Glass half empty or glass half full, Winslow? Don’t you just hate it when somebody interrupts a good wallowing in angst and self-pity?
Awareness and taking preventive measures in how we live may be the personal answers to individual survival. Nature struggles to keep a state of homeostasis. Currently it seems to be making a correction but the ones who continue to try to learn and change based on science may make it with minimal loss.
After years of warnings about the global effects of abusing the environment it is almost as if the “unseen force” has decided to clean house and do some remodeling. One consequence has been the majority realizing that good leadership is important so that we can stop being an obstacle.
Pointing out other years had higher misery indexes is fine, but it doesn’t mitigate or eliminate the suffering in this one.
I still want to out for coffee with friends again. (Yep, I’m aiming low, but it’s a sign that if we can do that, other, bigger, aspects of life will be returning).
President Donald Trump falsely labeled Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of him a “witch hunt.” It wasn’t.
If you want to see what a real political witch hunt looks like, just look to lame duck Attorney General slash personal fixer Bill Barr’s appointment this week of a special counsel meant to probe Joe Biden’s administration before it even begins.
While Barr’s order appointing Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel is focused on any crimes connected to the opening of the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, you’re kidding yourself if you think it necessarily stops here.
As a reminder, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was appointed in August 1994 to investigate Clinton’s real estate dealings (“Whitewater”), well over a year before Clinton even met then White House intern Monica Lewinsky and we saw how that worked out.
Anything that Barr does should be viewed through the prism of politics, rather than the law. This is the guy who refused in September to criticize Donald Trump for repeatedly calling on his supporters to vote twice in the run up to the 2020 election and furthered Trump’s baseless claims that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud.
And Barr doesn’t seem to have any good-faith basis for making Durham a special counsel. Barr first tapped Durham, a career federal prosecutor also serving as the District of Connecticut U.S. Attorney, to conduct this investigation last May. What does Durham have to show for it? One low-level F.B.I. lawyer pleading guilty in August to doctoring an email in connection with an application for a wiretap. That’s it.
In contrast, 18 months into his investigation Robert Mueller had already convicted Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort of various crimes, and charged and secured guilty pleas from Michael Cohen, (✁4 room)
Why is it when we elect Republicans, the first thing they do is give a big tax cut to their donors, saying the country is in great shape, and by the time they leave, 90% of the country is Code Blue….
When researchers at pharmaceutical companies around the world started developing COVID-19 vaccines, experts reminded everyone to temper expectations.
Vaccines usually take years. The frontrunners were made using unproven technology, and there were dozens of ways things could go wrong.
The Food and Drug Administration said it would be fine with anything over 50 percent effective.
Then, last month, Pfizer announced that it had a vaccine, and it was 95 percent effective. Moderna did too. It was better news than anyone dared hope for. Stéphane Bancel, chief executive at Moderna, said he cried when he first heard the data. With the FDA’s blessing, which came in late Friday night, health care workers in the United States could start getting shots next week, less than a year after the first case of COVID-19 was documented in the country.
Scientists pulled off the impossible thing, and that’s worth celebrating. It is a remarkable, awe-inspiring achievement. I would say it’s miraculous, but calling it a miracle takes away from the work that went into making it possible — both over the past few months, and during the years of basic research on coronaviruses and gene-based vaccines.
We’re celebrating as much as we are because we need this vaccine to turn the tide of the pandemic. But there’s a sad backstory to this party. We only need this vaccine so desperately because the United States failed at doing the hard, basic public health work.
Providing contact tracing, ample testing, masks, gloves, and clear policies aren’t as exciting as the moonshot of a vaccine, but if the US government had done them well, the country wouldn’t have been so reliant on the impossible.
✁
Even though they did work, the development of these vaccines took nearly a year. In that year, hundreds of thousands of people in the US died.
President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation Monday night after amassing the electoral votes to secure his White House win, taking a harder line than he has in the past against the efforts by President Trump and his supporters to overturn the election.
“It’s a position so extreme, we’ve never seen it before — a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our Constitution,” Biden said in Wilmington, Del.
He also called for national unity, even as polls show voters remain deeply divided and many Republicans refuse to recognize Biden’s win.
Biden’s speech came hours after California and its 55 electoral votes put him over the top. Hawaii was the last state to complete the vote.
Trump had no public events but has continued to tweet grievances about the election, which he claimed Sunday is “under protest.” He abruptly announced via tweet Monday night that Attorney General William P. Barr will be departing the administration later this month.
Retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan announced Monday he’s leaving the Republican Party and becoming an Independent over his disgust with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election.
“…it became clear to me that I could no longer be associated with the Republican Party [and] that leadership does not stand up and say the process, the election is over,” Mitchell said during an exclusive interview with CNN Monday.
Mitchell said he voted for Trump in the 2020 election and is a conservative – voting with Republicans 95% of the time – but that Republicans “must stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations, not simply for raw political power.”
“This election simply confirms for me it’s about power first and that, frankly, is disgusting and demoralizing,” Mitchell said.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Ain’t nutin’ changed. And I don’t think President Biden will be any improvement. He has a long history of Gaffes.
As bad as “we” think we have it.. “we” also have short and selective memories. A good percentage of the world has to deal with COVID as well as.. wars.. hunger.. refugee camps.. genocide.. dictators..
And when we had worldwide wars, Americans rationed metal, meat, stockpiled paper and grease so it could be donated to the war effort, etc.
TODAY, many Americans (who think they’re “patriots”) aren’t willing to sacrifice ANYthing to help during a crisis. Not even the minor discomfort of wearing a face mask. They consider it an AFFRONT to have to sacrifice for their country. They think “freedom” means “no duties or responsibilities.” Like children.
If they had been around then, we’d probably have lost the war. Can you IMAGINE the reaction to rationing meat? They’d be screaming “WHO IS THE GOVERNMENT TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN EAT?” They’d hurt the soldiers for their own convenience, just like they’re hurting doctors and nurses for their own convenience now.
Et tu, Vlade? Putin Congratulates Biden After Electoral College Vote https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/world/europe/putin-biden-election-electoral-college.html
Yeah – my parents were children during the great depression and the Korean War. I lived through SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu and a couple of other epidemics. Covid’s got nothing on us. Which when you think about it may have made us tougher … but would have been nice to avoid.
A White House official who fell ill with Covid-19 in September is recovering after three months in the hospital, though he lost his right foot and lower leg in his battle against the virus, according to a friend.
Crede Bailey, the director of the White House security office, was the most severely ill among dozens of Covid-19 cases known to be connected to the White House. Bailey’s family has asked the White House not to publicize his condition, and President Donald Trump has never publicly acknowledged his illness.
Bailey’s friends have raised more than $30,000 for his rehabilitation through a GoFundMe account. The White House declined to say whether Trump has contributed to the effort.
“Crede beat COVID-19 but it came at a significant cost: his big toe on his left foot as well as his right foot and lower leg had to be amputated,” Dawn McCrobie, who organized the GoFundMe effort for Bailey, wrote Dec. 7.
✁
Crede Bailey, the director of the White House security office, was the most severely ill among dozens of Covid-19 cases known to be connected to the White House. Bailey’s family has asked the White House not to publicize his condition, and President Donald Trump has never publicly acknowledged his illness.
✁
Bailey’s office handles credentialing for access to the White House complex and works closely with the U.S. Secret Service on security measures. Bailey was known on the compound as a strong Trump supporter.
I will not belittle the pain and suffering of Covid-19, but as a student of history I will point out we have suffered FAR worse epidemics in our history(THANK GOD for modern medicine!!) look back a century ago to the flu outbreak in WWI. And as far a war on the USA by the President I only have to point to FDR, who was saved from being a disaster by the outbreak of WWII.
Kurtass almost 4 years ago
Day one, of the liberation from the trump cult. Everything is peachy.
admiree2 almost 4 years ago
Glass half empty or glass half full, Winslow? Don’t you just hate it when somebody interrupts a good wallowing in angst and self-pity?
Awareness and taking preventive measures in how we live may be the personal answers to individual survival. Nature struggles to keep a state of homeostasis. Currently it seems to be making a correction but the ones who continue to try to learn and change based on science may make it with minimal loss.
After years of warnings about the global effects of abusing the environment it is almost as if the “unseen force” has decided to clean house and do some remodeling. One consequence has been the majority realizing that good leadership is important so that we can stop being an obstacle.
Darsan54 Premium Member almost 4 years ago
Pointing out other years had higher misery indexes is fine, but it doesn’t mitigate or eliminate the suffering in this one.
I still want to out for coffee with friends again. (Yep, I’m aiming low, but it’s a sign that if we can do that, other, bigger, aspects of life will be returning).
Silly Season almost 4 years ago
(Updated Dec. 04, 2020)
President Donald Trump falsely labeled Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of him a “witch hunt.” It wasn’t.
If you want to see what a real political witch hunt looks like, just look to lame duck Attorney General slash personal fixer Bill Barr’s appointment this week of a special counsel meant to probe Joe Biden’s administration before it even begins.
While Barr’s order appointing Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham as special counsel is focused on any crimes connected to the opening of the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, you’re kidding yourself if you think it necessarily stops here.
As a reminder, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was appointed in August 1994 to investigate Clinton’s real estate dealings (“Whitewater”), well over a year before Clinton even met then White House intern Monica Lewinsky and we saw how that worked out.
Anything that Barr does should be viewed through the prism of politics, rather than the law. This is the guy who refused in September to criticize Donald Trump for repeatedly calling on his supporters to vote twice in the run up to the 2020 election and furthered Trump’s baseless claims that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud.
And Barr doesn’t seem to have any good-faith basis for making Durham a special counsel. Barr first tapped Durham, a career federal prosecutor also serving as the District of Connecticut U.S. Attorney, to conduct this investigation last May. What does Durham have to show for it? One low-level F.B.I. lawyer pleading guilty in August to doctoring an email in connection with an application for a wiretap. That’s it.
In contrast, 18 months into his investigation Robert Mueller had already convicted Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort of various crimes, and charged and secured guilty pleas from Michael Cohen, (✁4 room)
~
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-barr-just-set-a-time-bomb-for-president-biden-with-special-counsel-john-durham
feverjr Premium Member almost 4 years ago
Why is it when we elect Republicans, the first thing they do is give a big tax cut to their donors, saying the country is in great shape, and by the time they leave, 90% of the country is Code Blue….
Silly Season almost 4 years ago
When researchers at pharmaceutical companies around the world started developing COVID-19 vaccines, experts reminded everyone to temper expectations.
Vaccines usually take years. The frontrunners were made using unproven technology, and there were dozens of ways things could go wrong.
The Food and Drug Administration said it would be fine with anything over 50 percent effective.
Then, last month, Pfizer announced that it had a vaccine, and it was 95 percent effective. Moderna did too. It was better news than anyone dared hope for. Stéphane Bancel, chief executive at Moderna, said he cried when he first heard the data. With the FDA’s blessing, which came in late Friday night, health care workers in the United States could start getting shots next week, less than a year after the first case of COVID-19 was documented in the country.
Scientists pulled off the impossible thing, and that’s worth celebrating. It is a remarkable, awe-inspiring achievement. I would say it’s miraculous, but calling it a miracle takes away from the work that went into making it possible — both over the past few months, and during the years of basic research on coronaviruses and gene-based vaccines.
We’re celebrating as much as we are because we need this vaccine to turn the tide of the pandemic. But there’s a sad backstory to this party. We only need this vaccine so desperately because the United States failed at doing the hard, basic public health work.
Providing contact tracing, ample testing, masks, gloves, and clear policies aren’t as exciting as the moonshot of a vaccine, but if the US government had done them well, the country wouldn’t have been so reliant on the impossible.
✁
Even though they did work, the development of these vaccines took nearly a year. In that year, hundreds of thousands of people in the US died.
They didn’t have to.
~
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/12/22158376/covid-vaccine-pfizer-public-health-antivirus
RobinHood almost 4 years ago
Winslow is right, ZOZO is the worse, can’t stand that guy.
Silly Season almost 4 years ago
President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation Monday night after amassing the electoral votes to secure his White House win, taking a harder line than he has in the past against the efforts by President Trump and his supporters to overturn the election.
“It’s a position so extreme, we’ve never seen it before — a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our Constitution,” Biden said in Wilmington, Del.
He also called for national unity, even as polls show voters remain deeply divided and many Republicans refuse to recognize Biden’s win.
Biden’s speech came hours after California and its 55 electoral votes put him over the top. Hawaii was the last state to complete the vote.
Trump had no public events but has continued to tweet grievances about the election, which he claimed Sunday is “under protest.” He abruptly announced via tweet Monday night that Attorney General William P. Barr will be departing the administration later this month.
~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/14/biden-transition-electoral-college-live-updates/
Silly Season almost 4 years ago
The 1st word, says it all….
~
Retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan announced Monday he’s leaving the Republican Party and becoming an Independent over his disgust with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election.
“…it became clear to me that I could no longer be associated with the Republican Party [and] that leadership does not stand up and say the process, the election is over,” Mitchell said during an exclusive interview with CNN Monday.
Mitchell said he voted for Trump in the 2020 election and is a conservative – voting with Republicans 95% of the time – but that Republicans “must stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations, not simply for raw political power.”
“This election simply confirms for me it’s about power first and that, frankly, is disgusting and demoralizing,” Mitchell said.
~
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/michigan-republican-congressman-quits-party-over-trump-s-election-fraud-claims/ar-BB1bVyt7
timbob2313 Premium Member almost 4 years ago
Panel #2.-“There have been years with world wide wars and disease” So what is COVID 19 if not a world wide deadly pandemic?
mauser7 almost 4 years ago
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Ain’t nutin’ changed. And I don’t think President Biden will be any improvement. He has a long history of Gaffes.
dotbup almost 4 years ago
Quick recap for those trying to keep up with MAGA talking points:
November 4-7th: “The media doesn’t decide elections, the voters do!”
November 7- December 14th: “The voters don’t decide elections, the Electoral College does!”
December 14th: “The Electoral College doesn’t decide elections, Congress does!” (<<this is where we are now)
January 9th: “Congress doesn’t decide elections, the inauguration does!”
January 20th: “Inaugurations don’t decide elections!”
January 21st: Trump tweeting from Florida calling Biden the fake president and himself the real president.
followed by a phony “swearing-in” ceremony at Mar-a-Lago featuring a local traffic court judge.
Alberta Oil Premium Member almost 4 years ago
As bad as “we” think we have it.. “we” also have short and selective memories. A good percentage of the world has to deal with COVID as well as.. wars.. hunger.. refugee camps.. genocide.. dictators..
Ignatz Premium Member almost 4 years ago
And when we had worldwide wars, Americans rationed metal, meat, stockpiled paper and grease so it could be donated to the war effort, etc.
TODAY, many Americans (who think they’re “patriots”) aren’t willing to sacrifice ANYthing to help during a crisis. Not even the minor discomfort of wearing a face mask. They consider it an AFFRONT to have to sacrifice for their country. They think “freedom” means “no duties or responsibilities.” Like children.
If they had been around then, we’d probably have lost the war. Can you IMAGINE the reaction to rationing meat? They’d be screaming “WHO IS THE GOVERNMENT TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN EAT?” They’d hurt the soldiers for their own convenience, just like they’re hurting doctors and nurses for their own convenience now.
William Robbins Premium Member almost 4 years ago
Et tu, Vlade? Putin Congratulates Biden After Electoral College Vote https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/world/europe/putin-biden-election-electoral-college.html
Thinkingblade almost 4 years ago
Yeah – my parents were children during the great depression and the Korean War. I lived through SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu and a couple of other epidemics. Covid’s got nothing on us. Which when you think about it may have made us tougher … but would have been nice to avoid.
Silly Season almost 4 years ago
A White House official who fell ill with Covid-19 in September is recovering after three months in the hospital, though he lost his right foot and lower leg in his battle against the virus, according to a friend.
Crede Bailey, the director of the White House security office, was the most severely ill among dozens of Covid-19 cases known to be connected to the White House. Bailey’s family has asked the White House not to publicize his condition, and President Donald Trump has never publicly acknowledged his illness.
Bailey’s friends have raised more than $30,000 for his rehabilitation through a GoFundMe account. The White House declined to say whether Trump has contributed to the effort.
“Crede beat COVID-19 but it came at a significant cost: his big toe on his left foot as well as his right foot and lower leg had to be amputated,” Dawn McCrobie, who organized the GoFundMe effort for Bailey, wrote Dec. 7.
✁
Crede Bailey, the director of the White House security office, was the most severely ill among dozens of Covid-19 cases known to be connected to the White House. Bailey’s family has asked the White House not to publicize his condition, and President Donald Trump has never publicly acknowledged his illness.
✁
Bailey’s office handles credentialing for access to the White House complex and works closely with the U.S. Secret Service on security measures. Bailey was known on the compound as a strong Trump supporter.
~
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-14/white-house-official-recovers-from-severe-covid-19-friend-says
ferddo almost 4 years ago
We did have worldwide disease in 2020: it is called COVID-19. We also had a worldwide war: Trump against the world, including the U.S.
mauser7 almost 4 years ago
I will not belittle the pain and suffering of Covid-19, but as a student of history I will point out we have suffered FAR worse epidemics in our history(THANK GOD for modern medicine!!) look back a century ago to the flu outbreak in WWI. And as far a war on the USA by the President I only have to point to FDR, who was saved from being a disaster by the outbreak of WWII.