Back To School-- Time For a COVID Surge due to Irrational Anti-Maskers

As the delta variant continues to spread nationwide, whether masks should be required in schools is a hot debate. Of course, while some parents argue that wearing masks presents a risk to their children, studies show otherwise. Research has found that masks significantly lower the spread of COVID-19. A study of an outbreak tracing back to a classroom backs this up. 

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study found that an unvaccinated teacher not only infected over a dozen students, but that the infection spread to siblings and parents as well. The study focused on a COVID-19 outbreak at an unnamed California elementary school and found that at least 22 students were infected with coronavirus by an unvaccinated teacher in May 2021.

"Students that were sitting in front of the classroom closer to the teacher were at higher risk, and we noticed that the infection in the students started to appear quite quickly right afterwards," Marin County public health epidemiologist Tracy Lam-Hine said. Lam-Hine is the lead author of the research paper.

According to Marin County Deputy Public Health Officer Dr Lisa Santora, the unvaccinated teacher took off their mask to read to children occasionally, even though the school required face coverings indoors. In addition to half her class being infected, six students in other grades and at least eight family members of the teacher’s students were infected. 

By the time the teacher learned she was positive two days later, the outbreak has already occurred, The Washington Post reported.  “The mask was off only momentarily, not an entire day or hours. We want to make the point that this is not the teacher’s fault — everyone lets their guard down — but the thing is delta takes advantage of slippage from any kind of protective measures,” Tracy Lam-Hine, an epidemiologist for the county, said in an interview.

The report noted that the outbreak could have been worse had Marin County’s vaccination rate been lower.  At the time of the outbreak, 72% of eligible people had been fully vaccinated in the city where the school is located. 

About 200 out of 6,000 school staff members in the school district are unvaccinated.  While school staff must wear masks indoors and get tested at least once a week, vaccines are not mandated. The study on the outbreak might change these things.   Research from CDC simulation projects found that without masking or testing, more than 75% of children could be infected within three months.

“Evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that multi-layer prevention strategies – such as vaccination for all children and adults who are eligible; masks for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors; ventilation; cohorting; physical distancing; and screening testing – work to prevent the spread of COVID in schools,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said at a press briefing on Friday.

Alongside the study, the CDC also released a report on how Los Angeles County schools had reduced cases among students below the rate of community transmission by implementing mask and vaccine mandates.  “This is not a story about a teacher and her class,” Lam-Hine said. “It’s about the need for all of us to be super vigilant.”

 

Brit Tours Places With Rude Names in Honor of His Friend

A man touring places with rude names in the UK on a moped finally arrived at his final destination of Bell End.  Paul Taylor, from Wantage, Oxfordshire, raised more than £20,000 for the Institute of Cancer Research during his trip, which started in Shitterton, Dorset, in memory of his friend Alexis who died of cancer.

He reached Twatt in Orkney on Wednesday but broke down near Cairn O'Mount in Aberdeenshire, and had to finish his challenge by Uber.  "It's been an adventure," he told the BBC.

After his friend died, Taylor said he wanted to do something "to help beat this awful disease" and believed his "Moronic Moped Marathon" was "a suitably ridiculous place to start".

His journey began on August 18 and saw him take in Booze in the Yorkshire Dales, Brawl in the Highlands, and Cockpole Green in Berkshire.  Street names on his itinerary included The Knob in King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, Butthole Lane in Shepshed, Leicestershire, and Titty Ho in Raunds, Northamptonshire.  Before his moped broke down, Taylor's Slovenian Tomos XL45 Classic had a top speed of 28mph.

Locations on the Moronic Moped Marathon included:

• Ass Hill, Wimborne, Dorset
• Sandyballs holiday village, New Forest
• Pishill, Oxfordshire
• Titty Ho, Raunds, Northamptonshire
• Willey, Warwickshire
• Penistone, South Yorkshire
• Upperthong, West Yorkshire
• Cockfield, County Durham
• Ogle, Northumberland
• Cockermouth, Cumbria
• Clitheroe, Lancashire
• Bell End, Worcestershire

After completing the challenge, Taylor said: "I'm pleased to be going back to see my wife and my dogs.  When you have a mission or purpose you keep going… and then when you stop you realize how tired you are.

"I'm tired and happy and reflective on what happened and how crazy it all was. Obviously this is a different period of my life that will probably never be repeated again.  Everything goes back to normal now, it's obviously quite a mad time."

However, Mr Taylor said he was considering a "Version 2.0" of his journey in the future, this time traveling west to east.  "You couldn't squeeze all the silliness in one expedition," he said.

 

Amiright?

Urban Highways That Deserve to Die

The latest edition of the latest Freeways Without Futures report, assembled semiannually by the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), calls out North America’s 10 most ill-advised urban highways. These are the roadways urbanists love to hate: They isolate neighborhoods, subject residents to increased air and noise pollution, pummel property values, and sponge up resources that could be better used elsewhere. In an effort to speed their demise, every few years CNU gathers transportation and design experts to single out the worst offenders, ranking the freeways most ripe for removal based on alternative designs, traffic conditions, community and political support, and other factors.

San Francisco’s 1991 Embarcadero demolition is the poster child for this movement: Previously home to an elevated freeway, the site now features a walkable boulevard with shops and waterfront access. More recently, Seattle is currently aiming to pull off a similar transformation by removing its elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct for a street-level boulevard and waterfront space.

Interstate 980 in Oakland divides the new glass skyscrapers of the city’s Uptown neighborhood, from West Oakland, a “food desert” where two-thirds of residents live below the poverty line.  West Oakland residents should be able to benefit from the growing number of amenities available in Uptown, since they technically live in walking distance. But crossing the 560-foot-wide interstate and two frontage roads is a daunting task.  Its 18 lanes are excessive for current traffic loads (it’s at 53 percent of capacity), and plans to replace it with a surface boulevard have been around for years. But there’s fresh energy behind the idea these days, thanks to support from Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. A reworked design promoted by the nonprofit ConnectOAKLAND would shrink the road by 75 percent, gaining as many as 15 cross streets and reclaiming land that could be put toward affordable housing.

Ed Sheeran - Bad Habits

Ron DeSantis Would Be the Coutry's Laughingstock if His State Wasn't So Deadly

Laughably, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said this week that  President Biden should follow his state’s lead, even as Florida experiences record-breaking cases, deaths and hospitalizations.  In a Wednesday interview, DeSantis unsuccessfully defended his COVID response, saying Florida is seeing “great success” in treating COVID patients with monoclonal antibodies,

Meanwhile, reality prevails.  Florida recorded 901 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the single highest single-day increase in deaths in the state since the pandemic began, according to the Miami Herald's calculation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.  Florida is experiencing its  worst surge in COVID-19 cases EVER, with the state recording more than 150,000 cases in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data.  More than 26,000 new cases were reported Wednesday, a one-day record.

As the death toll from COVID-19 increases, morgues are struggling to keep pace, with AdventHealth - a non-profit healthcare system in central Florida - renting refrigerators to store dead bodies.  Hospitals are also close to a breaking point in the state. Around 95% of Intensive Care Unit beds are in use across 262 hospitals, with 55.3% taken up by COVID-19 patients, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. On Monday, 75 doctors walked out on their jobs to protest against a surge in unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.

The state has struggled to manage the more contagious and deadly Delta variant, as Ron "DeathSentence" has for weeks resisted mask and vaccine mandates.  On July 31, DeSantis issued an executive order banning schools from imposing mask mandates, and threatened to withdraw funding if they do. Many school districts, however, have defied DeSantis' ban.

The state has recorded at least three million COVID-19 cases and more than 42,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to JHU.

 

Coronavirus Art - Worthing, England

Congressmen Interfere With Frenzied Kabul Evacuation for Political Stunt

Two members of Congress made an unauthorized whirlwind trip to Kabul early Tuesday, leaving less than 24 hours later on a flight used for evacuating U.S. citizens and vulnerable Afghans.

The rogue visit by Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) served as a distraction for military and civilian staffers attempting to carry out frenzied rescue efforts, according to Washington Post sources.  The cloak-and-dagger trip infuriated officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, where diplomats, military officers and civil servants are working around-the-clock shifts in Washington and at the Kabul airport to evacuate thousands of people from the country every day.

“It’s as moronic as it is selfish,” said a senior administration official. “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans — while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk — so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”

U.S. officials in Kabul are racing to rush U.S. citizens and allies out of the country in a dire security environment. The threat of a terrorist attack on the airport by the Islamic State is “real” and “acute,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned.  U.S. officials in Afghanistan are also under pressure to meet President Biden’s stated Aug. 31 deadline to accommodate tens of thousands of Americans, Afghans and others seeking to leave. The Taliban has vowed to impose “consequences” if U.S. operations extend beyond that date.

Officials expressed disgust at having to divert resources and accommodate grandstanding members of Congress while racing to get evacuees out of the country. “It’s one of the most irresponsible things I’ve heard a lawmaker do,” said one diplomat. “It absolutely deserves admonishment.”

The two lawmakers began their journey to Kabul via a commercial flight to the United Arab Emirates, paying for the tickets using their own funds. From there they figured out a way onto an empty military flight going into Kabul. They landed at Hamid Karzai International Airport around 4 a.m. Washington time, according to a person familiar with their travel.  It was unclear how the pair had initially planned to get out of the country.

Moulton spokesperson Tim Biba said the lawmakers pledged to leave only on a plane with at least three empty seats — their way of ensuring that the flight they took out had extra capacity. When they boarded to return home about 2:30 a.m. Kabul time, he said, they sat in seats designated for crew members.

In a statement, Moulton and Meijer cited their military experience when explaining why they chose to make the trip.  “America has a moral obligation to our citizens and loyal allies, and we wanted to make sure that obligation is being kept,” they said. “As members of Congress we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch. There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more. We conducted this visit in secret to minimize the risk to the people on the ground.”

What a bunch of crap-- they conducted the trip in secret to avoid public rebuke and the possibility that the Administration would shut down their silly stunt.  Whatever the real goal of the trip was, it's now been overshadowed by outrage over their recklessness.  

Foot Loose and Mystery-Free

A British doctor has offered an explanation on why severed feet still inside theri shoes keep washing up on the shores of the Salish Sea between Canada and the U.S.  In a video by Dr Karan Raj that has been viewed more than 600,000 times, the expert theorizes about the strange and rather gruesome phenomenon that has now happened 21 times since 2007.

As you might have already guessed this theory involves corpses of people that have either died at sea, been dumped in the ocean or washed out from whether they died.  According to Raj, their feet become severed from their legs after scavengers in the waters set upon the flesh however these creatures only take a few bits and pieces from the body. 

“When a human corpse falls to the ocean floor, it’s quickly set upon by scavengers. These scavengers are lazy feeders and prefer to eat the softer parts of our bodies first.  Some of the softest parts of us are the soft tissues and ligaments around our ankles. When scavengers chow down on this the foot will detach easily from the body,” said Raj.

However, this doesn’t really explain why the shoes remain on the feel. Raj believes that this is down to the way show manufactures, especially those that make trainers have changed the way they make their products.  He adds: “Over the last few decades, shoes have become more buoyant. As a result, we could be seeing more severed feet on our shores.”

This grim occurrence was recently ruled out as foul play by the British Colombia Coroners service who in December 2017 determined that the feet had likely come from people who had died in accidents or had taken their own lives.  The most recent discovery of this kind was in January 2019, when a boot and DNA belonging to Antonio Neill were found on Jetty Island in Everett, Washington. Neill had been missing since December 2016.

 

Truth in the Arts

The Hypocrisy and Incompetence of Texas Governor Abbot Laid Bare

 Abbott has repeatedly defended his ban on local mask mandates by using the same phrase:  “We’re past the time of government mandates, we’re into the time of personal responsibility.”

After Texas Governor Greg Abbott tested positive for COVID this week, the Houston Chronicle wrote a shockingly direct editorial, asking all Texans:  "How can Abbott protect Texas from COVID when he can't protect himself?”  Abbott continually argued against mask mandates, saying that it was time for personal responsibility.

The editorial take-down wasted no time on that issue:

Personal responsibility, apparently, is for the little people.  The powerful have Regeneron cocktails at the ready. The powerful have good health insurance and doctors who make house calls.  The powerful can quarantine in the comforts of a taxpayer-funded mansion in downtown Austin.

That’s one takeaway from the announcement Tuesday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has COVID-19 — the very day after he tweeted about his appearance at “another standing room only event in Collin County” attended by an estimated 600 people. How can we trust the governor to protect Texas from this raging pandemic when he won’t even protect himself — or, for that matter, his supporters?

What happened to the worn-out phrase he regurgitates every time he defends his callous ban on local mask requirements: “We’re past the time of government mandates, we’re into the time of personal responsibility.”

If a man elected to lead nearly 30 million Texans can’t be trusted to act responsibly, how can he effectively persuade others?

We’re not just talking about the upper-income folks who attend Republican gubernatorial fundraisers.  We’re talking about the millions of children returning to school who can’t be vaccinated. We’re talking about the rural Texans who must travel an hour to a hospital, only to find there are no beds available. We’re talking about the multitudes of Texans who have no health insurance and no relationship with a trusted doctor who can inform them about vaccines.

Texans are watching you, governor. What are you showing them?  Not a champion of personal freedom. Only a mascot of incompetence.  An elected chief executive who is now contagious and home-bound because he refused to follow his own advice to the little people.

A governor who not only refuses to lead an effective campaign urging Texans to protect themselves and their communities, but actively threatens to punish and sue local leaders who try to impose safety requirements such as mask-wearing.

The editorial continued its criticism of the Governor for getting special treatment as he disregards everyone else in his state.  Let's hope Texans are listening.

 

Visa and Mastercard Are Now the Rulers of the Internet

The decision by the creator platform OnlyFans to soon stop hosting a wide swath of sexually explicit content is sending shockwaves through the internet.

OnlyFans, a website with 130 million users and more than 2 million content creators, has become synonymous with pornography. For many, performing on the app is a lifeline: Some who lost their jobs during the pandemic turned to sharing explicit videos of themselves on OnlyFans to help pay the bills. Many of these sex workers are now expressing outrage at what they view as OnlyFans's betrayal of a community that enabled the platform's massive success. 

 

Venture capital firms are often wary of investing in platforms that host adult content. According to internal documents obtained by Axios, OnlyFans' popularity and revenue both exploded during the pandemic, yet it has struggled to secure outside investment. 

 

OnlyFans' decision is also a result of a much wider and concerted crackdown in recent years across explicit parts of the internet, one driven largely by a group of powerful and increasingly assertive companies: The payment processors who, behind the scenes, handle every swipe of your credit card whether you're paying for gas, buying groceries or tipping a performer on OnlyFans. In its announcement this week, OnlyFans said its decision was driven with a view toward building a sustainable platform for the long term. "These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers," it added.  OnlyFans' decision to attribute its policy change to payment companies reflects how the financial sector has increasingly leaned against sites that share adult content. But the issue, they say, is not one of mere prudishness, but legal exposure.

 

Credit card companies are growing increasingly conscious of their own potential legal exposure if they are accused of facilitating sex trafficking or the spread of child sexual abuse material.  Last December, Discover, Mastercard and Visa all announced that they would suspend payments to Pornhub, one of the web's largest porn sites, following allegations that the site had hosted child sexual abuse material. In response, Pornhub scrubbed its site of all videos that weren't produced by verified partners and implemented a verification program that all users would need to undergo if they wanted to post adult content. Though Visa later agreed to restore service to some adult sites owned by Pornhub's parent, MindGeek, Pornhub itself remains cut off from credit card processors; the platform still only accepts payment by direct bank transfer and cryptocurrency. 

 

The financial industry's muscle-flexing has drawn criticism from digital rights advocates who argue it's throwing its weight around. "Visa and Mastercard, acting together, are currently a choke-point for online payments," wrote the digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This means that every arbitrary policy of these two companies can translate into rules that all websites who want to process payments must follow." 

 

"The real villains here are the payment processors, the silent shadowy blacklisting cabal that dictates the kind of moral behavior we're allowed to engage in, who, without any sort of oversight, can wipe any company they wish out of existence," tweeted one San Francisco-based OnlyFans creator who goes by @Aella_Girl.  

Payment processors are well within their rights to determine what transactions they will and won't support on their networks. In that respect, they are not that different from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, who are massively powerful in their own right, said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia studying online content moderation and who also helps lead the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a group that advocates against non-consensual porn.  "Payment processors have considerable power over sites like OnlyFans and Pornhub," she added. "They're private companies. But should we be worried about the kind of power they have?"

 

Lizzo and Cardi B - Rumors

Media: Please Stop Second-guessing the Withdrawal and Focus on Getting Americans Out

President Joe Biden’s national address following the fall of Kabul to Taliban forces drew mixed reactions in the media sphere, with many continuing to criticize the pullout and calling for the Biden administration to own its inability to remove greater numbers of Afghanis out of the country before it fell.

The president told the American people that he stood “squarely” behind his decision to remove combat troops from the country by the end of August, continuing the military withdrawal started by Donald Trump--and he defended that decision as the morally right thing to do with no guarantee of achieving a better outcome if troops remained for years or decades.  "I am President of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me. I'm deeply saddened by the facts we now face. But I do not regret my decision to end America's war fighting in Afghanistan,” he said. 

After he spoke, media pundits came out in force and argued he did not accept responsibility.  But isn't “the buck stops here” the ultimate expression of a president owning his actions?  They said he did not explain how we could be in the situation we are in.  But what they really mean is that he did not give the explanation they wanted.

We all feel bad for the Afghani people-- but if the Afghan police and security forces won't stand up and fight the Taliban after 20 years of training and support, will they ever?  U.S. military trainers have described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters.  Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans agree that ending U.S. involvement in the war was in our best interest. But of all media outlets, MSNBC has been particularly vitriolic, featuring an endless string of news segments critical of Biden's decision to get out throughout its daily coverage.  Even three days following the chaotic withdrawal, MSNBC news anchors keep featuring segments highlighting the reaction of U.S. veterans to the pullout.  Sure, veterans are probably not happy with the withdrawal-- that shouldn't come as a surprise.  But why does MSNBC continue to treat that aspect of the story as news?  It seems as if MSNBC is attempting to drive the news instead of just reporting on it . . . and surely, they wouldn't be flogging the story for ratings purposes, would they?

MSNBC's Nicole Wallace put it best on her show earlier in the week, when she first reported on Biden's speech: “Ninety-five per cent of the American people will agree with everything he just said . . . [and] Ninety-five per cent of the press covering this White House will disagree. And for an American president to finally be completely aligned with such an overwhelming majority of what the American people think about Afghanistan is probably a tremendous relief to the American people,” she continued.

 Well said, Nicole.  Let's start to move on, MSNBC-- and focus on getting Americans out. 

Coronavirus Art - Whitstable, England

Meanwhile, Back in Florida, Texas and Louisiana

How Did We Get to Where We Are in Afghanistan?

One year ago, Trump released 5,000 Taliban fighters in exchange for a 3-month cease-fire to help his presidential campaign, despite strenuous objections from both the Pentagon and the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani warned that their release would be a “danger to the world.”   There are now reports that some of these fighters are now part of the Taliban force that has overtaken Kabul.

Pompeo negotiating with the Taliban in Qatar

In 2018, the Trump administration also specifically requested that the Pakistani government release Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar  in an attempt to facilitate peace talks. It now appears that Mullah Baradar will become to new President of Afghanistan.

The disaster unfolding in Afghanistan resulted from the deal Trump and Pompeo negotiated with the Taliban in Qatar a year ago, except he wanted the withdrawal to happen sooner—by Christmas of last year.  Not only did Trump cave to the Taliban by giving them everything they asked for, but no members of the Afghan government were present-- Trump completely cut them out of the negotiations. 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, who was appointed under George W. Bush, blames Trump’s “peace” deal with what is happening now because Trump would only work with the Taliban and completely delegitimized the Afghan government.  

Trump’s deal was a complete disgrace that diminished our allies and strengthened the enemy. Trump reinforced the Taliban with their top fighters, and promised a quick retreat of American forces.  Trump's actions essentially would establish the Taliban as the de facto regime once U.S. forces left.

After his loss to Biden in the election, Trump postponed the withdrawal to May 2021.  When the Pentagon asked for more time,  Biden pushed it to the end of August. Conservatives were enraged at Biden for delaying the withdrawal.  

 

Kabul-- 21st Century Saigon?

Taliban insurgents have now entered Afghanistan's capital Kabul and an official said President Ashraf Ghani had left the city for Tajikistan, following the militant Islamist group's lighting sweep across Afghanistan that led back to the capital two decades after it was overthrown by U.S.-led forces.  Local social media users branded Ghani a "coward" for leaving them in chaos.

Hundreds of Afghans, government ministers, government employees and other civilians (including many women and children) crowded in the terminal desperately waiting for flights out.  "The airport is out of control... the (Afghan) government just sold us out," said an official at the scene who declined to be named.  Before the day was out, all commercial flights out of Kabul's International Airport were suspended, according to a Nato official.  Only military aircraft are now operating.

American diplomats were evacuated from their embassy by helicopter to the airport as local Afghan forces, trained for years and equipped by the United States and others for billions of dollars, melted away.

The Ghani government's acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakawal, said power would be handed over to a transitional administration. "There won't be an attack on the city, it is agreed that there will be a peaceful handover," he tweeted.

However, two officials from the Taliban told Reuters there would be no transitional government and the Taliban said earlier it was waiting for the Western-backed government to surrender peacefully. "Taliban fighters are to be on standby on all entrances of Kabul until a peaceful and satisfactory transfer of power is agreed," said spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.  

Insurgents entered the presidential palace and took control of it, two senior Taliban commanders in Kabul said.   Many of Kabul's streets were choked by cars and people either trying to rush home or reach the airport, residents said.  "Some people have left their keys in the car and have started walking to the airport," one resident told Reuters. Another said: "People are all going home in fear of fighting."

Refugees from Taliban-controlled provinces who had traveled to Kabul were seen unloading belongings from taxis and families stood outside embassy gates, while the city's downtown was packed with people stocking up on supplies.

 U.S. troops from outside the country were still arriving at the Kabul airport, amid concern heavily armed Afghan security contractors could "mutiny" because they have not been assured Washington is committed to evacuating them, a person familiar with the issue said.  Asked if images of helicopters ferrying personnel were evocative of the United States’ departure from Vietnam in 1975, Blinken told ABC news: "Let's take a step back. This is manifestly not Saigon."  

U.S. media are broadcasting images of smoke rising from the U.S. embassy grounds.  "The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly including at the airport. There are reports of the airport taking fire; therefore we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place," a U.S. Embassy security alert said. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today that the embassy was being moved to the airport and that they have a list of people to get out of harm's way.

Loki Variant Seen Last Week in Tokyo

Dictator Daniel Ortega Arresting Opposition Candidates and Shutting Down Newspapers in Order to Stay in Office

Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa announced that it was suspending its print edition due to customs refusing to release its paper imports at a time when the government is accused of repressing opponents. La Prensa was the only national independent daily newspaper remaining in circulation but as of yesterday, it will be available only online.

Nicaragua is gearing up for a general election in November but since the beginning of June, authorities have detained 32 opposition figures, including seven with aspirations of challenging President Daniel Ortega, who is seeking a fourth successive term.

Since Ortega came to power in 2007, at least 20 independent media sources have disappeared due to seizures of raw materials and forced closures, according to the Central American nation’s business union.  “La Prensa has been left without paper to continue circulation at a national level because the National Directorate of Customs is holding hostage the company’s primary material property,” the newspaper said.  Its front page was dominated by the words: “The dictatorship is holding our paper, but it cannot hide the truth.”

Customs is demanding the payment of tariffs to release the materials despite a provision in the constitution that excepts the press from such taxes.

It is not the first time customs has caused an independent newspaper to fall.  Three years ago, the Nuevo Diario, one of the newspapers most critical of Ortega, announced it had published its last edition because of a year-long government blockade of its newsprint imports.  Between 2018 and February 2020, customs seized over 92 tons of press materials.

Most of the media that have disappeared did so after the violent crackdown in 2018 of anti-government protests that left at least 328 people dead and 2,000 injured, according to rights groups.

Ortego also recently put an opposition Vice Presidential candidate under house arrest without justification.  Former beauty queen Berenice Quezada “was told by judicial authorities and the public ministry that from now on she was under house arrest without access to telephone communications and with restricted movement,” said the Citizen’s Alliance for Liberty (CXL).

The CXL said the 27-year-old had been told she is “barred from running for public office” and must remain at her home in the capital Managua under police guard.  Quezada, who was Miss Nicaragua in 2017, was a surprise choice for running mate for the CXL’s presidential candidate Oscar Sobalvarro.

68-year-old Sobalvarro was only picked to run in November’s election because five of the alliance’s presidential hopefuls were amongst more than 30 opposition figures detained by authorities over the last two months.  They are accused of treason and threatening the country’s sovereignty under a controversial law approved in December that has been widely denounced as a means of freezing out challengers and silencing opponents.

Critics have accused President Daniel Ortega’s government of trying to prevent any meaningful opposition from standing in November’s election.  Neither the police nor the public prosecutor’s office have confirmed Quezada’s detention.

 

First Week of School in Broward and Palm Beach Counties a Disaster

In less than one day this week, COVID-19 claimed the lives of three Broward County school teachers and one of its assistant teachers. 

Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said, “Within a 24-hour span, we had an assistant teacher pass away, a teacher at her school pass away, an elementary teacher pass away and another teacher at a high school.”  There has been no response from Governor DeathSentence.

In the next county over, 440 Palm Beach county students were sent into quarantine just two days into the school year, reports CBS' Palm Beach affiliate WPEC.  The number of COVID cases spiked dramatically within the first two days of school. As of Thursday, there were 131 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 26 employees and 105 students, according to the district's COVID-19 dashboard. The cases have been confirmed in 60 of the district's facilities and K-12 schools. 

Students in quarantine will not be able to take part in virtual learning, according to WPEC, and instead, will have to make up their work.  Palm Beach Superintendent Michael Burke told MSNBC this week that the district's goal was to "get our students back in person on our campuses." But, he said, "we've gone as far as we can within the state law." 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (i.e., Corona Ron) mandated last week that school districts cannot require children to wear face masks, which have been proven to help curb the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses."  The governor's got to take responsibility for establishing the ground rules we're operating under," Burke told MSNBC. "This ability for families to opt out is leading to more cases which is ultimately going to send more kids home and deprive them of the typical classroom experience." 

Corona Ron's administration was finally forced to admit that the Governor can't actually follow through with his threat to strip the pay from School Superintendents and Board members who mandate face masks in school.  The Governor's office finally acknowledged what many had already pointed out-- that superintendents and board members are not state employees, and that Corona Ron can't withhold their salaries.  

In the meantime, Florida broke its daily COVID case record with 24,869 cases in a single day, the state’s most since the start of the pandemic.  The state's resulting COVID-19 surge has also created unprecedented wait times for hospital beds. 

Are you going to step up and lead, Ron?  How many people have to get sick and die before you admit you're wrong and do something to manage this crisis?

Miranda Lambert - Tequila Does Remix

The Revenge of China's Gen Z

Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.”  Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life” that is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as its celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.

44-year-old Guo became a freelance writer in Dali, a town in Yunnan province known for its traditional architecture and picturesque scenery. He married a woman he met there.  “Work was OK, but I didn’t like it much,” Guo said. “What is wrong with doing your own thing, not just looking at the money?”

“Lying flat” is a “resistance movement” to a “cycle of horror” from high-pressure Chinese schools to jobs with seemingly endless work hours, novelist Liao Zenghu wrote in Caixin, the country’s most prominent business magazine.  “In today’s society, our every move is monitored and every action criticized,” Liao wrote. “Is there any more rebellious act than to simply ‘lie flat?’”

It isn’t clear how many people have gone so far as to quit their jobs or move out of major cities. Judging by packed rush hour subways in Beijing and Shanghai, most young Chinese slog away at the best jobs they can get. Still, the ruling party is trying to discourage the trend. Beijing needs skilled professionals to develop technology and other industries. China’s population is getting older and the pool of working-age people has shrunk by about 5% from its 2011 peak.

“Struggle itself is a kind of happiness,” the newspaper Southern Daily, published by the party, said in a commentary. “Choosing to ‘lie flat’ in the face of pressure is not only unjust but also shameful.”

The trend echoes similar ones in Japan and other countries where young people have embraced anti-materialist lifestyles in response to bleak job prospects and bruising competition for shrinking economic rewards.

Official data show China’s economic output per person doubled over the past decade, but many complain the gains went mostly to a handful of tycoons and state-owned companies. Professionals say their incomes are failing to keep up with soaring housing, child care and other costs. In a sign of the issue’s political sensitivity, four professors who were quoted by the Chinese press talking about “lying flat” declined to discuss it with a foreign reporter.

Another possible sign of official displeasure: T-shirts, mobile phone cases and other “Lie Flat”-themed products are disappearing from online sales platforms. Urban employees complain that work hours have swelled to “9 9 6,” or 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

Some elite graduates in their 20's who should have the best job prospects say they are worn out from the “exam hell” of high school and university. They see no point in making more sacrifices. “Chasing fame and fortune does not attract me. I am so tired,” said Zhai Xiangyu, a 25-year-old graduate student. Some professionals are cutting short their careers, which removes their experience from the job pool.

Xu Zhunjiong, a human resources manager in Shanghai, said she is quitting at 45, a decade before the legal minimum retirement age for women, to move with her Croatian-born husband to his homeland. “I want to retire early. I don’t want to fight any more,” Xu said. “I’m going to other places.”

Thousands vented frustration online after the Communist Party’s announcement in May that official birth limits would be eased to allow all couples to have three children instead of two. The party has enforced birth restrictions since 1980 to restrain population growth but worries China, with economic output per person still below the global average, needs more young workers.

Minutes after the announcement, websites were flooded with complaints that the move did nothing to help parents cope with child care costs, long work hours, cramped housing, job discrimination against mothers and a need to look after elderly parents.

Xia Bingbao wrote on the Douban social media service that she moved to a valley in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, for a “low-desire life” after working in Hong Kong. She said despite a high-status job as an English-language reporter, her rent devoured 60% of her income and she had no money at the end of each month. She rejects the argument that young people who “lie flat” are giving up economic success when that’s already is out of reach for many in an economy with a growing gulf between a wealthy elite and the majority.  “When resources are focused more and more on the few people at the head and their relatives, the workforce is cheap and replaceable,” she wrote on Douban. “Is it sensible to entrust your destiny to small handouts from others?”

Guo, the writer in Dali, said he puts in more hours as a freelancer than he did at a newspaper. But he is happier, and life is more comfortable: He and his wife eat breakfast on their breezy sixth-floor apartment balcony with a view of trees.  “As long as I can keep writing, I’m very satisfied,” Guo said. “I don’t feel stifled.”

A handful who can afford it withdraw from work almost entirely. A 27-year-old architect in Beijing said she started saving as a teenager to achieve financial freedom. “From last September, when I saw all my savings had reached 2 million (yuan) ($300,000), I lay down,” said the woman, who would give only the name Nana, in an interview over her social media account.  Nana said she turned down a job that paid 20,000 yuan ($3,000) per month due to the long hours and what she saw as limited opportunities for creativity.  “I want to be free from inflexible rules,” said Nana. “I want to travel and make myself happy.”

 

Coronavirus Art - Wetteren, Belgium

Corona Ron DeSantis Is Playing With a Losing Hand

Florida is currently in the throes of one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country with a whopping 18.4% positivity rate, and it continues to be one of the top states when it comes to the average number of new cases reported daily.  Governor Death Sentence is proudly presiding over his state's COVID spiral, now even claiming that the latest spike in cases was merely a “seasonal” effect and no government measures could have prevented it.  Well, it looks like Corona Ronnie may have dealt himself a losing hand.

The week began on a bad note as  Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida smacked down DeSantis in a 60-page ruling granting Norwegian Cruise Lines an injunction blocking the governor’s law that prevents businesses requiring proof of vaccination.   Since the day DeSantis announcd his “no vaccine passports” policy, Norwegian has been unflinching in its opposition, threatening in May to skip Florida ports altogether if the governor’s ban was upheld.  Now it looks like the cruise line will be checking for vaccine cards in the Sunshine State, now that Corona Ron has lost both in Circuit Court last week and District Court on Sunday night.

Ronnie is also losing on the school front.  At the end of July, Ron DeSantis signed an executive order that said states which required face masks risked losing their funding. The DeSantis administration clarified that any loss of funding would not directly affect students, but could come from the salary of school board members or the superintendent who violated the law. 

Superintendent Rocky Hanna of the Leon County School District said his priority was keeping students safe amid the state’s rising case numbers. “If something happened and things went sideways for us this week and next week as we started school, and heaven forbid we lost a child to this virus, I can’t just simply blame the governor of the state,” he said. “I can’t.” Hanna added that if he didn’t do what was best for students in his district, then that would be on him. 

In speaking to ABC News, Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said she was following the advice of experts and was letting them guide her decision-making process. "The safety and the security and the quality of instructional hours are what matters right now," she stated in an interview. In reference to defying the ban on masks, she added, "I know it appears I'm being combative and I don't want to be combative, but this is the responsibility I have in this position."

And now the Broward County School Board has voted to maintain the school district's mask mandate that was originally approved July 28. "You can't ignore this pandemic. It's deadly, and it's getting worse instead of better and the more we don't use masks, the more we position the mutation of this virus to grow," said Rosalind Osgood, school board chair.

Several lawsuits have since been filed challenging the constitutionality of the executive order. Several school districts are considering mask mandates and a few have said masks will be required, with some opt-out exceptions. Other school districts that have defied DeSantis' executive order and instituted a mask mandate include Leon County, which includes Tallahassee; Alachua County, which includes Gainesville; Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa; and Orange County, which includes Orlando.

 

And now, even individual parents are getting in on the "Smackdown Ron" action.  Judi Hayes and a handful of other concerned parents with students who have disabilities filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida and DeSantis. It's the second lawsuit DeSantis is facing over his mask mandate ban.

"It is a common sense, reasonable accommodation for a vulnerable child who is immunocompromised or at risk of a serious disease to require a public entity to implement simple precautions to ensure that the most vulnerable children are safe," the lawsuit states. "While this proposition should not be in dispute, Governor DeSantis' executive order requires school districts to defy their obligations under Federal Law and harms the children who the disability discrimination laws were enacted to protect."

The lawsuit claims violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

 

Corona Ron is even losing among members of his own political party.   A Republican senator from Louisiana and longtime physician has criticized DeSantis'  decision to ban mask mandates in public schools.  “I’m a conservative,” Sen Bill Cassidy said. “I think you govern best when you govern closest to the people being governed. And if the local community ... their ICU is full, and the people at the local schools see that they’ve got to make sure they stay open because otherwise children miss out for another year of school, and they put in policy, then the local officials should be listened to.  I don’t want to top down from Washington DC I don’t want to top down from a governor’s office.”

The Delta variant has ravaged Louisiana as well as Florida, which recorded its highest daily case total last week since the beginning of the pandemic.  Sen Cassidy continued: “When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital is full and my vaccination rate is low and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their community.”

 

The COVID Olympics Are Over

The Tokyo games ended with an uninteresting closing ceremony highlighted with a fake light show that only served as a reminder that the games were primarily for the benefit of TV viewers (TV ratings were down, btw).  The Tokyo Olympics have also shown that the global sporting event is increasingly tied to events beyond athletics — a reality that will be inescapable in future Games.

While COVID-19 delayed and then reshaped the Tokyo Olympics, we have yet to see the Games turn into a much-feared global superspreader event.  Early results indicate that the combination of frequent pre-Games and game-time testing, combined with an estimated 80%-plus vaccination rate, seems to have limited outbreaks among the Olympics participants.  Even thought there were no fans, 29 athletes were excluded after testing positive, and even those who were able to take part had a dramatically altered Olympic experience, without spectators or even family and friends to cheer them on.

There's been a dearth of meaningful COVID information from Olympic organizers, but there was a spike in cases throughout Tokyo, and infectious disease experts say it's too early to rule out any connection to the Games.  Nevertheless, Annemarie Sparrow, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, tweeted: “If the Olympic Village were a country, it would be on a par with Russia & Brazil —43rd & 44th worst in the world.”

Health care experts say there needs to be a better plan for how individuals are isolated for COVID protocols, after Tokyo organizers came under fire for the conditions athletes faced during quarantine. The heat was also a major factor in Tokyo, and a reminder that global warming will need to be considered in the timing of future Games, as well as which cities are chosen and how venues are designed.  Host countries can construct venues with shade in mind and other relief from the heat, or organizers can schedule the Games for a cooler time of year.

Olympic officials also had to bend on longstanding rules against political demonstrations.  In Tokyo, women’s soccer players took a knee before a number of matches, while athletes from the U.S. and China also found ways to make political statements that pushed the boundaries of even the relaxed standards.

The Olympics is a huge business, and the financial assumptions that underlie the Games are overdue for reevaluation.  The people of Japan got little for their massive investment, separated by metal fences from the Games they paid so dearly to host. With no ticket revenue, an already challenging economic bet turned into a sea of red ink.  Sponsors, likewise, saw their ability to capitalize on their investment sharply limited. Gone entirely was the ability to schmooze clients and pitch products to fans.

The next Olympics will be nearly six months from now in Beijing.  Nearly half of Americans say China shouldn't be allowed to host the Winter Games in 2022 because of its record on human rights abuses, a new Axios/Momentive poll finds.  These results suggest that, in addition to facing public health challenges over the continued spread of COVID, the Beijing Games will be politically divisive for a large segment of the American audience.

 

Did Anybody Check Pompeo's Pockets on the Way Out the Door?

The State Department’s inspector general is investigating the disappearance of at last 20 types of items that had been in the agency’s gift vault, with dozens of individual items or more unaccounted for. 

Politico reported that two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said that dozens or hundreds of individual items that were previously in the State Department’s gift vault are now nowhere to be found.  The officials said that most of the missing items were gifts that the U.S. had planned to give to other countries, with many bearing Trump's insignia. 

The new details come after the The New York Times reported Wednesday that the State Department was investigating the disappearance of a $5,800 bottle of whiskey that the Japanese government gifted to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

The missing bottle of whiskey was received on June 24, 2019.  William Burck, Pompeo’s lawyer, said in a statement that Trump’s top diplomat did not recall receiving a bottle of whiskey from the Japanese government. “Mr. Pompeo has no recollection of receiving the bottle of whiskey and does not have any knowledge of what happened to it,” Burck said. “He is also unaware of any inquiry into its whereabouts. He has no idea what the disposition was of this bottle of whiskey.”

 

Olympic TV Moment

Clean Bandit & Topic - Drive

The Arizona GOP's "Fraudit" Lurches On

In the continuing saga of the "fraudit" in Maricopa County Arizona, the county Board of Supervisors has put its foot down and has refused to provide additional election material in response to new subpoenas filed by the Arizona Senate.

The supervisors letter clearly states that they will not comply with the request as they have provided ample material and time to conduct the audit and the latest demands are simply a fishing expedition to produce a fraudulent result.  From his statement:

"It has now been 10 months since the November 2020 election, yet the Arizona Senate Republican leadership continues to deny reality.  The election held in Maricopa country was one of the best-run elections in the U.S.  Real election experts all agree on that point.  

Maricopa County long ago provided the Arizona Senate everything competent auditors would need to confirm the accuracy and security of the November General Election.  The latest Senate demands are an attempt to distract attention fro their botched audit and conspiracy-obsessed contractors."

Without seemingly producing any results, the audit team has now seized upon the wacko conspiracy theory that additional ballots were "beamed into" the tabulation machines via the internet.  On the issue of delivering its routers, the board made it very clear that that is a request simply out of bounds and provided the reasons why:

"The Board of Supervisors will not produce its routers.  Maricopa County repeatedly has addressed the significant risks posed by producing its routers.  Specifically, providing these routers puts sensitive, confidential data belonged to Maricopa County citizens-- including SSN's and protected health information-- at risk.  Further the Maricopa County Sheriff has explained that the production of the routers would render internal law enforcement communication infrastructure extremely vulnerable to hacked, be they criminal cartels, terrorists or foreign powers.  

We understand the Senate's interest in examining the routers relates to determining whether the tabulation equipment [was] connected to the internet at any point during the November 2020 election.  IT [WAS] NOT.  No routers have ever been connected to the tablulation equipment of the Election Management System.  Two EAC-accredited professional elections technology companies have confirmed that fact.  These audits confirmed Maricopa County uses an air-gapped system in its tabulation room, meaning the ballot counting equipment is never connected to the internet and is completely separated from the Maricopa County network. The audits also confirmed there are no routers connected to the tabulation system and there never have been."

From the strongly-worded, somewhat sarcastic, letter by Maricopa Board Chairman Jack Sellers:

"It is now August 0f 2021.  The election of November 2020 is over.  If you haven't figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair and accurate yet, I'm not sure you ever will.  The reason you haven't finished your "audit" is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run.

The Board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land.  Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is your are going to release."

The Associated Press has outlined how laughable the whole process has now become.  In the last week alone, the only audit leader with substantial election experience was locked out of the building, went on the radio to say he was quitting, then reversed course hours later.  The audit review's Twitter accounts were suspended for breaking the rules. Another Republican, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, one of the Legislature's strongest advocates for stricter voting laws, agreed that “the Trump audit” was “botched.” A majority of the GOP-controlled Senate, which commissioned the audit, is now against it. Doug Logan, owner of Cyber Ninjas, ended months of silence about who was paying him when he said a whopping $5.7 million had been contributed by political groups run by prominent Trump supporters including Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne and correspondents from One America News Network. The figure dwarfs the $150,000 to be paid by the Senate. 

This latest admission from Cyber Ninjas reveals that the fraudit is not just a product of local extremists, it has been fed by sophisticated, well-funded national organizations whose boards of directors include some of the country’s wealthiest and highest-profile conservatives. Dark-money organizations, sustained by undisclosed donors, have relentlessly promoted the myth that American elections are rife with fraud, and, according to leaked records of their internal deliberations, they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote.

 

Coronavirus Art - West Wickham, England

Ron DeSantis Forcing a Death Sentence on Floridians

The number of Covid patients in Florida hospitals has risen to a new high, breaking records set during previous waves before vaccines were available. Health officials say 11,515 Florida residents are currently in the hospital. Many are younger and healthier than patients seen earlier in the pandemic.  

On Saturday, Florida set a record for most new infections in a single day. a Ron DeSantis, who must be in an absolute panic that Charlie Crist now leads DeSantis in a head-to-head match up in the latest survey from St. Pete Polls, has continued his Trump-like denial of the crisis, opposing efforts to make vaccines or masks mandatory.  Last week, one in three new cases in all of the U.S. were recorded in Florida or Texas.

COVID hotspots as of August 3, 2021

 

Hospital beds in Florida are quickly filling up.  Some have already reached capacity, with patients placed in hallways, lobby waiting areas and makeshift overflow centers. "We have more Covid patients in our hospital with this surge than we did with the original surge," one hospital official in Tallahassee, Dr Dean Watson, told NBC News.  "We have been living Covid for over a year and a half. The stress and the strain for all the providers and nursing staff is really getting to everyone."

The unvaccinated account now account for virtually all cases of sickness and death, say officials who are now referring to Covid as a "pandemic of the unvaccinated".  Many other states and businesses across the U.S. are once again introducing rules to force people to wear masks in public places.  Gov DeSantis, who is rumored to be considering a presidential run in 2024, has worked with state Republicans to block local governments and schools from requiring vaccinations or masks. Santis has even threatened to withhold funding for any Florida public school district that requires student to wear masks this fall.

Education in GOP's America

What We've Been Saying About Data Privacy Has Been Proven to be True

After years of warning from researchers, journalists, and even governments, someone used highly sensitive location data from a smartphone app to track and publicly harass a specific person. In this case, Catholic Substack publication The Pillar said it used location data ultimately tied to Grindr to trace the movements of a priest, and then outed him publicly as potentially gay without his consent. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the outing led to his resignation.

The news starkly demonstrates not only the inherent power of location data, but how the chance to wield that power has trickled down from corporations and intelligence agencies to essentially any sort of disgruntled, unscrupulous, or dangerous individual. A growing market of data brokers that collect and sell data from countless apps has made it so that anyone with a bit of cash and effort can figure out which phone in a so-called anonymized dataset belongs to a target, and abuse that information.

"Experts have warned for years that data collected by advertising companies from Americans’ phones could be used to track them and reveal the most personal details of their lives. Unfortunately, they were right," Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement, responding to the incident. "Data brokers and advertising companies have lied to the public, assuring them that the information they collected was anonymous. As this awful episode demonstrates, those claims were bogus—individuals can be tracked and identified."