Cognitive Test

The following is this blog’s feeble attempt to determine if you, dear readers, are cognitively impaired:

- Does Donald J. trump have an abrasive personality?

- Has Joe Biden, of late, lost some mental acuity?

- Are President Trump’s enacted and promised policies generally good for America?

- If elected president, would Joe Biden’s plaform promises be damaging to this country?

- If Trump loses on Nov. 3rd, will he step down?

- If Biden loses the presidency, will the Democrats lead another coup attempt?

If you, dear reader, answered any of the above questions “no,” you might consider buying some, or more, long-term care insurance.

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Net Worth

Found on Mostly Cajun blog

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Headlines

Why Trump is focused on making Marco Rubio happy

Coronavirus updates: Eli Lily begins late-stage trials for antibody drug, Russia plans mass vaccinations

Obama endorses 100+ Dem candidates — skips AOC

TV ratings crash for return of woke NBA and MBL

House committee subpoenas 4 top Pompeo aides

Trump returns to the Hamptons for fundraising swing as Biden closes the cash gap

July shootings in Portland double amidst chaos

34 shot, 9 fatally in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago

Trump blasts Birx after she warns coronavirus pandemic is ‘extraordinarily widespread’

Coronavirus cases ease in the Sun Belt states as nationwide deaths climb

Pompeo says Chinese software companies are feeding data directly to CCP

New York Times Op-ed: ‘Lets scrap the presidential debates’


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Nostalgia

Demolition Derby

I have attended a couple of uniquely-American demolition derbies in my knickers days. The secret was to run into other cars going backwards so that you didn’t destroy your car’s radiator which meant steam-belching mechanical inoperability (you lost).

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A Karen Karen

In a sea of red

A Bass with the first name of Karen,

The Veep nod she’s been cravin’.

But her ultimate plot

Is to take the top slot,

Soon after Joe’s office swear-in.


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Breastworks

From Woodstream blog

Stilton’s Place

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Fauci Feedback

Yesterday I published a reader contribution summarizing what Dr. Fauci said on a virtual call with some Dartmouth doctors ... see: Reader Contribution. I am not trying to be disrespectful of this doctor ... but I do have some questions about what he said ... the following:

1) Fauci says the the ratio of asymptomatic cases to diagnosed cases in 2:3 (40%). But previous studiies in California, New York and Florida put the ratio at 10:1, 20:1 or even higher. Perhaps our increased testing has changed things ... but this much?

2) Fauci says all ages get infected at the same rate, Take a look at what has happened in California ... see: California Department of Public Heath. No quite the same Anthony!

3) Fauci says that all vaccines were started from virus samples from China. I’m not sure that, if I were a drug company ready to make this huge investment, I would trust China for such a starter sample.


There was some happy news however — Fauci said that a vaccine may be approved by October! Will this be the October surprise by the Republicans? And will the Dems use scare tactics against such a vaccine breakthrough? Watch and see!

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Headlines

Karen Bass renounces her praise of Fidel Castro

Retail rents plummet across New York City, as glitzy shopping districts turn into ghost towns

Trump demands death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber

Portland protesters burn Bibles, American flags in the streets

Pelosi accuses Trump, Birx of spreading misinformation about coronavirus

COVID-19 test delays create a nightmare as schools try to reopen

Twitter endangers Americans by suppressing medical debate

Farage: Government burying ‘their heads in the sand’ on migration

German leaders warn of coronavirus resurgence, condemn protests

Eastman Kodak’s top executive reportedly got Trump deal windfall on an ‘understanding’

There have more shootings in NYC this year than in all of 2019

Report: 21 shot, 6 dead, Friday-Saturday afternoon in Chicago


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Quotable Quote

Ellen DeGeneres

“Things are never what they appear to be.” — Jeanette Potts

Reader Contribution

On a Zoom call this morning a classmate had to break out early for another virtual meeting with Dr. Fauci. The following is his promised report of what transpired. We thank Rick for this first-hand info:

Per my promise to share the Fauci call and the college's latest communication to students:

Fauci had personal/professional links with all the half dozen Dartmouth Drs who asked questions ... - Main takeaways (answers to questions):

1. Microbal world will continue to interact with human world so this will not be the last pandemic - it is unusual in that it is demographically broad (unlike HIV), not subtle - and has shut the world down.

2. Masks are critical but rejected by the young who don't take the virus seriously and by politics.

3. Opening schools needs to use national guidelines and experiences but ultimately be based on local situations eg low incidence of virus ok to open, high no, teachers protected like others at high risk eg  masks/face shields ok.

4. All ages seem to get infected at about the same rate - 40% of carriers are asymptomatic - young are now becoming more worrisome as carriers as they are showing a higher load of the virus in their nasal passages than adults. (Grandkids have always been little petri dishes...)

5. There are 165 vaccines in development world wide, 127 are in various stages of testing; the speed with which these are being developed is because of the ability with new technologies to rapidly process, grow and analyze the virus once samples came from China - allowed getting to phase one in 3 months versus 18 months previously; some of the stage 1 tests have produced responses as good as getting the disease, so should get some final results in about 3 months.

Cheers -

Rick

Today’s Poser

From daily timewaster blog

Imitating Immaturity

We are now in the midst of an pandemic. No, not the coronavirus, but Trump imitators.

Admittedly, President Trump has a sandpaper personality ... although less so recently ... and with offsetting policy pluses. This unattractive part of his temperament has spawned lots of obnoxious copy cats ... over-paid jocks, Nancy Pelosi, CNN commentators, many state governors, Chuck Schumer, Blue State mayors, snow-flake protestors, some foreign heads of state, Hollywood twits ... and many ... too many others ... without the good policy offsets ... a very disappointng gaggle of juvenile adults.

In 2016 Marco Rubio learned the hard way that trying to trade insults with the Orangeman was a huge mistake ... but this lesson was apparently not learned by the above sophomoric simps.

The real conundrum is why Trump elicits such a tide of imitators ... particularly since such aping does not compliment the apers ... it makes them appear petty and truculent. If they hate Trump so much, why try to emulate him? This is counterintuitive and I certainly can’t explain it.

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reddit Pic

A real patriot who, if he could, would ...

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Headlines

Thousands protest against coronavirus measures in Berlin

Apple surpasses Saudi Aramco to become world’s most valuable company

‘What a fraud this guy is,’ Tucker Carlson rips Dr. Fauci’s dodging of questions about protests

Karen Bass’s long march from Communist fringe to Biden’s VP short list

Trump says he plans to ban TIKTOK in the U.S.

Hurricane Isaias lashes the Bahamas as it bears down on Florida

U.S. Supreme Court rejects request to halt construction of the border wall

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred warns 2020 season could be shut down

Florida teen, 2 others arrested over massive Twitter breach

Big tech spends over $20 million in lobbying in first half of 2020, including on coronavirus bills

Court overturns death sentence of Boston’s Marathon bomber

Exclusive: [Sen.] Cotton presses Google on election interference revelations

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Children

An NBA spectacle designed to give China’s President Xi goosebumps ...



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Today’s Poser

Are the “non-violent” prisoners who have been early-released from prison (like in California and New York) really any less likely to contract COVID-19 in the general population than when they were still behind bars? ... Proof?

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Headlines

‘Rigged election’ goes from Trump complaint to campaign strategy

CDC warns Congress of ‘significant public health consequences’ if schools don’t reopen

The never-ending Flynn case drags on

Diane Feinstein: China is ‘growing into a respectable nation’

Stephen Miller: Obama’s comments at Lewis funeral ‘totally disconnected from reality’

Coronavirus live updates: U.S. cases jump by 67,000, Sanofi, GSK nab $2.1 billion in vaccine deal

FBI audit finds 2 errors in 29 FISA applications — Carter Page’s alone had 17 omissions

Fauci: ‘I don’t think we need to go to lockdown again’

Eurozone economy shrinks by record 12.1 percent in second quarter

Earnings at halfway mark are much better than expected

Federal grand jury indicts Tenn. Dem senator who allegedly embezzled  $600k

Donald Tump suggests delaying 2020 election

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Herd Immunity

Is herd immunity the only real solution to the increasing infection rate of the COVID-19 pandemic? Well many epideniologists think so ... and I am beginning to agree. The current hot spots in the USA are Florida, Texas and California ... replacing New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, all three of which might be approaching some sort of plateau in daily new cases ... each generating only a few hundred cases per day while the hot spots are in the thousands. (There are other states that could be placed in each group ... only to complicate things ... so we will ignore them here.)

To normalize things between these states we will look at new daily cases per million of population ... see: World Meters. Here they are today:

                                Total

                     Cases per 1 million

New York               22,843

New Jersey             21,128

Massachusetts       17,064

Florida                    22,350

Texas                      15,315

California               12,799

Total USA              14,351

As been demonstrated in various blood tests for this virus’ antibodies, the number of asymptomatic cases can be as much as twenty or more times diagnoses cases. Therefore we can see from the above that New York, New Jersey and Florida might really have as many as 400,000 cases per million (40%) of population. Now, herd immunity is estimated to be achieved at 50-60% ... so, we might be getting close to herd immunity in these three states. (Maybe why these states, excepting the special case Florida might be slowing down.) And Texas, California and Massachusetts still have a way to go ... as does the overall USA. (Caveat: our much more extensive testing now might have reduced this multiplier between asymptomatic and diagnosed cases to well below 20.)

(We are not dealing with coronavirus death rates here because therapeutics have gotten a whole lot better ... and we have also learned to concentrate mitigation efforts on nursing homes. Texas, California and Florida are still doing worlds better than the other three on this count.)

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China Import

From Powerline blog

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Powerline Pic

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E.T.

An extraterrestrial was sent to Earth on last February first as an emissary from the Council of Worlds to decide if the Earth was to be invited for membership. After a short period changing its appearance and learning all the languages, it spent its remaining time visiting most of the inhabited areas of this globe ... but concentrating on the biggest economic power, the United States.

This information gatherer found multiple forgeries in all disciplines painted over to appear as masterpieces ... while actual truths were being ridiculed into submission. It uncovered prancing hypocrisy, preening vanity, indulgent lust, ostentatious wealth, manufactured realities, rampant crime, self-serving politicians, unscientific science and a destructive media.

After six Earth months, it left this morning on the UFO trolley to go back and file its report ... shedding green tears and shaking its head in disbelief.

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Today’s Poser

Isn’t today’s Cancel Culture, which curses our history, a lot like children suing their parents for any bad genes they inherited?

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Headlines

Pompeo claims he didn’t  interact significantly with ousted Ukraine Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch

Trump suggests delaying election amid fraud claims, but he has no power to do so

Senate investigators target CIA, State records in expansion of Russian probe

Daily Caller experienced Google suppression, says EIC

Ruth Bader Ginsberg undergoes medical procedure [stent] at hospital

Former GOP presidential candidate, Herman Caine, dies after battle with coronavirus

1.43 million filed for [unemployment] benefits last week

Twitter under fire for flagging Trump posts but not Iran Ayatollah

U.S. suffers worse quarterly contraction on record as virus ravages economy

Congress has the goods on Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google

Additional 26 million Americans likely to qualify for round 2.0 of stimulus checks

Poll: Trump narrows gap in battleground states


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Quotable Quote

"It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." — Joseph Stalin (or was it Nancy Pelosi?)

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Crying Shame

The mask comes off as Barack Obama delivers his blatantly political eulogy at John Lewis’ funeral in Atlanta. He played a fistful of race cards to try to prop up his brain-dead Vice President by throwing red meat to this sympathetic audience ... trying to tear Trump down. It’s a crying shame ... this was supposed to be a solemn occasion ... yet this truculent man used it to hurl political mud balls.

Obama was elected president in part because he was to bring our country together. Here, he is shamelessly doing exactly the opposite ... only undisguised. Could he have gotten away with these racially divisive lies during his time in the White House?

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Typos

Periodically I need to apologize for any typos on this blog. I suffer from macular degeneration (I’m 81 and have age-related spotting on my retinae ... rendering me legally blind). This is compounded by that stupid automatic spell-correcting technology which too often “corrects” things that do not need correcting.

Anyhow, until my wife catches these fluffs, dear reader please tolerate them ... and forgive.

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Social Distancing

John Lewis funeral yesterday, inside and outside the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta.

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Headlines

How Covid-19 could give Kim Jong Un a doomsday weapon

Most swing-state voters back extending $600 weekly unemployment benefit, CNBC/Change poll finds

Over 100 police agencies pull out of agreements to guard Democrat National Convention

Twitter censors videos of doctors’ presser, locks Breitbart account

EU to limit export of ‘sensitive’ tech in response to Hong Kong security law

Coronavirus live updates: California, Florida, Texas report record-high average daily deaths

Politico publishes then scrubs article saying Biden picked Kamala as VP

Election interference: Google purges Breitbart from search results

Trump administration rejects new DACA applications as it works to end program

Kodak shares soar 200%, halted repeatedly on Trump deal to make drug ingredients

Some local U.S. law enforcement using Chinese drones cited for espionage concerns

Pelosi: ‘Despicable’ Barr was not forthcoming in his testimony

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Everly Brothers

Don and Phil at their Reunion Concert at Albert Hall,  London, 1983

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