I'm not taking it today as the National lead made be literally laugh out loud when I pried open my morning Globe:
"Americans give Biden mostly positive marks for first 100 days, Post-ABC poll finds" by Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin The Washington Post, April 25, 2021
President Biden nears the end of his first 100 days in office with a slight majority of Americans approving of his performance and supporting his major policy initiatives, but his approval rating is lower than any recent past presidents except Donald Trump, with potential warning signs ahead about his governing strategy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Overall, 52 percent of adults say they approve of the job Biden is doing, compared with 42 percent who disapprove. At this point in his presidency four years ago, Trump's rating was nearly the reverse, with approval at 42 percent and disapproval at 53 percent. Overall, 34 percent of Americans say they strongly approve of Biden's performance, compared with 35 percent who strongly disapprove.
Biden receives the highest marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with 64 percent of adults — including 33 percent of Republicans — giving him positive ratings. His approval rating for his handling of the economy stands at 52 percent, but 53 percent say they disapprove of the way he has dealt with the immigration situation at the US-Mexico border, a problem that has vexed his administration for much of its first months.
It won't be once he has transformed the voting rolls with the wide-open border.
Although his first sizable initiatives enjoy majority support, the poll also finds that by 2 to 1, Americans say that Biden should be willing to make "major changes" to his proposals to win Republican support, rather than trying to enact proposals without making major changes and getting no backing from congressional Republicans.
He just got a lifeline from Lindsey Graham and Murkowski of Alaska is really a Democrat in Republican clothing if you read the fine print.
In another caution for the president, a slim majority of Americans — 53 percent — say they are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned that Biden will do too much to increase the size and role of government. Overall, Americans are almost evenly split on whether they favor a smaller government with fewer services (48 percent) or a larger government with more services (45 percent).
Half the country loves tyranny!
That finding does, however, represent a shift in public opinion that existed between 1992 and 2012, when at least half favored smaller government.
The poll also shows a record divide between the parties in views of Biden ahead of the 100-day mark, with 90 percent of Democrats approving of his performance compared with 13 percent of Republicans. Biden's approval among fellow Democrats is six points higher than Trump's rating was among Republicans four years ago, while the two presidents' ratings among those in the rival party are identical (13 percent). Among independents, Biden's approval rating of 47 percent is nine points better than Trump's 38 percent four years ago.
Although there are signs that the economy is improving, a majority of Americans — 58 percent — rate the economy negatively, while 42 percent rate it positively. That’s statistically unchanged from the findings of a Post-ABC poll in late September, but in another sign that opinions about the country's condition are substantially shaped by party allegiance, the views of Democrats and Republicans have flipped with the change in administrations. Today, 49 percent of Democrats rate the economy positively, up from 18 percent in September. Meanwhile, 35 percent of Republicans give the economy positive marks today, compared with 69 percent who said that seven months ago.
The president's first major initiative was a nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief package, approved by Congress on party-line votes. Despite the divisions among lawmakers, the American Rescue Package receives strong public support, with 65 percent saying they back the plan compared with 31 percent opposed. Just over 9 in 10 Democrats support it, as do 1 in 3 Republicans and around 6 in 10 independents. The poll finds that Republicans with incomes below $75,000 are considerably more supportive of the package than are those with higher incomes.
Biden’s newly proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which has not been acted upon by Congress, receives less support than the COVID stimulus package, with 52 percent saying they favor it and 35 percent opposed. Broken down by party identification, 82 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of independents, and 17 percent of Republicans give the measure their support. Unlike the stimulus package, there is little variation among Republicans based on their income.
They have no idea what is in it and what it will lead to and won't see one damn dime, but the $nake oil $ure $ounds good -- until the money becomes worthless and digital.
Biden has proposed paying for the infrastructure plan by raising the corporate tax rate, which once stood at 35 percent but was lowered to 21 percent during Trump’s presidency. Biden has recommended that it be raised to 28 percent, and the new poll shows that 58 percent of Americans say they support the increase. Again, views are partisan: More than 8 in 10 Democrats back the increase, while 2 in 3 Republicans oppose it. A narrower majority of independents say they support the 28-percent figure.
As Biden pursues his overall agenda, the border and immigration loom as soft spots. While there are significant differences in his approval ratings on this issue among Democrats, Republicans, and independents, the falloff from his ratings on the pandemic are sizable among all three groups. For example, there is a 28-point drop among Democrats in rating Biden on the pandemic versus the border. Among Republicans, the falloff is 23 points, and among independents, 31 points.
This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone April 18-21 among a random national sample of 1,007 adults, with 75 percent reached on cellphones and 25 percent on landlines. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 points for the full sample.
Biden pledged in his inaugural address to try to unify the country and has often expressed willingness to negotiate with Republicans over the detail of his proposals, but on the economic stimulus package, he held firm on the overall size and most of the specifics of his proposal, arguing that it was bipartisan because voters from both parties backed it. He recently met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss the infrastructure package; while he indicated some openness to negotiation, he has not agreed to any changes.
Although Biden’s approval rating is notably higher than Trump’s was at this point four years ago, support for his job performance — which is a net positive of 10 points — ranks far below other past presidents.
Obama was 43 points net positive near the end of his first 100 days. George W. Bush had a net positive of 31 points. Bill Clinton, at net positive 20 points, was the lowest of the six presidents who preceded Trump, who was a net negative 11 points. Ronald Reagan had the best rating, a net positive of 54 points, followed by George H.W. Bush at 49 points, and Jimmy Carter at 45 points. Those three all governed during a less polarized era of American politics.
Here is the New York Times' take on the poll, and the National co-lead of the Globe:
"Election conspiracies live on with audit by Arizona GOP" by Jonathan J. Cooper and Bob Christie The Associated Press, April 25, 2021
PHOENIX — Months after former president Donald Trump’s election defeat, legislative Republicans in Arizona are challenging the outcome as they embark on an unprecedented effort to audit the results in the state’s most populous county.
The state Senate used its subpoena power to take possession of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County and the machines that counted them, along with computer hard drives full of data. They've handed the materials over to Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based consultancy with no election experience run by a man who has shared unfounded conspiracy theories claiming the official 2020 presidential election results are illegitimate.
It was okay that the guy who ran Dominion said he made sure Trump would lose, but anyway.
Neither here nor there, really, at this point.
The process is alarming election professionals who fear the auditors are not up to the complex task and will severely undermine faith in democracy.
How can you undermine faith in something that doesn't exist?
That's why the result will be upheld even if the evidence shows it swaps.
Then all elections are called into question, and our tyrannical duopoly can not have that!
“I think the activities that are taking place here are reckless and they in no way, shape, or form resemble an audit,” said Jennifer Morrell, a partner at Elections Group, a consulting firm advising state and local election officials, which has not worked in Arizona.
Trump on Friday predicted the audit would reveal fraud and would prompt similar reviews in other states he lost. “I predict the results will be startling!,” the former president said in a statement.
Shut up, blowhard -- if you are the real Trump because Trump is not Trump, according to Jim Stone, who believes.... "Ivanka is so corrupted by Jared and the Jewish community in general that she could KNOW her dad got drugged or replaced and she'd never say it. I would not pay an ounce of attention to Trump "announcing another run for the presidency" because odds are that guy's a goner, and what we are getting now from Trump is as fake as green screen Biden. The rest of Trump's family could have been eliminated and replaced by now also, FACE IT: There was a coup and when those happen no one knows what really happened. I'll make a prediction here: If Trump gets "placed in power" due to audits and people totally rejecting the coup, it will either not be Trump or it will be a drugged hypnotized and erased Trump that's going to do their bidding and continue on either with a brain as a body double scammer, or without a brain, following commands so the agenda simply goes forward, even with "trump" in power. I don't believe for a minute Trump would support the vax after all that has happened, nor do I believe he actually got the vax unless it was used to make a body double take his place while he's rendered irrelevant and drooling in a cube somewhere."
He has seemed different since he was allegedly infected and then rose from the grave and said the shots “a miracle.”
Cyber Ninjas began a manual recount of ballots Friday, a day after Democrats asked a judge to put an end to the audit. The judge ordered the company to follow ballot and voter secrecy laws and demanded they turn over written procedures and training manuals before a hearing Monday on the Democrats’ request. He offered to pause the count over the weekend if Democrats posted a $1 million bond to cover added expenses, but the party declined.
Why would Democrats not want an audit?
The truth fears no investigation!
On a since-deleted Twitter account, Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan used hashtags and shared memes popular with people promoting unsupported allegations casting doubt on Biden’s victory.
Logan insists that his personal views are irrelevant because he’s running a transparent audit with video streamed online.
“There’s a lot of Americans here, myself included, that are really bothered by the way our country is being ripped apart right now,” Logan told reporters Thursday night. “We want a transparent audit to be in place so that people can trust the results and can get everyone on the same page,” but Logan refuses to disclose who’s paying him or who’s counting the ballots, and he won’t commit to using bipartisan teams for the process. The GOP-dominated Senate refuses to let media members observe the count. Reporters can accept a six-hour shift as an official observer, but photography and notetaking are prohibited. It would be a violation of journalistic ethics for reporters to participate in an event they're covering.
Oh, NOW being DENIED ACCESS to the COUNTS is a BIG DEAL when it comes to the $lef-$erving pre$$ when it was "conspiracy talk" last November when Republican observers were kicked out of those key precincts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
The Senate has put up $150,000 for the audit, but Logan acknowledged that's not enough to cover his expenses. The right-wing cable channel One America News Network has raised money from unknown contributors for the project, and the money goes directly to Cyber Ninjas. Logan would not commit to disclosing the donors and would not provide an estimate for the total cost of his audit.
Cyber Ninjas plans to have teams of three people manually count each ballot, looking only at the presidential and US Senate contests, which were won by Democrats.
Maricopa County conducted a host of pre- and post-election reviews to check the accuracy of voting machines, including a hand count of a representative sample of ballots as required by state law. The county also hired two auditing firms that reported no malicious software or incorrect counting equipment and concluded that none of the computers or equipment were connected to the Internet.
“We’re going to set up a new norm where we don’t accept the outcome of elections in a free and fair and just democracy, and that is the core of what is at stake here,” said Tammy Patrick, senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County elections official. “I think that is incredibly, incredibly problematic.”
You mean after what happened in 2016, right?
Related(?):
Another reminder after Kemp's daughter's boyfriend and a member of the Loefler campaign was blown up on a highway and in the wake of the voting law?
I'm told one bystander suffered a minor injury but declined to be transported and that the occupants were members of a sober living group as investigators were working to determine the cause of the crash with information at the scene led police to believe another vehicle may have been involved.
Also see:
The New York Times says it is a triumph for the pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party.
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The Globe's World lead today:
"US military begins final withdrawal from Afghanistan" by Thomas Gibbons-Neff New York Times, April 25, 2021
KABUL — The US military has begun its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, the top US commander there said Sunday, marking what amounts to the beginning of the end of the United States’ nearly 20-year-old war in the country.
“I now have a set of orders,” said General Austin S. Miller, the head of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, to a news conference of Afghan journalists at the US military’s headquarters in Kabul, the capital. “We will conduct an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and that means transitioning bases and equipment to the Afghan security forces.”
Biden’s announcement was greeted with uncertainty in Afghanistan, as it prepares for a future without a US and NATO military presence despite a Taliban insurgency that seems dead set on a military victory despite talks of peace.
The insurgent group’s harsh version of Islamic law, which barred women from many jobs during its rule in the late 1990s and banned music and dance, among other arts, will probably return if the Taliban reassumes power — either through force or if they are incorporated into the government.
(Blog editor gasps. Then certainly we must stay!
Of course, more and more, people here look back to the era of harsh Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 and describe it as a time of security and peace, but don't let that spoil the New York Times narrative)
Holding the line for now are the Afghan security forces, which have endured a particularly difficult winter. Taliban offensives in the south and repeated attacks in the north despite the cold weather have meant mounting casualties ahead of what could be a violent summer as US and NATO forces withdraw. Although the Afghan military and police forces together are said to have around 300,000 personnel, the real number is suspected to be much lower.
It's been 20 years worth of lies, and it could NOT be a violent summer, right?
Atop the international military forces in Afghanistan, there are also roughly 18,000 contractors in the country, almost all of whom will also depart. Miller said that some of the contracts “will have to be adjusted” so that the Afghan security forces, which are heavily dependent on contractor assistance — especially the Afghan air force — will continue to be supported. The thousands of private contractors in Afghanistan are tasked with a range of jobs, including security, logistics and aircraft maintenance.
Meaning the OCCUPATION is to be PRIVATIZED like Prince of Blackwater fame wanted!
Under last year’s peace agreement with the Taliban, US, and international forces were supposed to withdraw from the country by May 1. Under the agreement the Taliban have refrained — for the most part — from attacking US troops, but what remains unclear is if the insurgent group will attack the withdrawing forces following Biden’s decision to set the final deadline later, in September.
Breaking the deal really sabotaged the trust, but the Taliban should have expected such a move after all these years and U.S. history.
Shows the rest of the world that AmeriKa's word isn't worth the paper they signed it on.
“We have the military means and capability to fully protect our force during retrograde, as well as support the Afghan security forces,” Miller said.
US troops are still spread out in a constellation of around a dozen bases, most of which contain small groups of Special Operations forces advising the Afghan military. To cover the withdrawal, the US military has committed a significant amount of air support, including positioning an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, in case the Taliban decide to attack.....
Why would they?
If so, blood all on Biden, should have been out May 1!
Beyond that, could we be looking at a GULF of TONKIN or USS COLE or LIBERTY type of event soon?
That would certainly set the region ablaze and after the bait of 9/11 and Afghanistan, it all switched to this place, remember?
"Fire at Baghdad hospital packed with COVID patients kills at least 82" by Falih Hassan and Jane Arraf New York Times, April 25, 2021
BAGHDAD — A fire sparked by an exploding oxygen cylinder killed at least 82 people, most of them COVID-19 patients and their relatives, at a Baghdad hospital, a devastating example of the pandemic’s impact on a country riddled with corruption and a legacy of decrepit infrastructure.
The Ibn al-Khatib hospital, a facility dedicated to COVID-19 patients in one of Baghdad’s poorer neighborhoods, had no smoke detectors, sprinkler system, or fire hoses, said General Khadhim Bohan, head of Iraq’s civil defense forces. The fire, which broke out late Saturday, spread quickly because of flammable material used in false ceilings in the intensive care ward, he added.
“If there had been smoke detectors, the situation would have been totally different,” Bohan told the state-run Iraqiya TV.
Who got that contract?
What's left out of the conversation is, like Afghanistan, we destroyed a country and turned it into rubble and then never rebuilt it despite the billions tossed to contractors -- with much of the money ending up in Dubai bank accounts.
Doctors and rescuers described a chaotic scene at the hospital, crowded with relatives of patients despite what was supposed to be a ban on most visitors to avoid the spread of infection. Because of a lack of nursing staff, Iraqi hospitals, even in COVID wards, require a relative to help look after a patient.
The fire struck as the world struggled with the biggest new weekly coronavirus case total yet, in a pandemic that has stretched well into its second year. Even as wealthier countries are rapidly rolling out vaccines, more countries than ever are struggling with overwhelming caseloads and mounting death tolls.
Iraq is battling an intense new wave of coronavirus infections. On Sunday, the country reported 6,034 new coronavirus cases and 40 deaths, a figure that excludes those who died in the fire. Last week, the country of almost 40 million topped more than 1 million cases since the pandemic began last year.
Despite being one of the world’s biggest oil producers, Iraq is also suffering a financial crisis that economists attribute to decades of mismanagement and dysfunctional institutions. Its health care system was devastated by more than a decade of US-led international sanctions against Saddam Hussein starting in the 1990s.
Oh, we did remake the place in our imagine as we still occupy the Green Zone, and I'm surprised the NYT mentioned the war criminal sanctions that destroyed Iraqi society after Bush baited Saddam.
Beyond that, I simply no longer believe the figures regarding the greatest hoax and $cam the world has ever seen, the COVID!
Since 2003, the government has spent billions of dollars to try to restore the health care infrastructure, but the system remains dysfunctional: Relatives must provide oxygen and medication in many hospitals. Strained by huge patient counts and heavy energy use amid a need for more oxygen supplies and ventilators, hospitals have been struck by an increasing number of fires.
Hmmmmmmmm.
Who would want to burn down physical healthcare $y$tems, 'eh?
A European Commission report early this year warned of the dangers of hospital fires because of increased oxygen use. It reported almost 70 people were killed in hospital fires around the world related to supplemental oxygen last year, including 10 in Romania.
That doesn't make sense, sorry, and that means this cover story is starting to stink.
So what really happened at the hospital?
Another Natanz?
An Iraqi health ministry spokesperson said the Ibn al-Khatib hospital was built in the 1950s and had been renovated last year to refit it for treating COVID patients. He declined to comment on why the renovation did not include smoke detectors or a sprinkler system, saying that was now under investigation. Among the dead were some older patients on ventilators who could not move from their beds, officials said.
“It was a horrible scene,” said Dr. Waad Adnan, a hospital resident who was in the physicians’ quarters next to the hospital when the fire started. “There was the sound of explosions and then huge balls of fire. The hospital staff did their best to turn off the central oxygen, but the cylinders began exploding,” he said.
Adnan, who spoke outside the hospital, said he saw patients and their relatives breaking windows and throwing themselves from the second floor to escape the blaze. He said the fire was believed to have started when an oxygen cylinder caught fire and then exploded.....
Now what images does that bring up in your mind?
An indelible September morning, perhaps?
The place looked like Chernobyl as firefighters raced to extinguish the 5-alarm fire that broke out at the Hyannis Harbor Hotel(?).
Related(?):
"Exxon Mobil Corp. is being warned by activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 it faces an “existential business risk” by pinning its future on fossil fuels as governments move to slash emissions, the Financial Times reported, citing an investor presentation. Exxon still has no credible plan to protect value in an energy transition, according to an 80-page investor presentation, the newspaper said. The San Francisco-based hedge fund also criticizes the company’s “value destruction” and “refusal to accept that fossil fuel demand may decline.” The U.S. oil and gas producer “touts its efforts in areas like carbon capture and biofuels,” the report said, citing the document, but the efforts have “delivered more advertising than results.”
They still can't see the forest for the trees, and that also explains why gas prices have been creeping higher.
Also see:
They claim they found the wreckage from the sub that sank and broke apart last week, but what if it has been hijacked and is sailing through the Hormuz Straight right now?
Or are they headed the other way, toward China, whose economy continued to boom in April from the record growth in the first quarter?
Related(?):
"Jamel Gorchene, the Tunisian man who killed a police officer Friday in a terrorist attack that has stirred a political storm in France, had watched videos “glorifying martyrs and jihad immediately before he acted,” the top French antiterrorism prosecutor said Sunday. Speaking at a news conference, the prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, portrayed Gorchene as an immigrant with a “troubled personality” whose radicalization went unnoticed by the French intelligence services before he stabbed the police officer in the neck and abdomen at her station. “According to two witnesses, the aggressor went back and forth in front of the building before he struck,” Ricard said. “and he cried ‘Allahu akbar’” — God is great, in Arabic — “as he stabbed the victim.” Officials identified the dead 49-year-old police officer by her first name, Stéphanie. The killing took place in the affluent town of Rambouillet, southwest of Paris, far from the troubled projects circling big French cities where many Muslim immigrants, mainly from North Africa, live....."
Because of Columbus, the French police didn't stop him -- but seriously, folks, does any of that report make sense?
The agitated Manchurain candidate was acting out in front of the police station before going inside, and no one noticed?
Did this event even happen or is a contrived piece of crap because Macron is in real trouble?
"An exit poll for Albania’s parliamentary election on Sunday suggests that the ruling Socialist Party is in a tight race with the opposition Democratic Party. The exit poll run for Euronews Albania from the MRB, part of the London-based Kantar Group, projects that the left-wing Socialists will win about 46% of the vote while the Democrats are expected to capture about 42%. It is still unclear whether Socialists will get 71 seats in the 140-seat parliament to govern alone....."
Albania, Albania, you border on the Adriatic!
"The holy city of Jerusalem, a tinderbox of competing religious and political claims, has repeatedly triggered bouts of Israeli-Palestinian violence. This time around, there have been some additional sparks, including Jewish extremists who, emboldened by their political patrons’ recent election to parliament, staged a provocative march to Jerusalem’s walled Old City chanting “death to the Arabs.” Over the course of a few days, nightly Jerusalem street brawls between Israeli police and disaffected Palestinian residents of the city escalated to cross-border fighting between Israel and Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas. Gaza militants fired an intense barrage of rockets into southern Israel and Israel launched several airstrikes at Gaza. Political posturing by Israeli and Palestinian leaders has added to the tense atmosphere....."
The Associated Pre$$ gives you a closer look at what’s been driving the violence, which started when Israel annexed east Jerusalem (they ain't Crimea, gasp), and the immediate spark for the current round of unrest was Israel’s decision to barricade a plaza outside of Jerusalem’s Old City during the holy month of Ramadan, after which hundreds of angry young Palestinian men took to the streets and hurled stones, firebombs and other objects at police, while officers have used stun grenades and water cannons to disperse them.
Then, on Thursday night, a far-right Israeli group called Lehava staged a massive demonstration just a few hundred yards from the Palestinian crowds in response to TikTok videos showing Palestinians slapping religious Jews at random, but the group’s leader is a disciple of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who promoted the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Holy Land (that's called ethnic cleansing, and who knew he was in bed with Hitler).
While Hamas is not believed to be directly involved in the latest rocket fire, it has done little to stop it and may be tacitly encouraging it as a message of solidarity with Jerusalem Palestinians, and Netanyahu, meanwhile, is desperately trying to hold on to power after Israeli elections last month ended in deadlock for a fourth consecutive time and is courting the support of “Religious Zionism,” a far-right party and “the question lurking in the background is to what extent has Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition shaped the clashes and the government’s reaction,” commentator Nadav Eyal wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily, and Israel’s decision to allow the Palestinians to remove the barriers late Sunday appeared to be aimed at easing tensions as both Israel and Hamas have signaled they want to cool things down -- never though late Sunday, minor scuffles broke out in Jerusalem, while the Israeli military reported two rocket launches out of Gaza, signaling the latest round of troubles was not over.
That is something that bears watching, and I will therefore expect the Globe to stay on it.
Of course, the plight of the Palestinians is the fault of the British, who chickened out back in 1917:
"In this post-Brexit, mid-pandemic moment in the United Kingdom, with its economy battered by recession and the royal family in mourning and turmoil, it is hard to find a topic that unites this fractious nation, but U.S. chickens — yes, the lowly, clucking farm animal, consumed daily by the millions in all 50 states — have done it. Everybody hates them. The odd thing is that U.S. chicken is not sold anywhere in Britain, and if people here get their way, it never will be. What precisely have U.S. chickens done to so thoroughly appall the British, even though few of the latter have ever sampled the former? The short answer is that some U.S. chicken carcasses are washed in chlorine, to eliminate potentially harmful pathogens. Americans for years have been devouring these birds without any fuss, but in Britain, U.S. chickens are now attached to the word “chlorinated” the way warning labels are attached to cigarettes — which is to say, always. U.S. chickens have been denounced by editorialists, academics, politicians, farmers and a wide variety of activists. U.S. poultry has long been derided in the United Kingdom, but didn’t become an object of public vitriol until it became clear, several years ago, that the two countries would sign a new free-trade agreement once Britain left the European Union....."
You can pick over it if you want; however, it's no use washing them because the water is treated with chlorine as well.
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Here is what the Globe is squawking about the most (today's front-page, above-the-fold, righthand-corner article):
I was told the kids love Uncle Joe and are very supportive of the agenda, so you can tune out the griping regarding the corrupt mayor of Fall River and his upcoming trial and selection of a jury after a white state trooper who was seen on video telling a Black driver “you are going to get your a—whipped” and yanking him out of the car by his neck is no longer with the Virginia State Police after body camera footage and 911 audio released late Friday appeared to show that a Virginia deputy mistook a cordless house phone held by a Black man for a gun before the deputy shot him repeatedly (just taking you back to your Roots in Spotsylvania County).
Related:
"During last summer’s reckoning over racial injustice, decades-long debates about whether to offer reparations to the descendants of slaves seemed to be gaining momentum. State lawmakers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon — where Democrats control the legislatures — introduced or hoped to revive proposals to study the possibility. It turns out the wait for reparations will continue. The state efforts have mostly stalled, raising questions about whether they can win enough support to succeed on a wide scale. California is the only state to approve a commission to study reparations statewide and how they might work. Oregon state Senator Lew Frederick said local and state efforts, if they gain more traction, could help build support, eventually, for reparations on the federal level. The nation’s racial reckoning amid the COVID-19 pandemic and police killings of Black Americans have only intensified the need for reparations, Frederick said. “We need a federal reparations bill, but I don’t know when we’ll get there,” said state Delegate Wanika Fisher, a Democrat who introduced legislation in Maryland to create a reparations task force. That mirrors the outlook in Congress. A committee of the US House, which is controlled by Democrats, advanced a decades-old bill that would establish a reparations commission, but its prospects appear dim in the evenly divided Senate, where it’s unlikely to generate enough support to overcome a filibuster....."
Then chuck it and reconcile it 50-50 like everything else, and this is all about dispossessing whites who have worked hard, played by the rules, and paid their bills while transferring their hard-accrued wealth to the state and favored groups that drive division.
What a colossal f**k job, and whoever complains is racist when we are all being f**ked by the CVD lie. These are the bribes they get to go along with the program for something that ended over 150 years ago and was really resolved over half a century ago. Atlanta is the most cosmopolitan city in the U.S. and ironically, we are at a point where the Southern states are the Free states and the Northern (blue) states are the Slave states under restrictions and lockdowns symbolized the the unhealthy slave masks!
Of course, it is “just the beginning” and who will get blamed next after another week of headlines about Black Americans dying at the hands of law enforcement (the churches have been emptied, wow) as only the privileged elite are allowed to hug.
This is the new Black Power salute, and why are they silent on the death of a trailblazer?
The official cause is a sickle cell mutation, and what is left unasked is whether she received a vaccine, and if so where, while the fund-raising efforts to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, in Boston are finally approaching the organizers’ $15 million goal — with a million-dollar gift from Bank of America is helping them get there (I suppose they can afford it after the quarter they had).
As for the Oscars, I never even gave it a thought last night and I'm not mourning missing one minute of the red carpet.
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I'm going to skip through the rest of this:
"Millions of people are skipping their second doses of COVID vaccines" by Rebecca Robbins New York Times, April 25, 2021
Millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their COVID-19 vaccines, and their ranks are growing.
More than 5 million people, or nearly 8% of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several weeks of the nationwide vaccine campaign.
Even as the country wrestles with the problem of millions of people who are wary about getting vaccinated at all, health authorities are confronting an emerging challenge of ensuring that those who do get inoculated are doing so fully.
The reasons vary for why people are missing their second shots. In interviews, some said they feared the side effects, which can include flulike symptoms. Others said they felt that they were sufficiently protected with a single shot.
Those attitudes were expected, but another hurdle has been surprisingly prevalent. A number of vaccine providers have canceled second-dose appointments because they ran out of supply or did not have the right brand in stock.
From the outset, public health experts worried that it would be difficult to get everyone to return for a second shot three or four weeks after the first dose. It is no surprise that, as vaccines are rolled out more broadly, the numbers of those skipping their second dose have gone up.
Mounting evidence collected in trials and from real-world immunization campaigns points to the peril of people skipping their second doses. Compared with the two-dose regimen, a single shot triggers a weaker immune response and may leave recipients more susceptible to dangerous virus variants, and even though a single dose provides partial protection against COVID, it is not clear how long that protection will last.
“I’m very worried, because you need that second dose,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel.
It's about “getting shots into arms,” whether you need it or not.
The stakes are high because there is only one vaccine authorized in the United States that is given as a single shot. The use of that vaccine, made by Johnson & Johnson, was paused this month after it was linked to a very rare but serious side effect involving blood clotting. Federal health officials on Friday recommended restarting use of the vaccine, but the combination of the safety scare and ongoing production problems is likely to make that vaccine a viable option for fewer people.
The CDC’s count of missed second doses is through April 9. It covers only people who got a first Moderna dose by March 7 or a first Pfizer dose by March 14. While millions of people have missed their second shots, the overall rates of follow-through, with some 92% getting fully vaccinated, are strong by historical standards.
College students pose a particular challenge. Many recently became eligible to be vaccinated and are getting their first shots, but they will have left campus by the time they are due for their second doses. In Pennsylvania, health officials have instructed vaccine providers to give second doses to college students even if they did not receive their first doses from that location.....
What's worse is they are requiring them for attendance.
I was told the article originally appeared in The New York Times, and they added that Zvi Ish-Shalom, a religious studies professor from Boulder, Colorado, had planned to get fully vaccinated, but then, an hour after his first shot of the Moderna vaccine, he developed a headache that has not gone away more than a month later and there is no way to know for sure whether the vaccine triggered the headache, but after weighing what he saw as the risks and benefits of a second dose, Ish-Shalom reached a decision about how to proceed -- although, “at this point in time, he feels very clear and very comfortable, given all the various elements of this equation, to forgo the second shot.” he said.
Should have never taken the first one.
Also see:
"The U.S. political divide on whether to get the coronavirus vaccine suggests that “maybe there’s been too much finger wagging,” said the head of the National Institutes of Health. “I’ve done some of that; I’m going to try to stop and listen, in fact, to what people’s specific questions are,” NIH Director Francis Collins said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” An NBC News poll released Sunday showed that 82% of Democrats had already been vaccinated or plan to be as soon as possible, against 45% of Republicans. Almost one-quarter of Republicans said they won’t get vaccinated and another 10% said they’ll do so only if required. That hesitancy has been seen as a roadblock to the U.S. achieving herd immunity against Covid 19. “We’re all in this together, and clearly, if we’re going to be able to put Covid-19 behind us, we need to have all Americans take part in getting us to that point,” Collins said. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has been among the U.S. health officials singling out Republicans, terming their attitude toward vaccines and public health measures like mask mandates and lockdowns “frustrating.” “It’s almost paradoxical that, on the one hand, they want to be relieved of the restrictions, but, on the other hand, they don’t want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesn’t make any sense,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said a week ago on CNN....."
Oh, that is so reassuring coming from him, and thank God one Republican Senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said last week that he was skeptical of the “big push” on vaccinations. He was then attacked by fellow GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who said Johnson’s comments hampered the effort to reach herd immunity on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Speaking of which when is Green Screen, 'er Biden, giving one?
Anyway, Collins said many parts of the country are getting close to a 75% or 80% level of those with immunity, when vaccinations are combined with people who’ve already had Covid-19,“but there are other places that are way behind, and those are the places we all worry about as the next hotspot, and what’s the next one? You can look at the map and say, ‘Where are vaccines lagging?’ Those are the places to worry about, and we can change that, if we can really inspire everybody to get engaged” because about 90% of Americans now live within five miles of a vaccination site and if that's too much they will come right to your door!
How soon before we are Canada?
"Severely strained hospitals in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, are undertaking unprecedented measures to cope as a variant-driven resurgence of the coronavirus tears through much of the country. There were a record 851 adult patients with coronavirus-related critical illnesses in Ontario ICUs on Sunday, up 156 percent from a month ago, according to the provincial Health Ministry. Nearly 600 were on ventilators, but critical-care physicians say those numbers don’t fully capture the number of severely ill covid-19 patients. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has come under fire for failing to heed warnings that predicted such a scenario, ignoring the advice of scientific advisers and presiding over a clumsy inoculation drive that has failed to get doses to those most at risk of infection. Opposition lawmakers have called on the Progressive Conservative premier to resign....."
We are being told the ICUs are so taxed that many patients who would normally be treated in one, including those on high-flow oxygen, are being cared for in hospital wards, and that “there’s no other way to put it other than to say that the virus is trying to bring Ontario’s hospitals to their knees,” but I have it on good authority that is not the case at all.
It's not like anyone will be going anywhere anytime soon, as it is another day, another record (gasp), so cancel the summer camp and start acting your age (OMG, in the age of COVID and social distancing the Globe wants to pack old people in like sardines (that doesn't go for their mansions, of course) because architecture plays a key role in reimagining care solutions -- and with that, I bid you good night:
"It was an eerily quiet year for Big Night Entertainment Group, the hospitality giant with over-the-top restaurants such as Empire and Scorpion Bar, and flashy nightlife venues such as the Grand and Big Night Live, which opened in 2019 next to TD Garden and immediately sold out Steve Aoki shows, but despite the pandemic, there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes as the Boston company expands beyond bricks and mortar. Ed Kane, cofounder of Big Night along with his brother Joe, and Randy Greenstein, established the B Strong Foundation, a nonprofit they funded with an initial commitment of $100,000, to help feed people and pay their rent to make sure kids were safe,” but which has raised more than $600,000, and Big Night plans to make it a permanent fixture because the pandemic “has changed our company forever,” Greenstein said....."
The $ports $ection isn't even an afterthought to me anymore, and I guess they won't be filling up the stadiums anytime soon.
