frankilin roosevelt

It's not about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.


Check out my old  Voice of the People page.


Gino Napoli
San Francisco, California
High School Math Teacher

jonsdarc@mindspring.com




Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.

a middle-aged
George Washington



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Tuesday, 4 August 2020 at 1h 40m 39s

Pigeons needing help

This is from Pablo Rochat, a resident of North Beach (San Francisco) who makes these silly videos.




Sunday, 2 August 2020 at 22h 49m 26s

Insanity is ...

...saying the same thing over and over again, and expecting your argument to suddenly make sense.

The positivity rate is more indicative then both the number of tests and the number of positives. Having 100,000 new cases is different if only 1% of those tested (meaning 10 million tests) are positive. If it's 20% and 100,000 new cases that means 500,000 tests.

The are 5 types of people in the larger population.

  1. People who have symptoms and seek out getting a test
  2. People who have had contact with persons who have positive tests and were sought out
  3. People who are asymptomatic that willingly seek out a test
  4. People who are symptomatic who have had not had contact with a positive test person or do not willingly seek a test
  5. Everyone else

-(Have I left anyone out?)-

If you do not have a track and trace system, groups 1 & 3 will be the only persons in your pool of testing. If you have a track and trace system, groups 1, 2, & 3 will be the only persons in your pool of testing. Note that here, everyone else (group 5) includes elements of groups 1 unless these persons can be contacted and traced (assuming such a system is in place at all).

I am not going make any conclusions about this. I haven't thought enough about this. However this pathetic argument that doing more tests means more positives is abhorrent. But the man-child lying denier is who he is.


The loose rule from WHO is that it's adequate if it's getting a positive rate of from 3% to 12%, but the countries where the disease really under control seem to be the ones where it's under 1%, like Uruguay, Germany, Malaysia, and Uganda. Those like the US where it's between 5% and 10%—Zimbabwe, Paraguay, Kazakhstan, Philippines, and Iran—are clearly in an order or two of magnitude more difficult situations.

But the relevant numbers for the US are really those for the state levels, where there's a huge range from 1% (New York) or lower (Vermont) through higher levels like California (6.5%), Kentucky (7.2%), and Texas (12.4%) to scary inadequate levels for Alabama (20.1%), Arizona (18.6%), Florida, (19.1%), Idaho (18.8%), Kansas (18.6%), and Mississippi (22.2%). If you increased testing in New York, you'd clearly find a negligible number of new positives—we are in principle catching them all—while if you increased it in Alabama or Florida you'd find relatively a lot.

But in Alabama and Florida you'd also find a lot more negatives, as has happened in California and Texas as testing has improved in those states, and the rate would go down. Which is where Trump is so pathetic: if he could only bring himself to understand the point, more testing would make him look better.

"We have more cases because we do more testing."

No. We have more cases in the US because

  1. the cases exist; and
  2. we do enough testing to find the number we find (which might or might not increase if we did more).

If the cases didn't exist, the amount of testing wouldn't make a difference. If you did more testing in UK (where the positive percentage is now down to 0.4%), the number of new cases would be insignificant. You can only find them if they're there. And this is where Donald seems to me not just pathetic, but cognitively impaired. And I don't mean suffering from senile dementia (on which I remain neutral) but from a failure to undergo the development most children are finished with by the age of seven or so. It's the insistence that the number of tests is the only factor:

"Think of this, if we didn’t do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing we would have half the cases,” Trump said at a press conference at the White House. “If we did another, you cut that in half, we would have, yet again, half of that. But the headlines are always testing." ~ Donald Trump (CNBC)


[SOURCE: No More Mister Nice blog | 2 August 2020]

Say what? Halving the sample size is not proportional to the rate of positives, because it completely depends on what groups are getting captured in the sample size. More than likely a smaller sample is more non-representative, drifting into a convenience sample. Which means you are only testing those people who have symptoms that volunteer to seek testing. You are not capturing the larger population at all.

That's why the positivity rate is a good proxy for how well a state or nation is at knowing where the virus is spreading.


Sunday, 2 August 2020 at 3h 48m 19s

Monopoly Monopsony WTF

Listen to the reality of monopolies, how they inhibit and how they strangle.

This is a radio show out of Los Angeles from Brad Friedman involving a conversation with David Dayen who recently wrote an excellent book titled "Monopolized" on the subject.

Click here


Thursday, 30 July 2020 at 19h 58m 43s

Grifter idolatry


Tesla received “certain payroll-related benefits” from government coronavirus relief programs that, along with cost-cutting, almost made up for the losses it suffered during pandemic-related closures, the company said in its latest quarterly report. Tesla did not specify which governments provided benefits, through which programs, or the value of the benefits.

The Palo Alto electric car maker’s CEO Elon Musk has said the “coronavirus panic” is “dumb,” called coronavirus shelter-in-place orders “fascist,” attacked coronavirus testing and defied Alameda County’s coronavirus closure order by re-opening the firm’s Fremont factory in May. Last Friday, with Congress wrangling over a second huge coronavirus-relief program, Musk tweeted, “Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people” and followed up with, “These are jammed to gills with special interests earmarks. If we do a stimulus at all, it should just be direct payments to consumers.”

The company did not respond to questions about the payroll benefits.


[SOURCE: Ethan Baron | The Mercury News |30 July 2020 ]

I get the idol worship, but Elon is really in the end just another grifter. Getting Government hand-outs while screaming about government fascism is typical for this nascisstic hypocrite. He's been accused of reselling his recalled Tesla cars and booking it as "goodwill" in the financial statements.

Nothing against Elon's ability and acumen, but his boring company and SpaceX are really just government revenue sources from government contracts. The boring company has yet to actually produce the efficient public transportation pods, is perceived as a posh idea that will be extremely costly, AND is highly unlikely to be able to handle large throughput.

I try to keep an open mind about these things, after all the future is real and we need to invest now for the issues we will be facing 20 or 30 years down the road. It's just that complicated, high maintenance infrastructure might not really be in our best interest. Look at France and Germany. It doesn't have to be expensive.

  1. From Wired
  2. Curbed LA
  3. CityBeautiful youtube channel


Friday, 17 July 2020 at 23h 6m 40s

Sarah Cooper

I really enjoy this subtle theatrical display.




Monday, 13 July 2020 at 18h 49m 16s

You can get reinfected

COVID-19 is not the flu. Hence all of the assumptions by which we characterize the COVID that come from our understanding of the flu are inherently not valid.


“Wait. I can catch Covid twice?” my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July, and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, for a second time — three months after a previous infection.

While there’s still much we don’t understand about immunity to this new illness, a small but growing number of cases like his suggest the answer is yes.

Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.


[SOURCE:  D. Clay Ackerly  | Vox | 12 July 2020]


Coronavirus antibodies won't keep you from getting the virus again, says a Central Jersey doctor reporting that at least two of his patients have been reinfected with coronavirus after testing negative for months in between.

Dr. Stuart Ditchek, who treats patients in Deal and surrounding parts of Monmouth County, said in a Wednesday night video posted here on YouTube, "We now have two cases that are reinfected that I am personally connected with."

Ditchek said the first patient had COVID-19 a few months ago, tested negative for months in between, went to a party last weekend, and then tested positive for coronavirus this week. "So that is a reinfection," the doctor said.

According to the CDC, the body's immune response to COVID-19 is not yet understood.

"Patients with MERS-CoV are unlikely to be re-infected shortly after they recover, but it is not yet known whether similar immune protection will be observed for patients with COVID-19," the CDC said.


[SOURCE:  | Monmouth Daily Voice | 9 July 2020]

Granted, these stories are anecdotal, but this is a novel virus, so we cannot assume that the Covid virus acts exactly the same as the influenza virus. Ask yourself : When you get a cold, are you immune from catching a cold again, or even in the same year? Some virus's remain dormant in our bodies for years, and then reappear. Some viruses mutate more frequently than others, but all virus's mutate, so the COVID you have today may not be the same as the COVID one year from now.

This virus has already mutated into a more contagious version.


Tuesday, 7 July 2020 at 20h 38m 17s

WTF #3

I discuss the Rate of Transmission, or growth factor.

The skinny: greater than 1 equals increase; less than 1 equals decrease.



Monday, 29 June 2020 at 16h 17m 26s

The Deficit Myth

Here is Stephanie Kelton doing a superb job at exposing this myth.



The skinny: Libertarians are used by the plutocracy to hijack the discussion in order to benefit from the way economics and government spending/debt is understood. Sadly it is also dysfunctional, and yields a growing rigid aristocracy over time with an eroding socio-economic structure (infrastructure, small business, good jobs, etc.) because excess funds tend to be horded by the wealthy and not really "invested".

This zombie idea posits that it is the wealthy only which invest and create economic progress, absent of anything government spending/debt can and/or does -- despite actual historical fact. The taxes on the rich are meant to obtain funds in order to make these necessary investments. When the wealthy eschew taxes, the government is forced to sell treasury bonds so that the same wealthy can buy them and earn interest to boot.

Now think about that. Instead of paying taxes, the same money the government could have raised by taxes is used to buy the government bonds, and the government then pays the bond-holders. Then when the government creates debts, these same wealthy bond-holders scream about deficits and responsibility. They hijack the government with this tautology and then pretend to be the patrician responsible adults in the room.

Here's an idea : How about just pay the taxes instead of selling bonds to the wealthy in the first place? I get that using bonds to fund government operations is solid economics, however it think it becomes dysfunctional when it begins to take the place of obtaining taxes. The wealth of a society must be used for the maintenance of that society, not just a cash cow to suck out wealth and create various enormous plutocratic enterprises carving out their own private spheres from the commonwealth.


Monday, 22 June 2020 at 1h 31m 35s

60 minutes from 28 September 2003

This was 17 years ago.


A small Texas town saw 13% of its black population arrested and charged with dealing cocaine. But a state judge in 2003 said the investigator behind the arrests was "the most devious, non-responsive law enforcement witness this court has witnessed in 25 years on the bench in Texas."




Tuesday, 9 June 2020 at 16h 51m 36s

Our World In Data timeline of COVID

This covid tracker measures the number of new confirmed cases per day beginning when the rate was 30 cases per day, starting as early as 22 February 2020 all the way up to the current date (which is 9 June 2020 right now). Additionally, the tracker measures the number of tests per case, and colors the tracking lines based upon the tests per case rate. After 60 days the differences in ability to control the outbreak is largely split above and below the 100 confirmed cases per day rate, with the high tests per case below 100, and the low tests per case above 100. Hmmmmm.

In other words, the most successful way to control the virus is to test everyone, quarantine, and trace.

What is shocking, beginning at the 20th day since 7 March 2020 (not every nation's dataset starts at 22 February), the United States is the only nation to have more than 10,000 confirmed cases per day every single day since that 20th day up until now (60 days or more later) -- while only testings just 20 to 40 per case -- which is the middle range on the color scale siena to red to orange to blue to black.




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