Impoverished Teachers Or The Rich Bitches Of Professional Sports?
Which side are you on? I have been an avid, if not rabid, sports fan since I was a little kid. Still am. It would be great to have sports back on a full scale.
But at what cost? How important is it really?
The NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL are all demanding daily testing, even when they are, as Amy Trask has coined it, “enbubbled”.
Not all the athletes are millionaires, many are not paid near that and are just trying to hang on and make a living for themselves and their families. That is a good thing. But even the common professional athlete makes many times more than a teacher.
Who is more important to society in the long run? The league personnel and athletes are getting tested and traced relentlessly in their bubbles and training camps because billionaire owners, TV platforms and gambling lobbyists demand it. They are tired of their gravy train being interrupted. An understandable thing if in their shoes. But 99.9% of the citizenry is not in their shoes.
Teachers and their schools are being ordered to open with nothing in place for their, or their students’, safety. How many teachers in Florida could be tested in Florida if the insane capacity being expended in the Magic Kingdom on the NBA were reallocated to a better benefit? How will that play out with that which is allocated to the NFL, MLB and NHL were reallocated across the country?
Where are the real priorities in a time of pandemic this country, and this world, has not seen in the last 100 years?
I want to reemphasize, would love for all the sports to be back. That would be wonderful. Especially when we all are sequestered unnaturally in our own homes.
But maybe teachers and their students….our children….and the future of all are more important than the current demand for sports.
The Covid danger is real, it is not a joke. It is not partisan politics. Here is a heartbreaking story. This man ran through my neighborhood to a win. The young and strong are in danger, not just the old and infirm.
Maybe, at least temporarily, our priorities ought change. Maybe LeBron James and Tom Brady should give their daily test to a teacher.
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
Talk radio shows in Boston have been covering this story for months.
My bet is that you will get 200 different answers to the question.
The great white virus is circling the boat.
Our children are the most important priority.
My own selfish interests are with the Sox. They have a scrimmage with the Blue Jays @ Fenway @ 7:30 on NESN tonight.
It will be a can of corn to watch
Bingo…
That “long ball” you just smashed was like a “Manny Lazer“ or “Big Pappy’s Bappy,”
shattering my truck‘s windshield traveling on 90 West@ 60 MPH.
I’ll be asleep for scrimmage.
The real “thing” is here and just like Jaws it has already consumed Alex and sadly with many more to come. 🤔
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_mechanics
…been off line for more than two [much needed] weeks and missed a LOT [oooof], it seems…
I’m guessing this has already been discussed here, but I’m wondering if this July 6 DOE order in Florida [http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19861/urlt/DOE-2020-EO-06.pdf] applies to only public [and charter] schools…I [stupidly] really don’t know how this works even in my state…can the state government order private and parochial schools to open? Or do these already privileged communities get to make these decisions for themselves?
Don’t know. And each state and territory has its own constitution and powers. Some are very broad, some not as much. It is an excellent question.
I would guess part of it is certifying that a non-public school counts toward an accredited education. A lot of the shutdowns this spring had to be accompanied by emergency waivers in state laws as far as attendance, testing, etc. A state that wanted to play hardball could most likely find requirements that aren’t being met and refuse to certify any of the kids in a noncomplying school for advancement. They might even put families at risk for not meeting mandatory education requirements, which can cause some ugly issues for kids and parents.
Generally, no, the feds could not order states to reopen schools closed by state authorities for public health reasons. But the feds have a political weapon – the power of the purse. And they don’t have to stop at withdrawing aid to schools; other federal aid could be yanked.
The question is how much federal aid is discretionary and whether know-nothing privateer Billionaire Betsy and Donald Trump are willing to take the heat for forcing states to reopen schools in the middle of a pandemic, on pain of losing federal grants. Who takes the blowback when Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths skyrocket a few weeks before the election?
If you’re a sociopath like Donald Trump, you don’t care, as long as there’s something in it for you. At least one Republican governor agrees. He just said, in effect, sure kids will get Covid when we reopen the schools. They’ll go home and then they’ll be fine, which proves Dr. Bandy X. Lee’s point that mental disease is as contagious as any other.
As bad as that is there were also reports that there is no real immunity imposed by exposure, whether it is due to mutations or separate strains is still being worked on. That means the “herd immunity” concept is not as valid as the GOP would have everyone believe and that means the reason to reopen is likewise bogus. McConnell’s attempts to get immunity from COVID litigation (actually ANY litigation) for businesses is the screaming proof that the GOP knows this idea is full of beans.
I think parents should keep their kids out until the schools can prove they are safe to attend, and that means testing (that DJT won’t pay for), contact tracing (ditto), money to tide everyone over (ditto) and an effective lower impact treatment (but that will cost people $$$ to line crony pockets). The GOP plan is to force everyone back (that’s why unemployment has been cut back) but to prevent liability for harming said employees for businesses that cut corners (like the meatpackers do).
Other Coronaviruses do not generate long periods of immunity. With the common cold, for example, the immunity seems to last about six months. But there’s an awful lot of work to do about all of this.
This has been reported on by Chris Martenson and Dr. John Campbell on their YouTube channels, but while extremely preliminary and not peer repeated or reviewed yet, it is interesting to correlate the role of T (memory) cells some appear to have gotten from prior coronavirus exposures including SARS-1 and MERS as well (not SARS-COV-2) and – possibly certain variants of the common cold (various coronaviruses).
As I barely understand it, T memory cells “tell” the B cells something is up and to create antibodies. Current vaccine development seems targeted at the B-cell antibody generation (which may not be long lasting) while this finding suggests perhaps the T memory cells (potentially decade+ lasting) might be a good avenue of research.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1.full.pdf
Plan A
1. Order schools to open for in-person classes
2. Order people to shop
3. Ride unleashed consumer confidence to victory!
Plan B
Something something Marxist Joe Biden something aims to destroy the suburbs using antifa and BLM.
—-
(These people are not Jedi.)
The State Constitution of Florida vines the local school boards the responsibility for opening “The state constitution, after all, empowers school boards, not the state education commissioner, to “operate, control and supervise” public schools.”: https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/07/07/can-florida-governor-force-schools-to-reopen.html
You could be forgiven if that was confusing given the EO issued by Florida State Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran. “Funny” aside, when DeSantis was recently questioned about this EO as if he issued it he was very quick to point out that he had not, but that Corcoran had.
It wasn’t this most recent press conference: https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1285585560493592576?s=20
Public HS teacher daughter’s school in STL MO suburbs is going 100% virtual. Apparently off the hook as HVAC system is crapped out with bond passed to fix – next year. Weak excuse, but with so many of our family with pre-existing conditions we will take it. Her girlfriend is a Charter HS teacher also in STL burbs is going back with 100% attendance, 25 kids in classroom. Sweet Jesus, the stupid.
Yeah. And HVACs are a huge problem, even when working properly. Charter schools have them too. Our daughter is grown, but she would not be going back to live school right now, K-12 or college, if she were not. Just no.
TRUMP TODAY
1] 5:28 PM · Jul 23, 2020
CANCELS [in-person] GOP CONVENTION [because: corona virus]
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1286412830225444871
BUT, ALSO
2] 5:38 PM · Jul 23, 2020 [10 minutes later]
PUSHES TO OPEN SCHOOLS [despite Corona virus]
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1286415327232954372
[Via Cheryl Rofer]:
https://twitter.com/julieingersoll/status/1286417218415333380
5:45 PM · Jul 23, 2020
Two private religion affiliated schools: Barron’s school will not be opening in person full time in the fall, and Ivanka’s children’s school hasn’t decided, yet.
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1286652364896776193
9:20 AM · Jul 24, 2020
links to:
As Trump Calls for Schools to Fully Reopen, His Son’s School Says It Will Not
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, the private school in the Maryland suburbs attended by Barron Trump, said it was considering either a hybrid part-time plan or going back to entirely online classes.
MLB coup?
Fauci to throw out the first pitch in DC.
Hope it’s not a soft ball.
Leadership matters?
I listened to Freddy Freeman, from the Braves yesterday. Very scary. His temp soared to over 104, burning up. It gradually went down but he prayed that he would wake up in the morning. Luckily, he did.
Our Republican Governor Charlies Baker is taking the right approach.
Go slow and be “balanced”
Freeman’s story is terrifying. Another reminder that things are not right yet. That is the duality though. I hated writing this post.
How is the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) doing in their bubble?
Likewise, the European leagues and sumo in Japan have shown some promise but these areas have effective procedures and tamped down the virus which the WH refuses to do. Mere hours after saying that mask wearing was “patriotic” DJT and many senior aides hobnobbed through a crowded fundraiser without masks.
KBO is doing just fine. They enforce their bubble by making sure the players all comply. They make the players all comply by making a positive test by any player the reason for dropping the team from the league for the season.
What’s interesting is that currently-suspended from MLB player Addison Russell (domestic violence), a star with the Cubs in recent years, is presently in quarantine in South Korea, having been signed by one of the KBO teams.
A while back a friend was talking about how we should have gone the Korea route with shutting everything down and strong enforcement and all. I told him it would never work because our two countries’ cultures are too different, especially when it comes to government imposing on individual liberties. The example I use is from my Army days. In the South Korean army, a sergeant who didn’t beat a recalcitrant, insubordinate or malingering soldier would be very likely to lose his stripes. Beatings to enforce discipline were expected. In the US army, well, we don’t go that route.
Cultural differences make a big difference.
BTW, KBO baseball is a lot of fun to watch. I have an ongoing rivalry in my house between the phone (Samsung) and the TV (LG). Neither one seems to want to win so far.
Our two newest TVs, including the big one, are LGs and they have been fantastic. Am not crazy that they always want to “update” via you know what, but they are fantastic products.
“shutting everything down and strong enforcement and all.”?
Well, that’s not an impression I’m getting from following media and friends from Korea.
Example:
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/PYH20200722120900013?section=safe/photo&main
Yes, *now* they’re forbidding concert venues of more than 5000 seats to open. Wow.
A few weeks ago, after a series of outbreaks, they managed to close bars and karaoke rooms in Seoul.
They’re still, again and again, having outbreaks fueled by “small meetings” by members of evangelical churches.
Most requests for changed behaviour are like “please refrain from”, not “it is forbidden by law”. And yes, there are quite a few people who just don’t comply.
I remember a picture of a sign in front of a park at cherry blossom time, asking people to stay outside.
Behind the sign, the park was packed with people.
Korea’s success in keeping Covid small seems to be in testing, tracing, believable messaging and agility, not Confucianism, draconian laws or total lockdowns.
They’re slowly crawling up to a number of 300 dead (total), and that keeps them on their toes.
And it seems that their health authorities can speak their mind without fear, a few days ago I saw them pronounce “It is probably unavoidable that the current infection control measures will have to stay in place for 1 to over 2 years.”
So Fauci threw out the first pitch for the Nationals. Then, Trump–coached by Mariano Rivera–is going to throw out a first pitch for the Yankees on August 15. I can’t believe he let Fauci go first. I’m guessing his pitch will somehow be “better” than Fauci’s.
I’m struck by the number of athletes who are balking or speaking out about their worries. The ones who are serious about maximizing performance were already in constant communication with health professionals pre-COVID, and they were already primed to avoid catching the flu and MRSA. Those guys know how this works.
There have been a number of statements about how they are worried about spreading the virus to their families, which is a key point that often gets lost in talk about individual risk.
And unfortunately, the issue of community spread is what tends to get lost in school reopening stories. Any parent can tell you how schoolkids are vectors, and while it’s bad enough that kids and teachers are being put at risk by these idiots and incompetents, that’s only a slice of the risk.
Exactly. Any parent knows.
I’m a parent.
I had my “shots” before I went to school.
Think “Rabies”
“Common Sense,” is what Trump “assaults” to exploit people.
Many oblige Trump’s tobacco commercial.
Thomas Reid would have none of this perversion of “Common Sense.”
All my friends are dead..
In person teaching is going to be like running into Chernobyl with a bucket of sand – just straight up out of the bunker over the razor wire and into the machine gun fire- and it presumes learning will occur. It won’t. Because of the failure to control the virus, there is a lost year and forcing in person will not only not fix things, it will hollow out teachers and para educators and bus drivers and lunch ladies and custodians and office staff and crossing guards and students and their families and friends. And day care and after school programs. And it was all avoidable.
We’re still watching used baseball- Panda hit three home runs, Angel Pagan two and Tim Lincecum was one hell of a great pitcher. It’s not the same, but it’ll do.
I’m still hoping that someone at ABC will heal a broken nation by pulling all the episodes of the Wide World of Sports from the cave and run a couple two three a week during prime time. Try and convince me that it wouldn’t be an immediate hit – because these times call for something bold Bold as a wide lapelled plaid sports coat, sideburns wide as a mile and so many sports from the silly to the dangerous and everything in between.
Korean baseball was running on ESPN, and MLB telecasts will start soon.
My father lost an entire year of school as a 10-year old because of the historic 1927 Mississippi River flood. The whole town was wiped out and spent more than that year rebuilding. Still, he became a physician (thanks, of course, to the Great Leveler–the GI Bill). These kids should stay home. The teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, too.
It does point to a question about whether “writing the year off” is a plan that would make sense. No school, no need to expose kids (however the vultures need to be paid off) and just reset next year after knuckling down to beat this now. If the sequence is that important the progression would still be maintained.
It is entirely possible this outcome will happen anyhow as restarts fail, but it may be better to do this as a planned process.
A guy I knew told me about his father, after the Long Beach earthquake, spending a second year in the same class, with the same teacher, in a tent, while the school was rebuilt. (They were doing the next grade’s work.) It looks like that’s what the virus is going to do to the schools all over the country.
Agree but they all should be paid
I’ve been watching our local district try to come up with plans for this year, and they are fighting a two-front battle. One is about the health issues, and the other is political.
Like a number of districts around here, they are planning on three different approaches (1) in-person education, with as much adherence to public health directives as possible (masks, social distancing, etc.); (2) hybrid of in-person and online, with students rotating into the buildings on different days for their in-person stuff; and (3) entirely online. They are trying to structure it so that parents have as much choice as possible, without pissing off the folks in Jefferson City.
From what I hear through the grapevine, the staff are assuming that at some point everything will end up entirely online once more. The only difference now is that folks have had time to rethink their teaching styles and lesson plans, and may be more prepared for the shift.
As Mrs Dr Peterr told me last night, when (not if) the first kid dies after in-person education, all bets are off on what happens next.
Meanwhile, Missouri’s governor is a complete head-in-the-sand conservative:
If you look at the science of it, those kids are going to go home, and spread it to their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and neighbors, who may take it to their workplaces before they know they’ve got it. And they *will* end up in the hospital, if not the cemetery. Their teachers are going to take it home, too, as are the rest of the staff.
I follow the nursing home stuff pretty closely, to keep tabs on some of my church members, my friends, and my own family members. I’ve seen more than one facility that appears to do everything right in terms of limiting visitors, checking symptoms, vigorous cleaning regimens, and testing, and yet cases come up – sometimes large clusters of them. Why Governor Parson thinks middle schoolers will be better at this than senior citizens is a mystery to me.
Imagine the trauma of being a child who brings the virus to a parent or grandparent who dies — what a burden.
And nowadays there are an awful lot of children who spend their after school hours with their grandparents because so many households have both parents working.
Good grief. The Governor (upper case as a noun — even if not proper, not a verb) seems to assume that the Covid Fairy alights upon Bobby or Becky, plucks the virus from a magic pouch, and infects just that one special boy or girl. And since it is a special magic virion, it can’t be passed to anyone else. And this “special” virus means that the lucky infected boy or girl will go home, get the sniffles for a couple of days, and then go back to school — immune for life.
Excuse me — be back in a few minutes — a rainbow just touched down in my neighbor’s front yard, next to his special mushrooms…
Yeargh, Parson is a pretty special piece of work, no?
It’s as if Missouri looked west at Kansas after they had 8 years of Sam Brownback and said “Hold my beer.”
Brownback, aside from being stupid and hypocritical, always seemed to have a look one would have after being told he needed a suppository.
People talk too frequently about leadership. Most of the time they are confusing leadership with good management. This pandemic points out in graphic fashion the lack of management ability and process at so many levels. Opening schools and opening the economy, including sports, are not mutually exclusive. In fact they have some similar characteristics requiring extremely detailed operational planning and operational skills along with the sustained discipline needed for ongoing application and adjustment. The time in quarantine should have been devoted to that management skill planning and development, e.g how do we specifically open schools. Teachers and school administration officials don’t currently have that management skill set. They have to be taught.
Attached is one template that could have been used. It is illustrative of what we are capable but chose to forego because our national “managers” – there are no leaders in any sense of the word – literally don’t know how to manage. Or in simplest military terms, if you are going to fight a war shouldn’t you know where the enemy is? Continual testing is the only way to know in a virus pandemic. If we are going to open up ourselves up to the enemy by opening the economy or sports or schools, shouldn’t there be a specific and required operational socializing process and discipline in place to minimize fatalities/virus transmission? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-white-house-coronavirus-response-went-wrong/613591/ The Marine Corps has a similar operational template called SMEAC for short – Situation, Mission, Execution specifics, Administrative support, Communication requirements. All marines use it. Nothing like these templates has been instituted and there are many more like them that could/should be used. I feel badly for kids and teachers and related families in the school openings. Trump wants his own charge of the light brigade. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.
Most public schools don’t even have the sufficient funding for pencils, paper and blackboard erasers. They could mostly pickup the skills to deal, but how can they execute without the money?
The budget for hand sanitizer alone will be massive.
And in rightwing dominated states, there’s this other sword hanging over everyone’s head. The state mandates a certain number of educational days per year, and a valid education day requires that a certain percentage of the kids are present at school on that day. If you don’t meet that percentage, you don’t get state money for that day.
Last spring, districts were granted waivers with the COVID-19 shutdowns. This year, how much do you want to bet that these waivers will be farther and fewer between? I can hear the voices from the state capitals now: “Nice school district you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it because you didn’t open with in-person education . . .”
Yes, exactly.
Peter Drucker said that leadership was overrated.
He said the definition of a leader is one who has followers. Management, as you point out, is essential.
You’re expecting Trmp to do things like actual leaders (and real businessmen) do. He’s never been either.
The “hybrid” plan for one of the DC suburbs entails a 28-student class: 14 kids in person, 14 kids online, all at the same time. The online kids simply tune into the classroom.
Additionally, It would seem that Barr could be using the resources he used at Lafayette Plaza, and is using in Portland, to protect Judges. But maybe he thinks that getting Don reelected is more important than protecting judges. At least up til someone has suffered because he didn’t protect them. Now his mouth opens, but the resources are still being wasted in Portland. That’s the Republican way, eh? “The Party of Death'”
Actually, the party of “Death Star”–we can only hope it goes as well for the GOP.
A friend of mine is a retired military officer. She’s been doing substitute teaching for years in several districts near her home. She recently went on Social Security, is still subbing (at least until schools shut down earlier this year), but is very aware of her demographic with regard to infection risks — and is not sure she wants to go back into the classrooms.
She’s been keeping a watch on what is happening in those districts and the magnitude of the planning and logistics required to achieve any degree of school opening is huge. Talking with one of her teacher friends last week, that teacher related that that the current plan (though still under development) would call for a three to five day immediate shut down if a student or any on-site personnel test positive.
When you walk the dog on this type of planning and do a little fault tree analysis, the uncertainties are many – and that means Risk. [ISO 31000 defines risk as the “effect of uncertainty on objectives”.] It should be no surprise that examination of Trump’s business ventures shows that he does not understand risk. I doubt if he really understands objectives beyond branding and popularity polls. Let’s say we allow him a choice of two different objectives; (a) get the schools open soon or (b) deliver the most effective education possible. The uncertainties for either course are significant, but the uncertainties inherent in objective (a) are magnitudes greater than for objective (b). The vast majority of school districts understand objective (b) – they deal with it every day.
I can’t think of a riskier course of action than Trump’s objective (a).
“It should be no surprise that examination of Trump’s business ventures shows that he does not understand risk.”
The First Law of the Casino is “the House always wins.” Let us ponder the fact that Trump went bankrupt running casinos. Repeatedly.
I would guess that Donald Trump does not understand most things. It takes a special kind of ignorance and self-obsession to create the impression that you are the dumbest f-g student an Ivy League professor has ever taught. (Someone normally sensitive about school funding and the need to accept “special” students who don’t really belong there.)
Trump’s ignorance is matched only by his stubbornness, viciousness, and his sociopathic disdain for consequences to anyone but himself.
Most people who did well on their College Board/SAT tests can remember their scores decades later and don’t feel a need to hide them (though they’re not going to tell everyone how well they did, either).
Perhaps Trump could give the kids an online tutorial in how to get someone else to do your homework and how to find someone to take your SATs. With a followup lecture on how to brag about how smart you are and what great schools you have attended.
It’s called white supremacist patriarchy combined with cash. Rather exclusive club.
An interesting article on just this topic, Bmaz.
“Players aren’t playing because they want to,” said Kypreos. “They’re playing because they have to.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sports-business-covid-19-nhl-hockey-fans-1.5656320
The comments following the article do not seem to be in support of the NHL doing this, quite interesting given how rabid Canadians are about hockey.
Isn’t it amazing that to the mass of Americans pro and college sports have proven (at this moment anyway) to be irrelevant. The absence of the great diversions (and I confess to be a former user of the sports opiate) that have fueled willful blindness has exposed the fascist reality. Now if we can get the Congress to defund ICE and the entirety of DHS maybe we have a fighting chance. At this moment we can draw a straight line from Joe McCarthy to William Buckley to Murray Chotner and Richard Nixon to Pat Buchanan to Ronald Reagan to George H W and George W Bush to Trumpty Dumpster. Let’s call a spade a shovel and call organized sports as they now exist an example of the legal slavery that has existed since it entered our political bloodstream in 1791. Keep the faith and pass the ammunition. Namaste patriots
It was Curt Flood who first publicly used the term to describe baseball and even after free agency we can that see that he and the Wobblies were (are) right.
Great piece bmaz.
Sorry to go OT. Crap is hitting the fan in Ohio- arrests going down:
https://apple.news/A-50SJcGtR1ymcDcJRLL_WQ
Sorry to post a reply. Edit would not work on my end.
Here’s a summary on Ohio:
Federal officials arrested Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others on Tuesday morning in connection with a $60 million bribery case.
U.S. Attorney David DeVillers’ office would not discuss details of the case, but a source involved in the investigation confirmed Householder’s arrest to The Cincinnati Enquirer of the USA TODAY Network.
Also arrested, according to the source: Neil Clark from Grant Street Consultants and once called by USA Today “one of the best connected lobbyists in Columbus”; former Ohio Republican Party chair and consultant Matthew Borges; Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group in Columbus; and Jeffrey Longstreth, adviser to Householder.
Saw that earlier. Quite a story.
This is a good Twitter source-
https://mobile.twitter.com/SharonCoolidge?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
501C4’s across the country need to be examined for political funds filtering.
Here are the docs:
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/21/ohio-bribery-case-read-documents-larry-householder-matt-borges/5480513002/
The $60 million figure really stands out. That is a Russia number — in the US, public officials typically get bought for a tiny fraction of that.
The reporter, Sharon Coolidge, tweets that the entity owned by Householder was using the money to advance its political goals, which makes me wonder if he just skimmed a share off the top and otherwise was the middleman for bribes to a lot of other Ohio politicians, or if it was just mostly by the book campaign spending.
She quotes the US Attorney saying they are knocking on a lot of doors, and I have to wonder if there will be more state house arrests.
More information. Reporter Colleen Marshall has a law degree which helps her to ask the right questions.
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/how-the-householder-indictment-came-about-what-may-be-next/
The Talking Points Memo recap has a delicious tidbit at the end.
As a Clevelander, at the time HB6 was in play, many understood a lot of money would be changing hands to get the deal done.
This report says he skimmed about $500K off the top, with about $60 million for sleazy lobbying tactics. That brings it all more in line with modern US graft, rather than a Sochi style graft job.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/07/21/ohio-house-speaker-four-others-arrested-amid-massive-dark-money-pay-to-play-allegations/
It seems like almost all of this stuff could have been achieved legally under our currently stretched to the limits laws. It isn’t clear to me why Householder and FirstEnergy wouldn’t have done a better job of preemptively lawyering up to avoid all of this.
RICO!!! ?
What, nobody going to mention what a traumatic loss it could be to the entire country’s collective sense of wonder, hope and well-being should nobody be able to watch Mike Trout perform baseball at its highest level for an entire season? Huge swaths of society doubtless would become listless, wandering in the wilderness, without sustenance or hope.
“Just a game” my ass, many would say.
Of course, the Angels still probably wouldn’t make the playoffs, meaning there still can be the hope for “next year”, so….
1. One issue not addressed here is child care for kids who used to go to school. For those who can work at home, this isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a huge problem for families of “essential workers”. For example, a medical worker who usually works an 8-hour shift suddenly is working 10 or 12 hours. Most schools offer after-care, so people on a normal shift could cope. Now the kids are not in school and the parent is working longer hours. How is that supposed to work?
2. I like sports too, and use them to hide from the daily news or any other problem. Suddenly we don’t have that. Suddenly 24-hr cable becomes a viable alternative to The Deficit Myth or In Search Of Lost Time. Suddenly the George Floyd protests become real. Maybe that’s not all bad. Jemele Hill made this point very explicitly in a recent interview.
If you really need a break from an episode of the madeleine, you could bake the real thing.
Turn your umbrella upside-down, when it rains . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svPiW06tu2U
Episode 1 Pennies From Heaven (the British Bob Hoskins’ version, not that awful Steve Martin drek)
While the Hoskins version is great (similar to The Singing Detective), don’t sell the Steve Martin-Bernadette Peters version short. Most people thought it a comedy, when it was, in fact, a satirical tragedy. As David Byrne says….some of you people just about missed it…
I recently watched the excellent French movie, Time Regained, which features the fabulous Catherine Deneuve, my first movie star crush, and the inimitable John Malkovich, who plays Baron Charlus with a hissing French accent; and a great cast of French actors. I single out Edith Scob as Orianne de Guermantes.
Your MMT is looking even better as they dump even more money into this economy. There probably is a lag time for this but the last four months inflation rates are well below last years average. As far as child care goes, it’s Warren’s current main idea and it makes eminent sense, if you want to get the moms and dads back to work child care is the vehicle. I think it always was.
MSN is finally getting around to covering the travails in Portland and seeing the real dangers posed by bullies in camo. WAPO covers it well this am.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/portland-moms-protests/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_moms-7am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
Hard not to admire these ladies.
One of my doctors has two kids under age 10. I learned yesterday that she is no longer with the clinic; child care was too onerous.
Last week, a friend who is a primary care doc said that her clinic just lost its director, who is also the parent of two teenagers. She (and her spouse) simply could not manage their kids’ online education + having to be physically in clinic most days. That physician will now be working with a ‘dial a doc’ service, from home, P/T, so that she can supervise teenagers.
One of my family members was laid off in June, and said it was a relief, because her 7 year old was spending far too much screen time. She can now get the kid out for walks, which is a mercy.
And then you’re told by the WH that Trmp gets tested “multiple times per day”, and you wonder who else is, and if that’s part of the reason they don’t want the rest of us to get *any*.
https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1285597515744784385
Multiple times a day ?! That’s a lot of swabs up your nose, might start to get a little sore after a while. Or does he take a saliva or blood test? If blood test, he might start showing needle tracks on his arm. If he develops an addiction to testing, he might need to be treated for that…
Or the blood vessels will develop problems. (Which can happen, if they hit the same place or close to it, every time.)
People in the MSM (and the rest of us) need to stop wasting time and patience speculating on the meaning what these chronic fantasists toss onto the daily midden of lies. It’s like reading entrails . . .
In light of his bragging about having “aced” a simple cognitive test, I had to laugh when trump was asked about multiple tests a day and answered, “I don’t know about more than one.”
It would be useful to the world and to American voters if journalists asked Trump why his doctors want him tested so often for dementia.
I may be late to the party on this, but a little repetition won’t hurt. Normally, I would say that Congressman Ted Yoho (R, FL 3rd – Gainesville) calling Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez a “f**king b***h” is the first thing that manly men from his part of the electoral world call women who are not sufficiently ladylike, that is, dim, demure and submissive. It would also normally be a go-to retort when the arrogant-and-slow lose a verbal sparring match with a smarter opponent, “d**khead” not being especially appropriate.
As sanctionable as that conduct is, it gets worse for Yoho. He has been in Congress four terms, he’s a licensed Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, he is not running for re-election, and he has consistently voted against funding for Planned Parenthood and disaster relief for Puerto Rico. That means his epithet was personal, as well as racist, aggressive, and misogynistic. He did it a day after a racist, misogynistic xenophobe attempted to murder a federal judge (and murdered her son). Yoho’s was an act of passive-aggressive performance art, telling his colleagues to keep up the good fight.
Yoho thinks he snuck in a freebie. He should be disappointed. His conduct should be promptly and officially rebuked. As with Trump and Den Hollander, when people tell you who they are, believe them the first time. And do something about it.
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1285572281486454785
Asked about why he is one of the few in Congress who doesn’t wear a mask, Yoho answered, because “herd immunity”.
In light of the science saying that herd immunity is unlikely, perhaps impossible, this veterinarian is apparently OK with getting and giving the virus for kicks, politics and hostility, all of which I agree might also factor into his exchange with AOC.
Not surprising for a cynic and authoritarian cult follower. Yoho is violating his most basic obligations as a public employee and member of Congress. He is also violating his obligations toward his profession, science, and public health (emphasis mine):
I would say Yoho is batting .000.
https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/avma-policies/veterinarians-oath
From South Florida Sun Sentinal: “About 17,000 of Florida’s roughly 287,800 cases have been people younger than 18. Of the 4,514 COVID-19 deaths reported by Florida as of Tuesday, four have been younger than 18. Palm Beach County’s health director warns of risk of long-term damage”
With headlines such as this how can anyone roll the dice on opening schools ? Schools are asking parents to supply paper, pencils, kleenex simple basic supplies every year. How are the schools going to cover the additional costs of retro fitting for the virus ? This is insanity.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-pbc-health-director-covid-children-20200714-xcdall2tsrd4riim2nwokvmsxm-story.html
And as much of a college and pro sports junkie as I may be, I am very uncomfortable with sending the gladiators out there for my entertainment, while I watch from my divan in front of the screen whilst my minions peel grapes for me and fan me with palm fronds.
OT #1: Yet another probable lie from Team Trump: apparently DJTJ turned down a big book deal to self publish his latest screed to save money for the RNC buying it up. Since when does any Trump turn down money?
OT #2: Rumors are flying that DJT will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.after he wished her well at the briefing today. Nice that he’s thinking of her and not her victims.
He apparently figures the sales (bulk and to individuals via who-knows-where) will provide him with a nice profit.
“I wish her well,” though. Donald Trump’s well wishes for Ghislaine Maxwell, from his press conference/campaign speech today.
If he’s being true to form – he rarely varies – Trump is signalling that he knows Ghislaine has an insurance policy that covers Donald, and that she has nothing to worry about. (A problem probably shared by scores of high-profile men, not all of whom have second homes on the Vineyard.) If Donald loses, he would have to issue a pre-emptive pardon – probably one of many – since her trial is not set to begin for a year.
Has a pre-emptive pardon ever been issued by any U.S. president in history?
Maybe he’s practicing what to say or do for his own pre-emptive pardon, which may be coming up soon-ish.
You mean other than the most famous presidential pardon in contemporary American history? On Sept. 8, 1974, Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon – to put “all this” behind us, to heal the nation’s wounds, and because public criticism was so vast a punishment that no further punishment was needed [for a white collar professional]. Ford issued his pardon before any prosecution had begun, making it pre-emptive. It reads, in pertinent part,
The dates correspond to Nixon’s tenure as president.
Well, yes, other than that. I was wondering about something similar to pardoning someone like Maxwell, who has already been indicted and held pending trial.
In the time period between August 9 (resignation) and September 8, 1974 (pardon by Ford), Nixon made a public statement about the “the anguish and regret” he had about “putting the nation through a national tragedy”. So at least there was that. I was wondering more about indicted people being pardoned before their trial.
There’s no legal impediment to when a president issues a pardon, or for what federal crimes. As to the person pardoned, it would be a valid pardon. The purpose for which a president issues a pardon, however, could and should subject him to criminal liability, in the event he does it to obstruct justice, hide his or others’ crimes, or to otherwise commit a crime against the United States. The argument has not been tested, however, because no other president has been this ignorant or willing to abuse his powers for private gain.
As for Maxwell, unless and until she’s found guilty and sentenced of a federal crime – which won’t happen before Trump should leave office in January 2021 – there is no sentence to commute. Trump’s only choice would be to pardon her. As for what happens then, to echo Rick Blaine, Trump never looks that far ahead. He stammers through one emergency at a time. One thing is sure: Ms. Maxwell’s life will never become less complicated.
A pardon doesn’t help DJT for the same reason pardoning Stone would not help: Maxwell would be free to sing about everyone.
However, that would expose too many powerful people, so a commutation would be better, but…she hasn’t been convicted yet much less sentenced. So, the options would seem be to pardon pre-trial, pray that a trial would result in a not-guilty outcome (double jeopardy) or commute the sentence after trial.
It would leave the “powerful people” still exposed, on the basis of what’s already public. That includes Trmp.
I should imagine many (figuratively gold, of course) bricks are being passed in anticipation of what might come out at trial, or even if there is a (unlikely?) guilty plea.
Many are the twitter pundits predicting an Epstein-like ending.
Given the dangerous information Maxwell undoubtedly has, she’ll need to look over her shoulder for a long time. Prince Andrew’s spokesperson says DJT’s dangling a pardon for silence, but I would suspect that once AG Barr extracts the information she knows in his “investigation” Maxwell will have some completely unforeseen unavoidable accident like Epstein did. She might be smart enough to say nothing until her trial starts.
I am also wondering why she was able to hide out for as long as she did in what appears to have been a safe house. If this were really hers from the get-go, the presence of a bunch of new, burly dudes with UK accents should have tipped someone off to her possibly being there.
So, if Ghislaine is really a distraction, what is she diverting attention away from? It seems very risky to put someone like her into the public eye where she might talk.
House was bought via an LLC, I understand, so her name/alias wouldn’t have appeared.
FYI, there are seals swimming in McCovey Cove right now as the Giants and the Oakland A’s play the Bay Bridge series.
No kayakers waiting for baseballs to come by?
There are several PJ, but tonight they are outnumbered by the seals.
The seals probably have better night vision.
AND, Alyssa Nakken, the first female coach on a Major League Baseball staff in league history, became the first woman to coach on the field during a major league game on Monday, and is coaching First Base again tonight.
The 49ers have the first woman coach in the NFL.
We welcome all of you Emptywheelers who wish to take refuge here in the Bay Area.
Let’s Rant!
Desantis, Ducey, Abbott, and the rest are going to take us all down. Their ‘let the fire burn’ approach has created a national backlog: results for tests in places that are (or were) doing fine are taking seven to ten days, thwarting contact tracing and containment. Those places include here, and I am pissed. There are many things to rage about, such as them killing their citizens with their disdain for life (and I am sorriest for that, for all affected, as you should know). But they are also wrecking things across the country — butterflies in France and all that. We shut down right after the NBA did; just ‘reopened’ a few weeks ago. Still haven’t even been able to get a vet appt. for shots for our dog. Hopefully, we’ll get basics accomplished before we have to get shutdown again (and maybe great mask compliance+ will spare some that outcome), but it’s like a race against time and spreading danger. These fucknuts are going to ruin everything for everyone.
Which brings me back to my thoughts on sports when you last posted about them (then, minus schools). While I intended them more broadly, I didn’t anticipate we’d have this much data in already pointing to how bad things could get, with sunbelt greed perturbing the NE/rustbelt’s efforts. And now we apparently have to wait until enough GOPers’ kids get the pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome for Trump, DeVos, and ilk to holster their threats/get better policy as to school openings in places they control.
So encore une fois:
We are not an island; good luck trying to create island effects within these United States with no national strategy.
Anything that starts in the fall will be aborted by tragedy, if not sense.
And:
In-person school is a COVID contact sport.
In an interview earlier tonight, Beto O’ Rourke called Gov. Abbott (among other things) the “leader of a Texas death cult”. Jonathan Chait (writing in the New Yorker) said the entire Republican party is “officially becoming a death cult”
https://youtu.be/qjhHVoNCRDo
And, like everybody else who watches YouTube clips, the mandatory first 5 seconds of commercials before they allow aborting of said commercial by the user is now starting to incessantly run aggressive Trump campaign ads. Since I only watched the mandatory first 5 seconds, I can’t report on the entire commercial, but it starts out with “If Joe Biden is elected, radical left mobs will overrun major cities unleashing a crime wave like we’ve…”
I guess that’s an example of “death-cult advertising”.
Hmm, sounds like they think they can radicalize people via yt ads or something.
As to TV ads, Philly market is inundated. They are on their third iteration of ‘Biden defunding the police’ hack jobs, this one with Grandma getting attacked as no one answers her 911 call over a burglar.
I have always called them a Doomsday Cult over their env and big oil policies. Guess Doomsday is here!
I would have to think they’re targeted ads as well. Except why target viewers of MSNBC and other progressive-oriented news clips? That’s where I’ve been seeing these ads in front of. Just to let us know that they’re very busy spending money on blanketing the internets with their fearmongering and “be very afraid” approach to reality? Anybody that finds DT to be “reassuring” has already lost their marbles and has no need for radicalization, IMO.
Yeah I’ve always wondered why they blanket MSNBC, and in certain markets no less, because it seems like they are burning cash. Dunno if they are trying to catch the non-primary viewer(s) in a household, scare-tamp some voters, or what. They’re more relentless this cycle on local news channel(s) where I _can_ readily imagine lots of mixed viewership (within households and dotted across the metro <– the latter such that blanketing would be a lot cheaper than microtargeting).
The whole idea of herd immunity rests on the assumption that exposure and successful defense against COVID-19 (meaning one lives) bestows the gift of immunity. It’s what the GOP is pushing (some more stupidly than others) without knowing it would work, just like DJT’s obsession with HCQ.
However, there are studies reported that call into question whether true herd immunity (like we were able to do for polio and smallpox) can be achieved. It looks like COVID-19 does behave like the flu family in an inconvenient way but more work needs to be done.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/could-covid-19-immunity-really-disappear-months/614377/
… and for some hope tied to T cells:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200716-the-people-with-hidden-protection-from-covid-19
Yeah, one group (one of those working on a hybrid antibody / T-cell model, possibly Oxford) was talking about doing challenge trials in the future. I’d like to see those results, though Godspeed to any volunteers. (Facultatively we will all be post-market “challenge volunteers” at some point… which, while harrowing, sounds sexier than the GOP vaccine-free trial of life we’re in now.)
[Found it, it was Oxford: AP via https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/oxford-university-coronavirus-vaccine-testing-results-early-testing-20200720.html ]
It’s really mindblowing to think – when that pause of reflection catches — what the hell did we get ourselves into this time ?
We are living a bright slice of geologic time, what would (otherwise) look in so many millennia like a bottleneck.
As our (MIA of late) friend Jockobadger would say, JHFC!
“challenge trials” reminded me of the German concert designed to test spread:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article244375897.html
I’m thinking perhaps, Rammstein or Nina Hagen might be suitable.
They’re probably more suitable, but let’s throw in the Scorpions and have All The Eras.
Which (topic of music) reminds me of your John Lewis tribute song (John Lewis’ Necessary Trouble): David Gilmour Big Island (as in Hawaii) sound. I liked it, nice job.
Thank you; I thought of the Scorps, also, but then decided Goth was more suitable than pop-metal.
And thanks for the song comment. My Canadian collaborator is a pro from the Toronto area, and plays the Hawaiian slide and upright bass – actually, he does everything but the rhythm guitar and vox. I recalled that Lewis quote and it fit the theme of stuff we are doing (30 songs so far in the “C19” series, another 5 in process), and when I put it to music …
Dead Kennedys, maybe? California Uber Alles!
Everything being done right now is for a purpose.
It’s to dismantle the public education system.
They want charter schools to replace brick and mortar.
Guaranteed public money and you can build a compliant society from the ground up if you control the education.
It’s why the Rebuplican governors are screaming to get the kids in school asap.
Once the images of dead kids and teachers hit the nightly news. Every parent across the nation will pull the children and place them into a computer chair.
Charter schools are no safer than public schools. The point is to undermine any socialized infrastructure, period.
DeVos is wholly on board with sending children to work. She doesn’t even care if they get education at all, so long as taxes don’t go to public schools.
Not sure how this works around the rest of the US, but here the charter schools take a census on October 5; funding for the entire school year is based on the census number for that date. Of course, by October 6, hundreds are kids are kicked out of charters, sent back to the public schools which are required to accept them. Happens every year.
That shit needs to die. Charter schools shouldn’t exist except in cases where public schools can’t take every student because of overcrowding, and overcrowding shouldn’t happen except in cases of catastrophe like hurricanes. Our children’s education shouldn’t be a profit center.
I fail to understand how private schools get a dime of taxpayer dollars for basic education, much less when public schools are chronically short of money to provide basic needs. Providing those often falls on the underpaid shoulders of teachers who care enough to give up part of what little they have to help their students succeed.
So-called charter schools are free riders. Children of white flight – aka, racism – they skim better students and reject any that might need extra resources or who, for whatever reason, might bring down their stats. Run as for-profit institutions, they claim privacy rights unavailable to public schools, and feel free to close up shop and skip town whenever the mood takes them.
If the average personal bankrupt can be made to work for years to repay undischargable obligations, a provider of for-profit education should be held equally and personally to account. Actually, they’ll be first in line when Betsy hands out corporate immunity for free cards.
I’m a nobody.
This nobody knows something.
Far UVC lighting (222nm) could put a dagger into the entire argument.
It’s real and it works.
Stop. It’s bullshit. You want to disinfect surfaces with UVC? Fine, they already do some disinfection of entire rooms and vehicles with UVC — but transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is most often by aerosolized transmission, less often by fomite (surfaces), and nobody is going to walk around with a goddamned UVC germicidal lamp wrapped around their mouth and nose to prevent contaminated exhalation if we can’t even get people to wear a goddamned fabric mask.
Don’t bring this shit back here until you can point to a working model in randomized clinical tests on human subjects.
Lol, Working on my patent drawing and application for a UVC miner’s hat rig.
This ought to be good. ~buying all the popcorn~
We gonna be rich, rich I tell ya!
They already have sharks with laser beams on their frickin’ heads. I have to think, from a patent-law perspective, that might make the UV headlamp thing “prior art”. Definitely obvious and not novel.
Might as well move right to production because it likely won’t be patentable.
What if bmaz combined the UV light thingee with the two-beers-over-the-ears-and-tubes-to-your-mouth hat? That takes two “prior art” items and combines them in a new and unheard-of manner.
Will the sharks’ ‘rona hats pairing laser beams on their frickin’ heads actually kill the sharks? Perhaps with the addition of Peterr’s suggested beer bong hat loaded with disinfectant to hit the virus, in a minute?
Because I think I could see marketing those to the MAGA crowd. Yeah. Offer to brand them Trump.
Last night national Geographic started a series about, I kid you not, Sharkano. There are sharks that live in underwater volcanoes off the coast of the Soloman Islands. They also glow in the dark. The thought is that they are attracted to the “magnetism caused by the magma”.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/04/sharks-underwater-volcano-sharkcano-kavachi/
I say, just strap a shark on your head. It can EAT all the Covid.
How’re you gonna get the shark strapped to your head with no arms?
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/far-uvc-light-safely-kills-airborne-coronaviruses
Columbia University called. They said your wrong.
Hey dude, I can read.
![](https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Excerpt_Columbia-UVC-Coronavirus_22JUL2020.jpg)
I’m absolutely certain that humans will stand in place and hold their breath while their exhaled aerosols hang in the air for EIGHT TO TWENTY-FIVE FUCKING MINUTES.
Also note a key word in that excerpt, ESTIMATED. They haven’t even gone as far as collecting data from clinical randomized trials of equipment. This is a preliminary stab at pre-development.
I am literally not holding my breath for this when there is other technology which is faster and makes more sense though it doesn’t eliminate risk to a level where masks are not needed.
Next time bring your study when you make your initial claim so we can save ourselves time.
A superbly satisfying reply, anticipated via coffee spew at that 812pm comment.
The clue phone has taken over the dial tone, and it has rung.
I just…~sigh~
You know what the fastest way to deal with getting rid of SARS-CoV-2 in aerosolized exhalations is? You do, you know.
Eight weeks of everybody wearing masks everywhere combined with modified stay-home order — nationwide — combined with banning all inbound travel from outside the U.S.
Faster than another study to test UVC(220nm) effectiveness and development of a preliminary light fixture and testing of the light fixture and tweaks to design and cost and solicitation for bids and arguing with Congress about funding and fighting anti-UVC protests and…
Masks and stay the fuck home for eight weeks, everywhere. Other countries proved it worked.
But no, I am going to fight back against nutty pie-in-the-sky studies which will result in sharks with UVC lamps on their frickin’ heads.
Simple, proven methods are too easy a solution, Rayne. Clearly, we must instead build a
rocketsubmarine to Mars, and charge for tickets to ride.I’ve regained my chill, but got really het up over the implications of heedlessly deploying what amounts to a broad-spectrum antibiotic on humans (and whoever else enters the rays’ path).
October surprise? Two-week mandatory stay-at-home order beginning right before Halloween. Any takers?
You sound pissed. That’s unfortunate. I used to idolize you guys. I came here daily to read your thoughtful comments. They helped me grow and learn as a individual.
Now I can see you sit on your ivory tower looking down at everyone.
Got it dude?
Btw
Heated air?
At first glance that doesn’t seem efficient at all.
You have been blowing bullshit and got called on it. Get over yourself.
There is a robot-uvc light too, but it seems to be designed for locations without people in them.
https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/asia-pacific/omron-launches-uvc-disinfection-robot-targeting-covid-19-virus.
According to the article from Columbia medical center “Far-UVC light cannot penetrate the tear layer of the eye or the outer dead-cell layer of skin and so it cannot reach or damage living cells in the body”
It seems like there are numerous things that could kill this virus but the risk of drinking, applying, or exposure would outweigh the rewards.
For those of us who aren’t scientists,
1. What exactly does far-UVC light do if it finds a way to reach living cells in the body?
2. Are there other ways than the “outer layer of dead skin” or the “tear layer of the eye” for Far-UVC light to enter the body? I’m thinking mouth,nose or cuts…
3. It sounds like the lights are designed for airborne droplets, if it does work and it is safe, would this limit it’s usefulness?
Read the study Blueride27 linked — it’s not long, not particularly deep.
The study is looking only at theory so far. They have no equipment they are testing yet, no design in place. They don’t even have data, have only guesstimated what this particular spectrum will do over a period of time.
Gonna’ point to Sarah Cooper’s How To Medical here because really, 12 weeks later, that’s where we are yet.
https://youtu.be/RxDKW75ueIU
My questions came from reading the study.
It gave me the creeps for reasons I didn’t really understand until Eureka spelled them out below.
Now I am imagining something potentially harmful being used (by this administration) as a cheap way to “cleanse” workers in poultry plants, or children in public schools in neighborhoods that can’t afford mitigation strategies and of course, immigrants.
From a scientist’s perspective, I can tell you one huge problem they’re not entertaining is that far UVC is an indiscriminate microbe killer on all surfaces it reaches (given time) — well they are talking that up, but not the potentially devastating downside. That means it c/would kill (some unknown fraction of) the commensal skin/eye surface colonies that live on all of us (and there’s a lot of viral-bacterial interplay there for balance that’s important as well, besides other microbes).
We’d then get (opportunistically) re-colonized by whatever we cross after leaving the light, or whatever is on adjacent clothed, skin (which could be/is quite different*), colonies would be rebalanced and selected based upon what survives the light (in other words rolling the evolutionary dice). Lots of our gene expression and other normal functioning are dependent upon our personal colonies… this could be a great disaster in the making, inviting opportunistic infections… NO THANKS to indiscriminate use in exposing persons (which is not currently done — the machines in use in e.g. hospitals are deployed in vacant settings as far as I know). As well, they note that their e.g. proposed overhead lights would need to be used in conjunction with masks, hand washing, etc., while, quote, being “potentially safe for human exposure.” Potentially.
I see no “microbiome” via CTRL-F at their papers, among whatever other concerns might exist.
Also, this is a type of “Franken-light” that we are not normally exposed to via the sun (to adapt the better-known “Frankenfoods” moniker here).
I’m getting more pissed off at the idea of humans being unconsentedly exposed to this shit the more I think about it. Someones, however, will make shit-tons of corona-panic cash long before we know anything about (long-term) safety from scientific studies, and any impacts on real people in real places from real exposures will be hard to prove in any case, because of all of the other toxicants in our daily lives.
—
*As a person who deals with gyms, I’m sure you’re quite familiar with e.g. MRSA, which occurs in localized ‘patches’ or spots/areas.
Two things
This virus has the ability to leave its victims with life long issues, the loss of even minimal long capacity to an athlete could take them out of elite status, or out of the big show completely.
Add that to everything else being discussed and it all seems a bit insane,
If the shit hits the fan
It could take a generation to rebuild these teams.
As for schools.
The people that can afford to will keep their kids home.
The teachers that can afford to will quit or retire.
All I can say about the demographics of the people that will show up for in person learning is “here we go again”
Steny Hoyer accepted Ted Yoho’s non-apology today (“I cannot apologize for my passion….”). He happily distracts from his boss’s non-position on a fracas that might have distracted from her agenda. https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1285965314832904193?cxt=HHwWgsC1gf-o1dgjAAAA
AOC, however, is made of sterner stuff: “I will not teach my nieces and young people watching that this is an apology, and what they should learn to accept.” She recounts the reasons. The esteemed Republican Congressman – in perfect imitation of his president and party’s routine conduct toward women, people of color, and the Democratic Party – fails to name Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and:
That’s the best Yoho could do and it was just fine with Steny. Much of the MSM, too, apparently. Let’s put it all behind us. If I were a cynical investor, I would go long on Look Forward, Not Back.
Steny Hoyer has no business accepting Yoho’s apology. This is the kind of high-handed white patriarchal bullshit which needs to end. Hoyer should have told Yoho he needed to demonstrate to the target of his offensive behavior that he was truly sorry or give up his seat on
Committee on Agriculture
— Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture
— Subcommittee on Livestock, Rural Development, and Credit
— Subcommittee on Nutrition
Committee on Foreign Affairs
— Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific
And quit putting this off on Pelosi. This is Hoyer being a white man, cutting out a minority woman, and possibly a senior woman at the same time. Yoho’s impending retirement makes it a perfect time for Hoyer to do the right thing and dress down a misogynistic white male bigot and make it clear this obnoxious behavior won’t be tolerated and will have a price under a Democratic majority.
Because Hoyer has now made it clear nasty little spoiled brats like Gaetz can get away with a half-assed sorry-not-sorry apology to another white man.
Goddamn it I will be sooooo glad when Hoyer is replaced by a more progressive Democrat.
We agree about the need to replace Mr. Hoyer. But it seems unlikely that Mr. Hoyer would publicly comment on the floor of the House about a potentially incendiary, high-profile matter, were his Speaker not in agreement. That does not seem typical of him or of the Speaker.
My take is that Mr. Hoyer is attempting, on behalf of his party and the House majority (but not on behalf of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez), to put all this behind us, and to take away a potential platform from a Young Turk.
To be honest, there is not a lot Hoyer or Pelosi can do. I think there was grounds to keep Yoho from speaking for a day on the House floor, but that’s about it. When Joe Wilson yelled his infamous “You Lie” line at Obama, a resolution with no teeth was passed by the House a little later, but it meant nothing to Wilson. Theoretically there could be an Ethics Committee referral, but that would go nowhere before Yoho retires at the end of the year.
Back in the days of Wayne Hays before the Elizabeth Ray scandal, the chair of the House Administration Committee could enforce discipline by shuttiing off the AC and turning off the water in a wayward member’s office, blocking his parking space and sending all of his interoffice mail to Rancho Cucamonga, but nowadays the chair doesn’t have that kind of control.
Mr. Hoyer had no obligation to accept or characterize Mr. Yoho’s statement as an apology. He could have responded as did AOC, saying that Yoho’s statement had none of the characteristics of an apology that young people should learn to give and accept. It even failed the corporate apology industry test of looking like an apology.
In fact, Yoho blamed his listeners for misinterpreting him, when his meaning was crystal clear. He declined to apologize with an arrogant appeal to false principle, saying that his passion, his God and his family made him do it. Yoho’s response was pure Trump, as was the theater of Hoyer’s acceptance.
Yes, he should not have accepted Yoho’s statement as a good faith apology. It obviously was a crock.
But he and Pelosi are stuck for now.
You could make an argument that the Democrats should have anticipated this back in November 2018 and made more serious plans for running the House the following January. I hope that kind of thinking is going on now.
We’re going to agree to disagree, earl. Hoyer would never do something other than what he did, even if he was the Speaker himself. He is never going to change his white patriarchal habits without an existential threat to his place in Congress, and I’m not even certain that would change him.
I don’t think you fully grasp exactly how impossible it is for women to ask old white men used to being top dogs to abase themselves in any way or to threaten other white men who help support their place in the pecking order of white patriarchy. But privilege has a way of blinding; have you considered at all that Pelosi let Hoyer handle this his way because she didn’t want a fucking shiv in her back?
I try to keep my eyesight by sometimes believing biographies that say Ms. Pelosi – entertaining and a mahvelous Rolodex aside – acquired her power by hard work and by taking it from old white men.
Or her constituents voted for her year after year, giving her seniority.
Hoyer shouldn’t have accepted Yoho’s apology, it was obviously a crock.
Having said that, he has no leverage over Yoho’s committee seats — standing House rules let the GOP determine those assignments.
But this raises a looming issue that Pelosi is going to have to address, since she controls the process for changing House rules.
The issue is that there is going to be at least one Q*A***n GOP member in the House next year. And she is going to need to be prepared to deal with all kinds of rule breaking. Jim Jordan is already making outreach and donations to their candidates, and it is fair to assume he and others will be there with support. What happens when they flout House rules? Can they be trusted with classified information?
Pelosi controls the process for changing House rules, and the point for implementing changes is when Congress begins its new session in January. She has to have a comprehensive package ready to roll on day one. There are going to need to be significant changes to the Ethics Committee as well — it’s essentially moribund, as shown by the lack of action on Duncan Hunter — and that is going to be unpopular with a lot of Dems, who are much happier with the lack of oversight.
Rounding up support for changes is going to involve a lot of work from the whole leadership team, including Hoyer and Clyburn, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the Speaker. No one else in the House has the authority to move rules to the floor for a vote but the Speaker. The only way around Pelosi would be a full fledged leadership challenge that removes her from the Speakership, and that would be a nightmare for the Democrats. Realistically, she has to be the one backing the changes. There is potentially going to be a host of issues hitting the floor, all the way up to horrible election issues, but this can’t be left for later.
A lot of shit is going to change if democracy manages to survive the election. Imagine a blue tsunami which makes the incoming 2019 frosh squad look like standing still. I am going to wait and see what happens before I hazard a guess about the rules under the next House.
All I can say is buckle up.
I truly hope the House leadership is doing a lot of contingency planning right now. They can’t know where we will be in November through January, but prepping for multiple possible scenarios is essential, including rounding up the lawyers and money for anything from a contested presidential election to states sending losing candidates to the House and insisting they be seated over rightful winners after ballots are fraudulently tossed.
We could have the House GOP carrying out civil disobedience in the chamber, attempts to get Trump-friendly judges to issue injunctions against House procedings…. There is a lot, but they need to game this stuff out.
I think you want this podcast: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/06/08/generals-speak-against-force-protestors
Jordan – and Gaetz – have been flouting House rules since this session started. The time to have done somethign was the first time or two they decided that those rules didn’t apply to *them*.
The rollout continues, which is why impeachment needs to happen again and now:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/22/1962974/-Trump-and-Barr-announce-federal-forces-are-going-into-additional-cities-over-objection-of-mayors
Impeachment, of anybody, will not even be discussed again, much less happen. People need to get that out of their heads.
Liked your question about How important were these sports teams. My opinion, to me, not important at all. However to the owners of these teams the t.v. stations, the sponsors, very very important because that is how they make money. they need to do the testing because without it the millionaire players won’t play. Now compared to teachers these sport team owners, politicians they don’t care about teachers, just look at how poorly they’re paid in the U.S.A. As to the children who will die without testing, they don’t vote so very few politicians give a rats ass. The more economically deprived children who die, the less money the government needs to spend. watching the increase in deaths, the lack of hospital beds in Texas. you really have to wonder how this can be happening in the richest country in the world
I just got over a bout with Covid 19. Mine was pretty mild, kept it out of my lungs. Glad I got it out of the way before winter. Winter is gonna be brutal.
Wow. Glad to hear mostly okay. Hope the winter does not change symptoms.
Glad you’re OK and that you describe your experience as mild-ish.
Yeah, winter… it’ll come real early if they really open schools to more-than-trivial in-person. We do not have the testing capacity already, and already are losing/have lost ability to contact trace because of delays…