October 5, 2020

Disturbance Just South Of Jamaica Forecast To Strengthen Over The Northwestern Caribbean Sea

800 PM EDT (0000 UTC), the disturbance was centered near latitude 16.9 North, longitude 76.9 West. The system is moving toward the west-northwest near 10 mph (17 km/h), and this general motion should continue for the next day or so. A faster northwestward motion is expected on Tuesday. On the forecast track, the center of the disturbance is expected to pass just south of Jamaica tonight and early Monday, move near or over the Cayman Islands Monday night, and approach the Isle of Youth and western Cuba Tuesday afternoon or evening. The system is forecast to move into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico Tuesday night or early Wednesday. ......(more)

https://www.ksat.com/weather/hurricane/2020/10/04/disturbance-over-the-central-caribbean-expected-to-become-a-tropical-storm-and-strengthen-further-over-the-northwest-caribbean-sea/

October 4, 2020

Bible thumping: Florida man accused of throwing holy book at deputy

MARION COUNTY, Fla. – A man who’d just broken into his neighbor’s home because he claimed God told him to throw a Bible at a deputy who responded to the scene, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies said the victim called them on Sept. 22 because he returned to his home in Summerfield after being gone for about an hour and found that his door had been kicked in.

The man’s neighbor, 39-year-old Robert Hoskins, told him, “I (expletive) up man, I was mad," records show. .................(more)

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2020/09/30/bible-thumping-florida-man-accused-of-throwing-holy-book-at-deputy/

October 4, 2020

Police, protest, pandemic and the end of the 9/11 era

Howard Bryant
ESPN Senior Writer


It has been a year. The American reckoning, or at the very least the burgeoning outline of one, has come into focus, forced into view by a perfect storm of toxicity: a global pandemic claiming more than 205,000 lives in the United States alone; the ongoing use of police force against Black citizens that further undermines any notions of peace or change; a corporate class long indifferent to Black suffering suddenly aligning its brands with protest; fears of an illegitimate election further exposing the fragility of bonds generations of Americans think unbreakable -- even as the house continues to prove it cannot stand. The nation, in short, has come apart, in words and images, deadly actions and even deadlier inaction. As a global pandemic is treated as a political issue instead of a public health one, the impatience to return to normal and urgency to protest for a new normal delays the arrival of either.

A dystopian summer saw the streets filled with anti-racism protesters, anti-mask protesters, combat-ready police and, more frighteningly, unidentified, unaffiliated "law enforcement troops" believed to be prison guards deployed by the president to police American streets. The National Guard stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial -- the nation's most powerful reminder that crossing the brink is possible because it has been crossed before -- and ominously prepared to act against its own citizens. In the mayhem, sports discovered early that its preferred profit-making role as "healer" has been replaced by the profit-threatening role of "barometer" as the twin colossi of pandemic and unrest redefine society and the industry, one bubble, one walkout, one referendum on amateurism at a time. It is a new era. Within this calamity, the presumptions of our exceptionalism provided no shield; indeed, we have shown ourselves to be utterly unexceptional, and the gap between who we are and our vision of ourselves is cavernous. We live in chaos.

WHO WE ARE

My father was born in 1938; the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor three years later was the defining moment of his generation. He lived unbothered by the inconsistencies of owning at various points of his life a Japanese motorcycle (Yamaha) and television (Hitachi), yet for decades loudly refusing to take what he considered to be the traitorous step of purchasing a Japanese car -- despite having over the years owned both a Volkswagen Beetle and a Jetta. His nationalism and racism finally relented around 1990, when he pulled into the driveway in a Mazda, but his stance was not uncommon; the fidelity to avenging Dec. 7, 1941, shadowed his time. My generation was defined by the Cold War and all of its fears of Manchurian candidates and nuclear Armageddon. The Soviets, the Americans, "The Day After," the world ending. In the early 1970s, I remember being terrified by those yellow-and-black signs in the foyers and stairwells of so many public and professional buildings -- a rectangular sign, three inverted triangles within a circle, and two ominous words: Fallout Shelter.

This month, the NFL resumed, and the chaos and reckoning of 2020 collided with the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 generation is my son's generation. The father a child of Pearl Harbor, the son of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the grandson of the twin towers' destruction. Born three years after the attacks, he has never lived in an America not at war. The vocabulary of his generation is shaped by that day, definitions of the combatants on either side of the front line: Heroes ... First Responders ... Terrorists. So too are his institutions. Entering its third decade since the attacks, sports remains a visual extension of 9/11 -- 20 years of sports viscerally shaped by geopolitics. The San Diego Padres and their desert camo jerseys. American flags affixed to the backboards of NBA games, player jerseys and referee uniforms. Images of the military, the flags, the flyovers and police dominating the ritualistic feel of sports. International war, and its accompanying staging, is all he and his generation know. .............(more)

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/29979519/police-protest-pandemic-end-9-11-era

October 4, 2020

Never forget: All of this was his own damn fault

Never forget: All of this was his own damn fault
There's crucial context to all the understandable media concern over Trump's health: He brought this on himself

DAN FROOMKIN
OCTOBER 4, 2020 10:00AM


(Salon) Political journalists covering the highly dramatic news that Donald Trump has been sickened by COVID-19 have been engaged in a public search for the right tone.

They are understandably intent that their giddiness about a huge story not appear to be gloating. As a result, you are hearing and reading in their reports a lot of sympathy, shock and concern — amid a whole lot of unanswered questions.

But it's not gloating to point out that this could have been avoided if Trump had taken the obvious and proper precautions that he petulantly and ignorantly chose not to.

The entirely self-inflicted nature of this tragedy is one of its central elements, as is the way Trump's incredible irresponsibility and arrogance was mimicked by his supporters, significantly exacerbating the pandemic. It's a hugely important element of what's going on here.

....(snip)....

The argument against the "thoughts and prayers" response to the tragedy was made with particular eloquence by author Naomi Klein on Democracy Now. "I really think we should see Trump getting COVID as the epidemiological equivalent of a mass shooting where the shooter opens fire on the crowd, and then turns the gun on himself," she said. "This is not a tragic accident — it is a crime scene, and should be treated as such." ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/04/never-forget-all-of-this-was-his-own-damn-fault/

October 3, 2020

What if Trump Can't Run? Many Steps Are Clear, but Some Are Not

(NYT) WASHINGTON — President Trump’s positive coronavirus test has raised the possibility, however remote, that he could become incapacitated or potentially die in office if his symptoms worsen.

While that outcome remains highly unlikely, and few in Washington were willing to discuss it on Friday, when Mr. Trump was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment, the Constitution and Congress long ago put in place a plan of succession to ensure that the nation is protected from adversaries and internal conflict when the elected president cannot serve.

The Constitution makes clear that the vice president is first in line to succeed the president should he or she die in office, and can step in to temporarily take on the duties of the presidency should the commander in chief become incapacitated. Vice President Mike Pence, 61, tested negative for the coronavirus on Friday.

Other situations become far more complicated and are wrapped in a cloud of legal disagreement over what to do if a president cannot exercise his duties but refuses to give them up, or wins election but cannot serve, or in a case in which the president and the vice president are incapacitated. ............(more)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/politics/trump-succession-constitution.html?

October 3, 2020

'We are living the issues': record number of women of color run for Congress

(Guardian UK) The US presidential election may be dominated by two older white men, but away from the battle for the White House a record number of women of color are running for Congress in 2020 – as US politics continues to be dragged, slowly, towards being representative of the country’s population.

In November, 117 women of color are running for Congress as Democrats or Republicans. And a record 298 women in total are running for the House of Representatives on a major party ticket, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

The new high builds on 2018’s midterm elections, when a historic number of women won seats in the House. Among that number are 61 Black women, 32 Latina women, and six Native American women – record numbers for each group.

In the Senate, 20 women are running as Democrats or Republicans, a decrease from 2018, but overall, the US is seeing a rising trend. ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/women-of-color-congress-us-elections-2020

October 2, 2020

Trump's positive Covid test was a surprise that many saw coming

(Guardian UK) It is likely to go down as the biggest “October surprise” in the history of US presidential elections. Yet anyone who was paying attention could have seen it coming.

Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus after claiming “it will disappear”, telling the journalist Bob Woodward he was downplaying it deliberately, failing to develop a national testing strategy, refusing to wear a face mask for months, floating the idea of injecting patients with bleach, insisting to one of his many crowded campaign rallies that “it affects virtually nobody” and, at Tuesday’s debate, mocking his rival Joe Biden: “He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

It suggested a sense of invincibility even as more than 200,000 Americans died. But now the chickens have come home to roost, just as they did for the similarly cavalier British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro. Covid-19, described as the “invisible enemy” by Trump, has penetrated the Oval Office. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/02/donald-trump-positive-test-covid-19-surprise-many-saw-coming-coronavirus

October 2, 2020

Trump's diagnosis could change everything -- but GOP still scheming to suppress vote

Trump's diagnosis could change everything — but GOP still scheming to suppress vote
With Trump in quarantine and his campaign suspended, don't think Republicans are dropping their nefarious schemes

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
OCTOBER 2, 2020 12:59PM


(Salon) Leave it to Donald Trump to test positive for COVID-19 just two days after a disastrous debate performance. It's tempting to think this is yet another of his reality show stunts, but it's hard to believe that he could get away with faking something like this considering that the Trump White House leaks like a sieve. It's more likely he does have the virus and his best-case scenario will be that he's one of the lucky asymptomatic cases and can spend the rest of the campaign testifying to his youthfulness and strength, no doubt attributable to "good genes."

As the man himself says, "We'll see what happens."

Meanwhile, there's still a lot going on that requires some sustained attention from the American people, none more important than the ongoing threat that the election, now just a month away, is going to be sabotaged. I don't use that word lightly. It is becoming very obvious that this is being planned and will be implemented in an attempt to ensure that Trump cannot lose.

In fact, according to some incredible reporting by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine, Republican operatives were locked and loaded back in 2016, but just didn't need to pull the trigger. They had lawyers at the ready to contest the election on the basis of "voter fraud" in all those close states if it had gone the other way.

.....(snip).....

Right now, aside from throwing sand in the gears of the post office, they're going to great lengths in states all over the country to make it difficult to vote early or drop off mail-in ballots. They're filing lawsuits against states that want to count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive later, a practice that's been in place for absentee ballots and military ballots for many years. On Thursday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott abruptly ordered the removal of all but one early-voting drop box in each county. That includes Harris County, the home of Houston — an overwhelmingly Democratic city — which encompasses nearly 1,800 square miles and about 4.7 million people. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/02/trumps-diagnosis-could-change-everything--but-gop-still-scheming-to-suppress-vote/

October 2, 2020

NYT: How Trump's False Voter Fraud Claims Are Used To Disenfranchise Voters Katy Tur MSNBC

https://m.

October 2, 2020

FL: Brightline shut down commuter service for months. When will the trains run again?

The trains are in the barn. The downtown stations are deserted. And the management of Brightline, South Florida’s idled high-speed rail service, is still deciding when to restore service amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brightline, the regional train line that conjured up new possibilities for South Florida transportation, economic development and even entertainment, remains on the sidelines after the pandemic suppressed tourism, diminished business travel and shrank consumer pocketbooks.

“We are evaluating a number of factors but haven’t identified a specific date,” said spokesman Ben Porritt. He did not elaborate.

Brightline suspended service on March 25. With no one knowing when the pandemic might ease, management indefinitely laid off 262 Brightline employees, including train engineers, attendants, maintenance people and corporate office workers. ..............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/news/21156619/fl-brightline-shut-down-commuter-service-for-months-when-will-the-trains-run-again