May 3, 2020

@tedlieu: It's Sunday afternoon, that means @realDonaldTrump is lying, again. His ban allowed in 40

@tedlieu
US House candidate, CA-33
It’s Sunday afternoon, that means @realDonaldTrump
is lying, again. His ban allowed in 40,000 non-foreign nationals from China and EVERYONE from Europe. And no, these folks were not tested. That’s why US now leads world with over 1,184,000 cases & 68,000 deaths.

https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1257050999425863680?s=20


https://twitter.com/KICKING8/status/1257059413510119424?s=20



https://twitter.com/clutter_bug49/status/1257055483489386496?s=20



https://twitter.com/coton_luver/status/1256982535633944579?s=20




US intelligence warned in November 2019 that #coronavirus spreading in China could be 'cataclysmic event': report https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/intelligence/491712-us-intelligence-warned-in-november-that-virus-spreading#.Xq8-0vHTaO4.twitter

May 3, 2020

COUNTDOWN: Precisely six months from today - on 11/3/20 - America will fire Donald Trump & flip the

COUNTDOWN: Precisely six months from today - on 11/3/20 - America will fire Donald Trump & flip the Senate. Are you ready to help make this happen?#NationalTrumpTwitterBlackout #GoJoe

https://twitter.com/DemWrite/status/1256984874268815360?s=20


https://twitter.com/Sky_Lee_1/status/1256981936683302912?s=20

https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/1256911560930463745?s=20

May 3, 2020

A strange, unnerving thing started to happen sometime last week: Some of us got a little lazy about

I can feel it --the staying home--is wearing on me. esp with the nice weather the last few days.
But WI is still on mostly lockdown until may 26. Although I noticed the garden center in the next town was open.


https://twitter.com/moonbreeze2/status/1257022746585858048?s=20





Yes, We All Have Quarantine Fatigue. No, That Doesn't Mean You Can Go Out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/voices/yes-we-all-have-quarantine-fatigue-no-that-doesnt-mean-you-can-go-out/ar-BB13sDsY?ocid=st2
Brittany Wong 14 hrs ago


A strange, unnerving thing started to happen sometime last week: Some of us got a little lazy about the whole social distancing thing to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Hop onto your Instagram and you might even see people boldly posting about their ventures outside their home: a pool party here with a “close circle” of friends, a smallish birthday party there with people from different homes. (“Don’t worry, we’re keeping 6 feet apart!”)

You see it on a larger scale in the news: In New York last weekend, sunny weather led people to flock to parks. (As of last week, residents of New York City have submitted 14,000 complaints to the police about people violating social distancing rules.)

In Southern California, thousands hit the beaches in Orange County, seeking relief from a heatwave that hit just in time for the weekend. (Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered all Orange County beaches closed this weekend, calling it a “temporary pause.”)

Clearly, “quarantine fatigue” is starting to kick in.
.....................................

“You see it on your social media feed. You see it in your neighborhoods with traffic. I live on a main road, and foot, bike, car and especially motorcycle traffic increase incredibly on nice days,” Owens told HuffPost.

After about six weeks of social distancing in some states, we’re all getting a little stir crazy ― especially those who were wary of the social distancing guidelines from the beginning.

“People were having trouble with physical distancing when the guidelines were strict,” he added. “It’s unlikely that loosening those restrictions in some states will lead to responsible behavior.”

A combination of factors ― warm weather, stay-at-home restrictions that have dragged on longer than anticipated and seeing other states move to reopen ― has led to Americans going outside more frequently and traveling longer distances, according to research out of the University of Maryland.

Using cellphone location data, researchers noted the change in behavior in the past two weeks in all but three states.



And in a Gallup poll conducted the week of April 20, 59% of respondents said they had practiced social distancing in the previous 24 hours. That was down from 65% in the week of April 6.. .......................

May 3, 2020

Tracking the 'Murder Hornet': A Deadly Pest Has Reached North America

instead of Trump and his ego slashed temper tantrums, this is what our government needs to be focused on.



?quality=90&auto=webp

A dead Asian giant hornet.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times


Tracking the ‘Murder Hornet’: A Deadly Pest Has Reached North America


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/asian-giant-hornet-washington.html

Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations.

“This is our window to keep it from establishing,” Chris Looney, a Washington State entomologist, said of the two-inch Asian giant hornet. He displayed a dead hornet on his jacket.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

By Mike Baker May 2, 2020

BLAINE, Wash. — In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it.

As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Wash., in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside — thousands and thousands of bees with their heads torn from their bodies and no sign of a culprit.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around what could have done that,” Mr. McFall said.

Only later did he come to suspect that the killer was what some researchers simply call the “murder hornet.”

With queens that can grow to two inches long, Asian giant hornets can use mandibles shaped like spiked shark fins to wipe out a honeybee hive in a matter of hours, decapitating the bees and flying away with the thoraxes to feed their young. For larger targets, the hornet’s potent venom and stinger — long enough to puncture a beekeeping suit — make for an excruciating combination that victims have likened to hot metal driving into their skin.

In Japan, the hornets kill up to 50 people a year. Now, for the first time, they have arrived in the United States.......................................

May 3, 2020

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks


https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-world-turns-on-the-true-covid-villain-surgical-masks?ref=


They once saw masks as a simple remedy to the virus’ spread. Now it’s an instrument of government suppression.

Updated May. 01, 2020 11:15PM ET / Published May. 01, 2020 7:19PM ET


Back in March, with Americans just a week into quarantine, Fox News host Laura Ingraham envisioned a way that the economy could reopen. Her plan relied on lots of masks.

“Going back to most jobs after 15 days will require new protocols until this virus burns out—everyone within 6 feet of others MUST wear masks,” Ingraham tweeted.


As part of her pro-mask campaign, Ingraham tweeted instructions for Do It Yourself (DIY) masks, even urging her followers to make homemade masks out of their sheets.

“Literally you can make these with cotton sheets,” Ingraham wrote. “Again, we can be resourceful when necessary!”

A month later, Ingraham has done a 180, becoming one of the right-wing media’s most outspoken mask-haters. She’s tweeted that widespread mask wearing would make everyone “like Antifa,” the left-wing antifascist activists reviled on Fox. On Wednesday, she suggested on her show that widespread mask usage is some sort of plot to scare people.

“The masks, they’re kind of a constant reminder,” Ingraham said. “You see the mask and you think you’re not safe, you are not back to normal — not even close.”

Such a conversion may seem peculiar on the surface. Who, after all, has an actual problem with face masks, especially in the midst of a pandemic. But Ingraham’s conversion reflects something deeper about the nature of our current politics, in which social safety measures themselves can become emblems of partisan leanings. Once the potential tools of liberation from stay-at-home orders, Trump supporters now see masks as a hated carryover from those same orders.

Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, the recent recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump, was an early mask paranoiac. On April 20, he promoted the idea, later picked up by Ingraham, that masks are totems of control.

“It is clear that the mask is a symbol of fear, and when you see various people suggesting that we may now have masks as part of our public lives for the rest of our lives?” Limbaugh said. “Uh, why?”.............................................





https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_675,w_1200,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_1044/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1588370168/200430-sommer-no-mask-hero_dgvvnz
MASK-LASH

May 3, 2020

Candace Owens Suspended From Twitter After Urging People Violate MI Stay-At-Home Order

5/02/20 2:57pm

Candace Owens Suspended From Twitter After Urging People Violate MI Stay-At-Home Order



Hitler-praising Candace Owens has finally been suspended from Twitter after she urged followers to defy Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders – without mentioning any trip to Michigan to break the law and expose herself along with them.





Yet Owens, who lives in New York, said nothing about doing any of what she was asking others to do.

She is, however, very eager to play up her conservative victimhood, presumably from the safety of her home.

As Mediaite reported, she sent a statement to the far-right MAGA site, Gateway Pundit, whining that her comments were no different from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a workers boycott and a protest. Apparently, Owens doesn’t know that a boycott in protest of reopen orders is legal and doesn’t promote the spread of a pandemic. As for the protest, AOC was saying that folks already out protesting the shutdowns should be over at the White House instead. Unlike Owens, AOC wasn’t urging anyone to leave the house and break a law to protest.

Oh, and unlike Owens, AOC went out in the rain to deliver food to people in her district.

Meanwhile, Owens is defiant. She said in her statement:

I stand by my statement about Governor Whitmer acting as a dictator. Both the Sherriff Departments and the citizens, and the state legislature of Michigan are in agreement with me. I will not kowtow to a socialist world order that seeks to limit my constitutional freedom of speech.

Her Smugness has a long record here at C&L.

First and foremost, her attack on Gov. Whitmer as a dictator is rather hypocritical given that Owens has actually praised Hitler. "If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine,” she said. Think Hitler would have allowed you unlimited freedom of speech, Candace?

A few months later, even the right-wing Talking Points USA had had enough of her,.....................

None of that stopped the GOP from having her testify as an "expert" on anti-white nationalism. There, she characterized white nationalism as no big deal — that it "isn't even in the top 100" list of concerns for black people.”... ...................




According to Mediaite, this is a screen grab of the tweet that got Owens suspended.

owens_tweet.png

May 2, 2020

Fed. Appeals Court nixes Trump policy of tying grants to enforcement

This is indeed a joyous victory. No doubt Barr and Trump are seething but will appeal to the US SC.



Court nixes Trump policy of tying grants to enforcement

https://apnews.com/55914ffab6ddb3c1eb1e48bc1b91ea1e
By MICHAEL TARMApril 30, 2020


FILE - In this April 1, 2020, file photo, Attorney General William Barr speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. A sharply worded ruling by a federal appeals court in Chicago on Thursday said the Trump administration policy of threatening to withhold grant money from so-called sanctuary cities to force them to comply with its more stringent immigration policies violates the separation-of-powers provisions enshrined the U.S. Constitution. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

CHICAGO (AP) — A sharply worded ruling by a federal appeals court in Chicago on Thursday said the Trump administration policy of threatening to withhold grant money from so-called sanctuary cities to force them to comply with its more stringent immigration policies violates separation-of-powers provisions enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said a freeze of that policy should extend nationwide, rejecting arguments by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers that if an injunction were OKed in the case it should only apply to the city of Chicago.


Broad executive-branch powers on immigration matters don’t include withholding money allocated by the legislative branch to pressure cities and states to comply with an executive-branch policy, said Judge Ilana Rovner, who authored the 95-page ruling.

“Such a concentration of power,” she said, “would allow tyranny to flourish, and our system of government is wisely set up by the Founders to foreclose such a danger.”

She added: “The separation of powers is a foundation of our government, not a formality to be swept aside on the path to achieving goals that the executive branch deems worthy. … The (grant) conditions imposed here are an executive usurpation of the power of the purse.”
............

..............
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot described being thrilled by the ruling in the litigation that stretches back to Donald Trump’s first year as president.

“When I got the news from our corporation counsel earlier this morning, I let out a cheer,” Lightfoot told reporters. She added: “This is a great victory, not only for Chicago, but for our immigrant and refugee communities everywhere in the country.”

Then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel initiated the legal action in 2017 against the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the grants, over the tying of grants to compliance with U.S. immigration law as the Trump administration wants it enforced.

..................

...............
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment Thursday. The department would have the option of appealing the 7th Circuit decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lightfoot said the city “will be right there with them” if the department goes to the nation’s highest court.

Chicago’s sanctuary policies date back to the mid-1980s and successive city councils have confirmed or expanded the protections.

The city has prohibited police from providing federal immigration and customs officials access to people in police custody, unless they are wanted on a criminal warrant or have serious criminal convictions.....................

May 2, 2020

Hundreds of Georgia's poultry workers have tested positive for COVID-19

Hundreds of Georgia’s poultry workers have tested positive for COVID-19



AJC EXCLUSIVE April 29, 2020


One Cornelia chicken plant worker died from his illness this month

Nearly 400 workers in Georgia’s prized poultry industry have tested positive for the disease caused by the coronavirus, and one has died from his illness, according to Georgia Department of Public Health statistics obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The 388 workers who have been sickened by COVID-19 represent about 2% of the estimated 16,500 people employed at 14 chicken processing plants across the state.

Obtained from hospitals and poultry plants, the data do not identify the workers or say where they contracted COVID-19. But the head of Baldwin-based Fieldale Farms said a 63-year-old Hispanic man with “other health issues” who worked at the company’s chicken plant in Cornelia died from the disease this month. Many immigrants and refugees work in the state’s poultry industry.

“The biggest challenge for these employees is the community widespread transmission in the areas where they live, the lack of education about COVID-19, and reluctance to change behaviors,” said Georgia Public Health spokeswoman Nancy Nydam, adding that her agency has received many anecdotal reports of people attending large social gatherings, house parties and religious services...................................

May 2, 2020

Right now in Atlanta. Do these people think COVID isn't real?---pic of National Mall...PACKED....

trump and family are at the secluded Camp David







https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1256655337714782215?s=20



https://twitter.com/ThePubliusUSA/status/1256657128015749124?s=20



moonbreeze
@moonbreeze2
·
5m
Replying to
@ThePubliusUSA
A parent brought her very small kid. They are NOT immune from the #coronavirus
Freedomfighter
@TinaMcKennamag
·
1h
Replying to
@ThePubliusUSA
Okay with me. Infect each other. Less stupid. I will hunker down until they finish killing each other.
1 more reply
Jen
✍
@zookeeper125
·
1h
Replying to
@ThePubliusUSA
Yep, stupid people just erased any curve flattening. Going to go straight up.
charlie
@TheOldOlaf
·
47m
Replying to
@ThePubliusUSA
Hey a whole park full of future dead people.
9hills
@9hills1
·
1h
Replying to
@ThePubliusUSA
Trump lured them into downtown with his Blue Angel stunt. More blood on his hands’

https://twitter.com/lsquinn11/status/1256661683881140224?s=20


https://twitter.com/LACaldwellDC/status/1256613668546060288?s=20


https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff/status/1256626412045381635?s=20


https://twitter.com/jaymac1893/status/1256615192680677376?s=20


https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/1256668537378058240?s=20

https://twitter.com/CNNnewsroom/status/1256665573842456579?s=20

May 2, 2020

The forest is talking: Trees are essential to our planet's health, but deforestation, drought, pests

Beautiful moving images at link:





The forest is talking
Trees are essential to our planet’s health, but deforestation, drought, pests, and wildfires are destroying this precious resource. Much of the information we need to protect forests is revealed in nature itself—if we listen. Learn how technology can help us tap into what the forest is telling us and help us preserve the trees we all rely on.


https://focusforests.microsoft.com/?ocid=AID3010600_QSG_4097562_FY2003INC_FOR_inp_rmc_SegF#discover



Revitalizing Earth’s most ancient giants
The old-growth forests of the Olympic Peninsula have long been prized by the timber industry. During World Wars I and II, these massive conifers were used to make airplane wings. Today, they’re a vital habitat for endangered animals like the Marbled Murrelet, and efforts are underway to restore these ancient giants that once made the region the logging capital of the world.