March 17, 2020

Coronavirus news: death toll in Italy rises by 16% in 24 hours, now at 2503, 3526 new cases

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/17/coronavirus-live-news-updates-uk-us-australia-europe-france-italy-who-self-isolation-travel-bans-borders-latest-update

Italy's death toll rises by 16% in 24 hours
The total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Italy has risen to 31,506, from 27,980 on Monday, Reuters reports.

The death toll also increased by 16% in the last 24 hours, by 345 to 2,503.


Coronavirus: 'Radical Change' To Life; Italy's Cases Surpass 31,500

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/17/817096232/coronavirus-radical-change-to-life-as-covid-19-reaches-152-countries

"As of today, 152 countries across the globe are affected by this new virus and over 7,000 people have lost their lives to it," the World Health Organization's regional director for Europe said Tuesday, describing the reach of a coronavirus that is disrupting lives in countries around the world.

"One-third of globally reported cases are in the European region," the WHO's Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge said, reiterating his agency's recent acknowledgement that the COVID-19 pandemic's epicenter lies not in China, where this coronavirus was discovered in December, but in Europe.

"The lives of millions of people in our region are undergoing radical change. There is quite simply a new reality," Kluge said in a briefing that was held in a U.N. building that has been nearly completely abandoned as workers stay home to practice social distancing. As Kluge spoke, a large bottle of hand sanitizer sat on the table in front of him.

The U.S. has more than 5,600 cases of the respiratory virus, as of midday Tuesday, and 94 people have died. New York is reporting some 1,700 cases, and Washington state is reporting nearly 1,000.

snip

March 17, 2020

Twitter takes down coronavirus tweets from John McAfee, David Clarke, and others

The platform had pledged ‘to protect the public conversation around Covid-19’

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21181617/twitter-coronavirus-misinformation-tweets-removed-accounts-covid19

Twitter has removed several tweets by prominent accounts that made misleading claims about the novel coronavirus pandemic, as the company says it’s following a “zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and any other attempts to abuse our service at this critical juncture.”

A Twitter spokesperson says the platform removed three posts by David Clarke, who tweets under the handle @SheriffClarke, because the tweets violated its policy against encouraging self-harm. All three of the tweets in question referred to the pandemic in some way, as noted by Jared Holt at watchdog site Right Wing Watch.

In one, Clarke linked to an article about bars and restaurants being ordered to close because of the novel coronavirus and added “Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.” In another, he encouraged people to “get back to reasonableness” and “stop buying toilet paper,” and a third removed tweet suggested people “take to the streets.”

A March 4th blog post outlines Twitter’s policies “to protect the public conversation around Covid-19,” which includes a search prompt that delivers information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other government health organizations and a ban on ads that “opportunistically use the COVID-19 outbreak to target inappropriate ads.”

snip

David Clarke



John McAfee (yes, the anti computer virus bloke)

March 17, 2020

He is going to kill us all!

https://twitter.com/PaulLidicul/status/1239733745722118145

March 17, 2020

It's a mortal threat....

March 16, 2020

Italy on Monday reported 349 new deaths from coronavirus, raising the death toll to 2158

12% rise in cases, almost 28,000 now


Coronavirus: Italy deaths top 2000 after 349 more fatalities confirmed

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/03/coronavirus-italy-deaths-top-2000-after-349-more-fatalities-confirmed.html


Italy: Coronavirus death toll now tops 2,000

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/health/italy-coronavirus-death-toll-now-tops-2-000/1768270


https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1239600130623451137


https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

March 16, 2020

McConnell Has a Request for Veteran Federal Judges: Please Quit

The Senate majority leader has encouraged judges thinking about stepping down to do so soon to ensure that Republicans confirm their replacements this year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/mcconnell-judges-republicans.html

WASHINGTON — Running out of federal court vacancies to fill, Senate Republicans have been quietly making overtures to sitting Republican-nominated judges who are eligible to retire to urge them to step aside so they can be replaced while the party still holds the Senate and the White House.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who has used his position as majority leader to build a judicial confirmation juggernaut for President Trump over the past three years, has been personally reaching out to judges to sound them out on their plans and assure them that they would have a worthy successor if they gave up their seats soon, according to multiple people with knowledge of his actions.

It was not known how many judges were contacted or which of them Mr. McConnell had spoken to directly. One of his Republican colleagues said others had also initiated outreach in an effort to heighten awareness among judges nominated by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush that making the change now would be advantageous.

The overt effort by Republicans to create vacancies reflects a realization that Mr. Trump could lose the presidency, or that Republicans could lose the Senate majority and deprive Mr. Trump of his partner on judicial confirmations even if he did gain a second term. Mike Davis, a former nomination counsel for Senate Republicans who created the Article III Project, a conservative judicial advocacy group, said that he still expected Mr. Trump to win, but that “we have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.” Republicans are reminding the judges that it could be another eight years — 2029 — before they could leave under a Republican president.

snip

March 15, 2020

Here's something that's absolutely terrifying: comparison of the age distributions of Covid-19 cases

https://twitter.com/markwby/status/1238867143363567616


Mark Byrne
@markwby





Mark Byrne
New York
BBC, Medium, Forbes, Bloomberg Markets Magazine, Bloomberg News, New York Magazine, Esquire, GQ, Belfast Telegraph


meanwhile

back in the sewers of Drumpland...............

March 15, 2020

Wanna win FL in the general? This settles it once and for all.

ZERO chance we can win FL if Sanders is the nominee. The vastly reduced Latinx vote he will garner will NEVER make up for Trump's white voter advantage. It is impossible.

Remember, IF we lose FL plus lose WI (or lose FL plus a bigger Midwest state that he flipped in 2016 like PA or MI which means a sure loss for us), there is almost zero path to beating Trump.

If ANY of our candidates (we only have 3 left and Tulsi is a joke) become the nominee and we lose FL and WI, we have no realistic path to winning, even if we fip MI and PA.

I explain

IF we lose WI and FL, we can WIN PA, MI, MN, VA, NV, NM, CO, NH and all the truly Blue states and we STILL lose 270-268, barring ME-2 and NE-2, which I deal with below.

Further explanation:

IF we lose FL and WI, the odds are very very high that IA stays red as well, leaving only AZ and NC as remotely possible pickups and Trump is polling strong in both, especially against Sanders. OH and IN, if WI and IA are red, will be even redder. Also, if we lose WI and IA, PA and MI are also back in somewhat play for him as well more than likely as the tendlines then skew against us, the same as 2016.

The map looks like this



The other possibility is the ultimate nightmarish way for Trump to win, one that will rip the country apart.

If you look at that map above, you will see I gave Trump ME-2 and NE-2, which he won last time. Let's say we flip either (but not both, which is the ONLY way we could realistically if we lost FL and WI, if we lose FL and either PA or MI, nothing matters, we are done at that point no matter what) back to Blue (a far more likely possibility than flipping AZ or NC or IA IF we lose FL and WI)

that yield this



or



269-269

Trump wins via the House electing him, even if we control the House. The process is that each state gets one vote and 26 are needed to elect a president. The Rethugs control exactly 26 House delegations, and the only two remotely close chances to knock it down to 25 are, ding ding ding... WI and FL (you can't make this shite up!!!), but due to gerrymandering and voter suppression, the odds of us flipping either are extremely poor. Also, we could flip one, but the Rethugs could gain the one tie state, PA, and that gets them back to 26. We have no shot at 26 ourselves, and could even lose some states that we control now with 1 seat margins, like CO, MI, and AZ or even other states we control as of now with more than a one seat margin.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fa6iq7MN40HIvob9li5z545pJhd1tQVgZ7GSn0kikLc/edit#gid=0


A 269-269 tie and Trump getting exactly 26 votes to win the POTUS in the House, which is the absolute bare minimum, and his getting them due to Rethug gerrymandering and voter suppression will cause riots I fear, especially if he gets crushed in the popular vote AND we hold the actual majority of House seats like we do now.

The nation may well not survive long term if Trump gets 4 more years and takes the SCOTUS to 7-2 or even 8-1 (Sotomayor has horrid chronic diabetes that has required hospitalisation already) hard RW (plus he will replace the ageing RW goon Thomas with a far younger model of thug) as well as the further cementing in of a multitude of RW hacks and scum on the rest of the federal judiciary.

All post-Brown v Board civil rights gains (and probably Brown itself) will be washed away, rolled back via a multiplicity of test cases shot up the federal judiciary ladder from the rabid RW red states. Furthermore, the RW will not stop at simply devolving decisions back to the states, instead they will try and ramrod down by force a nation-wide theocratic tyranny. The Blue states will eventually have no choice but the start a secessionist movement, which may well lead to a rupturing and rending apart of the union by 2040 at the latest.

Bernie needs to drop out and fully endorse and campaign HARD for Biden, and DEMAND his supporters do the same, demand it until he is so hoarse he can no longer speak. This #NeverBiden bollocks needs to be strangled in the crib, broken on the wheel ASAP, and Sanders simply must be one of the chief protagonists in its destruction.

March 14, 2020

Thomas Piketty Turns Marx on His Head

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/books/review/capital-and-ideology-thomas-piketty.html



By Paul Krugman

Seven years ago the French economist Thomas Piketty released “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” a magnum opus on income inequality. Economists already knew and admired Piketty’s scholarly work, and many — myself included — offered the book high praise. Remarkably, the book also became a huge international best seller.

In retrospect, however, what professionals saw in “Capital” wasn’t the same thing the broader audience saw. Economists already knew about rising income inequality. What excited them was Piketty’s novel hypothesis about the growing importance of disparities in wealth, especially inherited wealth, as opposed to earnings. We are, Piketty suggested, returning to the kind of dynastic, “patrimonial” capitalism that prevailed in the late 19th century. But for the book-buying public, the big revelation of “Capital” was simply the fact of soaring inequality. This perceived revelation made it a book that people who wanted to be well informed felt they had to have.

To have, but maybe not to read. Like Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” seems to have been an “event” book that many buyers didn’t stick with; an analysis of Kindle highlights suggested that the typical reader got through only around 26 of its 700 pages. Still, Piketty was undaunted.

His new book, “Capital and Ideology,” weighs in at more than 1,000 pages. There is, of course, nothing necessarily wrong with writing a large book to propound important ideas: Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was a pretty big book too (although only half as long as Piketty’s latest). The problem is that the length of “Capital and Ideology” seems, at least to me, to reflect in part a lack of focus.

snip

March 14, 2020

Ilhan Omar's Challenger Antone Melton-Meaux Issues Statement on Her Marriage to Chief Fundraiser

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rep-ilhan-omars-challenger-antone-205600575.html

MINNEAPOLIS, March 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Last night, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) announced on Instagram that she recently wed her chief fundraiser, Tim Mynett, during President Trump's historic prime time news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic. As a married person and father of two incredible children, I firmly believe all people, including politicians, are entitled to a private life. I wish Rep. Omar and Mr. Mynett the very best as they begin their married life together.

However, I also believe that how a candidate manages both their public life and political campaign are important metrics for voters to assess transparency and integrity. Misleading voters is a serious breach of the public's trust, whether that be the President of the United States or a Member of Congress.

Campaign finance remains a significant issue, especially when it comes to how campaigns raise and spend money. Ethics still matter. The voters of Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District deserve to know when Rep. Omar's relationship with Mr. Mynett, a paid campaign consultant and fundraiser, began and what steps, if any, she has taken since to avoid any conflict of interest.

I call on Rep. Omar to explain to the hardworking voters and donors in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District why her campaign has paid her husband's political consulting firm, E Street Group, more than $586,000 since 2018, according to the Federal Election Commission. This amount represents almost 60% of the total lifetime revenue of the firm, which prior to 2018 was largely inactive. Over the course of my campaign, I will be unveiling my policy position on campaign finance reform laws so that voters and donors no longer have to wonder if their hard-earned donations are being spent for their intended purpose.

snip


https://twitter.com/Antone_MN/status/1238579713427324938