Coronavirus is now running rampant in our towns and counties, indeed throughout this country. Feeding on our loved ones, neighbors, co-workers, children, grandparents in nursing homes, and virtually any breathing human in its path. We may as well have aliens parked on our neighborhood streets, kidnapping people, never to be seen again. We just don't have to see the gory truth because, well, hospitals. My own hospital of preference just had a refrigerated trailer delivered this past week. We are under attack.

A great many of us are locked down in our homes after losing jobs, and are now in a time-out of indefinite duration, helplessly hoping to come out of this with some semblance of our lives and health and families intact. Meanwhile we have a government that thinks a measly $1,200 should tide us all over for four months and counting. We are effectively imprisoned, and many without resources and food.

Our economy and our wallets have been dealt a devastating blow. Businesses shuttered forever-- the small ones folding first. Jobs evaporated nearly overnight. Airlines all but grounded. Americans are now prohibited from traveling to much of the world-- not for business, and certainly not for fun. Retirement plans, weddings, and family vacations all destroyed or postponed. The loss of travel dollars globally incalculable-- countless billions are lost and unrecoverable.

Most horrific has been the impact on our healthcare system and its frontline heroes. Straining this vital lifeline to its utter limits, the nurses and doctors working to save our stricken suffering themselves from PTSD, even if they don't also contract the virus, for years to come. And no available hospital beds for anything else but COVID. This benefits no one.

Or does it?

The cumulative negative impact of this pandemic in the U.S. has been more broad-reaching than any war or other catastrophic global event in a century. I dare say, ever. In the history of this nation.

With our nation literally under attack from all corners by a virus, the incomprehensible, ugly truth is we have no national, coordinated plan to contain, control and mitigate this beast and protect American citizens. Instead, we have politicians gaslighting, fudging numbers, and sitting on their hands. How is this possible?

Despite our President having the War Powers Act at his disposal, he still has not marshalled the manufacturing might and resources of this country to make adequate amounts of PPE for our heroic frontline healthcare workers and for the public. No mass production of test kits to protect, track and defend against this virus. No nationwide, massive contact tracing program to isolate and starve this beast of fresh bodies to infect. States are left on their own to fend for themselves.

All of this juxtaposed against an international backdrop of so many other countries who have successfully shown the way to bring this virus to heel. It is no mystery what needs to be done. We simply have a leader that refuses to lead, refuses to listen to the scientists or act in any way that is helpful, and refuses to do his job. More to the point, he refuses to protect and defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

This is willful inaction. This, in fact, is dereliction of duty that constitutes an attack on all of us. Just as surely as watching a person drown and doing nothing will cause their death. In the hearts and minds of all Americans who care about this country, this seemingly self-inflicted mortal wound makes no sense on any level. Unless what is not being done, is done at the bidding of our enemies.

So, I ask again.... Who, in all the world, does this willful inaction resulting in a freefall of death and economic destruction-- this taking apart of America-- benefit?

More and more, I am overcome with a foreboding sense that this virus is being weaponized against all of us.

Please tell me how I am wrong.

I haven't posted in a long while, being so disheartened of late. But I've been here since 2000 and check in almost daily for a dose of sanity. Thank you all for that. Well, most all of you...

Leaving this here for your listening pleasure, and an offering of love and comfort for the long, difficult road ahead. Truly a song for these times.



Come by the fire, lay down your head
My love, I see you're growing tired
So set the bad day by the bed, and rest a while
Your eyes can close
You don't have to do a thing but listen to me sing
I know you miss the world, the one you knew
The one where everything made sense
Because you didn't know the truth, that's how it works
'Til the bottom drops out and you learn
We're all just hunters seeking solid ground

Don't stop trying to find me here amidst the chaos
Though I know it's blinding, there's a way out
Say out loud
We will not give up on love now
No fear, don't you turn like Orpheus, just stay here
Hold me in the dark, and when the day appears
We'll say
We did not give up on love today

I'll show you good, restore your faith
I'll try and somehow make a meaning of the poison in this place
Convince you love, don't breathe it in
You were written in the stars that we are swimming in
And it has no name, no guarantee
It's just the promise of a day I know that some may never see
But that's enough, if the bottom drops out
I hope my love was someone else's solid ground

Don't stop trying to find me here amidst the chaos
Though I know it's blinding, there's a way out
Say out loud
We will not give up on love now
No fear, don't you turn like Orpheus, just stay here
Hold me in the dark, and when the day appears
We'll say
We did not give up on love today
We'll say
We did not give up on love today

Still time for an election audit: Column
Ron Rivest and Philip Stark 11:26 a.m. EST November 18, 2016

This should be standard — and it's easy, too.

A Washington Post–ABC News poll found that 18% of voters — 33% of Clinton supporters and 1% of Trump supporters — think Trump was not the legitimate winner of the election. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has called on Congress to investigate the Russian cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee and the election.

There are reasons for concern. According to the director of national intelligence, the leaked emails from the DNC were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” The director of national intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency concluded that the Russian government is behind the DNC email hack and that Russian hackers attacked U.S. voter registration databases.

We know that the national results could be tipped by manipulating the vote count in a relatively small number of jurisdictions — a few dozen spread across a few key states. We know that the vast majority of local elections officials have limited resources to detect or defend against cyberattacks. And while pre-election polls have large uncertainties, they were consistently off. And various aspects of the preliminary results, such as a high rate of undervotes for president, have aroused suspicion.

Computers counted the vast majority of the 130 million votes cast in this year's election. Even without hacking, mistakes are inevitable. Computers can’t divine voter intent perfectly; computers can be misconfigured; and software can have bugs. Did human error, computer glitches, hacking, or other problems change the outcome? While there is, as yet, no compelling evidence, the news about hacking and deliberate interference makes it worth finding out.

***

...an audit that manually examines a random sample of the ballots in a way that has a large chance of detecting and correcting incorrect results. This is called a “risk-limiting” audit. If the reported winner of a contest really won, a risk-limiting audit generally needs to examine only a small fraction of the ballots. But if the reported winner actually lost, a risk-limiting audit has a large chance of indicating that a full hand count is needed to set the record straight.

Risk-limiting audits are a crucial check on election integrity and accuracy even when elections are not controversial and margins are wide. They have been endorsed by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration and many organizations concerned with election integrity. Colorado law requires risk-limiting audits starting in 2017, and California law requires them for deploying some new voting systems.

There is no federal law mandating election audits. A number of states perform some kind of audit, but our research shows those audits have little or no chance of detecting and correcting erroneous results. To audit this election effectively will require immediate legal action.

<snip>

Ron Rivest is Institute Professor at MIT and was a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Technical Guidelines Development Committee. Philip Stark, associate dean of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley,was appointed to the board of advisers of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

More here:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/11/18/election-audit-paper-machines-column/93803752/

Go sign the petition here:

https://www.change.org/p/demand-an-audit-of-the-2016-presidential-election

Hell yeah!! We should be doing this for EVERY election .

I keep having this sickening thought creep into my head, and it won’t leave me alone. If this disgusting, orange scumbag will publicly incite Russia to hack our elections and incite his supporters to punch people, what on this Earth would stop him from hiring people to set off explosions and IEDs all over this country to scare people into a fear-induced tizzy in an effort to compel voters to vote for him???

The tough guy…. The Badass! … the terrible Strong Man!?!?

Even if it’s not The Don himself hiring hit men, surely ISIS would find this an attractive strategy as well. Is our nation being terrorized into voting against our own best interests? I think the answer is a resounding and shocking: YES.

What is this country REALLY up against with this election?

This thought has had my stomach upset all morning.

Just heard it now. Couldn't agree more. GO BERNIE!!