https://twitter.com/pettigrew_stats/status/1307772503444598791

Interesting idea. Click on that tweet for more analysis on this.

I am up for anything that lessens the small "D" undemocratic nature of the electoral college.

One man, one vote baby!

Source: Huffington Post

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday left open the possibility of using the impeachment process to prevent the Republican-controlled Senate from confirming a new Supreme Court associate justice in the next few months.

George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's "This Week," told Pelosi that some people have suggested the House could move to impeach President Donald Trump or Attorney General William Barr "as a way of stalling" the judicial nomination process.

"Well, we have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss right now," Pelosi said before pivoting to discuss the upcoming election and the coronavirus pandemic.
"This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election with statements that he and his henchmen have made," she said. "So right now, our main goal ... would be to protect the integrity of the election as we protect the American people from the coronavirus."

Stephanopoulos pressed Pelosi: "But to be clear, you're not taking any arrows out of your quiver? You're not ruling anything out?"
Pelosi hesitated before responding, adding that Democrats will use "every arrow in our quiver" to protect democracy.

"We have a responsibility," she said. "We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people. That is when we weigh the equities, protecting our democracy requires us to use every arrow in our quiver."

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nancy-pelosi-impeach-scotus-nomination_n_5f675d92c5b6b9795b1244a9

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Stay strong Madam Speaker, the integrity of an entire branch of government is at stake. The Republicans cannot be allowed to arbitrarily change Senate rules to block Democratic nominations to the court while allowing their own to go forward.

Save the Supreme Court from this Republican assault.

https://twitter.com/mviser/status/1304917603647971332

Well, better late than never, I suppose. Voting Trump out in 2020 is the least anyone who voted for him in 2016 should do.

A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.

This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

“The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action,” Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. “It’s like we’re a developing country.”

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more — to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

“We are no longer the country we like to think we are,” said Porter.

The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/united-states-social-progress.html

This is it in a nutshell, we are increasingly becoming two Americas -- one half doing well or at least Ok and the other half becoming more and more desperate.

https://twitter.com/mviser/status/1303123049131249664

Bazinga!



Joe should insist that the debate stage have a ramp that they both must enter on. lol

Trump is obviously mentally and now also physically impaired.

Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right


Among German conspiracy theorists, ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, the American president is surfacing as a rallying cry, or even as a potential “liberator.”


BERLIN — Just before hundreds of far-right activists recently tried to storm the German Parliament, one of their leaders revved up the crowd by conjuring President Trump.

“Trump is in Berlin!” the woman shouted from a small stage, as if to dedicate the imminent charge to him.

She was so convincing that several groups of far-right activists later showed up at the American Embassy and demanded an audience with Mr. Trump. “We know he’s in there!” they insisted.

Mr. Trump was neither in the embassy nor in Germany that day — and yet there he was. His face was emblazoned on banners, T-shirts and even on Germany’s pre-1918 imperial flag, popular with neo-Nazis in the crowd of 50,000 who had come to protest Germany’s pandemic restrictions. His name was invoked by many with messianic zeal.

It was only the latest evidence that Trump is emerging as a kind of cult figure in Germany’s increasingly varied far-right scene.

“Trump has become a savior figure, a sort of great redeemer for the German far right,” said Miro Dittrich, an expert on far-right extremism at the Berlin-based Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/world/europe/germany-trump-far-right.html


THIS is how far Trump has degraded our nation's standing in the world. And after we get rid of Trump, people like Mike Pompeo will be stepping up to try and do it all again. Let's be under no illusions about what the Republican party has become when we work to undo all the damage they have wrought.

https://twitter.com/mviser/status/1301639109690228736

So, Trump is standing next to the GRAVE of General Kelly's son who died serving in Afghanistan and he says THAT directly to Kelly?

And here I was thinking my opinion of Trump could not possibly sink any lower...

In the United States, racial disparities in human health can impact even the first hours of a person's life, according to new research.

Black newborn babies in the United States are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by Black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors, a study has found.

The mortality rate of Black newborns shrunk by between 39% and 58% when Black physicians took charge of the birth, according to the research, which laid bare how shocking racial disparities in human health can affect even the first hours of a person's life.

By contrast, the mortality rate for White babies was largely unaffected by the doctor's race.

The findings support previous research, which has shown that, while infant mortality rates have fallen in recent decades, Black children remain significantly more likely to die early than their White counterparts.

Researchers from George Mason University analyzed data capturing 1.8 million hospital births in Florida between 1992 and 2015 for the new study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, also known as PNAS.

When cared for by White physicians, Black newborns were about three times more likely to die in the hospital than White newborns, the researchers found. "Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases, and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns," the authors wrote. "The findings suggest that Black physicians outperform their White colleagues when caring for Black newborns."

The authors did not speculate about the reasons behind the trend, but wrote: "Taken with this work, it gives warrant for hospitals and other care organizations to invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism."
"Reducing racial disparities in newborn mortality will also require raising awareness among physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators about the prevalence of racial and ethnic disparities," the researchers added.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/health/black-babies-mortality-rate-doctors-study-wellness-scli-intl/index.html


Implicit bias? Sadly, at the very least, it seems so.

It pains me that white medical professionals, apparently, have been affected to this degree by our systemically racist society

https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1293299181809995779

Nice one!

https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1293016740453134342

I dunno, it can't be easy being THIS incompetent. It would take most people a lot of effort to be this bad.