And another day of ‘leave the rest to me,’ the biggest threat to democracy, the vaccines and delta, the eviction moratorium coming to an end, Trump tax returns, the DOJ suing TX, and gay and bisexual men’s weak earnings comes to a close:
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” -- George Orwell
Deaths
US: 629,064 (+572)
World: 4,224,124 (+9523)
Cases
US: 35,688,506 (+104,234)
World: 198,010,967 (+646,374)
Trump urged Justice officials to declare election ‘corrupt’. President Donald Trump urged senior Justice Department officials to declare the results of the 2020 election “corrupt” in a December phone call, according to handwritten notes from one of the participants in the conversation. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump said at one point to then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, according to notes taken by Richard Donoghue, who was then Rosen’s deputy and who was also on the call...“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency.”
The biggest threat to democracy isn’t coming from China. It’s coming from within. In countries where democracy is at real risk of collapse or even outright defeated — places like India, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, and, yes, the United States — the real drivers of democratic collapse are domestic. Far-right parties are taking advantage of ethno-religious divides and public distrust in the political establishment to win electorally — and then twist the rules to entrench their own hold on power. Leaders of these factions, like former US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aid and abet each other’s anti-democratic politics. More traditional authoritarian states, even powerful ones like China or Russia, have thus far played at best marginal roles in this struggle…Elected authoritarians still bill themselves as defenders of democracy while in power — even after they start undermining the electoral system with tactics like extreme gerrymandering and takeovers of state election agencies. Their political appeal isn’t grounded in an overt rejection of democracy in favor of a Chinese model, but rather a claim to be taking democracy back from corrupt elites in the name of the “true” people, typically defined in ethno-nationalist terms.
CDC warns in internal document that 'war has changed' with the coronavirus. Vaccines continue to be effective, particularly at preventing severe disease, according to the document. But they may not be as good at preventing infection or transmission of the delta variant.
Study: Vaccinated people can carry as much virus as others. In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
New study says vaccines can't stop the delta variant alone. Researchers recommended the use of masks and physical distancing until almost everyone is vaccinated.
Texas governor threatens to fine local officials who enforce new mask mandates. Local government entities that institute mask mandates may be fined up to $1,000. The order also specifies that government entities cannot “compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization.”
Two groups on Friday said vaccinations in thousands of pregnant women over the past several months have shown the shots are safe and effective during pregnancy.
Masks Are the New Condoms for Public Health Education. So, how do I respond and address these issues? The same way as I did with condom education years ago. I try to deliver a message that is caring, culturally and community sensitive, and with honesty and hope. I try to explain that the science changes and so do our recommendations based on the latest data that are available from credible sources, not anecdotes. I explain that I am there to provide harm reduction techniques to try to reduce the risks, but I cannot eliminate the risks. There are no guarantees. There are no easy answers, only intelligent alternatives. There will be casualties, but masks, just as condoms, reduce the risks. I am not asking to take away anyone’s freedoms, only providing the strategies to help everyone protect one another with risk reducing techniques like masks and condoms, from the risks of deadly diseases, like COVID-19 and AIDS, and to provide the opportunity for others and themselves, the freedom to live disease-free.
Disney and Walmart mandate vaccines for employees. Disney (DIS) is requiring all its salaried and non-union hourly employees in the US to be vaccinated. Workers who are working on-site but are not yet vaccinated must do so within the next 60 days, according to a statement from the company to CNN Business. All new hires must be fully vaccinated before beginning their jobs...Walmart (WMT), the nation's largest retailer, said all its US-based corporate employees must be vaccinated by October 4, according to a Friday memo from Doug McMillon, the company's president and CEO.
House fails to extend eviction moratorium ahead of 6-week recess. The measure was objected to by Republicans, none of whom supported the bid. — Because the people at risk of being evicted are not rich.
$1 trillion infrastructure plan clears another Senate hurdle. The Senate further advanced a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan Friday with a bipartisan group of senators helping it clear one more hurdle and bracing to see if support can hold during the next few days of debate and efforts to amend it.
Justice Department says IRS must give Trump tax returns to Congress. The Justice Department, in a reversal, says the Treasury Department must provide the House Ways and Means Committee former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, apparently ending a long legal showdown over the records.
Georgia Republicans inch closer to a takeover of elections in state's largest county. Republican lawmakers in Georgia are requesting that the state undertake a performance review of local election officials in Fulton County -- a move that could result in a GOP takeover of election operations in a heavily Democratic region of this battleground state.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has directed his company's ad buyer to stop placing ads on Fox News after a reported disagreement over a commercial promoting an event linked to his repeated claims of voter fraud. — How’d we get to the point where the “MyPillow” guy is famous? Ugh.
Temperatures dropped across Brazil - with rare snowfall overnight in some places - as a polar air mass advanced toward the center-south of the global agricultural powerhouse, threatening coffee, sugarcane and orange crops with frost.
DOJ Sues Texas Governor Over Using State Troopers To Turn Back Migrants. The Biden administration sued Texas on Friday to prevent state troopers from stopping vehicles carrying migrants on grounds that they may spread COVID-19, warning that the practice would exacerbate problems amid high levels of crossings on the state's border with Mexico.
Gay and bisexual men earn thousands less than their straight peers, eye-opening study finds. Their findings, published Friday (30 July) in the Journal of Population Economics, found that gay men earn on average 6.8 per cent less than straight guys across all three continents. Lesbian women, on the other hand, tend to earn more than heterosexual women – 7.1 per cent, to be precise. A difference that researchers attributed to lesbian women being perceived as more “masculine” by employers.
Amazon now employs almost 1 million people in the US — or 1 in every 169 workers.
68% of Republicans in the U.S. say they would feel somewhat or very uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns to refer to someone else; 67% of Democrats say they would feel somewhat or very comfortable with it.
In Hawaii, robot dogs join the police force. The handful of police officials experimenting with the four-legged machines say they’re just another tool, like existing drones and simple wheeled robots, to keep emergency responders out of harm’s way as they scout for dangers. But privacy watchdogs — the human kind — warn that police are secretly rushing to buy the robots without setting safeguards against aggressive, invasive or dehumanizing uses.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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