Friday, September 18, 2020

And another shitty day in America comes to a close. Yes, 2020 just keeps getting worse:

“Dissents speak to a future age.” -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” — Justice Ginsburg, just days before her death

Deaths

US: 203,171 (+958)

World: 956,421 (+5876)

Cases

US: 6,925,941 (+51,345)

World: 30,691,801 (+343,222)

Countdown: 46 days.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” --Mitch McConnell, February 2016 (within an hour of Justice Scalia's death)

Despite it being an election year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate will vote on President Trump's nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Editorial: This is white privilege. This showcases the racism McConnell and many other Republicans had for Obama. Wake up. It’s always been there. Supporting the GOP means you are at worst a racist, and at best someone who condones racism. Both options are disgusting. Only you can change you for the better. I hope you make the correct choice.

From August: Senate GOP divided over whether they'd fill Supreme Court vacancy. -- If they do, we need to take to the streets and demand justice.

A Long List of GOP Senators Who Promised Not to Confirm a Supreme Court Nominee During an Election Year.

Battle over RBG seat could damage Supreme Court's reputation, set off legitimacy crisis. Compared to the other two branches of government, the American public’s faith in the Supreme Court is relatively high. But the reputation of the nation’s high court could change in an instant if a highly polarizing president moves to fill a third spot on the bench less than two months before the 2020 election.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg had planned to retire under Hillary Clinton as the first woman president.

2020 General Election Early Vote Statistics. Virginia, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming all begin early voting today. Get those ballots in now. Don’t wait.

Gaslit Nation 2020 Survival Guide. We are the saviors we’ve been waiting for.

Voters endure long, socially distanced lines to cast early ballots in four states. — This is beautiful. Vote when you can. And ignore the polls. 

How Jared Kushner Let the Markets Decide America’s COVID-19 Fate. Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”...“Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.” The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies. “That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.” According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.” “That’s when I was like, We’re screwed,” the shocked attendee told Vanity Fair.

Eyeglasses may help protect against coronavirus: study. “These findings suggest that the eye may be an important infection route for COVID-19, and more attention should be paid to preventive measures such as frequent hand washing and avoiding touching the eyes.”

CDC reverses course on testing asymptomatic people for Covid-19, again. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday changed its guidance again after an outcry from public health officials, saying asymptomatic people who have come in contact with Covid-19 should be tested. The updated guidance aligns more closely with previous recommendations.

More migrant women say they did not consent to surgeries at Ice center. AP review finds no evidence of mass hysterectomies but files show growing allegations of operations women did not fully understand. Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, the women’s lack of consent or knowledge raises severe legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.

The Little-Known History of the Forced Sterilization of Native American Women. For many, America’s history of brutal experimentation on people of color is perhaps best summed up by the Tuskegee Experiment, in which doctors let African-American men suffer from syphilis over a period of 40 years. But another medical outrage is less well-known. Jane Lawrence documents the forced sterilization of thousands of Native American women by the Indian Health Service in the 1960s and 1970s—procedures thought to have been performed on one out of every four Native American women at the time, against their knowledge or consent.

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of America's billionaires saw their fortunes skyrocket over the past six months — while millions of Americans are now earning less than they were before the pandemic began, according to a new study. “...the Covid crisis is "supercharging America's existing inequalities."

U.S. to start blocking TikTok and WeChat downloads Sunday. But its ownership by a Chinese tech company has been a point of contention among U.S. politicians who have expressed concern that China's government could demand the user data of millions of Americans. That data could then be used for espionage purposes, but security experts have warned that data security is a problem that goes well beyond TikTok or apps that are owned by Chinese companies. While TikTok has a higher profile in the U.S., WeChat is widely used by Chinese Americans. The app is primarily a messaging service but includes a wide variety of functions including a payment system and social media. In China, WeChat is almost necessary for daily life, where it can be used for everything from paying for taxis to playing video games.

Cannabis in the presidential race: Biden-Harris pledge to decriminalize marijuana. Harris announced the position at an ABC virtual town hall Monday. "Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will decriminalize the use of marijuana and automatically expunge all marijuana-use convictions and end incarceration for drug use alone," Harris stated. "This is no time for half-steppin'. This is no time for incrementalism. We need to deal with the system and there needs to be significant change in the design of the system."

Emails Show the Meatpacking Industry Drafted an Executive Order to Keep Plants Open. Hundreds of emails offer a rare look at the meat industry’s influence and access to the highest levels of government. The draft was submitted a week before Trump’s executive order, which bore striking similarities.

A Milwaukee man gunned down his sister in the same house that a child was logged on to a remote class, and a school official says the other students who were logged on could hear it all.

If you do not snooze you lose: sleep seen as essential for the brain.

The downside of conveniently signing in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, or Apple.

Workers worry that in the not-too-distant future they will be sidelined by humans implanted with performance-enhancing microchips...Although cyborgs may sound like the stuff of science fiction, they could be here before long.

Running out of storm names, Atlantic season goes Greek. This is only the second time National Hurricane Center forecasters have had to pull out the Greek alphabet for names, with the last time being 2005. Tropical Storm Wilfred, the last of traditional names, officially formed little more than an hour before Alpha, prompting the hurricane center to tweet “get out the Greek alphabet.”

The oldest human footprints in the Arabian Peninsula have been discovered on an ancient lakebed deep in Saudi Arabia's Nefud Desert, according to research released Friday. The fossilized footprints date to between 112,000 and 120,000 years ago and give insights into the routes that early modern humans – Homo sapiens – took out of Africa maybe 5,000 years earlier.

Hubble Sees Jupiter Erupt With Storms Big Enough to Swallow Earth. “Jupiter, I shouldn't need to remind you, is a very big planet.”

RIP Winston Groom. He was 77.

“Stupid is as stupid does.” -- Forrest Gump

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.