First they came for the votes of the convicted.
Then they came for the votes of Black and People of Colour.
Then they came for the votes of the poor.
Then they came for the votes of the working class.
. . .
Then the only votes left belonged to rich white people.
Cheetolini has appointed a new Minister of Truth. . .I mean, propagandist. . .no wait, press secretary, that’s it. Her name is Kayleigh McEnany. Putting that in an anagram finder:
An even better addendum:
And an unrelated, humourous observation I made yesterday:
President Trump on Monday replaced the Pentagon’s acting Inspector General Glenn Fine, who had been selected to chair the panel overseeing the rollout of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed last month, Politico first reported.Why it matters: A group of independent federal watchdogs selected Fine to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, but Fine’s removal from his Pentagon job prevents him from being able to serve in that position — since the law only allows sitting inspectors general to fill the role.
- The group of inspectors general will now have to choose a new watchdog to lead the committee.
- The White House named Environmental Protection Agency inspector general Sean O’Donnell to serve as the acting Pentagon inspector general in addition to his current post. Fine will return to his role as the Pentagon’s principal deputy inspector general, a spokesperson told Politico.
The big picture: Sources close to Trump tell Axios’ Jonathan Swan that they expect him to fire more inspectors general across his government, after his Friday night removal of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community I.G. who alerted Congress to the complaint that triggered impeachment.
Conservative allies of the president have told him that these inspectors general are members of the “deep state” trying to undermine him, and Trump appears to have embraced that view.
On Monday, Trump rebuked a reporter at a coronavirus press briefing for asking about findings from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general. He continued to attack the HHS inspector general on Twitter on Tuesday, claiming that she spent eight years with the Obama administration and calling her report “another Fake Dossier.”
The HHS inspector general, Christi Grimm, has served as a federal watchdog in multiple administrations since 1999.
The first rule of any successful business must surely be Don’t Annoy Your Customers. It’s amazing how many feel they can hurl make false assertions, spew hate speech or engage in flat out discrimination without consequences.
Back in May 2019, the owner of the “Formosa Fitness” gym in Taichung, Taiwan, put up a Transphobic and homophobic post on his business’s facebook page. Many LGBTQIA people were annoyed and posted negative reviews, myself included. (There are two images below the fold, hidden to make viewing them optional.)
The owner falsely claimed that gay men were having sex in his gym and predating on others, and that he didn’t want anyone not cisgender hetero binary in his place of business. I expect he assumed he could lose some foreigners as customers, since he speaks Mandarin. But what he didn’t account for was the response by Taiwanese people who are mostly pro-equality. Memberships slowly declined and by November 2019, he was out of business. Victory.
This past week, several Taiwanese businesses (restaurants and bars) enacted xenophobic and baseless policies, saying “No foreigners without a passport” or “no entry without proof of a departing flight”. For foreigners who have legal residency visas and did not travel since mid-December, such “policies” are both baseless and illegal as per Taiwan’s Immigration Act, Article 62. But good luck getting the businesses to listen.
To say they have responded to criticism poorly is an understatement. Many “doubled down”, banned people who spoke up or wrote negative reviews, etc. And it’s not just foreigners who have spoken up, Taiwanese people have come to our defence. The only people these businesses are hurting are themselves: a nightclub, another nightclub, a bistro, another bistro, a bar, another bar, among others. Some have since dropped the policy or apologized. Most haven’t.
A friend of mine (who is fluent in Mandarin and a permanent resident) wrote about this on her own blog (linked to with her permission). She gives far more detail than I do here.
This is definitely illegal:
The government has tracked all known cases of COVID-19, and none were brought in by foreigners. All imported cases were brought by returning Taiwanese citizens; all foreigners were infected locally.
Have there been any infected people in Taiwan who have knowingly broken quarantine? Yes, several. One was a woman who went shopping. A man went to a nightclub because he was bored. The third was a man who invited friends to his apartment for a party, potentially infecting them. The first two were fined NT$1 million (US$33,000). A spoilt 25 year old with rich parents did it twice, but did not receive the most severe fine; many have called for him to be jailed for the remainder of his quarantine.
There was a kerfuffle two weeks ago involving a spoilt 20-something British woman who landed in Taiwan on her way to Australia. (She did not break quarantine.) She told her mother she was “incarcerated” and given “inedible food” during her quarantine, and her mother told the BBC. The Taiwan government showed a picture of the accomodations, a place twice the size of my apartment. The food, while simple (e.g. boiled, steamed food), did meet the woman’s dietary restictions. Taiwan has alloted NT$1000 (US$33) per day compensation to those in quarantine, but because of her unjustified complaints, the woman won’t receive it. The BBC originally reported the mother’s account, but have since deleted it and tried to pretend the page doesn’t exist.
Click to read more:
And I’ll bet smokers are terrified at the thought. But the only people who should be afraid are those in danger of Initimate Partner Violence when smokers go through withdrawal.
Health experts from various medical bodies are recommending that not just people stop smoking because of COVID-19, but that tobacco companies cease production and distribution. Possibly, permanently. COVID-19 attacks the cilia in the nose and lungs, hence the very deep swabs into the nose. Infected people can still get air into the lungs, but if the oxygen can’t get into the blood….
From the European Respiratory Society:
COVID-19, propelled by smoking, could destroy entire nations
Smoking is a risk factor for many diseases. COVID-19 is in a whole new class of its own (1). Many countries are just starting to come to terms with the fact that smokers are 14 times more likely to die from COVID-19 (2, 3), but few have issued warnings to quit smoking (4) and to our knowledge, no country has ramped up its tobacco control prevention measures. In the face of this pandemic we know of no country that has widely distributed free nicotine replacement therapy or cessation support drugs,
This is the cited article (2) in the text above, from the National Institute of Health:
From CTV:
COVID-19 seems to be hitting smokers more severely, scientists warn
TORONTO — With COVID-19 cases soaring, health care officials are trying to get ahead of the worst by looking at who is most at risk of ending up in the ICU and on ventilators if they catch the virus. High on that list is smokers.
[…]
Early research is showing that among people with severe pneumonia due to COVID-19 in China, 12 per cent of current smokers were admitted to an ICU, required ventilators, or died, compared to less than 5 per cent of non-smokers.
Dr. Neal Patel, a critical care specialist and pulmonologist with the Mayo Clinic says cigarette smoke damages tissues in the lungs.
“It destroys the cilia in the lungs … as well as in the nasal pharynx,” Patel said. He explained that “the cilia are tiny hairlike follicles that help to trap damaged viruses, debris, and move that debris upwards, out of your lungs so it doesn’t stay there and cause issues.”
From Reuters:
Experts urge smokers and tobacco firms to quit for COVID-19
LONDON (Reuters) – Health experts on Monday urged smokers to quit and cigarette companies to stop producing and selling tobacco products to help reduce the risks from COVID-19.
“The best thing the tobacco industry can do to fight COVID-19 is to immediately stop producing, marketing and selling tobacco,” Gan Quan, a public health specialist and a director at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, said in a statement.
[…]
It said a study of more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February found that smokers – both past and present – fared poorly, with smokers comprising more than 25% of those that needed mechanical ventilation, admission to an intensive care unit, or who died.
From CNN:
Now’s the time to quit smoking: It could increase your odds of beating Covid-19
“Every lung doctor in America will be preaching that everyone should quit smoking.” Dr. Brian Christman, a volunteer spokesman with the American Lung Association and a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, told CNN.
[…]
If you make the decision to quit, the cilia in your lungs are one of the first parts of your body to heal. These hair-like projections wave back and forth like a brush as air moves in and out of your lungs.
It’s not just medical professionals. Tobacco companies are getting desperate. Altria (aka Philip Rigor Mortis) has “temporarily” ceased production of tobacco in Virginia. Good luck claiming this is “an essential business”. From CSP Daily News:
Marlboro Maker Suspends Manufacturing Due to Coronavirus
RICHMOND, Va. — After learning that a second employee at its Philip Morris USA (PM USA) manufacturing center in Richmond, Va., had tested positive for COVID-19, Altria Group, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, announced it will temporarily suspend operations at that facility for two weeks “out of an abundance of caution.” On the same day, the company notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that its chairman and CEO had contracted the coronavirus and is taking a temporary leave of absence.
[…]
In terms of its operational decision, PM USA has actively implemented business continuity plans and believes it has sufficient cigarette inventory for approximately two months based on current estimated shipping volume, in addition to current wholesale and retail inventories, officials said.
Altria is also bribing…I mean, begging and pleading for the FTC to get its money out of Juul before the latter company collapses. The FTC is using the false pretense that Altria’s purchase of Juul “violated anti-trust laws”. This was not about “competition and monopolies”. From the FTC:
FTC Sues to Unwind Altria’s $12.8 Billion Investment in Competitor JUUL
Today, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint alleging that Altria Group, Inc. and JUUL Labs, Inc. entered a series of agreements, including Altria’s acquisition of a 35% stake in JUUL, that eliminated competition in violation of federal antitrust laws.
“For several years, Altria and JUUL were competitors in the market for closed-system e-cigarettes. By the end of 2018, Altria orchestrated its exit from the e-cigarette market and became JUUL’s largest investor,” said Ian Conner, Director of the Bureau of Competition. “Altria and JUUL turned from competitors to collaborators by eliminating competition and sharing in JUUL’s profits.”
Dr. Silvia Paracchini FRSE is a geneticist and lecturer at the School of Medicine, University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In March 2018, she began a comprehensive study on handedness involving nearly 2.4 million participants. The results were published this week.
She tested only Europeans. European children are encouraged to use their natural hands, so doing a Euro-centric study actually removes a bias. Most religions, countries and cultures in other parts of the world (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America) still consider it acceptable to abuse left handed children (forced hand switching).
The article cited below does not say whether the effect of right handed bias of mass manufacturing was taken into account. It would also be worth knowing the different rates amongst various groups. Other studies have claimed XY people are more likely to be left handed than XX, and LGBTQIA people are more likely than cishetero binaries.
World’s biggest study of left-handedness
Thursday 2 April 2020
From Leonardo da Vinci to Oprah Winfrey, and from Napoleon Bonaparte to Jimi Hendrix the talents of left-handers have been celebrated across the generations.
However, the prevalence of people who favour their left hand over their right has always been a rough estimate – until now.
In the biggest ever global study of handedness researchers from across Europe, led by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and in the UK by the University of St Andrews, have concluded that 10.6% of the world’s population are left handed.
Details of the study of more than two million people by researchers at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Oxford, University of Bristol, Ruhr University Bochum and St Andrews are published in Psychological Bulletin today (Thursday 2 April 2020).
Frequency of left-handedness has shaped and underpinned different fields of research, from cognitive neuroscience to human evolution. While hundreds of empirical studies have assessed handedness, there has never been a large-scale, comprehensive review of the prevalence of handedness and the factors which moderate it.
For the study researchers examined five meta-analyses involving 2,396,170 individuals on hand preference for different manual tasks. They showed that left-handedness prevalence lies between 9.34% using the most stringent criterion of left-handedness, to 18.1% using the most lenient criterion of non-right-handedness, with the best overall estimate being 10.6%.
Typically handedness is measured by which hand is used to write with. However, for this study researchers allowed for the fact that about 9% of people use different hands for different tasks which further improved the accuracy for their findings.
Understanding handedness contributes to our understanding of human evolution. For example, it has been claimed that right-handedness, along with the capacity to make and use tools, to use language, and to show functional and anatomical cerebral specialisation, are characteristics specific to humans, and that they are intimately tied together in the divergent evolution of man from apes.
The lead UK author of the study, Dr Silvia Paracchini, of the School of Medicine at St Andrews, said: “This study will provide a useful reference for different areas of handedness research. In addition to providing reliable figures, the study highlights variability across studies depending on the different criteria used to measure handedness. While we intuitively classify handedness as a left/right category, these data show that the proportion of people using different hands for different tasks is almost as big as the proportion of the left-handers.”
‘Human handedness: A meta-analysis’ is published in Psychological Bulletin.
Please use the paper’s DOI (10.1037/bul0000229) in all references and social media posts.
Now if only ignorant and bigoted attitudes will finally die.
I don’t care if your culture, society or religion says it’s “rude” to do or hand you something with my left hand, I’m still going to do it. There’s nothing wrong with my hand, it’s your unfounded beliefs that are wrong.
[Reposted for an update at the end]
On Saturday evening, RTHK’s Yvonne Tong attempting to inteview Beijing’s puppet…I mean, “assistant director general” of the WHO, Bruce Aylward.
First watch him squirm and pretend he “didn’t hear the question”. If he didn’t hear it, why didn’t he ask her to repeat it? Then, he hangs up on her to avoid her second attempt to ask. When she calls back, he lies “We’ve already talked about China….”
Pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe it. “WHO”? More like WORM: Worm Owned by Renminbi Money. He is an embarrassment to all Canadians.
Update:
Another example of how Hong Kong’s government and “leader” Carrie Lim are puppets of Beijing. The emphasis in the text is mine.
Hong Kong criticises broadcaster RTHK for asking WHO about Taiwan
Hong Kong’s government said public broadcaster RTHK breached its charter by asking the World Health Organisation (WHO) about Taiwan’s membership, a move democracy advocates criticised as a new government effort to muzzle the press.
[…]
An RTHK spokesperson said the station had reviewed the programme and found no violation of its charter. Taiwan was referred to as “a place” in the episode and no stance was taken, the spokesperson said.
Hong Kong enjoys freedom of the press and other rights guaranteed before the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule in 1997, and democratically run Taiwan has been widely debated in the city’s media.
It’s worth the fourteen minutes. Quod erat demonstrandum.
When I read Nathan’s post on the Atlanta Braves, I intended to write a 50-100 word reply, not 500-1000. Apologies for hijacking your topic, Sir.
There are three disingenuous arguments that pro sports owners use when refusing to change racist team nicknames and mascots:
1) Tradition
2) Rebranding
3) Legal conflicts
None have any validity. All are justifications of perpetuating racism for profit.
This is long and there are pics, so it continues below the fold….
The bad:
According to the Worldometers site, at 18:00 UTC time the number of infected people worldwide surpassed 1,000,000. The death toll is over 51,000.
It is 100 days from December 25, 2019 (around the time COVID-19 was first reported) to April 2, 2020. There were 1,000 cases on January 24; 100,000 on March 6; and 900,000 yesterday.
The good:
Taiwan’s National Health Research Institutes has developed a test that detects COVID-19 in 15 minutes using SARS antibodies from 2003. However, it will be some time before it can be distributed worldwide.
In news items about the urns in China, you may have noted mention of Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming Festival 清明节). It and Children’s Day (in Taiwan) are two holidays celebrated on April 4th and April 5th. The word for “four” in Chinese (and Korean and Japanese) sounds like the word for “death”, so 4/4 is their day of the dead. Never give anything to an ethnic Chinese person that comes in a multiple of four; packaged products here come in 3s, 5s, and higher numbers, rarely 4s.
Normal Tomb Sweeping Day activities involve visiting shrines, cutting grass and cleaning family graves or visiting family elders. Over on the mainland, they may not even be able to do that, unable to claim their deceased and give them a proper burial. Mourning periods are not officially banned, but are well nigh impossible in the current situation.
The holidays fall on a weekend this year, which in the past would have meant no extra days off. But starting in 2018, Taiwan enacted statutory holidays when they fall on the weekend, meaning schools and businesses are closed for Thursday and Friday (4/2 and 4/3). Normally a four day weekend would be nice, but, with COVID-19 around, the number of infected in Taiwan over 300 and selfish cretins STILL breaking voluntary quarantine (one did it TWICE and was fined both times), most people I know are staying home.
This holiday was a missed opportunity. If the government had enacted a mandatory national quarantine from March 28 to April 12, it would have meant only eight lost work and school days (3/30-4/1, 4/6-4/10) and allowed the medical system to get ahead of things. And this isn’t just my view, one of the government’s own doctors working on it (I’ll add a link to the news item when I find it again) has recommended a national two week quarantine. The acts of a selfish few could cause it to overrun the island.
Tomb Sweeping Day always makes me think of The Replacements:
“The ones who love us best
Are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays, at best”
April 1, 2018 was a nice day. After years of xians saying, “April first is athiest day!” (their misspelling, not mine), it was nice being able to say “Easter is for April fools.” Wow, did they ever get touchy about that.
Easter should be a static holiday, on April 1st every year.
It’s difficult to celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility today, on a day when fascists in Idaho pass laws legalizing hate and discrimination, when news of another murdered Black Transgender Person appears, when bigots use current events to incite hatred and blame LGBTQIA people for COVID-19 (how, exactly?), when TERF trash continue to incite hate under the false pretense of “stopping predators”. (Don’t flatter yourselves, TERFs. Transgender heterosexual women will never be interested, and even Transgender women who are bi, pan or lesbian won’t either. Not with your personalities.)
That said, as time passes and still there are no “predators in toilets”, no “rapes by traps”, no “denial of rights to the gender hypocritical”, the public see that Transgender people are no more a “problem” than cisgender gays or cisgender lesbians were. They demonize and incite more violence because they know they can’t demonstrate and cite examples.
Being visible does not require people out themselves nor is it about forcing people to come out. If you don’t feel safe about coming out, worried about losing your income, your home, family, friends, safety, etc., then don’t come out.
Visibility is about those who are willing to be seen, willing to pave the way for others to eventually be safe. People like Caroline Cossey, Laverne Cox, Zinnia Jones and others paved the way for people like me to feel confident enough to come out. I and others who benefitted from them are doing the same for more who still don’t feel safe: paving the way for you. As more come out, you may eventually feel safe enough. I know I didn’t until there were enough.
I have what I call the “one in a thousand” rule when it comes to marginalized people.
When you’re young and different than everyone else, after enough attacks, insults, harassment, and people claiming you’re “weird” or “wrong”, you start to wonder if they’re right. If you don’t or can’t find support, the abuse may eventually wear you down and take your life.
But if you hear about others, learn that others like you exist, suddenly you realize you’re not the problem. Suddenly you start to wonder just how many others there are. Suddenly you start looking for them and they start appearing in far greater numbers than you ever expected.
When you think you’re one in a thousand, you feel like you’re nothing. When you learn that you’re 7.7 million out of 7.7 billion not only are you not alone, but you are a collectively a force that is hard to silence, oppress and oppose. If you feel isolated and alone, don’t assume you’re the only one. Reach out and try to find others. They’re there.
There’s really only one thing bothering me on this year’s International Transgender Day of Visibility: Cartoonist Sophie Labelle, author of “Assigned Male”, was going to visit Taipei around this time, but cancelled her world tour due to COVID-19. I was looking forward to meeting her.
I don’t believe in supernatural mumbo-jumbo one iota, but I love Hallowe’en. I’m one of those 24/7/366 (this year) types who talks and lives Hallowe’en every day. You wouldn’t believe how many Hallowe’en groups I’m in and the number of pages I follow.
Around March 20, one of the Hallowe’en lifers came up with the genius idea: create an event to alleviate boredom and let people have fun. April 30th is Walpurgisnacht (aka Hexennacht, night of the witches). That’s six months from Hallowe’en, but people desperately need a release right now. I’ve seen people joking that they’ll be breaking out xmas decorations soon.
They called it Quarantine-o-we’en and set March 31st as the date. People expected only Hallowe’en lifers to participate, but the regular public has joined in and now it’s taking on a life of it’s own, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) joining in. You stay home, but you decorate your house for Hallowe’en, wear costumes, and post pictures online. A search of google, youtube, facebook (#quarantineoween) and many other sites turn up a plethora of results.
If you have nothing to do, join in! There are pics of me below the fold.
None of these are mine, they’re others’ observations posted online and collected:
It’s like the exact opposite of that pokemon go summer.
Eighth day of isolation and it’s like Vegas in my house. We’re losing money by the minute, cocktails are acceptable at any hour, and nobody knows what time it is.
I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to change my netflix password so my ex can’t use it anymore. It really doesn’t get any better than a national lockdown.
Night 1 of no sports: My wife and I just had an hour long conversation. She’s really nice, and apparently she works in the medical field. Also, TVs are black when they are off.
Friend: How’s self isolation going?
Me: Pretty good, no human contact in a week.
Friend: Coronavirus is tough, right?
Me: Coronavirus?
Coronavirus: the biggest game of cooties I’ve ever seen in my life.
Someday our kids will have kids. Those kids will complain that they’re bored and have nowhere to go. So our kids will tell them about the time they couldn’t leave their house for a month because of a pandemic.
This is our kids’ “two mile walk uphill in a snowstorm” moment.
Day 4 of social distancing: Struck up a conversation with a spider. Seems nice. He’s a web designer.
Saw a neighbor scraping “My kid is a terrific student” off her car. I guess homeschooling isn’t going well.