Thursday, December 29, 2022
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Monday, December 26, 2022
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Pass the Social Security Fairness Act
https://mtstandard.com/opinion/letters/pass-the-social-security-fairness-act/article_756e0dd7-f494-51aa-b00e-d54d62534cf5.html#tracking-source=article-related-bottom
Re: HR82 in the House and S1302 in the Senate, known as the Social Security Fairness Act. I implore the Senate to make it happen. You have the month of December to make it happen. Please do it. Jan. 1 Republicans own the House and it will never happen. Pelosi will be out. Do it. $179 a month Social Security?! H.R.82 — 117th Congress (2021-2022) - Social Security Fairness Act of 2021 - This bill repeals provisions that reduce Social Security benefits for individuals who receive other benefits, such as a pension from a state or local government. The bill eliminates the government pension offset, which in various instances reduces Social Security benefits for spouses, widows, and widowers who also receive government pensions of their own. The bill also eliminates the windfall elimination provision, which in some instances reduces Social Security benefits for individuals who also receive a pension or disability benefit from an employer that did not withhold Social Security taxes. These changes are effective for benefits payable after December 2021.
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Monday, December 19, 2022
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Ellen DeGeneres has issued a statement regarding the death of her former talk show’s longtime DJ and co-executive producer, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, saying on Wednesday, "“I’m heartbroken. tWitch was pure love and light,” she wrote on Instagram. “He was my family, and I loved him with all my heart. I will miss him. Please send your love and support to Allison and his beautiful children - Weslie, Maddox, and Zaia.” If you or someone you know is in crisis, dial 988
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Saturday, December 10, 2022
International Anti-Corruption Day is observed on December 9 every year. It serves as a reminder for each of us to actively speak out and fight against corruption in our lives and the lives of others. The United Nations has declared this day to bring attention to the need to adopt an anti-corruption stance.
Friday, December 9, 2022
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Monday, November 7, 2022
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Sunday, October 23, 2022
From the journal Nature - 08 June 2021 - Arguments that the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China (It's crucially important to find out the origins of the pandemic in order to prevent it from happening again)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3
The WHO has yet to reveal the next phase of its investigation. But China has asked that the probe examine other countries. Such reticence, and the fact that China has withheld information in the past, has fuelled suspicions of a ‘lab leak’. For instance, Chinese government officials suppressed crucial public-health data at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scientists don’t have enough evidence about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to rule out the lab-leak hypothesis, or to prove the alternative — that the virus has a natural origin.
In theory, COVID-19 could have come from a lab in a few ways. Researchers might have collected SARS-CoV-2 from an animal and maintained it in their lab to study, or they might have created it by engineering coronavirus genomes. In these scenarios, a person in the lab might have then been accidentally or deliberately infected by the virus, and then spread it to others — sparking the pandemic.
One holds that it’s suspicious that, almost a year and a half into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative still hasn’t been found in an animal. Another suggests it is no coincidence that COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, where a top lab studying coronaviruses, the WIV, is located.
Some lab-leak proponents contend that the virus contains unusual features and genetic sequences signaling that it was engineered by humans. And some say that SARS-CoV-2 spreads among people so readily that it must have been created with that intention. Another argument suggests that SARS-CoV-2 might have derived from coronaviruses found in an unused mine where WIV researchers collected samples from bats between 2012 and 2015.
As for finding an intermediate host animal, researchers in China have tested more than 80,000 wild and domesticated animals; none have been positive for SARS-CoV-2. But this number is a tiny fraction of the animals in the country.
Another feature of SARS-CoV-2 that has drawn attention is a combination of nucleotides that underlie a segment of the furin cleavage site: CGG (these encode the amino acid arginine). A Medium article that speculates on a lab origin for SARS-CoV-2 quotes David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as saying that viruses don’t usually have that particular code for arginine, but humans often do — a “smoking gun”, hinting that researchers might have tampered with SARS-CoV-2’s genome.
China has not conceded to demands for a full lab investigation.
“We want an answer,” says Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. “But we may have to keep piecing bits of evidence together as weeks and months and years move forward.”
Nature 594, 313-315 (2021)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01529-3
Monday, October 17, 2022
Monday, October 10, 2022
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Monday, September 12, 2022
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Friday, September 9, 2022
Monday, September 5, 2022
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Monday, July 25, 2022
Thursday, July 21, 2022
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
The case of criminal charges against Trump - 1) the reason to do so is obvious; 2) the reason not to do so shows a lack of valor, honor and respect for the rule of law - No accountability? - I thought no one is above the law!
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-department-want-charge-trump-happen-rcna33042
Filing criminal charges against Trump in connection with his efforts to overturn the election “will very likely spark civil unrest, and maybe even civil war,” said Barbara McQuade, an NBC legal analyst and a former U.S. attorney. But, she said, “I think not charging is even worse, because not charging means you failed to hold someone criminally accountable who tried to subvert our democracy.”
Unlikely Heroes - Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty disorderly and disruptive conduct, and Jason Van Tatenhove, an ally of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes - admit that their beliefs were wrong and that Trump played a key role in the effort to undermine Democracy via influence on a violent mob - the January 6 insurrection
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Saturday, June 11, 2022
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Friday, May 27, 2022
Monday, May 23, 2022
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Monday, May 16, 2022
Monday, May 9, 2022
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Monday, April 25, 2022
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Friday, April 22, 2022
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Friday, March 25, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Monday, March 14, 2022
Monday, March 7, 2022
Thursday, March 3, 2022
Google's Efforts thus far to Help Ukraine and End Russia's Government Controlled Misinformation Campaign
https://news.sky.com/story/how-are-the-big-tech-companies-responding-to-the-invasion-of-ukraine-12555497
In a statement Google said: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine is both a tragedy and a humanitarian disaster in the making."
In Ukraine the company has updated its Search and Maps services to provide alerts to UN resources for people searching for refugee and asylum information.
Google said it had been taking action against "Russia-backed hacking and influence operations" for years and was continuing to automatically increase Google account security protections.
It said it was also providing protection against DDoS attacks for more than 100 Ukrainian websites, including local news services.
The company has blocked the YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe - including the UK, which is not covered by the European Union restrictions - and has banned RT from monetising its content on any of its advertising platforms.
In Russia, the company said most of its services would remain available, helping people there access global information and perspectives beyond those of state-controlled media.
Monday, February 28, 2022
Friday, February 25, 2022
The 113th U.S. Congress considered H.R. 281, but it did not pass because our government puts economic interests ahead of Chinese systematic murder of political dissidents for organ harvesting.
H.Res.281 - Expressing concern over persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience, in the People's Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their religious beliefs, and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.
113th Congress (2013-2014)
Friday, February 18, 2022
Due to widespread violations of anti-doping regulations, including an attempt to sabotage ongoing investigations by the manipulation of computer data, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2019 banned the Russian Federation from all major sporting events - including the Olympic Games - for four years. BUT Russia is still cheating the system. They exploited / abused 15-year-old Kamila Valieva who would have won gold without performance enhancing drugs. It would be ironic if it weren't tragic for her.
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Saturday, February 12, 2022
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Saturday, February 5, 2022
Thursday, February 3, 2022
Some call voting restrictions upheld by Supreme Court ‘Jim Crow 2.0.’ Here’s the ugly history behind that phrase. (WP, 2021)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/07/02/jim-crow-voting-restrictions-supreme-court/
By Gillian Brockell
July 2, 2021
When northern newspapers complained about Mississippi’s new state constitution in 1890, charging that new anti-fraud voting restrictions were meant to disenfranchise Black voters, a White state senator defended it, saying, “I deny that the educational test was intended to exclude Negroes from voting … That more Negroes would be excluded is true … but that is not our fault.”
By 1903, as the “Mississippi Plan” spread throughout the South, Mississippi Gov. James Vardaman was less discreet about it. “There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter,” he said. “Mississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the n----- from politics.”
More than a century later, the Supreme Court has upheld new voting restrictions in Arizona, after a lower court said the restrictions discriminated against minority voters. In a 6-to-3 opinion critics say is reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. acknowledged that these restrictions could have a disproportionate effect on 0.5 percent of Black, Latino and Native American voters. Though Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by 0.4 percentage point in Arizona and 0.3 points in Georgia, Alito argued that 0.5 percent of voters was too “small in absolute terms” to outweigh the state’s interests in protecting the vote from fraud.
The decision paves the way for other states that are considering — or have already passed — new voting restrictions in the wake of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. The rush of new laws have earned the moniker “Jim Crow 2.0” from voting rights activists. But what about Jim Crow 1.0? How did white supremacist lawmakers get around the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote, and later, the 19th Amendment, which should have secured the vote for Black women? Here’s a look at their legal and illegal methods.
Poll taxes
Nearly every Southern state instituted poll taxes during the Jim Crow era. In most states, the tax was “just” one or two dollars (the equivalent of about $30 to $60 today) — an amount easy enough for middle- and upper-class voters to pay, but much harder for the poor, then and now. The tax disproportionately excluded Black voters. Plus, a lot of these laws required the tax be paid well before voting day and to produce multiple receipts, extra steps that made voting even harder.
That was the case in Ocoee, Fla., in 1920, where a local White judge held training sessions for potential Black voters on how to pay the poll tax beforehand and prove it on Election Day.
Poll taxes were banned in 1964 at the federal level by the 24th Amendment, and at the state level by the Supreme Court in 1966.
Literacy tests
Laws requiring literacy tests were an even bigger challenge to overcome. Again, they disproportionately affected Black voters, many of whom were denied education while they were enslaved. And even if they could read, the laws were still rigged against them. In Mississippi, the county clerk would demand a passage to be read from the state constitution and then decide if the prospective voter passed. For Black voters, they would read dense, difficult sections; for White voters, easier ones.
That’s what happened to Fannie Lou Hamer in 1962, when she attempted to register to vote in Indianola, Miss. Hamer, 44 at the time, had only recently learned from organizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that Black people were even eligible to vote. The first two times she took the literacy test, she failed, prompting her to tell the clerk, “You’ll see me every 30 days till I pass.”
‘Grandfather’ clauses
Lawmakers argued that since poll taxes and literacy tests could also prevent White people from registering to vote, the laws were not racist. But by adding “grandfather” clauses, exempting anyone whose grandfather could vote from taxes and tests, poor or illiterate Whites had a way around the law.
The Supreme Court unanimously (with one abstention) struck down grandfather clauses in 1915, after Oklahoma officials who enforced it were prosecuted in federal court. Chief Justice Edward Douglass White said the clauses were “repugnant to the prohibitions of the 15th Amendment.”
Whites-only primaries
Because political parties were not government entities, their primaries did not have to abide by the 14th (equal protection) or 15th amendments, so in many counties and states, Southern Democrats held Whites-only primaries. Since White voters were overwhelmingly Southern Democrats, whoever won the primary was all but guaranteed to win the election.
A federal court struck down Whites-only primaries in Georgia, spurring Maceo Snipes, a Black man who had just returned from fighting in World War II, to cast a ballot in a Democratic primary on July 17, 1946. He was the only Black person in Taylor County, Ga., to do so.
That’s where the last method comes in.
Intimidation and violence
If White supremacists’ legal moves failed, there was always violence, and the threat of it, to keep Black voters from exercising their rights.
After the federal court decision in 1946, White politicians in Georgia had warned “wise Negroes will stay away from White folks’ ballot boxes.” Within days of Snipes voting in the primary, he was shot on his front porch by a White man. At the hospital, he was denied medical care because of his race and died of his injuries. The man who admitted to shooting him was acquitted.
And even though the county clerk said Hamer failed her literacy test, just her attempt to register in Mississippi in 1962 led to frightening retaliation. She was harassed by police on her way home, where her husband was fired from his job and she had to flee for her life. Someone fired 16 bullets into the house where she was staying; fortunately, no one was hurt.
Hamer persisted and passed her literacy test on the third attempt. Then she was told she still couldn’t vote until she could provide two poll tax receipts.
And in Ocoee in 1920, when Black men and women showed up to vote with their poll tax receipts, White residents retaliated, burning down Black homes and churches and chasing Black families out of town. One of the voters, July Perry, was lynched, and his mutilated body was strung up in front of the home of the White judge who had trained him. Nowadays, these “Jim Crow 1.0” methods have all been struck down or banned. And for decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prevented many local officials from imposing any other voting restrictions without first getting “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department. But the Supreme Court struck down the pre-clearance provision in 2013, arguing that it had worked so well it was no longer necessary. The decision by the Supreme Court further weakens the Voting Rights Act.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Sunday, January 9, 2022
Demagogue: That’s what Trump is, and it matters - By Eli Merritt
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-america-demagogue-trump-20201015-r7r42jdtpja7dkhxqr3nomkegu-story.html
If we have any hope of arresting our constitutional democracy’s descent into chaos and breakdown, we must first know exactly what struck us in the fateful year 2016. Today we are not at the end stage of our democracy. We are instead at an early crossroads where a full-blown demagogue ascended to the White House and could ascend again. Trump’s election to the presidency has exposed the single greatest vulnerability –– and most destructive force –– present in a democracy.
Aristotle breathlessly warned about it. So did Plato, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Edward Gibbon, Alexis de Tocqueville, the founders of the United States and Abraham Lincoln. These statesmen and political philosophers uniformly exhorted the guardians of democracy to beware demagogues. In their writings and speeches, they elaborate a golden rule of this free yet fragile form of government: that the citizens of a democracy must work together tirelessly, irrespective of political and party differences, to keep demagogues out of high office. So concerned was Aristotle about this destabilizing political personality type that he employed the term “demagogue” 29 times in his treatise “Politics,” sounding the alarm repeatedly on the baleful impact of “the intemperance of demagogues” on rational government.
In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founders referenced “demagogues” 21 times, frequently with respect to the dangers of a demagogue ascending to the presidency. George Mason of Virginia pronounced, rightly, that no worse evil can befall a democracy than “the mischievous influence of demagogues.”
For the same reason, Abraham Lincoln advised Americans in an 1838 speech, entitled “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions,” to unite fiercely behind one inexorable survival strategy of constitutional democracies: the exclusion of demagogues from elected office. When such a person gains traction in politics, Lincoln counseled, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.” Demagogues injure democracies in two potent, long-lasting ways. First, they foster division and distrust among the people instead of unity of purpose. Demagogues do this in order to gain and retain power for personal benefit, not for the benefit of the people.
Second, and far more dangerous to a democracy, a demagogue is temperamentally wired to run roughshod over everything we hold dear in our representative government: the Constitution, Bill of Rights, impartial courts, the rule of law, institutional norms, truth-telling, and, not least, free and fair elections followed by the peaceful transfer of power.
A demagogue is compulsively driven to obtain power and popularity at all costs. There is no higher godhead or object outside the self to obey. As a result, sacred democratic institutions become, for the demagogue, vexatious obstacles to be manipulated in the relentless quest for power and self-glory.
As Alexander Hamilton said in the Constitutional Convention, demagogues “hate the controul of the Genl. Government.” Every democratic tradition and institution that stands in their way, he and other political philosophers from across the ages scream at us to understand, eventually gets neutralized.
As ancient and modern political scientists attest, a democracy cannot long survive the corroding influence particularly of demagogues in the presidential chair. They break the faith, and over time, magnificent constitutional democracies like ours degenerate into all-out demagogic democracy. Then, in later stages of decay, the people, exhausted by tumultuous demagogic government, finally submit to the stabilizing influence of authoritarianism as the lesser of two evils.
The great paradox of democracy is that the people, who possess the power, sometimes vote demagogues into office who, once there, tear apart the very system of government that elected them, stripping the people of their power.
The best way to protect against this insidious peril is through the twin instruments of political courage in democracy’s gatekeepers and the awesome power of voting.
Most immediately, we must get Trump’s political diagnosis right. He is a demagogue –– and therefore a poison to democracy. Joe Biden is not. Voters must understand that clearly. The health, and possibly survival, of our democracy depends upon it.
Merritt is a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University, where he is researching the history and psychology of demagogues and writing a book entitled “Disunion Among Ourselves.”
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