WaPo | We
had our chance to elect a woman as president in 2016 — and we blew it.
Not electing Hillary Clinton, a moderate, competent candidate, was one
of the worst blunders in U.S. history. Odds are that, if Clinton had
won, a lot of victims of covid-19 would still be alive. (The British
medical journal the Lancet attributed 40 percent of U.S. coronavirus deaths to Trump’s “inept” response, while other studies suggest that female leaders did better at dealing with covid-19 than male counterparts.)
We
are likely to have another opportunity to elect a woman as president in
2024. While there are two potential Republican contenders — former
United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L.
Noem — the most likely woman, by far, to win the presidency is Vice
President Harris. That’s not only because 15 previous vice presidents
have become president, but also because Joe Biden, already the oldest
U.S. president in history, will be 82 in 2024. He has previously spoken
of himself as a “transition candidate” and signaled that he would serve only one term.
Of
course, now that he has finally attained the presidency on his third
try, Biden may not want to give it up, but it’s imperative that Harris
acquire the stature and experience not only to win the next race but
also to govern effectively. That’s especially important given the
likelihood that Republicans will nominate either Trump or a Trump
mini-me. America can’t survive another four years of Trumpism. Helping
Harris get ready for the presidency, therefore, may be Biden’s most
important job, beyond responding to immediate crises such as the coronavirus and global warming.
That’s why I was delighted to read a report
from my Post colleague Olivier Knox that says Harris is taking an
active role in foreign policy, including meeting regularly with the
secretaries of state and defense, becoming a “vocal participant” in
policy discussions regarding Iran and Saudi Arabia, and calling world
leaders on her own. National security policy is the most important part
of the president’s portfolio, but it is an area where Harris, a former
attorney general of California and U.S. senator, does not have much
experience. She has 1,337 days to fill that gap on her résumé and get
ready to break the ultimate glass ceiling.
acleddata |In March 2020, the Trump
administration declared the novel coronavirus pandemic a national
emergency in the United States. Although the US is home to just 4% of
the world’s population, it now accounts for a quarter of all confirmed
COVID-19 cases and a fifth of the death toll (New York Times, 2021). A year on, more than half a million people have died of COVID-19 across the country (CDC, 2021), and the new Biden administration has officially extended the national emergency beyond its March 2021 expiration date (CNBC, 25 February 2021).
The health crisis has exacerbated
existing inequalities and political faultlines in the US, contributing
to a surge of unrest throughout the country. New analysis of ACLED data —
now extended to the beginning of 2020 — reveals the full scope of the
pandemic’s impact on American protest patterns for the first time.
Key Findings
Trends in pandemic-related
demonstrations are closely correlated with trends in COVID-19 cases,
with spikes in unrest matching infection waves reported throughout 2020.
ACLED data show that the majority of these demonstrations have been
organized around five main drivers: the risks faced by health workers, the safety of prisoners and ICE detainees, anti-restriction mobilization, the eviction crisis, and school closures.
Health workers
have protested to call for safer working conditions and a stronger
government response to the pandemic. Demonstrations organized by health
workers have contributed to protest spikes throughout the year, with
surges during each wave of the pandemic. These protests have been
peaceful and less than 1% have faced intervention from the authorities.
Health worker protests have taken place in 38 states and the District of
Columbia.
Prisoners and ICE detainees
are at high risk of contracting the coronavirus due to a combination of
cramped quarters, poor ventilation, limited time outdoors, and
restrictive measures that prevent the use of masks and other PPE.
Demonstrations by and in solidarity with prisoners and ICE detainees
have called on the government to reduce these risks, and have been
organized in 37 states and the District of Columbia. Solidarity
demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful — over 99% of all
events — and the majority of demonstrations involving prisoners and
detainees have been peaceful as well — over 77% of all events.
Nevertheless, demonstrations by prisoners are frequently met with force:
in more than a third — over 37% — of all peaceful coronavirus-related
protests held by prisoners and detainees, guards have used force like
firing pepper spray and pepper balls.
Government measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus have prompted thousands of anti-restriction demonstrations
calling for the country to reopen. These demonstrations have taken
place in every state and the District of Columbia. Right-wing
mobilization against COVID-19 restrictions has been a critical means for
far-right armed groups to build networks around the country, serving as
a key precursor to ‘Stop the Steal’ organizing after the election
leading up to the US Capitol riot in January 2021. Over 23% of all
demonstrations involving right-wing militias and militarized social
movements across the country have been organized in opposition to
pandemic-related restrictions. Anti-restriction demonstrations involving
these groups turn violent or destructive over 55% of the time, relative
to less than 4% of the time when they are not present, underscoring the
destabilizing role that militias and other militarized movements can
play in right-wing mobilization.
Demonstrations over the eviction
crisis triggered by the pandemic — largely spearheaded by the ‘Cancel
the Rents’ movement — have urged the government to cancel rent and
provide financial relief amid the economic downturn. These
demonstrations — which have been overwhelmingly peaceful, at over 99% of
all events — have fluctuated in response to federal and state relief
packages as well as measures to postpone or ban evictions. These
demonstrations have taken place in 35 states and the District of
Columbia.
The battle around school reopenings
has led to waves of protests both for and against a return to in-person
teaching. School-related demonstrations account for approximately 25%
of all coronavirus-related demonstrations in the US. Approximately
two-fifths of these demonstrations have been organized against the
reopening of schools (i.e. for continued online learning) while about
three-fifths have been organized in favor of reopening (i.e. for
in-person teaching). Both movements have been widespread geographically,
with 43 states and the District of Columbia hosting demonstrations
against reopening and all but Arkansas and District of Columbia hosting
demonstrations in support of reopening.
The full picture of the Biden
administration’s response to the crisis — and its impacts on
pandemic-related protest patterns — remains to be seen. If the
government is able to meet Biden’s promise that vaccines will be
available to all Americans by the end of May 2021 (NPR, 3 March 2021), and if this in turn leads to a sustained decline in COVID-19 cases, pandemic-related mobilization may subside.
At the same time, much of the population remains resistant to vaccination (The Hill, 10 February 2021),
which could stymie efforts to combat the virus and reopen the country.
If partial vaccination prevents a decrease in new cases, or enables a
future resurgence, it could prolong lockdown measures, prompting an
increase in anti-restriction protests. Prolonged lockdowns will do
additional harm to the economy, which will fuel further unrest over the
eviction crisis as well as demonstrations calling for financial
support.
However, if the administration
responds with a mandatory vaccination policy or imposes new national
restrictions to curb the pandemic, it could reinvigorate right-wing
mobilization, including militia activity, against the federal
government. While right-wing organizing and militia activity has
temporarily abated amid the crackdown on groups and individuals
connected to the Capitol riot, these networks — bolstered during reopen
rallies throughout 2020 — are likely to reactivate when the next
politically salient moment arrives. The ‘anti-vax’ movement could serve
as such a catalyst, as anti-vaccine activists are already a growing
force at reopen demonstrations (New York Times, 4 May 2020),
and have increasingly found common cause with right-wing anti-lockdown
demonstrators as they shift their focus to the vaccination rollout (New York Times, 6 February 2021).
Many of these demonstrators are new to the ‘anti-vax’ movement, joining
as a reaction to the coronavirus pandemic and what they perceive as an
attack on civil liberties mounted by the government in response to the
health crisis (New York Times, 6 February 2021).
Building on the reopen organizing that began in early 2020, organized
opposition to the vaccine rollout in early 2021 could serve as an
important nexus allowing militias, militant street groups, and other
right-wing social movements to develop additional networks for future
mobilization.
abcnews | Halfway into his first 100 days, President Joe Biden
has yet to hold a formal, solo news conference, raising questions about
accountability with the White House under increasing pressure to
explain why.
Even as the nation deals with multiple crises -- a
deadly pandemic and the devastating economic fallout -- Biden has gone
longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his
15 predecessors over the past 100 years.
The tough exchanges in such a setting can reveal much more to
Americans about a president's thinking and test his explanations, as
opposed to what so far have been Biden's brief answers -- often
one-liner quips -- in the tightly-controlled and often-scripted events
the White House has arranged to date.
The contrast with former President Donald Trump
has been especially striking, especially given Biden's repeated
promises to Americans that he'd always be "straight" and "transparent."
The
previous record was set by President George W. Bush, who waited 33 days
before hosting a formal, solo press conference. But that was more of an
anomaly: Many others held them within a handful of days or a few weeks
of taking office, according to an analysis of documents in a database maintained by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
CNN first reported on Biden surpassing his predecessors' record.
The White House last week pledged Biden would hold a news conference
before this month was out, but it has not yet set a date. It did
schedule his first primetime address for Thursday, though, "to
commemorate the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown."
taibbi | The thesis of The Revolt of the Public is that traditional
centralized powers are losing — have lost — authority, in large part
because of the demystifying effect of the Internet. The information
explosion undermined the elite monopoly on truth, exposing
long-concealed flaws. Many analysts had noted the disruptive power of
the Internet, but what made Gurri unique is that he also predicted with
depressingly humorous accuracy how traditional hierarchies would respond
to this challenge: in a delusional, ham-fisted, authoritarian manner
that would only confirm the worst suspicions of the public, accelerating
the inevitable throw-the-bums-out campaigns. This assessment of the
motive for rising public intransigence was not exactly welcomed, but
either way, as Kling wrote, “Martin Gurri saw it coming.”
Gurri also noted that public revolts would likely arrive unattached
to coherent plans, pushing society into interminable cycles of zero-sum
clashes between myopic authorities and their increasingly furious
subjects. He called this a “paralysis of distrust,” where outsiders can
“neutralize but not replace the center” and “networks can protest and
overthrow, but never govern.” With a nod to Yeats, Gurri summed up: “The
center cannot hold, and the border has no clue what to do about it.”
The Revolt of the Public became
a cult classic in the Trump years for a variety of reasons, resonating
with audiences spanning the political spectrum, from left to right to in
between, everywhere except the traditional media consensus. It
describes a basic problem of authority in the digital age and for that
reason will continue to have relevance into the future. But its most
striking feature is how completely it nailed the coming Trump era.
Published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public may
be alone among the countless books about the Trump years to correctly
peg its core destabilizing problem. While conventional pundits blame
everyone from Russians to white nationalists to “fake news” for all that
currently ails us, Gurri focused on the inherent problem of authority
in the digital age. If you follow his thinking, the specific forms that
recent revolts have taken — Brexit, Trump, etc. — have been far less
important than what he describes as the “nihilist impulse” behind them,
“the wish to smash down whatever stands.” In America, this impulse found
Trump, not the other way around. It also could have (and has, in other
countries) come from the left instead of the right. The relentless focus
on Trump as the center of all evil on earth has mostly served to
deflect from a broader narrative about distrust of institutional
authority that far pre-dates Trump.
Through a series of case
studies ranging from Egypt to Tunisia to Italy to the campaign of Barack
Obama, Gurri lays out how snowballing disgust with the blundering
arrogance of ruling parties was everywhere leading to upheavals. In the
Italian general elections of February 2013,
a new party called the “Five Star” movement won 25% of the vote.
Inspired by a comedian-blogger named Beppe Grillo, named after the
Jiminy Cricket character in Pinocchio, the party, Gurri wrote,
“lacked a coherent program. The single unifying principle was a deep
loathing of the Italian political establishment.”
Gurri saw such
outbursts everywhere, even in the election of Barack Obama, since “the
U.S. presidential elections of 2008 [were] an early instance of the
public on the move against the established order.” The political
scientists and pundits who puzzle over the fact that a great many people
voted for both Obama and Trump, shouldn’t. Both men positioned
themselves as outsiders, both were aided by a lack of a track record and
a deliberately vague platform, making both effective vehicles for
expressing popular discontent.
newyorker | But why did it take two months for Boylan’s
accusations to be taken seriously by reporters, lawmakers, and
law-enforcement officials? Her December 13th tweet received some initial
news coverage. “Bombshell Cuo Claim,” one headline in the New York Post read. But, by the end of the month, the bombshell had fizzled. In an Albany Times Union
article on December 26th that recapped the Governor’s year in the
“national spotlight,” Boylan merited just three sentences. Partly, this
can be explained by Boylan’s decision in December not to talk to
reporters, and by the fact that she was, at the time, a lone accuser,
whereas now she is one of several. But there is another reason: soon
after she went public, someone tried to damage Boylan’s credibility and
undercut her accusations by leaking damaging information about her to
the press.
Within hours of Boylan’s tweet on
December 13th, several news outlets reported that they had “obtained”
state-government documents relating to Boylan’s job performance in the
Cuomo administration. The documents—described by the Associated Press as “personnel memos,” by the Post as “personnel documents,” and by the Times Union
as “personnel records”—said that several women had complained to a
state-government human-resources office that Boylan had “behaved in a
way towards them that was harassing, belittling, and had yelled and been
generally unprofessional.” According to the Post’s account,
“three black employees went to state human resources officials accusing
Boylan, who is white, of being a ‘bully’ who ‘treats them like
children.’ ” According to the Associated Press, the documents said that
Boylan resigned after being “counseled” about the complaints in a
meeting with a top administration lawyer. Reporters who wanted to dig
into Boylan’s accusations against Cuomo now had to contend with the
possibility that there were people out there who might have accusations
to make against Boylan. At best, the documents seemed to raise questions
about Boylan’s reliability. At worst, they painted her as a racist.
In
a statement, Boylan’s attorney, Jill Basinger, told me Boylan has never
seen the documents that the news accounts referenced—which Basinger
called a “supposed ‘personnel file.’ ” Basinger accused the Governor’s
office of leaking the documents, and also said she expects that the
attorney general’s investigation will look into the leak. “It is both
shocking and disgusting that the governor and his staff would seek to
smear victims of sexual harassment,” Basinger said. “Ms. Boylan will not
be intimidated or silenced. She intends to cooperate fully with the
Attorney General’s investigation.”
At
a press conference last week, Cuomo said that he supported “a woman’s
right to come forward,” and that he was “sorry for whatever pain I
caused.” At the same time, he pleaded with New Yorkers to allow him some
due process. “Wait for the facts from the attorney general’s report
before forming an opinion,” he said. That’s how the Governor would like
to be treated. But that’s not how he traditionally has treated others.
For decades, the Governor has had a reputation for scorched-earth
tactics, and for retaliating against those who corner him, threaten him,
or simply displease him. As Boylan weighed whether to come forward last
year, her lawyer told me, she “believed that she would be retaliated
against for going public with her mistreatment.” One former senior
official in the Cuomo administration whom I spoke to said it was
impossible to imagine that Cuomo himself hadn’t approved the leak of the
Boylan documents. “There’s no question he would know about it, and
direct it,” the former official said. “That’s how he would think.”
In
the nineteen-nineties, while Cuomo was the Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, under Bill Clinton, he fell into a long-running feud
with Susan Gaffney, the agency’s inspector general. In 2000, Gaffney
accused Cuomo of sexual discrimination. “Gaffney claims that Cuomo has
called her at home on weekends to berate her, has started collecting
information to smear her, and has leaked damaging information about
her,” the Postreported,
at the time. In the same story, a Cuomo spokesperson said, of Gaffney,
“This is nothing more than a diversion from her misconduct regarding the
downloading of pornography in her office and retaliation for our
efforts to get to the bottom of it.”
In 2013,
Michael Fayette, a state Department of Transportation engineer, gave a
few quotes about his department’s operations during Hurricane Irene to
the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. His statements were
innocuous—“We were up for it,” he told the paper—but they hadn’t been
cleared by the higher-ups in Albany. The press found out that Fayette’s
superiors were moving to terminate him, and started asking how it was
possible for someone to be fired over such a harmless episode. In
response, a top Cuomo aide gave a radio interview
during which he read aloud misconduct allegations contained in
Fayette’s personnel files, including that he’d had an improper
relationship with a subordinate. “They can run over you like you’re a
freaking speed bump,” Fayette, who retired before he could be fired,
told me, last week.
NYTimes | Denmark suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine
because of concerns about possible links to an increased risk of blood
clots, the Danish Health Authority announced on Thursday. Iceland and
Norway later also announced suspensions in administering the shots.
Danish
authorities said all use of the vaccine in the country would be halted
for at least 14 days after several severe cases of clots were reported
among people who had received the shot, the national broadcaster DR
reported.
Still, Danish health officials said they could not yet know if the clots — including a case in which a patient died — were caused by the vaccine, and that an investigation was launched to be “on the safe side.”
Within hours, the European Medicines Agency said in a statement that there is currently
no indication the vaccine “has caused these conditions.” The agency,
which is Europe’s main drug regulator, said the vaccine’s benefits
continue to outweigh its risks, and countries can continue to administer
the vaccine while the cases of blood clots are investigated.
The agency’s safety committee is already looking into all cases involving blood clots reported after AstraZeneca vaccinations.
Amid the flurry of suspensions, the
Netherlands announced that it would continue to administer the
AstraZeneca vaccine despite the concerns voiced by other countries.
The company did not have an immediate response to the suspensions.
Magnus Heunicke, the Danish minister of health, posted a message on Twitter
confirming that the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been suspended,
“following a signal of possible serious side effects in the form of
fatal blood clots.”
NYPost | A 39-year-old single mom in Utah with no underlying medical
conditions died four days after receiving her second dose of the Moderna
COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report.
Kassidi Kurill, a mother of one from Ogden, received the vaccine due
to her work as a surgical tech for several plastic surgeons, KUTV reported.
“She was absolutely fine with getting it. In fact, she told all of
us, ‘It’s fine, you guys should all get it,’” her father, Alfred Hawley,
told the outlet.
Kurill experienced a sore arm after the first jab of Moderna, but had no other side effects.
But things took a tragic turn after she received her second dose on Feb. 1.
“She came in early and said her heart was racing and she felt like she need to get to the emergency room,” Hawley said.
When they arrived at the ER, Kurill was throwing up. Hawley, a
retired fighter pilot, told doctors his daughter had just received her
second shot.
“They did a blood test and immediately came back and
said she was very, very sick, and her liver was not functioning,” he
told KUTV.
Kurill’s older sister Kristin, who lives in Arizona, said she knew
her sister had gone to the hospital, but the
She thought her sister would get an IV and be back home in an hour, but Hawley knew they were not going home anytime soon.
“It was a total shock, and I was even afraid to tell my wife,” he told the news outlet.
Kurill
was soon flown to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, a trauma
center, as her liver was failing and a transplant was believed to be her
best chance at survival.
Kristin jumped on the first flight to Utah but was not allowed into
the hospital because of coronavirus protocols, so she waited with her
sister’s daughter Emilia, 9, as the family hoped for a miracle.
Kurill’s parents volunteered to donate a portion of their livers but
never got the chance to offer the lifesaving gift when their daughter’s
liver, kidneys and heart shut down.
She died 30 hours after arriving at the hospital.
speed at which she
deteriorated was “so unexpected.”
fox4kc | A big change is coming for students this fall in one of the metro’s largest school districts.
Shawnee Mission will not offer a remote learning option, so students will have to attend in-person or transfer elsewhere.
The news is welcomed by parents who’ve fought for full in-person
learning to know remote school won’t even be on the table come fall. But
no one can predict what the pandemic will be like in August, and that’s
why other families are frustrated they may have to change schools to
stay safe.
Remote learning are two words no one was ready for this time last year.
“It was kind of a shock, but you know I’ve got two children and have a
compromised immune system so completely understood and supported that
decision,” said Shawnee Mission School District parent Beth Koon.
With her family’s health concerns, Koon decided the best thing was to
continue remote learning through Shawnee Mission Schools this year.
“That was just a very easy decision for us to decide to stay home with the kids and stay safe,” Koon said.
Koon said her kids are excelling in online classes. So she was
stunned to see a letter from SMSD Tuesday, saying remote learning won’t
be available next school year.
“To presume that the pandemic is over, there’s no spread and that
adults or families like mine with immune compromised family members, who
do need to make these decisions to isolate, to stay safe, to pull that
rug out from under us I felt was very alarming,” Koon said.
While the district knows some kids have thrived in remote learning,
others have struggled, and it wants to offer the best in-person
experience possible. In a letter to parents, the district wrote, “Absent
a pandemic, there is no legal way to continue providing the remote
learning option.”
“We may still be in the pandemic to some degree. We won’t have kids
vaccinated, but the changes that the governor had authority to put in
place and that the Kansas Department of Education had authority to put
in place, those will have expired and there’s no indication those will
be renewed,” said David Smith, a SMSD spokesperson.
NYTimes | Ron DeLord, a
fiery former Texas cop turned labor organizer, has long taught union
leaders how to gain power and not let go. He has likened a police union
going after an elected official to a cheetah devouring a wildebeest, and
suggested that taking down just one would make others fall in line.
He
helped write the playbook that police unions nationwide — seeking
better pay, perks and protections from discipline — have followed for
decades. Build a war chest. Support your friends. Smear your enemies.
Even scare citizens with the threat of crime. One radio spot in El Paso
warned residents to support their local police or face “the
alternative,” as the sound of gunshots rang out.
“We
took weak, underpaid organizations and built them into what everyone
today says are powerful police unions,” Mr. DeLord said in a recent
interview. “You may say we went too far. I say you don’t know how far
you’ve gone until you’re at the edge of the envelope.”
That moment may be now.
Since
the death of George Floyd at the hands of police last May set off
protests nationwide, 27 states and Washington D.C. have adopted new
police oversight and reform laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Officials in Boston, Los Angeles
and other cities agreed to limit police spending. In November, voters
overwhelmingly approved 17 ballot measures in six states to rein in
police officers.
Unions — many of which have dug in despite the protests and challenged officers’ firings
in high-profile incidents — are also increasingly seen as out of step
with the public. Officers in big cities can earn more than $100,000 a
year, far more than citizens they are assigned to protect. That success
has stoked a backlash. Many cities say they are unable, or unwilling, to
pay for ever mounting police costs.
As cities from Portland, Ore., to Chicago negotiate new police contracts this year, local officials are seeking to gain back concessions made decades ago.
Union
and city leaders are especially watching negotiations in San Antonio.
Years ago, officers there locked in some of the most highly coveted
perks and protections of any department in the country: rules that
helped shield officers from discipline; fat pensions, Cadillac health
insurance plans, even taxpayer-funded payments for divorce lawyers.
Their success became a case study for unions nationwide.
During
the last negotiations, city officials claimed the contract would
bankrupt San Antonio. Now, city officials are focused on undoingsome
disciplinary protections. Adding pressure, a May ballot measure in the
Texas city could eliminate the union’s ability to bargain — a
devastating blow.
benjaminstudebaker | Then there are jobs that require a degree but which are less secure
and less lucrative than they used to be. Attacks on teachers’ unions,
for instance, are gradually eroding the benefits and security which
teachers have traditionally enjoyed. As this happens, the distinction in
living standard between teachers and ordinary workers becomes blurrier
and blurrier. Tenured teachers still have a better situation than most
workers, but fewer and fewer teachers are put in position to acquire
tenure. Within teaching, then, there is a minority of secure, tenured
faculty–who are part of the rump professional class. Then there are
teachers who have no realistic path to tenure and have been effectively
turned into casual workers. These teachers are part of the fallen
professional class. The rump professional class and the fallen
professional class have largely the same education, but are nonetheless
treated very differently, because the system is not interested in
rewarding their merit but in reducing the cost of the education system.
The fallen professionals want to be part of the rump professional
class, but can no longer access it materially. They can only access it
culturally, by maintaining their familiarity with the language and ideas
of the rump professionals. For this reason, the fallen professionals
try very hard to continue to be part of the culture of the rump
professionals. This enables many rump professionals to make money off
their fallen counterparts by selling an ersatz version of the experience
of professional class life. This takes the form of podcasts, YouTube
videos, and prestige TV shows and films. By consuming this media, the
fallen professional continues to feel part of the rump professional
class, even as the fallen professional is robbed of the material
benefits of being a member.
Because the fallen professionals want to feel superior to the
ordinary workers, the rump professionals have a financial incentive to
sell ideas which flatter this superiority complex. This has led, in
recent years, to the development of a woke industry which invents new
terms and grounds for taking offence. By using these terms and taking
offence in these ways, the fallen professionals feel they are
participating in the culture of the rump professionals and they can
distinguish themselves from the ordinary workers, who fail to use the
language or to recognise the offensiveness.
The rump professionals justify this commercialisation of radicalism
on the grounds that it is ostensibly morally committed to resisting
racism, patriarchy, fascism, or even capitalism itself. But the main
effect of the product is to create cultural barriers between the fallen
professionals and the ordinary workers, so the fallen professionals will
continue to politically identify with the rump professionals and
therefore with the rich. The language is used to label the ordinary
worker a deplorable bigot, and the ordinary worker responds by seeking
the absolute destruction of these professionals through right
nationalist politics. Mortified by the right nationalism of the workers,
the rump and fallen professionals lean ever harder into denouncing them
as bigots, creating a vicious cycle which pushes the workers further
and further to the right.
For some time now, the left has sought to use these fallen
professionals as “class traitors”. They are supposed to lead left-wing
movements and organise on the ground. But the fallen professionals
cannot do this, because they have contempt for the people they are
trying to lead. This contempt is nurtured by the cultural content
manufactured by the rump professionals.
None of this is anyone’s fault, individually. Because it’s getting
harder and harder to be part of the rump professional class, would-be
professionals must do everything they can to compete, and that means
they have to look for money wherever they can find it. Those who make it
must make money off those who do not. Those who do not were fed lies
from childhood. They were told that a professional class life was
achievable, and they were told it would be wonderful and fulfilling.
Their desire to get the recognition and meaning they were promised is a
reasonable consequence of the way they were socialised. And how can the
ordinary worker react in any other way? The worker cannot have dignity
without resisting a professional culture that constantly denigrates
workers for lacking elite education.
Newsweek | A private Facebook
group from a teachers union in Los Angeles warned members not to post
images of Spring break vacations online after the union voted to remain
closed for in-person instruction.
NEW: In a leaked post from a private Facebook group for UTLA union members only, teachers are warned not to post on social media if they go on spring break vacations because the optics would be bad for them while UTLA is refusing to return to "unsafe" in-person schooling @FOXLApic.twitter.com/KxQc7k450T
Members of the United Teachers
Los Angeles (UTLA) union were told to avoid sharing images of vacations
in a leaked private Facebook group to avoid controversy with parents, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported Monday.
"Friendly
reminder: If you are planning any trips for Spring Break, please keep
that off of Social Media. It is hard to argue that it is unsafe for
in-person instruction, if parents and the public see vacation photos and
international travel," the post said.
The private Facebook group, called "UTLA FB GROUP-Members Only" has
about 5,700 members. UTLA represents teachers across Los Angeles Unified
School District, the largest district in the state with about 600,000 students, or roughly 10 percent, of California's public schoolchildren
The
warning came just days after UTLA overwhelmingly voted to remain closed
for in-person learning, unless the union's full list of demands are
met.
Those demands include that Los Angeles County has less widespread
COVID infections, staff are fully vaccinated or provided access to full
vaccines, and safety conditions are in put in place, according to the
union's website. Los Angeles County is currently in California's purple
tier of COVID-19 restrictions, meaning that the area has "widespread"
infections with more than an 8 percent positivity rate.
"This vote
signals that in these most trying times, our members will not accept a
rushed return that would endanger the safety of educators, students, and
families," UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a statement.
"As
much as educators long to be back to in-person instruction, it must be
done safely for the sake of students, staff, and families. That has been
our guiding principal from Day 1 of this pandemic," Myart-Cruz added.
wired | I think I felt a visceral resistance at times to the notion that we
could edit the human genome, especially in ways that would be
inheritable. But that changed both for me and for Doudna as we met more
and more people who are themselves afflicted by horrible genetic
problems, or who have children who are suffering from them. And when our
species got slammed by a deadly virus, it made me more open to the idea
that we should use whatever talents we have in order to thrive and be
healthy. So I’m now even more open to gene editing done for medical
purposes, whether that’s sickle cell anemia, or Huntington’s, or
Tay-Sachs, or even to increase our resistance to viruses and other
pathogens and to cancer.
I still have worries. One is I don’t want gene
editing to be something only the rich can afford and it leads to
encoding inequalities into our societies. And, secondly, I want to make
sure we don’t reduce the wonderful diversity that exists within the
human species.
Do you have any ideas for how to do that?
I
spend the last few chapters of my book wrestling with that question.
And I hope not to preach, but to allow the reader to go hand in hand
with me and Jennifer Doudna and figure out on their own what their hopes
and fears are about this so-called brave new world we’re all stepping
into together. I once had a mentor say there are two types of people who
come out of Louisiana: preachers and storytellers. He said, “For
heaven's sake, be a storyteller, because the world’s got too many
preachers.”
So
by telling the tale of Crispr in all its scientific triumphs and
rivalries and excitement, I hope to turn people on to the science. But I
also want to make them more qualified to wrestle with one of the most
important questions we’re going to face as a society over the next
couple of decades: When we can program molecules the way we program
microchips, what is it we want to do with this fire that we’ve snatched
from the gods?
corbettreport | On November 10, 2020, Joe Biden announced the members of a
coronavirus task force that would advise his transition team on setting
COVID-19-related policies for the Biden administration. That task force
included Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and senior fellow at the
Center for American Progress.
JOE BIDEN: So that’s why today I’ve
named the COVID-19 Transition Advisory Board comprised of distinguished
public health experts to help our transition team translate the
Biden-Harris COVID-19 plan into action. A blueprint that we can put in
place as soon as Kamala and I are sworn into office on January 20th,
2021.
ANCHOR: We’ve learned that a doctor from
our area is on the president-elect’s task force. Eyewitness News
reporter Howard Monroe picks up the story.
THOMAS FARLEY: I know he’s a very bright, capable
guy and i think that’s a great choice to represent doctors in general in
addressing this epidemic.
HOWARD MONROE: Philadelphia health commissioner Dr.
Thomas Farley this morning on Eyewitness News. He praised
president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team for picking Dr. Ezekiel
Emanuel to join his coronavirus task force. He is the chair of the
Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of
Pennsylvania.
That announcement meant very little to the general public, who likely
only know Emanuel as a talking head on tv panel discussions or as the
brother of former Obama chief of staff and ex-mayor of Chicago, Rahm
Emanuel. But for those who have followed Ezekiel Emanuel’s career as a
bioethicist and his history of advocating controversial reforms of the
American health care system, his appointment was an ominous sign of
things to come.
He has argued
that the Hippocratic Oath is obsolete and that it leads to doctors
believing that they should do everything they can for their patients
rather than letting them die to focus on higher priorities. He has
argued that people should choose to die at age 75 to spare society the burden of looking after them in old age. As a health policy advisor to the Obama administration he helped craft the Affordable Care Act, which fellow Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admitted was only passed thanks to the stupidity of the American public.
JONATHAN GRUBER: OK? Just like the people—transparency—lack
of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know,
call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically
that was really critical to getting the thing to pass.
During the course of the deliberations over Obamacare, the issue of
“death panels” arose. Although the term “death panel” was immediately
lampooned by government apologists in the media, the essence of the
argument was one that Emanuel has long advocated: appointing a body or
council to ration health care, effectively condemning those deemed
unworthy of medical attention to death.
ROB MASS: When I first heard about you
it was in the context of an article you wrote right around the time that
the Affordable Care Act was under consideration. And the article was
entitled “Principles for the Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions.”
I don’t know how many of you remember there was a lot of talk at the
time about [how] this new Obamacare was going to create death panels.
And he wrote an article which I thought should have been required
reading for the entire country about how rationing medical care—you
think that that’s going to start with with the Affordable Care Act?
Medical care is rationed all the time and it must be rationed. Explain
that.
EZEKIEL EMANUEL: So there are two kinds of
“rationing,” you might say. One is absolute scarcity leading to
rationing and that’s when we don’t simply don’t have enough of something
and you have to choose between people. We do that with organs for
transplantation. We don’t have enough. Some people will get it, other
people won’t and, tragically, people will die. Similarly if we ever have
a flu pandemic—not if but when we have a flu pandemic—we’re not going
to have enough vaccine, we’re not going to have enough respirators,
we’re not going to have enough hospital beds. We’re just going to have
to choose between people.
off-guardian | The world has been fixated for months on novel-coronavirus PCR testing, contact tracing and vaccination.
Meanwhile, another major part of the Covid biomedical
complex has received far less attention: the use of antibodies for
detecting, diagnosing and treating infection with the novel coronavirus.
Hundreds of antibodies have been approved for these purposes since January 2020. And hundreds more are poised to start being marketed soon.
This is part of the biomedical gold rush: by last summer already, antibodies were on track to become the most lucrative medical product, with global revenue projected to reach nearly half a trillion dollars by 2024. Profit margins in the range of 67% aren’t uncommon.
Pharma giants
such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly are among
the companies grabbing the largest chunks of the
novel-coronavirus-antibody market. And some of the most muscular
government agencies, including Anthony Fauci’s US National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the US’s Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, are part of the action (see, for example, the
second-last section of this article, on antibodies used to treat Covid).
Virtually every study and piece of marketing material
related to Covid is premised on scientists having positively and
correctly identified the presence of the novel coronavirus (also known
as SARS-CoV-2) in the material they’re working with.
The job of that identification is usually given to
antibodies that are said to bind to the novel coronavirus. The
assumption is these antibodies are able to pick out the virus and only
the virus from among every other organism and substance surrounding it.
Unfortunately it turns out that the
antibodies rarely (if ever) do that. This is because of, among other
things, inadequate verification of the antibodies’ accuracy in targeting
the virus by the companies that manufacture and sell them. And there’s
even less verification by government regulators.
Let’s take a 30,000-foot tour of a couple of the main
features of the antibody-industry landscape, which is awash in
complexity and cash.
bleedingheartland | With this preamble, it is not difficult to predict what will happen should Senate File 41 or House File 496 move forward and eliminate tenure from Iowa’s public universities. (Editor’s note: The House bill cleared the first “funnel” deadline and is eligible for debate in the lower chamber.)
Whoever we can recruit either will be taking the position as a
temporary fix until a tenure track comes along somewhere else, or is
someone who has no chance of a tenure track position anywhere.
Either way, it will be impossible to develop competitive and
long-term research groups. The ability to attract external funds and to
sustain PhD programs will quickly crumble, and most of the accomplished
tenured faculty in our institutions will leave. As Matt Chapman reported in 2019,
when another tenure ban was being considered, “after similar
legislation passed in 1943, three educators left the state and received a
Nobel prize while tenured at other universities.”
Without tenure, our public universities will become giant teaching
community colleges with no research. Upper-level courses will be taught
by mostly unqualified instructors.
We will still be able to provide degrees and have fancy commencement
ceremonies (if that is what you care about), but conferring degrees with
very diminished value in the job market. The STEM departments as we
know them will disappear. In practice, Iowa will not keep a single
research university, as none of its private colleges can take up that
role. The same fate will follow with the prestigious University of Iowa
Hospitals and Clinics. Our state will become a technological desert,
where only companies requiring unskilled labor will have an incentive to
come.
Is it conceivable to have a university system without tenure? In
principle, everything is conceivable, but realistically, it is not. This
system has been in place for centuries now. Everything revolves around
tenure. Many funding opportunities are only available for tenure (track)
positions. Changing it would require a revamping of epic proportions
for the entire nation.
google.sites |All eyes in higher education are on Kansas, as the Board of Regents has unilaterally suspended tenure protections and long-established procedures of shared governance, transparency, and due processin order to ease the termination of faculty and staff. This extreme policy circumvents professional standards and violates our commitments as a member institution of the American Association of Universities (AAU). Procedures already exist to make decisions according to financial exigency as part of shared governance. The regents now allow administrators to bypass the established process and eliminate faculty’s structural role in it. The leadership at our fellow Regents Universities in Kansas quickly recognized that this move is at odds with our profession, and have stated that they will not implement it. Only at KU has our Chancellor not committed to shared governance and our professional integrity by refusing to exercise the policy.
KBOR’s policy blatantly violates two of the three coreAcademic Principles of the AAU– those pertaining to Shared Governance and Academic Freedom. Such actions place KU at grave risk of expulsion from this prestigious professional organization, which would inevitably impede the recruitment and retention of faculty and the securing of research funds, ultimately eroding the value of all degrees from the University of Kansas.
The AAU principles reflect widely held professional standards, laid out in foundational statements from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure holds that financial exigency must be “demonstrably bona fide” in order to justify termination, and must be considered by a faculty committee as well as the governing board. The AAUP standard does not provide for arbitrary administrative power over such decisions. The1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities calls for “joint planning and effort” among its constituents, in which faculty are to hold primary responsibility over matters of faculty status, including dismissal. In order to have a voice in institutional planning, faculty must be fully briefed on the specific budgetary matters in play. The regents’ policy allows administrators to make dismissals without formally declaring financial exigency. This is clearly out of step with the AAUP standard that university executives work “within the concept of tenure,” and “necessarily utilize the judgments of faculty” when addressing institutional challenges.
These standards speak to the role of the faculty, but to bypass them affects the entire campus. The new policy gives a blank check to the chancellor to make sweeping changes. The regents have asked us to trust the chancellor in a time of crisis, but our financial issues predate the pandemic. This recent experience suggests that accountability is in order. To annul shared governance and transparency instead degrades the working conditions of the entire university and the learning conditions for all of our students.
bostonreview | Harvard hired Dr. Cornel West in 2016 without tenure?
This was news to me. Five years ago I wrote what I believed was a
tenure review letter for Dr. West; I even named the file
“cornel_west_tenure.docx.” I received the request on April 18, 2016.
Given Dr. West’s dual appointments in both the Harvard Divinity School
and the Department of African and African-American Studies in the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the request was signed by David Hempton,
Dean of Harvard Divinity School, and Claudine Gay, Dean of Social
Science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It asked me to evaluate Dr.
West for a senior appointment as Professor of the Practice of Public
Philosophy. The letter never states that this was to be a non-tenured
appointment, nor is tenure explicitly mentioned. But having received
literally hundreds of requests over the course of three decades, I can
say it certainly read like a tenured appointment.
Besides, Dr. West had already been tenured at Harvard—and at
Yale and at Princeton. Dr. West left his tenured position at Harvard in
2002 after then Harvard president Lawrence Summers questioned his
scholarship, his commitment to teaching, and his political advocacy. He
took a tenured position at Princeton, where he remained for more than
ten years before moving to Union Theological Seminary and then back to
Harvard. It never occurred to me that Harvard would bring him back as a
contract laborer, especially given the criteria for tenure: the value
and originality of scholarship.
It is ridiculous to have to say this, but the public attacks make it
necessary: Dr. West is a formidable intellectual who works in the
interstices of philosophy, theology, cultural criticism, political
analysis, and social critique. He has produced a massive body of work
that cuts across forms and disciplines—books, articles, published
dialogues, lectures, debates, and commentary displayed across several
different media platforms. No need to reproduce his curriculum vitae
here. Just consider the fact that Dr. West has been the subject of several scholarly books: Mark David Wood’s Cornel West and the Politics of Prophetic Pragmatism (2000), Rosemary Cowan’s Cornel West: The Politics of Redemption (2002), Clarence Johnson’s Cornel West and Philosophy (2003), and Keith Gilyard’s Composition and Cornel West: Notes Toward a Deep Democracy
(2008), to name just a few. Only a handful of Dr. West’s tenured
colleagues can make such a claim. And beyond all this, he is an
immensely popular teacher and a stalwart supporter of student activism.
Graduate students from across the campus swiftly petitioned the
university to reconsider its decision to deny Dr. West tenure. Jonathan
L. Swain, Harvard’s director of media relations, would not comment on
the petition, but he did say
previously that West’s reappointment committee did not have the
authority to review him for tenure. To put it bluntly, either the dean,
the provost, or the president blocked any possibility of turning Dr.
West’s appointment into a tenured position, but no one so far is willing
to take responsibility for this decision. Dr. West suspects it has to
do with his politics—notably, his active support for the Bernie Sanders
campaign and his consistent advocacy for Palestinian human rights. I
agree. Harvard has a problem with outspoken, principled faculty who take
public positions that question university policy, challenge authority,
or might ruffle the feathers of big donors. And when the faculty in
question are scholars of color, their odds of getting through the tenure
process are slim to none.
ghionjournal |Precisely at the time we need
leadership the most, we have been left out in the cold and shepherded
into the wilderness by black opinion leaders who are more interested in
cashing checks and enhancing their Q ratings than they are in standing
up for justice. Gone are the days of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and
erstwhile moral giants who confronted racism with the courage of lions,
we are now firmly entrenched in the era of hustling hyenas like
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris who cozy up to the very
system of repression they pretend to be fighting against.
Instead of leading with imagination, sambos in expensive suits prefer to distract us
with agitprops and tropes. We went from “we shall overcome”, a mission
statement of resilience, to “black lives matter” as we meekly advertise
our inadequacies and beg for social acceptance. I am actually
embarrassed every time I see a similarly complexioned brother or sister
wearing a #BLM logo on their facemask or their chest;
As if doing damage to our psyche was not enough, some decide to add
insults to self-injury by dismissing the plight of anyone who does not
have melanin like ours. It is the height of absurdity to assume that
someone who is “white” has privilege by virtue of their skin color.
Not only is it patently untrue, it is counterproductive as it prevents
likeminded and like-mired “white” people–who would otherwise be
receptive to our plight–from hearing the message we are trying to convey
and joining the fight for redemption.
No one likes to be marginalized and their struggles to be minimized;
this is true for the truly privileged and the most disadvantaged alike.
Think about it; if someone in a wheelchair downplayed your pains and
pooh-poohed your anguish wrought by a broken leg, would you not take
umbrage with that person no matter how crippled she was? People who have
it bad don’t have a license to insult and disparage others who have it marginally better.
Instead of reaching an audience that is sympathetic to our cause, all
we do is close doors and preclude much needed conversations.
The only people who profit from these campaigns of grievance and
woe-is-me victimhood are the very charlatans who are sitting in the lap
of comfort and leading lives of true privilege. The establishment reward
demagogues who incite passions and lead us in the wrong direction.
There is a reason, after all, the Obamas were compensated to the tune of $60 million and why Ta-Nehisi Coates keeps landing on the New York Times bestsellers list.
The fastest way to make a buck and get leg up is to sell your own
people down the river in order to be invited into the whites’ house.
The leaders of Black Lives Matter have perfected the art of the
shakedown in ways that puts Jessie Jackson to shame; they have made more
money in our names and using our pains than any black organization
since the NAACP. What do we have to show for the hundreds of millions they have collected since Ferguson?
Email or DM me if you know the answer because I have been searching for
that answer since Michael Brown was assassinated. Far from being
freedom fighters, Black Lives Matter is a co-op of fee collectors who
hear cash registers ringing each time a “black” man or woman gets killed
by a cop.
This wouldn’t be much of a story if it weren’t the third most
outlandish thing Reid said in the last week. Instead, Reid is empowered
to say what appears to be more hyperbolic and vitriolic comments,
encouraged by her Twitter followers and, apparently, by her bosses at
the NBC News-affiliated cable channel.
On Wednesday night’s Reid Out, the host was opining on the decision by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
to “open” the state and end the statewide mask mandate. With the chyron
“Texas To End All COVID Precautions” (not true, but moving on), Reid had this to say about Texas and Mississippi:
“These states, what they have in common, is they have structures which
say black and brown lives matter less. All that matters is that Black
and brown people get their behinds into the factory and make me my
steaks. Make me my stuff. Get there and do my nails. Work. Get back to
work now, and do the things that I, the comfortable, affluent, person
need. Isn’t that what we’re seeing?”
There’s a lot here to unpack. Reid’s conclusion is that Texas is
going to change Covid rules so “Black and brown people” can… “make me my
steaks”? It’s confusing, and offensive — and spoken with such a total
certainty, which makes it so much worse.
Which brings us to this tweet from Reid, also from Wednesday and also supremely confident, about what “people on the right” think:
I’ll say it again: people on the right would trade all the tax cuts for the ability to openly say the n-word like in “the good old days.” To them, not being able to be openly racist and discriminatory without consequence is oppression. Trump is the avatar for this “freedom.” https://t.co/RlqAFYe5Zr
Yes, Reid apparently believes that “people on the right” would like to
“openly say the n-word,” and that “not being able to be openly racist”
is “oppression” to these people. Note — this is not directed at
“racists” or “white supremacists.” It’s not even couching this as “some
people on the right.” It’s just a blanket, across-the-board comment,
according to Reid, that all people on the right think this way.
Theoretically, Joy Reid works with “people on the right” — like Nicolle Wallace. But I mean this sincerely — does Joy Reid really know a single Republican?
nymag | The normally efficient governor’s office had been spinning out of control ever since a bombshell New York Times
story broke the prior evening detailing how Cuomo had made a series
of inappropriate comments to Charlotte Bennett, a young female aide,
including asking her if she had ever had sex with older men and if she
was monogamous in relationships.
“They are panicking,” one former
adviser said. The governor’s office released a statement saying it would
have no further comment on the issue, then released three more
statements throughout the day, the last of which was a cringe-inducing
one in which the governor said he spends all his time at work, that he
considers his colleagues in the executive chamber friends, and: “At work
sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are
funny. I do, on occasion, tease people in what I think is a good natured
way.” He continued: “To be clear I never inappropriately touched
anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make
anyone feel uncomfortable.”
Cuomo
announced that Barbara Jones, a former federal judge with whom he has
close ties, would lead an investigation into the allegations against
him. It was rejected out of hand. State Attorney General Letitia James
leads such investigations, something Cuomo should know, since he led
them against both Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson when he was attorney
general, which contributed to both of them being run out of office. He
then said that Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore would team up
with James to pick an investigator, something James, after consulting
with Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker
Carl Heastie to make sure they would back her up, rejected again.
It
was not lost on the three that here was the governor trying to find an
older white woman to oversee the work of the first female Black attorney
general.
Although
it was erratic behavior from the governor’s office, it was also
quintessentially Cuomo: trying to keep all inquiries in-house, trying to
control the outcome, and trying to see if the other branches of state
government would give ground, as they so often do.
As
of this writing, there are now threefive allegations of sexual harassment
lodged against Cuomo: by Bennett; by Lindsey Boylan, another aide who
alleged that Cuomo forcibly tried to kiss her and made inappropriate
comments to her; and by a woman named Anna Ruch, who says Cuomo made
inappropriate advances to her at a wedding. It is important to say “as
of this writing,” because the current number of sexual-harassment claims
against the governor is almost certain to rise, to say nothing of
allegations of bullying, coercion, and workplace aggression that have
also come out over the past several weeks.
This moment was supposed to be a triumphant one for the governor.
The state is emerging from a year of COVID lockdown; vaccinations are
happening; businesses are reopening. Instead, Cuomo has been holed up in
Albany, waiting for more allegations to come out, as whispers grow that
he will not be the governor of New York by the end of next week, if not
sooner.
The
biggest problem for the governor at the moment is that he is facing an
open revolt in the State Senate and the Assembly. Even in the moderate
suburban swing districts where Cuomo is supposed to have electoral
strength, lawmakers fear that he will be a liability if he were to run
for a fourth term in 2022. They are also anxious to reclaim some of the
prerogatives of governing that Cuomo’s domineering style has taken away
from them. And after years of abuse from Cuomo and his aides, many
lawmakers are ready to exact revenge — none more so than New York City
mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been on a national TV tour tearing into
the governor over the sexual-harassment allegations and the way he has
treated his rivals in government.
“The problem he has right now,” said one Cuomo ally, “is that everybody hates him.”
Begrudgingly Acknowledged Country Bangers
-
When someone says they hate country music, they’re typically referring,
whether they know it or not, to the neotraditionalist “young country” that
arose in...
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...