November 14, 2020

Look to the ownership of the MSM.

The MSM sets the bounds of what is open for public discourse, confuses a much as enlightens by design, provides personalities that some like and other hate, and serves to normalize outrageous events and creeping fascism in general.

Need new Fairness Doctrine and anti-trust to break up the current media companies.

The CIA does not have clean hands (and never did). One ofthe CIA's main missions back when founded in 1947s was to imbed the various media with CIA assets.

October 28, 2020

Don't think Dr. Josef Mengele worried about losing his medical license.

That said, Trump probably did have the virus.

On the other hand, Trump deciding that the nation is going to accept we are beaten by the virus as a strategy is essentially a form of genocide in that the aged, ill, disabled, poor, and minorites of color are more likely to die or have lingering effects.

Attendant to the most effected by the virus, there will be less to pay out in SS, SSI, Medicare, retirement in general, etc. and at the same time economic opportunity from what Klein correctly named disaster capitalism.

Trump and enablers are essentially Murderers.

October 25, 2020

NOLO on deliberately spreading an infectious disease.

Is It a Crime to Intentionally Get Someone Sick?

A person whose intentional or reckless behavior spreads an infectious disease, such as HIV, SARS, or COVID-19, could face criminal charges.

Spreading the common cold doesn’t carry criminal consequences. But intentional or reckless behavior that spreads a disease with serious public health consequences—such as HIV, SARS, Ebola, or COVID-19—can result in criminal charges.

A majority of states have communicable disease laws that make it a crime to expose another person to a contagious disease on purpose. Even without a specific communicable disease statute, all states have general criminal laws—such as assault, battery, and reckless endangerment—that can be used to prosecute people for spreading diseases intentionally or recklessly. And if emergency public health orders are in place, prosecutors can charge people with violations of quarantine and other emergency orders.

Criminal communicable disease laws typically focus on infectious diseases with serious public health implications that spread through contact with an infected person’s blood, saliva, mucus, or other bodily fluids. Some states have laws that are specific to a particular disease, like HIV, or a category of diseases, like sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Other states have laws that address communicable diseases generally. These laws and their punishments differ significantly among states.

more at: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-it-a-crime-to-intentionally-get-someone-sick.html

October 20, 2020

Coronavirus spreading 'uncontrollably' in much of U.S. -- but not California. Here's why

Source: SF Chronicle

Coronavirus spreading ‘uncontrollably’ in much of U.S. — but not California. Here’s why

Annie Vainshtein Oct. 20, 2020 Updated: Oct. 20, 2020 12:47 p.m.

Seven months into the pandemic, the coronavirus is spreading rampantly across much of the U.S. — with California a very notable exception.

More than half of all states now fall into the “uncontrolled spread” category, according to data gathered by the COVID Exit Strategy. California, by contrast, is one of eight states where transmission is decreasing or flat.

The only states with better case rates than California are New York, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, according to the COVID Exit Strategy, a volunteer project created by public health and crisis experts that tracks the states’ performance using data from the COVID Tracking Project and others.

Experts point to several reasons behind California’s current success. But in short, “The decisions made during summer and the end of summer are paying off,” said Ryan Panchadsaram, COVID Exit Project co-founder and former U.S. deputy chief technology officer, who lives in San Francisco. “We’ve sort of hit a plateau, which is reminding us we have to be vigilant.”

cut

Such variables aside, Swartzberg said at least three elements of California’s efforts have certainly paid off: compliance around mask-wearing and social distancing; overall trust in public health officials and organizations; and sustained caution with phased reopening.

cut

more plus pictures and graphics at: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-spreading-uncontrollably-in-15661745.php

Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-spreading-uncontrollably-in-15661745.php

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Nice to see California be a good example but also still vigilant.

October 13, 2020

A National Security Reckoning How Washington Should Think About Power

A National Security Reckoning
How Washington Should Think About Power

By Hillary Clinton November/December 2020


In a year marked by plague and protest, Americans are reckoning with long-overdue questions about racial justice, economic inequality, and disparities in health care. The current crisis should also prompt a reckoning about the United States’ national security priorities. The country is dangerously unprepared for a range of threats, not just future pandemics but also an escalating climate crisis and multidimensional challenges from China and Russia. Its industrial and technological strength has atrophied, its vital supply chains are vulnerable, its alliances are frayed, and its government is hollowed out. In the past, it sometimes has taken a dramatic shock—Pearl Harbor, Sputnik, 9/11—to wake up the United States to a new threat and prompt a major pivot. The COVID-19 crisis should be a big enough jolt to rouse the country from its sleep, so that it can summon its strength and meet the challenges ahead.

Among the highest priorities must be to modernize the United States’ defense capabilities—in particular, moving away from costly legacy weapons systems built for a world that no longer exists. Another is to renew the domestic foundations of its national power—supporting American innovation and bolstering strategically important industries and supply chains. These twin projects are mutually reinforcing. Modernizing the military would free up billions of dollars that could be invested at home in advanced manufacturing and R & D. That would not only help the United States compete with its rivals and prepare for nontraditional threats such as climate change and future pandemics; it would also blunt some of the economic pain caused by budget cuts at the Pentagon. Integrating foreign and domestic policy in this way would make both more effective. And it would help the United States regain its footing in an uncertain world.

SHORTSIGHTED

For decades, policymakers have thought too narrowly about national security and failed to internalize—or fund—a broader approach that encompasses threats not just from intercontinental ballistic missiles and insurgencies but also from cyberattacks, viruses, carbon emissions, online propaganda, and shifting supply chains. There is no more poignant example than the current administration’s failure to grasp that a tourist carrying home a virus can be as dangerous as a terrorist planting a pathogen. President Barack Obama’s national security staff left a 69-page playbook for responding to pandemics, but President Donald Trump’s team ignored it, focusing instead on the threat of bioterrorism. They dismantled the National Security Council’s pandemic directorate, folding it into the office responsible for weapons of mass destruction, and filled a national medical stockpile with drugs for anthrax and smallpox while neglecting the personal protective equipment needed for a pandemic. The Trump administration also shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development program created during my time as secretary of state to detect viral threats around the world, and it has repeatedly tried to slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The costs of this misjudgment have been astronomical.

Long article from Foreign Affairs magazine: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-10-09/hillary-clinton-national-security-reckoning

September 12, 2020

Gavin Newsom most certainly tied the wildfires to climate change.

This is a climate damn emergency,’ California’s Gavin Newsom says

A visibly angry Gov. Gavin Newsom warned the rest of the country Friday that California’s record wildfire season is a glimpse into its future if political leaders do not start taking the climate crisis more seriously.

“I’m a little bit exhausted that we have to continue to debate this issue. This a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening. This is the perfect storm,” Newsom said during a visit to the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area in Butte County, where he surveyed damage from the North Complex Fire.

Newsom decried the “ideological BS” that he said is preventing swift action to combat climate change, which scientists generally agree has intensified the severity of natural disasters. California is the midst of the worst wildfire season in its modern history, with more than 3 million acres already burned this year, and the August Complex Fire in Northern California this week became the largest the state has ever recorded.

“California, folks, is America fast forward,” Newsom said. “What we are experiencing right here is coming to (communities) all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change — unless we disabuse ourselves of all the BS that’s being spewed by a very small group of people that have an ideological reason to advance the cause of a 19th century framework and solution. We’re not going back to the 19th century.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/e2-80-98this-is-a-climate-damn-emergency-e2-80-99-california-e2-80-99s-gavin-newsom-says/

September 9, 2020

That looks like a CCC era constructed lookout.

Like this:



That is Orleans Mountain Lookout on Six Rivers National Forest. It has not been manned for over 30 years but has been maintained. It is being threated by fire now. Looks very similar in layout to Pinyon Peak. There are very few manned lookouts locally now, several of the old CCC constructed ones were demolished or otherwise removed years ago.

Back in 1977 there was the Hog Fire that burned to the lookout. I was a USFS employee at the time (69-85; timber guy) but was a firefighter (as was everyone able bodied with a red card) on Hog Fire. There is an old CCC track down the backside of the mountain that was widened by Cat and about a 2 mile hose lay with porta tanks to get water to the lookout. We ended up driving up the fire line throwing fusees out at dusk to start a back fire. I hosed down the lookout when the fire line was lit at the lookout.

September 6, 2020

Look at this real time gif of the California fires.

September 4, 2020

Two related questions about impeachment. Poll too.

1). Can Trump be impeached and convicted between the election (assuming he loses) and inauguration with Pence then to serve during transition?

2). Regards impeachment now (or anytime prior)?

Issues are bountiful.

Why not take the strategy with GOP Senate that convict now or wear the failure to convict Trump into their own re-election?

August 31, 2020

Video of Great White and Kayak fishermen November 2018

Off coast of Humboldt county CA.