Tuesday, November 2, 2021

And another day of bad omens for Democrats, rejecting police reform, shots for 5-11 year olds, abortion access hurting the feelings of pro-birthers, reviewing and removing books, depressing realities, and a resurgence of syphilis comes to a close:

“Patriots don’t blindly follow along with the lie that their country has no flaws. You’re thinking of faith.” — Entitled Society Sally

Deaths

US: 768,797 (+2498 over two days)

World: 5,028,109 (+13,169 over two days)

Cases

US: 46,998,099 (+174,161 over two days)

World: 248,260,110 (+799,513 over two days)

Takeaways from Tuesday’s elections: Bad omens for Democrats. The most-watched election of the year, the Virginia governor’s race, was too early to call Tuesday night. That’s a bad sign for Democrats in 2022. President Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 percentage points just a year ago, and if Democrats cannot generate more enthusiasm than their gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe did, they’ll likely be swept out of power in Congress.

Minneapolis voters reject replacing police with new agency. Minneapolis voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety, an idea that supporters had hoped would bring radical change to policing in the city where George Floyd’s death under an officer’s knee brought calls for racial justice.

US gives final clearance to COVID-19 shots for kids 5 to 11.U.S. health officials on Tuesday gave the final signoff to Pfizer’s kid-size COVID-19 shot, a major expansion of the nation’s vaccination campaign. -- Shots can begin immediately.

Abortion Access Hurts Pro-Lifers’ Feelings, Texas Attorney Argues to Supreme Court. The Texas solicitor general defended the state’s abortion bounty law by arguing opponents of reproductive rights may suffer “extreme moral or psychological harm” at the thought of abortion.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is asking the state's association of school boards to review and remove any books with "pornography or other inappropriate content" in the state's school libraries. He did not cite specific examples…But a spokesperson told NPR over email that the group was "confused" about why it had been the recipient, given that it "has no regulatory authority over school districts and does not set the standards for instructional materials, including library books."

Glenn Youngkin’s Campaign Is About One Racist Thing. The depressing reality is that he may not need to run on anything more. If running a white grievance campaign sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Donald Trump sailed to the White House in a similar fashion. The former president never really had any core policies besides pure, uncut racism.

About 7 in 10 (69%) Americans said they know just some or little to nothing about what's in Pres. Biden's spending packages…Despite Republicans having sat on the sidelines while the White House works exclusively with congressional Democrats to get both bills to the president's desk, the lack of knowledge extends across all parties. Americans also do not feel like these bills would help them or the U.S. economy if they become law.

Colin Kaepernick in Netflix series likens NFL draft to slavery: 'No dignity'. The opening scene of the former NFL quarterback's coming-of-age dramedy has caused division on social media.

Graham told officers on Jan. 6 to use their guns on rioters: report. "What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.”

Almost one in three of Republicans say violence may be necessary to ‘save’ US. The troubling statistics show the post-election rancour that led to the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January is still very much in place.

Republican legislators in Texas and Democratic legislators in Illinois have something in common: When it comes to drawing new political maps, they don’t play fair. The two states illustrate the conflict of interest wired into their redistricting laws, which let the people who hold legislative seats draw the districts where they compete to keep their jobs and their party majorities. It’s designed for political majorities to continue their dominance and for incumbents in both parties to keep their powerful posts, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when it works the way it’s rigged to work…If the maps hold — remember that they’re being contested in federal court — they point to a lot of uncontested general elections for federal and state legislative seats. That moves the focus to the primaries, which can be competitive no matter which party has the upper hand. Those are harder to rig.

On the Ground With the QAnon Believers Who Flocked to Dallas for the Grand Return of JFK Jr. Though the Kennedy scion failed to appear at Dealey Plaza this afternoon, some are hopeful he might make an appearance at a Rolling Stones concert later.

Facebook’s Metaverse Is for Rich People. After almost two years of plush pandemic lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg wants to sell you on a virtual play world to solve your problems. After nearly two years of pandemic life mixed with wide frustration toward Facebook as a breeding ground for conspiracy theories about the very science that would help us get out of the pandemic faster, it’s telling that the tech titans behind the company have opted to do their reputational rehab by going all in on a virtual play world that no one really asked for, ignoring the real world in service of building up a fictional one where it’s a lot easier to gloss over big problems—and Facebook’s role in exacerbating many of them.

Syphilis is resurging in the U.S., a sign of public health's funding crisis. The alarms are now clamoring. In the United States, more than 129,800 syphilis cases were recorded in 2019, double the case count of five years prior. In the same time period, cases of congenital syphilis quadrupled: 1,870 babies were born with the disease; 128 died. Case counts from 2020 are still being finalized, but the CDC has said that reported cases of congenital syphilis have already exceeded the prior year. Black, Hispanic and Native American babies are disproportionately at risk. There was a time, not too long ago, when CDC officials thought they could eliminate the centuries-old scourge from the United States, for adults and babies. But the effort lost steam and cases soon crept up again.Syphilis is not an outlier. The United States goes through what former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden calls "a deadly cycle of panic and neglect" in which emergencies propel officials to scramble and throw money at a problem — whether that's Ebola, Zika or COVID-19. Then, as fear ebbs, so does the attention and motivation to finish the task.

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

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