This one single graphic about the representation of wealth in government tells us a lot about how decisions about public money is disbursed get made as to who gets what.
"Instead of worrying abt who you will vote for in Nov, let's take a few days to ponder how little power you have over the elites & how there is no Democracy & it is merely a spectacle at this point." @eshaLegal
Thread on NO representation in congress⬇️https://t.co/LQ6VriIwqw
— 🍀⏳Plucille⏳🍀 (@Plucille54) May 12, 2020
American businesses keep looking for ways to keep wages low. One way they have been able to do that is because since most people’s health insurance is obtained through their employment, that makes it difficult for people to leave since that would require them to find new health care providers, assuming the new employer does provide health insurance. And during the period between jobs, you would not have insurance. For many people, the least troublesome option is to stay with the same employer until it becomes intolerable.
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John Oliver has another excellent show, this time explaining clearly why the postal service is in financial trouble because of burdensome restrictions imposed on it, Trump’s lies about it, and why it must be saved.
Trump lies shamelessly during his press conferences and also make racist allusions. Reporters have mostly left it to commentators to later deconstruct these statements but by then the damage has been done. But increasingly it looks like reporters at the press conferences are challenging him in real time to explain and back up his statements and he clearly does not like it. A week or so ago Jonathan Karl of ABC News kept asking for examples when Trump made one of his baseless, fact-free, sweeping assertions and Trump of course could offer none and just got peevish. Yesterday, Trump abruptly ended the conference and left when two such pushbacks occurred. Watch.
.@weijia: Why is this a global competition to you when Americans are losing their lives every day?
TRUMP: Maybe that's a question you should ask China.
WEIJA: Why are you saying that to me, specifically?
TRUMP: I'm saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that. pic.twitter.com/hokJOXASh8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 11, 2020
The killing of the Ahmaud Arbery, 26, who was shot while jogging in a residential upscale neighborhood outside Atlanta, Georgia on February 23 is revealing layers of racism and cronyism by the police and prosecutors in Glynn county that is unfortunately all too common in the US. Arbery is black and the two men who had blocked the street with their truck and confronted Arbery before killing him are white. The event was captured in this video.
I am trembling with anger over what I just witnessed. CLICK AWAY if you need to.
We need ALL HANDS ON DECK.
This is the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery.
It’s one of the worst things I’ve seen in my entire life.🆘Meet us now @ https://t.co/AIYI5FD2sn to demand justice. pic.twitter.com/7cqn3q737M
— Shaun King (@shaunking) May 5, 2020
We learn that people in the White House are very frequently tested for covid-19 and as a result more and more people working there have been found to have it. It was because of such infected people that Dr. Anthony Fauci (head of the NIH’s infectious disease program and a member of the coronavirus task force), Dr. Stephen Hahn, (commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration), and Dr. Robert Redfield (director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) were quarantined because they were found to have been in contact with some of them.
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As more details emerge of the foiled attempt on Tuesday, May 5th at overthrowing the Venezuelan government of president Nicolas Maduro, the sheer ineptitude and hubris and arrogance of the plotters becomes ever more incredible to behold. Take this report about the ringleader, a former member of the US Special Forces Green Berets named Jordan Goudreau and how he worked with representatives of Juan Guaidó, the person the US treats as the president of that country even though, you know, he is not, to plan and implement the foiled attempt.
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Three of the US’s top health officials, Dr. Anthony Fauci (head of the NIH’s infectious disease program and a member of the coronavirus task force), Dr. Stephen Hahn, (commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration), and Dr. Robert Redfield (director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have gone into two weeks quarantine after having come into contact with people who have tested positive for covid-19.
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Around the housing complex where I live there are wild turkeys that wander around. I know that turkeys can get aggressive, and have heard of them even attacking vehicles. There seem to be a lot of videos online about them being particularly aggressive towards, for some reason, letter carriers.
Brian Melican has an interesting article in the April 20, 2020 issue of the New Statesman about three cities and how their failed responses to previous pandemics led to sweeping changes in the structure of the cities: Marseille, France in 1720 during the plague; Hamburg, Germany during the cholera epidemic in 1892; and Östersund, Sweden during the flu pandemic of 1918. It is a familiar story that resonates today about how business and civic leaders put the interests of commerce and low budgets ahead of the best scientific advice of the day, that overcrowding, poverty, unsanitary conditions, and lack of access to clean water and health services contribute to the widespread outbreaks of disease.
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