Friday, September 25, 2020

And another day of silence from the GOP as Trump and McConnell destroy America come to a close:

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” -- Albert Einstein

Deaths

US: 208,440 (+902)

World: 993,435 (+5711)

Cases

US: 7,244,184 (+61,713)

World: 32,758,988 (+350,484)

Countdown: 39 days.

CDC forecast now projects more than 20,000 more coronavirus deaths by Oct. 17. The U.S. is now averaging about the same number of new infections on a daily basis as it was in June, which was the county's peak period.

Coronavirus continuing to mutate, study finds, as US cases rise. Experts believe virus is probably becoming more contagious but US study did not find mutations made it more lethal.

Don't Be Fooled by Reports on the 'New' Coronavirus Mutation. But while the basic science of this research may be legitimate, it isn’t as worrisome as some headlines might lead you to believe—the virus is not becoming capable of ripping through masks or surviving soap and water, and the “new” strain is the same one the U.S. has been dealing with for months now.

Gov. DeSantis announces he's lifting all COVID-19 restrictions on Florida restaurants. They are now fully open. — Republicans are literally trying to kill you.

Virus cases rise in US heartland, home to anti-mask feelings.

Democrats prepare bill limiting U.S. Supreme Court justice terms to 18 years. The new bill, seen by Reuters, would allow every president to nominate two justices per four-year term...Term limits for high court justices have for years had support from a number of legal scholars on both the right and the left. Several polls in recent years have also shown large majorities of the American public support term limits.

Amy Coney Barrett Is an Extremist—Just Not the Kind You Think. The problem with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee has nothing to do with her strongly held religious beliefs and everything to do with her right-wing Republican ones. Her nomination has been made with one issue in mind: abortion. The conservative men who have been attacking a woman’s right to choose for a generation have long pined for a woman to do the final work of denying women their right to their own bodies.

Trump unveils 'Platinum Plan' for Black Americans. The proposals that include prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan and Antifa as terrorist organizations, making Juneteenth a federal holiday and efforts to bolster Black economic prosperity. — Antifa isn’t an organization. “Antifa” is Emmanuel Goldstein. Something you are to spend your two minutes of hate each day on. 

Trump pledges to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, designate KKK a terrorist group in pitch to Black voters. — It’s all a ruse. He’s a racist. Less than 40 days out from the election kind of gives this move away. 

The Trump administration’s war on birth control. The Affordable Care Act made birth control more accessible than ever. Then came Trump. The Trump administration, through a systematic dismantling of federal programs and requirements intended to ensure contraceptive access, has turned back the clock on years of successful public health policy and jeopardized countless Americans’ ability to control their reproductive lives. “The best word to describe it is catastrophic.”

Editorial: The Republican Party talks a lot of shit about personal freedoms, but these freedoms are reserved for mainly rich, white people. For everyone else, it’s about control. Republicans aren’t pro-life, that’s a ruse. No, they’re pro-control. Welfare for the rich; “pull up your bootstraps” for everyone else.

Probe into ‘discarded’ ballots becomes campaign outrage fuel. Thursday’s kerfuffle and accompanying internet outrage over a handful of ballots is likely a taste of what’s to come in the month left before the presidential election, which is being held amid a global pandemic that has triggered a wave of absentee ballot requests as Trump continues to launch unsubstantiated attacks on mail voting.

Fact-check: Team Trump capitalizes on Pennsylvania ballot incident to baselessly accuse Democrats of 'stealing' the election.

Federal judge blocks Texas’ elimination of straight-ticket voting. Less than three weeks before early voting begins in Texas, a U.S. district judge has blocked the state from eliminating straight-ticket voting as an option for people who go to the polls this November.

Family demands release of evidence in Breonna Taylor’s case.

NYPD should stop making traffic stops, attorney general says. New York’s attorney general on Friday recommended the New York Police Department get out of the business of routine traffic enforcement, a radical change she said would prevent encounters like one last year in the Bronx that escalated quickly and ended with an officer fatally shooting a motorist.

QAnon leaders look to rebrand after tech crack downs. The shift in tactics comes the same week as Twitter released new data stating that their ban on QAnon-related accounts was severely limiting the reach of the conspiracy theory. -- Nut. Jobs.

Conspiracies About RBG Are Already Running Rampant on Facebook. Facebook accounts and pages are exploiting the Supreme Court Justice's death to spread conspiracy theories and amplify calls to civil war.

Facebook is restricting its workers' political speech and they’re pissed: “It’s never been a better time to unionize”.

Report: Mnuchin wants to delay disclosure of Trump's Secret Service travel costs until after the election.

Girls alleged abuse at Circle of Hope Girls' Ranch for years. It stayed open until they got on TikTok. More than a dozen people reported abuse at a religious boarding school in rural Missouri before the owners' daughter launched a campaign that got action. At the ranch, Askins later told NBC News, he saw Boyd smack a child in the mouth and force a girl to chug water and then drink her own vomit. Askins said he heard Boyd order teenage girls to assault one another. “Knock her out, I mean it,” the voice of a man — whom Amanda, Askins and others identified as Boyd — is heard saying in a video Askins captured. The video disturbed Amanda, 29, but it was far from the first time people had raised concerns about what was happening at her parents’ ranch...But in many states, the industry has little to no regulation. No state agency in Missouri licensed or accredited Circle of Hope, and former residents and parents believe that’s partly why the abuse went unchecked at the ranch for more than a decade. -- This is nothing but abuse. It’s disgusting.

First man cured of HIV infection now has terminal cancer. Brown, dubbed “the Berlin patient” because of where he lived at the time, had a transplant from a donor with a rare, natural resistance to the AIDS virus. For years, that was thought to have cured his leukemia and his HIV infection, and he still shows no signs of HIV. But in an interview with The Associated Press, Brown said his cancer returned last year and has spread widely. He’s receiving hospice care where he now lives in Palm Springs, California. -- Fuck cancer.

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

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