Friday, September 4, 2020

And another day of orders, reversals, projections, crackdowns, and benefits comes to a close:

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” -- Carl Sagan

Deaths

US: 192,111 (+1053)

World: 878,985 (+5745)

Cases

US: 6,389,057 (+53,813)

World: 26,792,247 (+324,757)

Countdown: 60 days.

Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic Piece Shows the Difference Between Battlefield and Political Courage. The most infuriating part of the soon-to-be-legendary story is what it says about the men who continued to serve this president.

Trump often sees an American landscape of 'losers' and 'suckers'. The Atlantic's report that the president callously dismissed dead American soldiers stands to reinforce his past disregard for sacrifice.

President Trump's New COVID-19 Advisor Is Making Public Health Experts Nervous. “He has no expertise in any of this stuff," Jha says. "He's been bringing out arguments that have been refuted week after week, month after month, since the beginning of this outbreak." Here are some of Atlas' ideas, and why they have scientists and public health experts fretting.

Top Adviser To Operation Warp Speed Calls An October Vaccine 'Extremely Unlikely'.

Widespread COVID vaccinations not expected until mid-2021, WHO says. None of the candidate vaccines in advanced clinical trials so far has demonstrated a “clear signal” of efficacy at the level of at least 50% sought by the WHO, spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.

U.S. coronavirus deaths will more than double to 410,000 by January, the University of Washington's health institute projected.

The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason. Immediately following report that majority of troops oppose Trump, Trump administration orders armed service newspaper publishing since Civil War to shut down within four weeks. — They no longer even try to hide the soon-to-be corpse of democracy in the darkness.

Trump reverses Defense Dept. order to shut down Stars and Stripes newspaper.

Trump orders crackdown on federal antiracism training, calling it 'anti-American'. Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ antiracism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda”. The OMB director, Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory”, “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil”.

For Black Immigrants, Police and ICE Are Two Sides of the Same Coin. For Black immigrants, life in the U.S. often means being encircled by the same systems of criminalization, profiling, and over-policing as Black Americans.

Assistant Texas AG ousted after posting pro-QAnon, anti-LGBT tweets.

Jerry Falwell Jr. made Liberty University financial and real estate decisions that benefited him personally on multiple occasions before and during his presidency.

A Georgia church is the first in the country to split from United Methodist Church over LGBTQ rights. — There are good things that happen every once in a while.

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

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