perhaps €1 a piece max, but which set you back a very reasonable €225. Good lord. The incompetence is not going to stop here and now, it's engrained in the political and societal brains and structures.
And it's not just the politicians, the "experts" also refuse to see and acknowledge that they are utter failures. They, too, blame the people. But just like they should have all secured access to 100 N95 masks for every individual, and Vit. D and zinc, and HCQ if people still get sick, they should have made rapid tests available for everyone to use at home, twice a week or so, if only just to ease the pressure. But health care has been institutionalized, so that will only happen when things get terribly out of hand.
All these failures have cost a lot of lives, and will continue to do so, and do a huge amount of damage economically and mentally. The idea of second lockdowns is insane, given that no N95 masks, no Vit. D, no zinc, no HCQ were ever made available. But the lockdowns will come regardless. Because the politicians and experts can and will blame it all on you.
In an event like this, people's worlds get much smaller, and they only know what their "local" media tell them, and those media are in line with the respective political systems. In crisis times, you as a journalist don't attack the leading party, no matter how badly they fail, because they will deflect any criticism right back onto you, and say it's your critical reports that made people behave badly.
It's circular logic at its finest. And since all these fine people in all these fine countries got it all wrong in the same way, they can use each other for cover. France can point their finger at Spain, and they at Italy, and all hail the King of Sweden. BTW, has anyone ever seen an explanation for why so many countries and states sent infected elderly people back into care homes? That one puzzles me.
The next threat is hidden right in that finger-pointing. Because they all want to keep their borders open, and that has consequences. Should have gotten it right the first time, guys, because Lockdown 2.0 was always going to be much harder. What you will see now is groups of people in various countries saying they will not do 2.0. While borders are open.
And what then? You're going to lock them all up (instead of down), in virus-infected prison cells? You guys have no idea what's coming at you. There is even talk in several places of engaging the army to make people obey. But it's the politicians and experts who have failed, not the people who have lost faith in them. And those people have had 6 months now to educate themselves on COVID19, so they're not so easily fooled anymore.
I still don't believe in the big conspiracy themes. I see a sea of incompetence, of people not up to their jobs who insist on hanging on to those jobs anyway. That's true, too, for the blunt refusal to even consider N95, Vit.D, zinc and HCQ. They're just not smart enough. They were not selected for being smart, but for fitting into, and being servants to, the existing system. And then something unexpected happens. And they have no idea what to do.
Many people will not accept Lockdown 2.0. Not because they're stupid, or suicidal, or they want to kill their neighbors and friends, but because they understand that what they've given up over the past 9 months has been of no benefit to them, or their neighbors and friends. And then on top of that they themselves get blamed for things getting worse. That's the breaking point, right there.
Our "leaders" simply have no clothes on.
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Debt Rattle August 31 2020
August 31, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Covid19, election night, Erdogan, face masks, leaking, Moderna, pandemics, Ratcliffe, Trump, vaccine 15 Responses »
Bruce Davidson Iran 1964
• Japanese Wear Face Masks, But The Main Reason Is Just To Fit In (Asahi)
• US Floats Idea Of Early Approval For Eventual COVID19 Vaccine (ST)
• Moderna Neglected To Disclose Pentagon's Financial Support (ZH)
• On Election Night, We Might Not Know Who Won (Mish)
• Trump Approval Rises Among Black, Hispanic Voters (Hill)
• DNI Ratcliffe Declassifying More Russia-Collusion, Media-Leak Documents (ZH)
• China's Mega Banks Lost Billions Of Dollars In Profit As Bad Loans Rise (CNBC)
• Erdogan Criticizes Greece As Turkey Marks 1922 Victory (K.)
• Assange Travesty Continues (Craig Murray)
• Rampant Destruction Of Forests 'Will Unleash More Pandemics' (O.)
US new daily cases look promising, but total cases passed 6 million cases.
Upward mobility
"The decline of upward mobility in one chart" https://t.co/yRn6W5JRKi pic.twitter.com/8n0Bt05ytL
— Trevor Noren (@trevornoren) August 28, 2020
Seeing all those people walk outside with masks on, makes me wonder why we can't inform them better. Wouldn't that benefit everyone? If they get that wrong, what else don't they understand?
Japanese people have taken to wearing face masks during the pandemic, but the main reason for doing so has more to do with going along with others than preventing the coronavirus from spreading, a new study says. Peer pressure emerged as the dominant factor for wearing face masks amid the health crisis in Japan, according to the results of a survey administered by academics. A research group headed by Kazuya Nakayachi, a professor at Doshisha University's Faculty of Psychology, published its findings in the Swiss scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology on Aug. 4. "Wearing masks is recommended to stop the virus from spreading to others, but our research suggests wearers rarely use masks for that purpose," Nakayachi said.
"Most of them simply want to don masks just because others do." The researchers surveyed 1,000 Japanese citizens online in March about how often and why they wear face coverings. The survey found that most people wear the protective gear, even though masks offer the wearers themselves limited protection. The results show a majority of respondents, or 51.2 percent, said they "usually" wear masks amid the pandemic, followed by 31.4 percent who said they "sometimes" wear them. Only 17.4 percent said they do "not at all" wear masks.
The head of the US Food and Drug Administration raised the possibility in an interview published on Sunday (Aug 30) that a future vaccine against the coronavirus might be given emergency approval before the end of trials designed to ensure its safety and effectiveness. A request for such extraordinary approval would have to come from the vaccine developer, Stephen Hahn told the Financial Times. "If they do that before the end of Phase Three," which involves large-scale human testing, "we may find that appropriate. We may find that inappropriate, we will make a determination." But Hahn insisted he was not acting under pressure from President Donald Trump, who has been pushing hard for a vaccine, saying one might be ready before the Nov 3 elections.
"This is going to be a science, medicine, data decision," Hahn said. "This is not going to be a political decision." Three Western drugs makers are well along with their Phase 3 clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of participants. The three are AstraZeneca, which is partnering with Oxford University in England; Moderna, collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health, and the Pfizer/BioNTech alliance. By the nature of the trials it is difficult to predict when reliable results will emerge.
I think this is what we would call a racket.
Before the mainstream media transfigures Moderna founder and CEO Stephane Bancel into a corporate savior on par with Bill Gates, we'd like to remind investors (and the public) that Moderna and its insiders have demonstrated an eyebrow-raising affinity for pumping the stock with over-hyped press releases then cashing in shares or warrants (all insider stock sales were pre-scheduled divestitures, the insiders' lawyers have argued). Despite receiving nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money via "Operation Warp Speed", the drugmaker is planning to charge as much as $37 for a single dose, or up to $60 for two courses, of its experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. That's far and away the highest price point disclosed yet.
And while we wait for more detailed data from the vaccine's Phase 3 clinical trials, patent advocacy group KEI is taking Moderna and its executives to task for neglecting to disclose government funding received by the company during its early stages, before the coronavirus pandemic. Despite receiving $25 million from the Department of Defense's "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" – or "Darpa" – Moderna has never disclosed this, or any other, government funding in its applications for 126 patents and 154 patent applications. KEI has lodged a request with the DoD and Darpa to remedy this in patents.
As KEI points out, Moderna's "failure" to disclose its government funding could have serious consequences for Americans hoping to get their hands on an affordable vaccine. The disclosures could affect everything from the US government's worldwide royalty free license, to the public's march-in rights, to obligations to make inventions available to the public on reasonable terms. When approached by the FT, Darpa confirmed that Moderna was required in its contracts to disclose the funding in any patent applications that stemmed from research that the US government helped fund.
Now, Darpa is actively looking into which Moderna patents may have been produced with Darpa support, so the US government can take credit where credit is due. "It appears that all past and present Darpa awards to Moderna include the requirement to report the role of government-funding for related inventions," Darpa spokesman Jared Adams said in an emailed response to the Financial Times. "Further, Darpa is actively researching agency awards to Moderna to identify which patents and pending patents, if any at all, may be associated with Darpa support," he said. Mr Adams declined to comment further, saying the investigation was continuing. US federal law required government funding to be disclosed in these circumstances, he noted.
Because Trump voters vote in person and Dems don't, on election night itself it may look like a large Trump victory. But then….
I'm not sure why Mish says: "Prepare for Trump to Claim Biden Stole the Election". Is that more likely than Biden making that claim about Trump?
An NBC/WSJ Poll on expected mail-in votes might cause some very misleading if not totally inaccurate reporting on who is in the lead depending on when mail-in votes get counted: "Supporters of Democratic candidate Joe Biden are significantly more likely than Trump backers to say they plan to vote by mail. Nearly half – 47 percent – say they plan to mail in their ballot, with an additional 21 percent saying they will cast a vote before Election Day at an early in-person voting site. Only about a quarter of Biden voters, 26 percent, plan to vote on Election Day at a polling place. In contrast, two-thirds of Trump's voters — 66 percent — say they will vote in person on Election Day. Just 11 percent say they plan to vote by mail, and 20 percent say they will vote early in person".
Due to the above, FiveThirtyEight notes the Consequences Might Be Weird: "If this holds, it would mean votes cast on Election Day would skew heavily toward Trump, and votes cast by mail would skew heavily toward Biden. This has serious implications for … well, democracy. First, Trump could argue the mail ballots (which, remember, could account for most of Biden's votes) were fraudulent and thus should not be counted. Although it's unlikely they'd actually be thrown out, this would damage the credibility of the election in the eyes of many Trump supporters. Second, it could mean the first votes counted on election night will be disproportionately good for Trump, who might claim victory based on incomplete returns. It might not be until days later, after a good chunk of the Democratic-leaning mail vote is counted, that Biden pulls ahead.
Let's do a quick-and-dirty exercise to show what I mean. In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll overall, Biden led Trump by 9 percentage points among registered voters. But Biden led Trump by 63 points (!) among voters who planned to vote by mail, and Trump led Biden by 33 points among voters who planned to vote in person on Election Day. If this kind of partisan split occurred in every state, Biden would win the mail vote in all 50 states — from Alabama to Wyoming — and Trump would win the Election Day vote in all 50."
The above scenario in all 50 states isn't likely, but it is likely in some states. The election day results could easily swing Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and that could swing the election night apparent winner. Trump will howl and his supporters will believe him. Some of my friends believe Trump will refuse to stand down, but I am sure it would not come to that. A bluff in that direction, however, is another matter. Chaos could last for days or even weeks in such a scenario with severe consequences on the stock market as well as potential riots which Trump would then try to pin on Biden.
Shift.
President Trump's support among black voters rose 9 percentage points amid the Republican National Convention, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds. Twenty-four percent of registered black voters in the Aug. 22-25 survey, which included the first two days of the convention, said they approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 76 percent said they disapprove. That is up 9 points from the previous survey conducted Aug. 8-11, where the President received 15 percent support among this group. The survey found support among Hispanic voters also grew by 2 percentage points, from 30 percent in the last poll to 32 percent in this most recent survey. Forty-four percent of overall registered voters in the Aug. 22-25 survey approved of Trump's job as president, a 1 percentage point dip from the last poll.
Eighty-two percent of Republican voters approve of Trump, a 1 point increase from the last poll, while 18 percent disapprove. Eighty-seven percent of Democratic voters disapprove of Trump along with 64 percent of independent voters. The survey found the president remains underwater with suburban voters and urban voters, at 42 percent support each. His support remains steady among rural voters, at 53 percent. Thursday, Trump officially accepted the 2020 Republican presidential nomination during the last night of the RNC. The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 2,861 registered voters between Aug. 22-25. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.83 percentage points.
Leaking secret docs to the press has become far too normal.
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, told Fox News's "Sunday Morning Futures" that he has been coordinating with US Attorney John Durham and plans to soon declassify more documents related to the Trump-Russia probe. "I pledged to a bipartisan group of senators that I would look at all of the underlying intelligence surrounding the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's interference and this idea of Trump-Russia collusion, but I'm not going to prejudice John Durham's work in connection with that, so we've had to coordinate with his office about the timing of that. But I'm optimistic that I'll be declassifying additional documents soon."
As a reminder, Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into several aspects of the Obama administration's surveillance activities against Trump associates. Ratcliffe went on, referring to Durham's review of the investigation: "He's looking at the same documents that I am," "He's not sharing his findings or the work that he's doing. But I'm coordinating with him to make sure that he has the intelligence documents that he needs to do his work. And what I don't want to do is declassify something that might prejudice his work. So we're going to have to coordinate as we go forward with the completion of his work with my ability to declassify documents."
Additionally, Ratcliffe, said Sunday he has filed multiple "crimes reports" regarding alleged leaks of classified information to the media. "When I become aware of intelligence community information that is disclosed unlawfully, I do what's called a crimes report. I've done that now on a number of occasions, and so those investigations are moving forward." He said that the leaks were "for political purposes" to create what he said is a false narrative "that somehow Russia is a greater national security threat than China."
"The brunt of the asset quality pressures might not have come through yet because of the still existing moratorium on the repayment of loans as well as its interest payments.."
China's five largest banks reported their biggest profit declines in at least a decade as they brace for further increases in bad loans in an economy weakened by the coronavirus pandemic. The five lenders — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Bank of Communications — released their latest financial report cards last week. All five posted at least 10% year-on-year declines in profit for the first half of 2020 as they set aside more funds for potential loan losses in the coming months — much like many banks around the world. "The banks have been asked to … perform 'national service.'
They've been asked to support the economy at the expense of their own operational strength," said Jason Tan, research analyst at CreditSights, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Monday. Chinese banks, among the world's largest by assets, have been placed at the front line of the government's effort to soften the economic blow on households and businesses. Authorities in Beijing reportedly asked financial institutions to sacrifice 1.5 trillion yuan ($219 billion) in profits this year to help companies by lowering lending rates and deferring repayments on loans. The Chinese economy — the world's second largest — is expected to grow just 1% this year as measures to contain the coronavirus hit global economic activity, according to the IMF.
That would be China's weakest growth in at least 40 years, according to data by the fund. China, the first country to be hit by the fast-spreading coronavirus, has shown some signs of economic recovery. But the effect of the economic slowdown on banks have not materialized fully, said Tan. "The brunt of the asset quality pressures might not have come through yet because of the still existing moratorium on the repayment of loans as well as its interest payments," he explained. "So, these will probably come in the second half, if not in the first half of 2021 when the moratorium lifts in March 2021," he added.
Are Merkel and the EU just waiting for the shooting to start? Ironic that Erdogan ignored, if not insulted, Kemal Ataturk when he made the Hagia Sophia a mosque, but now lays a wreath at his tomb.
Turkey marked the 98th anniversary of the decisive War of Independence battle against Greek forces Sunday as the threat of a new conflict with Athens looms in the eastern Mediterranean. "Turkey's struggle for independence and future continues today as well," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a message to commemorate Victory Day. "It is absolutely not a coincidence that those who seek to exclude us from the eastern Mediterranean are the same invaders as the ones who attempted to invade our homeland a century ago." In recent weeks, Turkish and Greek forces have engaged in a series of cat-and-mouse military exercises in the seas between Cyprus and the Greek island of Crete.
The confrontation was sparked when Turkey sent a research vessel accompanied by warships to search for gas and oil reserves. Greece, a member of the European Union, claims the waters are part of its continental shelf and has enlisted the support of the 27-nation bloc, which has condemned Turkey's "illegal activities" and warned of potential sanctions against Ankara. Turkey says Greece and others are denying its rights to explore for energy resources in the Mediterranean. Greece and Cyprus have recently been joined by France, Italy and the United Arab Emirates in carrying out naval and aerial war games in the region. On Saturday, Turkey began its own military maneuvers until Sept. 11 off its southern coast.
Turkey's Defense Ministry also released cockpit footage of what it said were Turkish jets in mock dogfights with Greek F-16s between Crete and Cyprus. "No one should have any doubts about our resolve in this matter and our unshakeable belief in victory," Erdogan said. In an interview with broadcaster AHaber on Saturday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Greece extending its territorial waters from six to 12 nautical miles would be a "cause for war." Earlier this week, Athens announced plans to extend its maritime border with Italy to 12 nautical miles. Erdogan laid a wreath at the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Ankara later Sunday. Ataturk led the Turkish troops in the independence struggle following World War I and went on to establish modern Turkey.
Cancel culture wherever you look.
The travesty that is Julian Assange's extradition hearing resumes fully on 7 September at the Old Bailey. I shall be abandoning my own legal team and going down to London to cover it again in full, for an expected three weeks. How this is going to work at the Old Bailey, I do not know. Covid restrictions presumably mean that the numbers in the public gallery will be tiny. As of now, there is no arrangement for Julian's friends and family in place. It looks like 4am queuing is in prospect. By 7 September it will be six months since I applied to resume my membership of the National Union of Journalists. I STILL have not the slightest idea who objected, or what the grounds were for objection. I have not heard from the NUJ for months.
A senior official of an international journalists' organisation has told us that he inquired, and learnt that the NUJ national executive has considered my application and set up a sub-committee to report. But if so, why is this secret, why have I not been informed, and why am I not allowed to know what the objection is? I find this all very sinister. At this stage it is not paranoid to wonder whose hand is behind this. The practical effect of this is that without NUJ membership I cannot access a Press card, and avail myself of whatever media arrangements are in place for the Assange hearing (just as I was kept out of most of the Salmond trial). I have now reached the stage where I would like to take legal action against the NUJ, but the finances are beyond me.
I am not going to ask you to donate because we are going to need all our resources for the contempt case against me, which the Crown drags out. I shall be writing next week about my own case and that hearing earlier this week. I would just note now that the "virtual hearing" is entirely unsatisfactory and unfair on defendants. There was at least one occasion when my QC agreed with a suggestion of the judge when I would have instructed them not to had I been, as I should normally have been, seated near them in court and able to instruct.
Yes, forest destruction is terrible, but you can't link it to COVID19, because we don't know where it comes from. You're just destroying a perfectly viable argument.
Scientists are to warn world leaders that increasing numbers of deadly new pandemics will afflict the planet if levels of deforestation and biodiversity loss continue at their current catastrophic rates. A UN summit on biodiversity, scheduled to be held in New York next month, will be told by conservationists and biologists there is now clear evidence of a strong link between environmental destruction and the increased emergence of deadly new diseases such as Covid-19. Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of farming and the building of mines in remote regions – as well as the exploitation of wild animals as sources of food, traditional medicines and exotic pets – are creating a "perfect storm" for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people, delegates will be told.
Almost a third of all emerging diseases have originated through the process of land use change, it is claimed. As a result, five or six new epidemics a year could soon affect Earth's population. "There are now a whole raft of activities – illegal logging, clearing and mining – with associated international trades in bushmeat and exotic pets that have created this crisis," said Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation at Duke University. "In the case of Covid-19, it has cost the world trillions of dollars and already killed almost a million people, so clearly urgent action is needed." It is estimated that tens of millions of hectares of rainforest and other wild environments are being bulldozed every year to cultivate palm trees, farm cattle, extract oil and provide access to mines and mineral deposits. This leads to the widespread destruction of vegetation and wildlife that are hosts to countless species of viruses and bacteria, most unknown to science. Those microbes can then accidentally infect new hosts, such as humans and domestic livestock.
All good things are wild and free.
Debt Rattle July 1 2020
July 1, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:30 am Finance Tagged with: CDC, coronavirus, Covid19, election, face masks, Fauci, MMT, rallies 33 Responses »
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887
• US Has "Way Too Much Virus" To Contain Outbreak (Axios)
• Fauci Warns Of 100,000 US Cases Per Day (BBC)
• US Buys Almost Entire World's Supply Of Coronavirus Drug (Ind.)
• People In Their 20s Largest Age Group Of New COVID-19 Cases In Minnesota (MPR)
• The Biggest Myths About The National Deficit (Alt.)
Only yesterday I wrote "..at this point it is entirely unclear how countries like the US and Brazil will ever be able to get rid of the virus." Dr. Fauci, also yesterday, said "We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.."
Turn around? How? CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat said the US has "way too much virus" to contain the outbreak." Scott Gottlieb has even more dire numbers:
"We are probably diagnosing 1 in 10 infections nationally," says @ScottGottliebMD. "The 40-50,000 infections we are diagnosing each day right now really represents 400-500,000 infections…not all those people are symptomatic but probably 200-300,000 of them are symptomatic." pic.twitter.com/evsqAk3ZaQ
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 1, 2020
Things are not looking good at all. But there's more. The nationwide protests are perceived, presented, played as anti-Trump manifestations. By both political sides, for political gain. And by the media for financial gain. That makes them de facto election rallies. And the pro-Trump side will not accept any more restrictions on their own rallies, which they (will) argue are just as legitimate. Because they have an election to contest.
If the BLM protests can continue, despite virus warnings and limited numbers at gatherings, then the conservatives will gather too, in comparable numbers. And they don't "believe" in distancing or face masks, they claim they don't reduce their risks, they reduce their freedom.
"Perfect storm" is an often abused term. But it does come to mind here and now.
And you thought the first half of 2020 was hard.
US has sixth day in a row with over 40,000 new cases
These 12 western and southern states only made up 45% of the test in the US on Tuesday (261,895 of 581,288). 55% of the tests are in the 38 sates where the percentages are falling.
The US has a regional pandemic problem that left uncheck will spread everywhere.
(2/2)@wesbury pic.twitter.com/Rnax5ZGwDA
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) July 1, 2020
Over half of US metro areas have just recorded their worst COVID19 spikes yet. Looks like COVID19 just got started in the US. Right now would be a great time to stop traveling, wear a mask and listen to the experts. Source: https://t.co/LiPiUVJC7C pic.twitter.com/3qH2h0sPJd
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) July 1, 2020
Yes, I would think it's obvious by now.
The novel coronavirus is spreading too widely and quickly to contain, CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat told The Journal of the American Medical Association Monday, warning she expects "this virus to continue to circulate." Per Schuchat, "This is really the beginning, and what we hope is that we can take it seriously and slow the transmission." Her comments are in contrast to those of senior members of the Trump administration — notably Vice President Mike Pence, who said on Friday "we have made truly remarkable progress." COVID-19 cases are surging across the U.S., prompting states including Texas, Arizona and New Jersey to pause plans to reopen their economies in recent days.
What else she's saying: "We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it's very discouraging," Schuchat said in her interview with the Journal's Howard Bauchner. She said there was "a lot of wishful thinking around the country" that the pandemic would be over by the summer. "We are not even beginning to be over this," Schuchat said. "There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so." "We're not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea, where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control."
If this is a war, as many have labeled it, the US is losing it.
Top disease researcher Dr Anthony Fauci has told the US Senate that he "would not be surprised" if new virus cases in the country reach 100,000 per day. "Clearly we are not in control right now," he testified, warning that not enough Americans are wearing masks or social distancing. During the hearing, he said about half of all new cases come from four states. Earlier, the New York governor said nearly half of all Americans must self-quarantine if they visit the state. On Tuesday, cases rose by more than 40,000 in one day for the fourth time in the past five days. The surge – which is occurring particularly strongly in southern and western states – has forced at least 16 states to pause or reverse their reopening plans, according to CNN.
Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are the four states referenced by Dr Fauci as being most heavily hit currently. For some the new measures come over a month after they first began to reopen their economies. [..] Testifying to a Senate committee on the effort to reopen schools and businesses, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases criticised states for "skipping over" benchmarks required for reopening, and said cases will rise as a result. "I can't make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing, I will guarantee you that," he told Senator Elizabeth Warren. "Because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country even though in other parts of the country they're doing well, they are vulnerable."
"We can't just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk," he added. Dr Fauci also called on the US government to produce face masks to be distributed for free to all Americans, and condemned the "all or none phenomenon" of some people who have completely disregarded social distancing measures.
As someone said today: late-stage capitalism. Meanwhile, the UK wants to restart its HCQ testing program.
The US has effectively secured the world's supply of one of only two drugs proven to help treat coronavirus. Remdesivir, which has previously been used to fight Ebola but has now been found to reduce recovery times among Covid-19 patients, is exclusively manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) has announced it has bought up more than 500,000 doses of the drug. The figure equates to Gilead's entire production for July, as well as 90 per cent of its production in both August and September. The US's decision to stockpile the drug means there will likely be little supply in the rest of the world for several months.
HSS secretary Alex Azar, hailed the move, saying president Donald Trump had struck an "amazing deal". "To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it," Mr Azar added. "The Trump Administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people."
It took about a month?!
More than 100 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among Minnesotans in their 20s in the Mankato area who said they went to bars on June 12 and 13 — the first weekend bars and restaurants were allowed to serve indoors. Two Mankato bars — Rounders and The 507 — were the focal points of that young adult outbreak, Ehresmann said Friday. Officials were also following up on a cluster of 30 cases at two Minneapolis bars — Cowboy Jack's and Kollege Klub. Social media from those bars shows they were crowded, with no room for social distancing, and people who were standing and not masked, so not following the state guidance, Ehresmann said.
"It's not that you can't socialize. It's not that you can't have fun," she said. "But you need to do in a manner that's safe for you and the people around you." Friday's Health Department data showed that Minnesotans in their 20s now make up the largest age group of confirmed cases in Minnesota — 7,045 people infected, with two deaths. While those young people may be less likely to suffer complications from COVID-19, officials say the concern is that they may be unknowingly spreading the disease to grandparents or other potentially vulnerable populations.The median age of confirmed cases in Minnesota has been dipping and is now just under 40 years old.
Stephanie Kelton is on an MMT mission. It's not an easy one. It goes against everything we think we know about economics.
What drives the biggest misunderstandings about government debt in our national conversation? Stephanie Kelton: Everything is wrong. The way we talk about federal government debt is, from my perspective, we say things like we're borrowing from China and foreigners. Hillary Clinton said when she was secretary of State that it's a national security threat. People talk about it representing a liability to all of us, so we hear people talk about "your share [of the national debt]," a burden on future generations, that it ultimately has to be paid back, that it's going to require higher taxes in the future. I could keep going.
So what connects all these misunderstandings? Are we thinking of the government too much like a household or a business? Yes, of course. We think that the government has borrowed, and we think that this is real debt. And neither of those things is correct. I say in the book that if I walk into a bank and borrow money, I'm borrowing money because I don't have it. Right? That's why I got to the bank to take out a loan. The federal government is not borrowing money because it needs money. It's not borrowing because it doesn't have the capacity to finance whatever it wants to spend money on. It has the fiscal capacity; it can just spend. And not only that, the government sells the bonds.
And by the time the government sells the bonds, the spending has already taken place. So the bonds cannot possibly be the tool with which the government raises money in order to spend. It's selling the bonds after the spending had already taken place. Why does it do that? It doesn't need to borrow, it has already financed the spending. So we don't really understand — the public and most economists get this wrong — we don't even understand what the purpose of selling bonds is. We treat it as a borrowing operation. It's not. The purpose of selling the bonds is to drain off the reserves, the dollars, to remove some of the dollars the government has spent into the economy and replace them with treasuries. It's a subsidy to the rich, is what it is.
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June 19, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:25 am Finance Tagged with: AMC, Bolton, China, CIA, coronavirus, Covid19, deflation, face masks, Mexico, Pelosi, primate, spying, Trump, Vault7 15 Responses »
NPC "Largest electric locomotive and Congressman John C. Schafer" 1924 (he'd be in an electric car today)
• Mainland China Reports 32 New Coronavirus Cases, 25 Of Them In Beijing (R.)
• Mexico Posts Record Number Of New Coronavirus Infections (R.)
• AMC Theaters To Reopen, Say Face Masks A "Political Controversy" (V.)
• John Bolton's Bad Reviews Don't Stop Him Topping Us Book Charts (G.)
• Bolton, Pelosi Agree: Trump Unfit To Be US President (R.)
• Japan's Deflation Gathers Momentum As Prices Extend Declines (R.)
• Fed Chair: Keep Private Entities Out Of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CD)
• EU Car Sales Crash 57% In May As Europe Amid Inventory Glut (ZH)
• Australia Sees China As Main Suspect In State-Based Cyberattacks (R.)
• Report Reveals CIA Incompetence To Blame For Vault 7 Breach (RT)
• Americans Are Unhappiest They've Been In Nearly 50 Years (Ind.)
• Indian Primate Jailed For Life After Carnivorous Rampage (RT)
Happy Juneteenth!
I made sure to check quite a few times, but it is what it is: according to Worldometer data, over the past 24 hours global new cases went from an almost record 141,872 on June 17 to an all-records shattering 177,168 on June 18. Maybe something's off, but right now I couldn't say what.
Worldometer reports new cases for June 18 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 140,528. Third consecutive day above 140,000.
My count 6AM EDT to 6AM EDT based on Worldometer numbers is much higher today at 177,168.
New cases past 24 hours in:
• India + 13,827
• Mexico + 5,662
From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day's close-:
From Worldometer:
Before COVID-19 the dots plot from the Fed was interesting. Not so much anymore. Unanimous opinion that near-zero rates are here for a couple of years https://t.co/Lsul1hOcFP pic.twitter.com/qaxMzdi1SA
— Mark Riepe (@MarkRiepe) June 18, 2020
Hunan we have a problem.
Mainland China reported 32 new coronavirus cases as of the end of June 18, 25 of which were reported in the capital city Beijing, China's National Health Commission said on Friday. This compared with 28 confirmed cases a day earlier, 21 of which were in Beijing. Local authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading further following a series of local infections. Another five asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but show no symptoms, were also reported as of June 18 compared with eight a day earlier. China does not count these patients as confirmed cases.
Did we close the borders yet?
Mexico's health ministry reported on Thursday a record 5,662 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections and 667 additional fatalities, bringing the total in the country to 165,455 cases and 19,747 deaths. The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
"AMC Theater CEO Adam Aron says their cinemas won't require masks upon reopening because they didn't "want to be drawn into a political controversy."
Is testing also a political viewpoint? How about COVID19 treatment at hospitals? Can we deny that to people who have political issues with facemasks?
AMC Theatres, the world's largest exhibitor, has unveiled plans to re-open after coronavirus forced it to close its more than 600 venues in the U.S. for nearly four months. The company is expected to resume operations in 450 of those locations on July 15 and expects to be almost fully operational by the time that Disney's "Mulan" debuts on July 24 and Warner Bros.' "Tenet" bows on July 31. As part of that process, AMC is reducing its seating capacity in order to help people social distance, it is implementing new cleaning procedures, placing hand-sanitizing stations throughout its theaters and encouraging contact-less and cash-free concessions. "We didn't rush to reopen," AMC CEO and president Adam Aron said in an interview with Variety.
"There were some jurisdictions in some states, such as Georgia and Texas, that allowed people to reopen theaters in mid-May. We opted to remain closed, so we could give the country time to get a better handle on coronavirus. We wanted to use this time to figure out how best to open and how to do so safely." AMC's competitors Regal and Cinemark announced their own plans to resume business earlier this week, targeting a similar mid-July timeframe for when they expect to be fully operational. [..] Prior to coronavirus there was a great deal of consolidation in the exhibition space, much of it made possible by debt financing. AMC's decision to acquire rivals such as Odeon Cinemas, UCI Cinemas and Carmike Cinemas left it heavily leveraged with more than $5 billion in debt. In recent filings, AMC acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic could push it into bankruptcy. [..]
AMC will not mandate that all guests wear masks, although employees will be required to do so. Nor will AMC perform temperature checks on customers, though it will monitor its employees' temperatures and have them undergo screenings to check for signs of coronavirus. The situation will be different in states and cities that require residents to wear a mask when they're in public, but Aron said that AMC was wary of wading into a public health issue that has become politicized. "We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy," said Aron. "We thought it might be counterproductive if we forced mask wearing on those people who believe strongly that it is not necessary. We think that the vast majority of AMC guests will be wearing masks. When I go to an AMC feature, I will certainly be wearing a mask and leading by example."
[..] the theater chain said that it is going to lean heavily on technological solutions such as deploying electrostatic sprayers, HEPA vacuums and upgraded MERV 13 ventilation filters, which would eliminate airborne particles and reduce the chance that COVID-19 will spread. Other procedures being implemented include cleaning auditoriums between each showtime and allowing extra time between screenings for disinfection; blocking out every other row of seats to decrease congestion; pushing guests to use online ticketing and kiosks to limit interactions with staff, and designating various points within theaters for one-way foot traffic.
If you think wearing a mask "cuts off your oxygen", just wait until you find out what COVID does.
— Sam Ghali, M.D. (@EM_RESUS) June 18, 2020
"Orange Man Bad" beats Black Lives Matter.
John Bolton's damning indictment of the Trump presidency is soaring up online charts in the US a week before its release, despite withering reviews describing it as "bloated with self-importance", as the Trump administration makes a last-ditch attempt to prevent its publication. In the teeth of a series of critical assessments from papers including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Bolton's The Room Where It Happened is currently No 1 on Amazon's US charts. Its sales are just ahead of another scathing take on Donald Trump, this time his niece Mary Trump's forthcoming Too Much and Never Enough, which is subtitled How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Bolton's book, which is out on 23 June, and Mary Trump's, scheduled for 28 July, have knocked anti-racism titles by authors including Ibram X Kendi, Ijeoma Oluo and Robin DiAngelo off the top spots.
As the US justice department on Wednesday sought an emergency order to block publication of Bolton's memoir, copies of the book were leaked to news outlets which revealed a series of explosive claims from the former national security adviser. According to Bolton, Trump pleaded with China to help him with his 2020 re-election campaign, praised China's president Xi Jinping for his country's internment camps, and was willing to halt criminal investigations to "give personal favours to dictators he liked". Trump also weighed in, claiming on Twitter that the book is "made up of lies & fake stories". Early reviews of the book have not been favourable. The New York Times said the memoir was "bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much".
Filled with "minute and often extraneous details", the review continued, it "toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged". The Washington Post said that "for a memoir that is startlingly candid about many things, Bolton's utter lack of self-criticism is one of the book's significant shortcomings", while NPR found that Bolton "clearly does not expect to attract the casual reader, or anyone else unable to digest sentences such as this one on the third page: 'Constant personnel turnover obviously didn't help, nor did the White House's Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all)'."
I agree with Twitter that much of CNN's audience would not recognize this video by @CarpeDonktum as a joke. That's what makes it a masterpiece. That plus the national press. And the Presidential tweet. https://t.co/sLo24hmSwG
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 19, 2020
Reminder that CNN is also currently paying Nick Sandmann's college tuition because they smeared him for the crime of smiling while wearing a MAGA hat
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 19, 2020
pic.twitter.com/vnRpk0zl5y
If you are angry at everything that someone does, their conclusion will not be "I am bad and need to change". It will be "you are are perpetually angry and nothing good comes from interacting with you".
This is a message for online Leftists, who will, I am sure, be angry.
— Black Cat (@BlckCatBlckSky) June 19, 2020
President Donald Trump came under attack from both sides of the American political spectrum on Thursday as liberal Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and former White House aide and conservative hawk John Bolton both declared him unfit to lead the country. "President Trump is clearly ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to be the president of the United States," Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, told a news briefing. In a new book, Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, has accused the Republican president of sweeping misdeeds, including explicitly seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping's aid to win re-election in November. "I don't think he's fit for office," Bolton told ABC News in part of an interview aired on Thursday.
"There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's re-election." Pelosi told a weekly news conference she was consulting with her fellow Democrats on whether to subpoena Bolton about the allegations in the book, which has not yet been distributed. If Bolton testifies before Congress, it could revive the issue of Trump's competence as he faces a stiff challenge on Nov. 3 from Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee, and fends off criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and protests over racial injustice and police brutality. Bolton refused to testify in the House's impeachment probe last year and threatened to sue if subpoenaed. He offered to testify in the subsequent trial in the Senate, but the Republican-controlled chamber did not take him up on the offer.
[..] Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman who led the impeachment inquiry, sharply criticized Bolton as unpatriotic for withholding information from the probe. The new allegations are "further proof" that Trump's actions in Ukraine were part of a pattern of abusing his power and the U.S. government for personal political gain, Schiff said in a statement.
Bolton news is fuzzy. Bolton isn't saying Trump tied Ukraine weapons $ to opening a Burisma/2016 probe. Bolton says Trump wanted Ukraine to "[turn] over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related Mr. Biden & and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine." Huh? pic.twitter.com/RNiBM6ANwT
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 26, 2020
Bolton *can't even recall* what he overheard Trump saying he wanted Zelensky to meet Giuliani about. Maybe Hunter Biden OR Hillary Clinton, or "maybe both." In short: Bolton's "bombshell" was such a dud that, per NYT, he did not "fully understand" what was even going on. pic.twitter.com/bNRCF79RpW
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 19, 2020
Abenomics will die with Abe's political career regardless.
Japan's core consumer prices fell for a second straight month in May, reinforcing deflation expectations and raising the challenge for policymakers battling to revive an economy reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. The data will likely complicate the Bank of Japan's job of restoring growth and inflation, with a raft of recent indicators suggesting the nation is in the grip of its worst postwar economic slump. Several BOJ board members warned that stronger monetary support and closer policy coordination with the government were needed to prevent Japan from returning to deflation, minutes of the bank's April meeting showed.
"With the pandemic hurting the economy, there's a good chance Japan may slide into deflation. Downward pressure on prices will likely persist throughout this year," said Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. The nationwide core consumer price index (CPI), which includes oil but excludes volatile fresh food prices, fell 0.2% in May from a year earlier, government data showed on Friday. That compared with market forecasts of a 0.1% fall and followed a 0.2% drop in April, which was the first year-on-year decline since December 2016. The BOJ kept policy steady this week after expanding stimulus in March and April. But governor Haruhiko Kuroda conceded that inflation would remain well short of its 2% target for years to come.
[..} Some BOJ policymakers were concerned that bolder steps are needed to prevent the country from slipping back to sustained period of damaging price declines, the April minutes showed. "Japan is now facing the risk of deflation, so it's possible to further enhance coordination between fiscal and monetary policies," one BOJ board member was quoted as saying.
"The private sector is not involved in creating the money supply, that's something the central bank does."
Private entities aren't needed to build central bank digital currencies, said the head of the U.S. central bank on Wednesday. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, said the idea of a digital dollar – a blockchain-based version of the current world reserve currency – is complex, and one that the Fed takes seriously, but also that the idea needs to be studied further before one can be created and implemented. However, in response to a question from Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Powell said he believed private entities did not have a role in designing a digital dollar.
"I do think this is something that the central banks have to design," he said. "The private sector is not involved in creating the money supply, that's something the central bank does." Emmer was asking specifically about a recommendation from the Digital Dollar Project, which was launched earlier this year by former Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, Chief Innovation Officer Daniel Gorfine and Accenture Director David Treat. The project suggested a digital dollar be issued by the Fed but designed in partnership with the private sector and accessible through a two-tiered banking system similar to the one in place in the U.S. today.
Powell said the general public may not be receptive to the idea of private employees being responsible for the money supply because they're not accountable to "the public good." Still, the idea is apparently being examined. A group of central banks have gotten together to discuss and better understand the concept as well as evaluate the implications on financial inclusion and concerns around cybersecurity, he said. "If this is something that is going to be good for the United States economy and for the world's reserve currency, which is the dollar, then we need to be there and we need to understand it first and best," Powell said. "So we're working hard on it."
Jay Powell,
What have we become? Is THIS the American Dream?
20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative Balance via @forbes https://t.co/Tbhm3fToQj
— Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth) June 19, 2020
A guy I know said he was driving from Holland to Germany this week to pick up a car he bought, an 8-month old BMW at half the new price.
New car sales in the EU plunged in May, falling 57% to 623,812, as Europe grapples with the same problem that the U.S. has had for weeks: a glut of inventory, despite re-opening some factories and re-starting production in certain areas. All 27 EU member states posted double digit declines in new car sales, with the U.K. falling an astounding 89%, according to MarketWatch. Production coming out of the EU remains "well blow" pre-crisis levels but the lack of demand continues to contribute to a growing inventory problem. This, in turn, has created a slowdown in an industry that's already moving at a crawl to begin with. Jobs and profits are both threatened from the glut, in addition to the monumental threat they both still continue to face from the ongoing global pandemic.
Unsold cars on dealer lots are "at least 30% above normal" according to industry analysts, while unsold inventory in Germany alone was about $17 billion worth. Antje Woltermann, managing director of the ZDK industry group: "Unsold stocks are climbing, and on the other hand vehicles are not leaving the lots." While Europe is struggling, many have looked to China, where sales were up 6% in May, for signs of optimism. For example, Stephan Wöllenstein, chief executive of Volkswagen Group China said: "The return of these kinds of figures is encouraging and gives us continued cautious optimism going forward."
But those numbers don't account for the recent second wave of lockdowns, including in Beijing, that China now faces. Countries like France and Germany continues to try and spur sales with government incentives, but Germany is focusing primarily on EVs while the glut is in traditional ICE cars. Recall, in May, we were ahead of the curve when we noted that European car registrations had plunged 76% in April. According to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, the number of new cars sold fell from 1,143,046 to just 270,682 YOY in that month.
Australia is but a lap dog.
The story changed overnight to name China as the main "suspect". Of course what would be really suspect is if China DID NOT spy on Australia.
Australia views China as the chief suspect in a spate of cyber-attacks of increasing frequency in recent months, three sources familiar with the government's thinking told Reuters on Friday. The comments came after Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a "sophisticated state-based actor" had spent months trying to hack all levels of the government, political bodies, essential service providers and operators of critical infrastructure. "We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting," Morrison told reporters in the capital, Canberra, but declined to say who Australia believed was responsible.
Three sources briefed on the matter said Australia believed China is responsible, however. "There is a high degree of confidence that China is behind the attacks," one Australian government source told Reuters, seeking anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media. Australian intelligence has flagged similarities between the recent attacks and a cyber-attack on parliament and the three largest political parties in March 2019.Last year, Reuters reported that Australia had quietly concluded China was responsible for that cyber-attack. Australia has never publicly identified the source of that attack, however, and China denied it was responsible.
Russiagate revisited.
According to a just-released internal CIA report, "CCI had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems. Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax." "Most of our sensitive cyber weapons were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report goes on to say. The heavily-redacted document actually dates back to October 2017 and was only made public Tuesday by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), in an effort to pressure the new Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe into imposing new security measures. While the CIA ineptitude is the obvious takeaway, no one seems to have noticed the real bombshell: the timing of the breach and its implications.
The report says the CIA "did not realize the loss had occurred until a year later, when WikiLeaks publicly announced it in March 2017." Now, what all was happening between March 2016 and a year later? You guessed it: Russiagate! Even as his own cyber arsenal was getting swiped from under his very nose, CIA chief John Brennan was obsessing about "Russian hackers" of the Democratic National Committee, or Hillary Clinton's emails, or something – and pushing the bogus 'Steele Dossier' alleging Donald Trump's collusion with Russia, which eventually made it into the infamous 'Intelligence Community Assessment' that accused Moscow of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. It gets worse. According to the report, "Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss—as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems."
So if the mythic bogeymen 'Russian hackers' had actually wanted to harm the US, they could have just used the CIA's own, unprotected cyberweapons to stage false flags and wreak havoc across the world? None of which happened, obviously. Yet Brennan and his confederates have been telling everyone for years that the Kremlins wanted to "hack our democracy" by publishing some Democrat emails and posting memes on social media! [..] As for how Vault 7 got to WikiLeaks, the jury is still out on that. Joshua Schulte, the employee charged with leaking the files, is being prosecuted again after a hung jury at his first trial in March. His lawyers have argued the CIA security was so lax, anyone else on the team, or even outsiders, could have done it. The next time the media report some incendiary claim based on US intelligence "assessments," try to keep all this in mind.
How cann you be lonely when you have a TV set to keep you company?
Happiness among Americans has fallen to the lowest level in nearly five decades during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll. The Covid Response Tracking Study, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), found that morale was at the lowest point it has ever been since tracking emotional health trends began in 1972. The number of people who described themselves as very happy fell by 17 points to just 14 per cent in 2020. The previous record low – seen shortly after the 2007/8 Financial Crisis – was 29%. For the first time in 48 years, more people said they were unhappy than very happy. More than 60 per cent of Americans reported being "pretty happy".
Interviews of the 2,279 US adults that took part in the survey took place between 21-29 May, while large parts of the country were under some form of lockdown designed to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Feelings of loneliness have also increased as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, with half of all respondents saying they felt isolated either very often, often or sometimes. When asked the same question two years previously, less than a quarter of respondents said they experienced feelings of isolation.
An alcoholic pet monkey…
An alcoholic pet monkey has been locked up for good in Uttar Pradesh after a terror spree that left 250 people injured and one dead. Efforts to rehabilitate the animal were scrapped and zoo doctors affirm he's a menace to society. The six-year-old monkey, named Kalua, received a life sentence of solitary confinement at India's Kanpur Zoo this week after repeated attempts at normalizing his behavior left zookeepers and other monkeys much the worse for wear. Zoo doctor Mohd Nasir told local media the savage simian would harm people wherever he went if set free, explaining "he remains as aggressive as he was" when first brought to the zoo three years ago.
Kalua formerly belonged to an occultist in Mirzapur district, who fed him a diet of meat and copious alcohol. When his owner died, the grieving pet apparently went into withdrawal, becoming vicious and attacking locals. By the time forest and zoo teams succeeded in apprehending the aggressive creature, he had bitten over 250 people, including 30 children. One of his victims died of the injuries, while others – Kalua apparently has a thing for attacking women and girls – were left in need of plastic surgery. While the zookeepers had hoped to calm Kalua down, substituting a vegetarian diet for the human flesh he'd apparently come to rely on, they didn't have much luck. The carnivorous creature has stayed hostile, especially toward female zookeepers, and plans to release him back into the wild a changed monkey have been shelved.
Kalua's misbehavior predates the coronavirus outbreak, but he's not the only monkey in Uttar Pradesh to make the news in recent weeks. A gang of monkeys attacked a lab technician in Meerut last month, stealing several blood samples taken from Covid-19 patients and running off with them in a scene that seemed lifted straight out of a Hollywood pandemic film.
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1273395771912617984
Jason Bounce@MeowedOfficial pic.twitter.com/a9kdQGekPj
— 9GAG (@9GAG) June 18, 2020
June 13, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:04 am Finance Tagged with: airborne, CDC, Churchill, coronavirus, Covid19, endemic, face masks, Flynn, M4A, Mayans, Oscars, prosecution, subpoena, testing, Yemen 28 Responses »
Gustave Doré Dream of the Eagle (Dante's Purgatory) 1868
• 32 Yemen Doctors Die Of Coronavirus (MEM)
• Italian Prosecutors Question PM Conte For 3 Hours Over Virus Response (R.)
• June 12 COVID-19 Test Results (McBride)
• CDC Warns Restrictions May Be Needed Again If US COVID-19 Cases Spike (R.)
• Seattle Coronavirus Survivor Gets A $1.1 Million, 181-Page Hospital Bill (ST)
• No Country for Old Men (Ben Hunt)
• Churchill Statue Boarded Up Ahead Of Expected UK Protests On Saturday (R.)
• Films Aiming To Win Oscars Will Need To Meet Diversity Criteria – Academy (R.)
• The American Press Is Destroying Itself (Taibbi)
• The Party of Chaos and Falsehood (Jim Kunstler)
• Lawyer For Flynn Judge Says Court Will Eventually Dismiss The Case (JTN)
• Judges Appear Skeptical Of DOJ Move To Dismiss Flynn Case (Fox)
• Graham Granted Significant Subpoena Power For Russia Probe Investigation (JTN)
• Some Claim Mayan Calendar Was Wrong, 'World Will End On June 21' (Mirror)
Worldometer reports new cases for June 9 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 140,917. New record.
My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is + 141,854 cases.
• Pakistan + 6.472
• Chile + 6,754
US coronavirus deaths
90 days ago: 58 deaths
80 days ago: 704 deaths
70 days ago: 7,152 deaths
60 days ago: 23,649 deaths
10 days ago: 106,180 deaths
Today: 116,831 deaths
⚠AIRBORNE is the "dominant" route for the coronavirus transmission! New PNAS paper by a Nobel laureate's group concludes this based on study of several studies and how transmission wasn't truly slow until mask rules went into place. MASKS FOR ALL, please. https://t.co/nmergxbW20
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) June 12, 2020
The number only becomes significant when you read that only 560 patients have been reported.
Some 32 doctors in Yemen have died as a result of the coronavirus, the Yemeni Physicians and Pharmacists Syndicate announced yesterday. Doctor Mohammed Ahmed Seif was the latest fatality, he died in the southern province of Taiz. "Seif is the 32nd martyr from coronavirus," the syndicate said in a statement. By Wednesday, a total of 560 people were reported to have been infected by the virus, 129 of whom have died and 23 have recovered, according to official data. The data does not include the Houthi-controlled areas, which were reported to have registered a total of four infections and one fatality, though many fear the actual number is far higher.
On Monday, the United Nations (UN) said that the mortality rate from the virus in Yemen was "alarmingly increasing", warning of what it described as a "deteriorating health system". Since 2014, Yemen has been suffering from an ongoing war between pro-government forces and the Houthis, who have captured most of the north, including the capital, Sanaa.
What's the use of this? Is it not a case for Parliament instead?
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was questioned by prosecutors on Friday about the country's response to its coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 34,000 people. The prosecutors from Bergamo, one of the northern cities hit hardest by the pandemic, are looking into why badly affected small towns around the city were not locked down earlier in the outbreak, when infections were rising fast. Conte, who was questioned as a witness for three hours in his office in Rome and is not under criminal investigation, later told reporters via his spokesman: "I wanted to explain every stage to the smallest detail." Prosecutors also questioned Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese and Health Minister Roberto Speranza.
In interviews with several Italian newspapers on Friday, Conte said he would tell prosecutors everything he knew and was not worried by the possibility he could be personally investigated. If that did happen, it would be likely to weaken an already fractious coalition government and add fuel to already frequent speculation that Conte may be pushed out despite his high personal approval ratings in opinion polls. Prosecutor Maria Cristina Rota said the meeting had taken place "in an atmosphere of great calm and institutional collaboration". The region of Lombardy, which includes Bergamo, was the original epicentre of Italy's virus outbreak and has remained by far the worst hit of its 20 regions, accounting for about half of its total deaths and most new infections.
The decision not to isolate Bergamo and the surrounding towns has been one of the most contentious episodes, with the central government and Lombardy's regional authorities each saying the other was responsible. In Lombardy, which is led by the right-wing opposition League party, the Bergamo prosecutors have already interrogated the regional president and health chief. League leader Matteo Salvini was quick to seek political capital from Conte's interrogation, tweeting that it was Rome's decision not to set up a so-called "red zone" to seal off Bergamo and enforce it with the army and police. "Now we expect that Conte will at least apologise to the relatives and the friends of too many Bergamo citizens who have died," he tweeted.
US still not testing nearly enough. Like so many other countries. Without testing there's no crushing the curve.
Note: I started posting this graph when the US was doing a few thousand tests per day. Clearly the US was way under testing early in the pandemic. I'll continue posting this graph daily at least until the percent positive is continuously under 3% and the daily positive is significantly lower than today.
The US is now usually conducting over 400,000 tests per day, and that might be enough to allow test-and-trace in some areas. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly. According to Dr. Jha of Harvard's Global Health Institute, the US might need more than 900,000 tests per day . There were 583,961 test results reported over the last 24 hours. This was a new high for the number of test results reported (some states might have had a data dump). The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 4.1% (red line).
Except for protests.
What on earth will happen if a new lockdown is declared? Should have done the first one right.
U.S. health officials on Friday urged Americans to continue adhering to social distancing and other COVID-19 safety measures, and warned that states may need to reimpose strict restrictions if COVID-19 cases spike. In recent weeks, experts have raised concerns that the reopening of the U.S. economy could lead to a fresh wave of infections. About half a dozen states, including Texas and Arizona, are grappling with a rising number of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds. Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the public should continue to maintain 6 feet of social distance, wash hands regularly and wear facial coverings to reduce the risk of infection.
"If cases begin to go up again, particularly if they go up dramatically, it is important to recognize that more mitigation efforts such as what were implemented back in March may be needed again," said Jay Butler, the deputy director of infectious diseases at the CDC, who spoke to reporters along with CDC Director Robert Redfield. As the United States reopens its economy, a number of U.S. states, including Texas, Arizona and Florida, have relaxed social distancing guidelines in recent weeks. Many U.S. states also do not require residents to wear protective masks. Most Americans support stay-at-home orders and said they always or often wear face coverings in public , according to an online survey conducted early May of over 2,000 adults in New York City and Los Angeles. Most also said they would feel unsafe if restrictions were lifted.
In the history books this will be known as: "How Medicare for All Got Started."
Remember Michael Flor, the longest-hospitalized COVID-19 patient who, when he unexpectedly did not die, was jokingly dubbed "the miracle child?" Now they can also call him the million-dollar baby. Flor, 70, who came so close to death in the spring that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, is recovering nicely these days at his home in West Seattle. But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day. "I opened it and said 'holy [bleep]!' " Flor says. The total tab for his bout with the coronavirus: $1.1 million. $1,122,501.04, to be exact. All in one bill that's more like a book because it runs to 181 pages.
The bill is technically an explanation of charges, and because Flor has insurance including Medicare, he won't have to pay the vast majority of it. In fact because he had COVID-19, and not a different disease, he might not have to pay anything — a quirk of this situation I'll get to in a minute. But for now it's got him and his family and friends marveling at the extreme expense, and bizarre economics, of American health care. Flor was in Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah with COVID-19 for 62 days, so he knew the bill would be a doozy. He was unconscious for much of his stay, but once near the beginning his wife Elisa Del Rosario remembers him waking up and saying: "You gotta get me out of here, we can't afford this."
Just the charge for his room in the intensive care unit was billed at $9,736 per day. Due to the contagious nature of the virus, the room was sealed and could only be entered by medical workers wearing plastic suits and headgear. For 42 days he was in this isolation chamber, for a total charged cost of $408,912. He also was on a mechanical ventilator for 29 days, with the use of the machine billed at $2,835 per day, for a total of $82,215. About a quarter of the bill is drug costs.
For now, I'll stick to the pandemic having become embedded, but not yet endemic.
Ben's point is salient: if -when- COVID19 becomes endemic, other health care options must vanish, while premiums rise.
Connecticut is opening up a bit, so I've got an outpatient surgery scheduled at the big local hospital (specialty clinics are still closed) next Friday. I feel lucky to get on the calendar so soon. I also feel nervous. My dad was an ER doc. My brother is a healthcare lawyer. Again, these are things that have certainly made an impression on me. To be clear, my lack of healthcare options today and over the past 3 months isn't because of the lockdown. That's how a child would see this. My lack of healthcare options is because of the virus. In its acute phase, Covid-19 shuts down non-emergency healthcare provision entirely. In its endemic phase, Covid-19 forces enormous and costly changes in healthcare provision. There is no "v-shaped recovery" for medicine. Covid-19 is now in its endemic phase. The enormous and costly changes in healthcare provision that Covid-19 requires and the resulting impact on healthcare consumption lead me to three conclusions about the healthcare industry and national politics.
Conclusion #1: Endemic Covid-19 permanently dents healthcare provision (and consumption). The days of "efficient" (i.e., insanely lucrative) specialty medical clinics where docs go through 3 knee replacements or 10 lasik procedures in an afternoon are GONE.
Conclusion #2: Although both acute and endemic Covid-19 sharply reduce my healthcare options and healthcare consumption, my healthcare insurance costs have not gone down. They've gone up. Healthcare payers (insurance cos) are a public utility. They should be regulated as such. #BITFD
Conclusion #3: For the past 30 years, US fiscal policy has been largely driven by Boomers' insatiable demand for more and more healthcare, to the advantage of both the Dems AND the GOP. Covid-19 destroys that cozy political dynamic, but neither party realizes this yet.
I'm sure we can find a few very wrong things that the Queen is, or has been, invested in. Why stop here?
Statues of historical figures including Winston Churchill have been boarded up ahead of more expected protests on Saturday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "shameful" that the monument to Britain's wartime leader was at risk of attack. Anti-racism protesters, who have taken to the streets following the death of African American George Floyd, have put statues at the forefront of their challenge to Britain's imperialist past. A statue of Edward Colston, who made a fortune in the 17th century from the slave trade, was torn down in the city of Bristol last Sunday, and authorities have acted to protect monuments they believe could be next.
They have now boarded up a statue opposite parliament of Churchill after demonstrators daubed it with paint last weekend. "It is absurd and shameful that this national monument should today be at risk of attack by violent protesters," Johnson wrote on Twitter. On Friday, around 500 people gathered in Hyde Park chanting "the UK is not innocent" and "Black Lives Matter", before marching through central London, with many saying that statues such as Colston's were legitimate targets. "If we have these big images, and we're telling people that these people and what they stood for is OK, we're just allowing everything that they did to pass," said student Samantha Halsall.
Meanwhile in Britain:
Next up: the music scene. Imagine what they can do to country music.
The organization that hands out the Academy Awards said Friday it would form a group to develop diversity and inclusion guidelines that filmmakers will have to meet in order for their work to be eligible for Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has been criticized for honoring few movies and creators of color, said the move and other steps represented a new phase of a 5-year effort to promote diversity. The group said in a statement it would work with the Producers Guild of America to convene a task force of industry leaders to develop "representation and inclusion standards" for Oscars eligibility by July 31 that will "encourage equitable hiring practices on and off screen."
The rules will not apply to films vying for Oscars at the next ceremony in 2021. Criticism of the movie academy intensified in 2015 with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, a backlash against an all-white field of acting contenders. The academy responded in part by doubling the number of women and people color in its invitation-only ranks. Still, by 2019 just 32% of its roughly 8,000 members were women, and 16% were people of color. New members will be announced next month. "We know there is much more work to be done in order to ensure equitable opportunities across the board," Academy Chief Executive Dawn Hudson said. "The need to address this issue is urgent."
Good theme, pretty weak execution. The press has been destroying itself for years. Everything they say has become full-blown partisan.
Probably the most disturbing story involved Intercept writer Lee Fang, one of a fast-shrinking number of young reporters actually skilled in investigative journalism. Fang's work in the area of campaign finance especially has led to concrete impact, including a record fine to a conservative Super PAC: few young reporters have done more to combat corruption. Yet Fang found himself denounced online as a racist, then hauled before H.R. His crime? During protests, he tweeted this interview with an African-American man named Maximum Fr, who described having two cousins murdered in the East Oakland neighborhood where he grew up. Saying his aunt is still not over those killings, Max asked:
"I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?… Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it's going to be national news, but if a black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It's stuff just like that that I just want in the mix."
Shortly after, a co-worker of Fang's, Akela Lacy, wrote, "Tired of being made to deal continually with my co-worker @lhfang continuing to push black on black crime narratives after being repeatedly asked not to. This isn't about me and him, it's about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness. I am so fucking tired." She followed with, "Stop being racist Lee." [..] If there's an edge to Fang at all, it seems geared toward people in our business who grew up in affluent circumstances and might intellectualize topics that have personal meaning for him.
In the tweets that got him in trouble with Lacy and other co-workers, he questioned the logic of protesters attacking immigrant-owned businesses "with no connection to police brutality at all." He also offered his opinion on Martin Luther King's attitude toward violent protest (Fang's take was that King did not support it; Lacy responded, "you know they killed him too right"). These are issues around which there is still considerable disagreement among self-described liberals, even among self-described leftists. Fang also commented, presciently as it turns out, that many reporters were "terrified of openly challenging the lefty conventional wisdom around riots."
[..] Max himself was stunned to find out that his comments on all this had created a Twitter firestorm. "I couldn't believe they were coming for the man's job over something I said," he recounts. "It was not Lee's opinion. It was my opinion." By phone, Max spoke of a responsibility he feels Black people have to speak out against all forms of violence, "precisely because we experience it the most."
Jim reintroduces Hillary as a candidate. But I think she is simply too unpopular.
The Democratic Party Resistance apparently believes that all this mayhem, and the false sanctimony excusing it, works to their advantage in the coming national election. They may be disappointed about how that works out, as they've been disappointed in three years of previous gambits to overthrow the government and seize power by any means necessary. The picture of them is resolving into the party of bad faith, foul play, coercion, and tyranny. Even the corona virus scare carries a taint of Resistance manipulation. One moment the populace is hustled into an economically devastating lockdown; and then suddenly, on a fine spring day, they're incited to mix in moiling mobs of street protests with the predictable result of a fresh spike in virus contagion and the possibility of a second lockdown.
Like many activities in our national life lately, it's another hostage racket, and, guess what, you're the hostage. Their most transparent artifice is the utterly false elevation of Joe Biden as their candidate for president. Everybody knows he's incapable of performing the job, and probably even of functioning through a campaign. His inchoate utterances on events and policy make Donald Trump sound like Ralph Waldo Emerson. He's left behind himself an evidence trail of financial crimes running to at least nine digits of grift. And, of course, if you believe all women, he's a sexual molester. Everything about his public presentation is false, including his hair, teeth, and soul. This past week, his handlers posed him as Grief Counselor-in-Chief (via video from his basement) at the state funeral for George Floyd, accompanied by an inspirational music soundtrack to shore up the sham sentimentality.
Never have so many hollow platitudes been woven into such garment of alternative reality for public consumption. Most pathetically of all, the audience of mourners, mere props, as black America has long been employed by the cynical party, went along with the charade that George Floyd was a model citizen and father, now soaring on golden wings to the place on high where you don't need methedrine and fentanyl to feel happy. A couple of days later, Democratic Party bigwig and Clinton henchperson, Terry McAuliffe, told a meeting of the faithful that Joe Biden should remain confined to his basement. In a matter of weeks, you may be sure, we'll learn that the party is compelled to draft Hillary Clinton as poor Joe's replacement. It can't be helped. Her turn will not be denied, even if she has to destroy the country to take it.
Everyone agrees and knows the case will be dismissed. But the "lead" judge says: "There's nothing wrong with him holding a hearing; there's no authority I know of that says he can't hold a hearing,"
No wonder people think thiis all just to get this past the election. But I'm convinced Flynn and Sidney Powell have long seen this coming.
A lawyer representing the judge overseeing the Michael Flynn trial suggested Friday that the court will eventually dismiss the case against the former Trump national security adviser, arguing that the judge's decision to call in outside opinions on the matter was merely an issue of seeking advice before the probable dismissal. The lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, made the acknowledgement during a roughly two-hour federal appeals court hearing on whether the court should order a lower court to immediately dismiss the case, as was requested last month by the Justice Department, or allow the case to proceed through at least July.
"There's no reason at this point to fear that the District Court is going to deny the government's motion to dismiss," she told the three-judge panel Friday morning, stating that the lower court is simply "getting advice" from third parties before likely doing so. It was unclear at the end of hearing, at about noon, when the panel of judges—Neomi Rao, Robert Wilkins and Karen Henderson—would make a decision. A ruling could come before the weekend but is expected to likely happen no sooner than Monday. Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States Jeff Wall argued Friday in the virtual hearing that the federal government has gone "beyond what we thought we were obligated to do" in explaining its reasoning behind its dismissal request, and that Sullivan should honor that decision and drop the case rather than draw it out.
"There's no reason not to take that final step. This has already become, and I think is only becoming more of, a public spectacle," he said, arguing that the appeals court should force the lower court to end the trial. Sidney Powell, one of Flynn's attorneys, made similar arguments, saying the Justice Department provided an "extensive and thoroughly documented" argument in favor of dropping the case and that Sullivan should obey the request and bring the prosecution to an immediate end. The trial "cannot go on any longer," Powell argued, claiming that the judge overseeing the case "has no authority" to continue it after the executive branch requested it be dropped.
Failing to bring the trial to an end immediately, Powell said, would simply be "delaying the inevitable," arguing that Sullivan will eventually be found to have exceeded his authority in this case. Yet the court at times appeared reluctant to quickly dismiss the case. Henderson pointed out that Sullivan has scheduled a hearing for July on the matter instead of electing to keep the trial "waiting and languishing." "There's nothing wrong with him holding a hearing; there's no authority I know of that says he can't hold a hearing," she said.
am I right or am I right https://t.co/ypjlm2GadK
— ThunderB, DennisTuttle'sLifeMattered (@ThunderB) June 12, 2020
Judges on a D.C. appeals court Friday seemed skeptical of arguments that they should force a federal judge to dismiss a case against President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as sought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) – after Flynn's lawyer said the case was "concocted" and slammed previous "government misconduct" against him. The unusual move from Judge Emmet Sullivan to keep the case alive despite prosecutors' wishes was preceded by an unusual move from the DOJ itself to drop the charges against Flynn even after he had pleaded guilty – saying the FBI interview that led to his charge of lying to investigators had no "legitimate investigative basis."
But the long-running case continues to drag on. The latest twist involved the higher D.C. appeals court panel agreeing to review the handling of the matter. After Sullivan moved to accept input from outside parties, he was called to defend his own decisionmaking before the panel in response to a petition from Flynn to force the judge to let the case die. At issue is the discretion of the judiciary to delay, deny or question the prosecution's decision to continue pursuing a criminal case. "This record contains enormous evidence now of government misconduct," Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell said. She added that she believes Sullivan doesn't have the authority to do anything but approve the DOJ motion, and that continuing the case would be an unnecessary burden on Flynn.
"We would simply be delaying the inevitable," Powell said. "He just got dumped on a 72-page brief that we have to answer by Wednesday … the toll it takes on a defendant to go through this is absolutely enormous." "The government's just wasting resources out the wazoo," she said. Powell also complimented the government's claim that the case against Flynn was flawed: "This is the most impressive motion to dismiss I have ever seen in decades of practice." [..] For his part, government lawyer Jeff Wall told the judges that it is the government's position that it does not need to tell the court all of the reasons why it wants to dismiss a case — just those it chooses to disclose.
"..the president's attack on the Russia investigation.."?
The 3-year $40 million investigation ended in utter and complete disgrace for Robert Mueller and the people who appointed him, and now you're saying none of this should be looked into?
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday was granted broad subpoena power in his probe into the federal government's 2016 Russia-Trump campaign probe, allowing him call more than 50 people for interviews, including high-profile Obama administration officials. Graham received the authorization in a party-line vote in the GOP-controlled committee. "I find myself in a position where I think we need to look long and hard about how the Mueller investigation got off the rails. This committee is not going to sit on the sidelines and move on," said Graham, a South Carolina Republican.
The committee is currently conducting a broad investigation into the 2016 Russia probe, including "Crossfire Hurricane," which was the FBI's name for their investigation into Russian election interference by way of the Trump campaign. The FBI's actions during that operation gave way to what is broadly referred to as the (now mostly debunked) Russia-collusion narrative. With Thursday's vote, Graham now has the authority to subpoena former intelligence officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The committee chairman has also been granted the authority to subpoena documents and records reference in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report assessing the use of FISA warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Tensions ran high during the committee meeting in which member voted on the subpoenas. To issue a subpoena, the committee chairman needs to either strike a deal with the top Democrat – now California Sen. Dianne Feinstein – or secure a majority vote by the committee. Republicans hold a 12-10 majority, so they were able to grant Graham unilateral subpoena power, rejecting several amendments by the Democrats.
"Unfortunately, it appears that Senate Republicans now plan to spend the next several months bolstering the president's attack on the Russia investigation and his Democratic nominee, Democrat Joe Biden. Congress should not conduct politically motivated investigations designed to attack or help any presidential candidate," Feinstein said.
Joe Biden doesn't know what Juneteenth is:
"He's going down to Texas on Juneteenth, right? The first major massacre … of the Black Wall Street, right?"
1. President Trump is going to Texas today, not June 19
2. Juneteenth is about emancipation
3. The massacre was in Oklahoma pic.twitter.com/vpNDQLwqBj
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 & get the APP (@TrumpWarRoom) June 11, 2020
Compared to actual news these days, even this is light reading.
From the coronavirus pandemic to an influx of terrifying murder hornets, 2020 has thrown a number of tricky obstacles in humanity's way. But the worst is yet to come, according to conspiracy theorists, who claim that the world will end next week. The bizarre theory is based on the fact that when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, 11 days were lost from the year, to better reflect the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. While 11 days might not sound a lot, over 286 years it adds up, with some conspiracy theorists claiming we 'should be in 2012.' In a now-deleted Twitter post, scientist Paolo Tagaloguin said: "Following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012.
"The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days. For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years". According to this theory, June 21 2020 should actually be December 21, 2012. If you cast your mind back to 2012, you may remember various theories, indicating the world would end on December 21. NASA said: "The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012."
Hard to tell if I recorded this 30 years or 10 minutes ago… pic.twitter.com/GPDURhYIJL
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2020
Apparently a happy mountain lion sounds exactly like an idling car engine pic.twitter.com/efj0ctxGE1
— Life on Earth (@planetpng) June 11, 2020
Five months into 2020, and there has been a huge, record-breaking warm anomaly over Asia (up to +8°C).
If 2020 goes on to be the warmest recorded year, despite the lack of an El Niño event, then this year's monstrous Asian anomaly will be the reason why.https://t.co/vjpQnxMaHJ pic.twitter.com/raPOz241HP
— Robert Rohde (@RARohde) June 12, 2020
Automatic Earth (Not) In Athens
May 31, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:04 pm Finance Tagged with: Athens, coronavirus, Covid19, face masks, Greece, Holland, homeless, lockdown, Monastiraki, opening, Piraeus, quarantine, refugees, selflessness, testing, travel 9 Responses »
Monastiraki Square deserted due to lockdown, Athens, Greece 2020
Well, actually, there is no Automatic Earth in Athens right now. But we're working on it. And I have had a hard time finishing articles recently for some reason. It may be because it's virustime, and it's certainly because of the lockdown. People are social animals, and I am no exception. Living alone and working alone makes it more extreme.
Not that I have changed my mind on lockdowns; they are the only option to tame the virus under the circumstances. Still, a lockdown must be executed properly, to make it "as close to impossible as possible" for the virus to jump to new hosts, and that has only been done in very few places, either because politicians and "experts" don't understand how and why, or they find it too inconvenient. But enough about that for the moment, even as today's new global cases top 130,000 in yet another new record.
In mid-December I went from Athens to Holland, where I still rent a small apartment though I've been spending most of my time in Athens. I thought I'd stay a few months in the Lowlands, do some of the everyday -or every year- stuff that needs doing, taxes, medical things etc., and return to Athens in spring.
I had a ticket back to Athens from Holland on April 1, which I had bought early February, when things still seemed somewhat normal. But as the date approached, of course, we moved ever further away from normal. If I had booked a few weeks earlier, things might have worked out, but Greece implemented a very strict lockdown, so it wouldn't have been much fun.
I could change the ticket for free until two weeks before departure, after which the cost for changing it would be close to the original ticket price. So I changed it. By then, there was a two-week mandatory full quarantine in place for new arrivals in Greece. Not very tempting, but more importantly I was thinking I didn't want to become a burden on the Greek healthcare system.
Which according to some has shrunk by 75% (imagine that) due to EU-mandated austerity. I was thinking the odds of Greece and the Greek system being overwhelmed were much higher than that it would happen in Holland. Boy, was I wrong. The irony is that it is exactly this that made Greece adopt the strict lockdown measures it did, as early as it did, and faring so much better because of it.
For 2 months, until 2 weeks ago, everyone who was out in the street had to carry a piece of paper detailing why they were out (try that in the US!). The only valid reasons to be out were shopping for food or medicine. All stores other than supermarkets and pharmacies were closed anyway. Greece was early and strict. They didn't feel they had a choice.
And even if so much of the healthcare system has been bulldozed, the core is still very strong, that is a major factor. The professionals (experts) running the system and advising the government are of a very high caliber, which is more than one can say of many other countries.
In Holland, it's been a very different story. It was late to the game, and when it did decide on a lockdown, it called it an "intelligent" lockdown. Like Dutch people are smarter than others. Which, of course, people like to hear. Most stores have remained open (though not public transport), there was no mass testing, only people with obvious symptoms were tested, and the Dutch version of the CDC still maintains today that face masks don't actually work (i.e. we are more intelligent than 4.5 billion Asians).
Like in many other countries, the lack of testing and masks really only had one reason behind it, and it wasn't that they would not work, or that anyone believed they didn't, it was that they didn't have any. And then when a government says they're not needed, the pace at which they are purchased abroad or can be produced domestically slows down too, even with all the high tech industries in the country. That way you sort of boil in your own fat.
We're 5 months into the pandemic, and only now can one get tested without already being on the verge of death [Update May 31: still no test available without symptoms, asymptomatic carriers be damned. Should I fake symptoms?]. And only now are masks obligatory in public transport. This means the virus has become pretty much embedded, though perhaps not yet endemic, in the population.
It's a giant gamble with the lives of your citizens when you try to hide your failure to acquire the necessary tools and implement the needed procedures, behind stories about how well "we" are really doing. The kind of gamble that politicians should at the very least by forced to quit for, but that is not going to happen.
But, more irony, they're real popular. People buy the narrative that "this is the best we could have done", and hang on to their lips every day for a shred of good news. That happens in many countries, of course, and, yes, it has a function: if you want to do a lockdown, above all you need a sense of unity. That it is used to hide lies and failures is almost an afterthought.
I don't try to point out to people here -the few I see- anymore that their government has done a terrible job; they all watch the same news, and they've all bought the same "we're in this together" kool-aid. Which, again, does serve a purpose, but it's also very false. Here are the latest numbers from Worldometer:
Holland:
17.3 million people,
46,257 cases of COVID19, and
5,951 deaths.
Greece:
2,915 cases and
175 deaths.
I don't even have to do the percentages, do I? The "successful" and "intelligent" Holland not only, 5 months in, still has an "official" worse "deaths per million population" rate than the US(!), the Dutch numbers also invariably come with the official addition that "real" numbers of both cases and deaths are much higher due to the lack of testing.
Almost as if they're proud of it. As if it's a waste of time to try and keep track of how and where the virus is spreading in your society, something you won't ever know if you only test and count people who are already in hospital or dead.
High time for a more uplifting story. In early March, as Greece lockdown measures took hold one by one, almost all of the social kitchens were quickly shut down. But not the people the Automatic Earth has been supporting for 5 years running with your kind help. "Our" crew changed strategy as cooking in the street was no longer an option, and started preparing meals in a central place, only to drive down and hand them out fully ready in the familiar places near Monastiraki square and the Piraeus port.
And because so many other social kitchens had closed and the homeless still needed to eat (always the first to bear the brunt, no exception this time), they made -and make- a lot more meals as well than they were used to doing, and worked 4 days instead of 2, preparing some 700 meals every week.
It's not just many more meals, but every meal takes much more time and energy to prepare than usual; each has to be packaged separately, because of course fears were that the homeless would be most susceptible to the virus. In short, they've all been working their behinds off. Everyone talks about heroes, and these people are mine. Let me show you with a few pictures:
Here's Monastiraki square, deserted (with the Acropolis on top of the mountain):
Some of the crew preparing meals in the central place:
And posing (that's Tassos doing his finest Greek Zorro):
Then there's of course -some of- Da Boyz:
The usual hot meal in the big pot:
But lots of other things too, all individually wrapped:
Which then end up in these crates before they're loaded into cars to be distributed.
I love this picture, these are some of the things served on Greek Easter, April 19, because the homeless, too, should celebrate:
And then the packages are handed to the people in central Athens:
And at the port of Piraeus:
Greece, like other countries, is slowly easing its lockdown, first the stores opened, last week it was terraces at bars and restaurants, and next week it will be the inside of these places too.
"The Crew" is not yet back to cooking in the streets, that will take a bit more time. I've been keeping in close touch with them, and it's high time to replenish the supermarket "checks" I last arranged for in December. First thing I'll do when I get there. Been offering it all the time, a bank transfer might have worked, but so far they manage.
Air traffic is resuming as well, bit by bit. When I changed my ticket in mid-March, I had no idea what would be realistic, and picked June 16 "out of a hat". Not a bad guess, it turns out. June 16 became 17, and 2 days ago the Greeks said Holland is a risk country, so no flights before July, but this morning they changed that again, to mandatory testing at the airport followed by a night in a designated hotel; it now looks as if this might actually happen. Then again, 17 days is an eternity in virustime of course.
And in the process I'll get tested, something I can't get done in Holland. I've been holed up in an area of Holland with very few infections, but I'll still have to do the train-airport-plane routine to get to Athens, all places where the danger of being infected is -relatively- high. Holland is a country the size of a postage stamp, and it still today averages more new cases than Greece has had total deaths.
As always when I write about the Automatic Earth in Athens project, I ask you to support it. There are still a few hundred dollars left, but I want to buy at least €1000 worth of supermarket checks, so the crew can fill their by now empty pantries and cupboards and do something extra for the clients, who haven't had an easy time.
The way it goes is simple and identical to how we've always done this: you can donate through our Paypal widget at the top left corner of the site. Any donations that end in $0.99 or $0.37 go straight to the crew, other amounts go to the Automatic Earth, which also badly needs support, and which you can of course also support via Patreon, see top right corner of the site.
I am honored and proud to be associated with these people, and proud of the bonds we have forged since 2015, and I think you should be too. Together, we support the most vulnerable people, homeless and refugees, in a city still overflowing with vulnerable people (with many more added because of the virus), and we do it through a crew that doesn't cease to amaze with their selflessness.
I don't remember if I ever mentioned this, but a few years ago I was talking to a guy who did a project on Lesbos, maybe still does, and we were saying: many years from now, when looking back on your life, what will you be most proud of? We both concluded that this would certainly among the top in the list: supporting the weakest members of society. But I can't do it without your help, which has been amazing all this time, and which I hope will continue in the same way that I am determined to continue to support this wonderful little shimmer of light.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl