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.
Bernie may not become the Democratic nominee, but god bless him for staying true and hammering down the message. I know people are down on Biden, but ... you don't stop voting just because the person who is running against insanity, incompetance, and evil isn't who you want. Even if this is just the same ole good cop, bad cop routine -- jesus fuck, give me the good cop every single time. Puhlease.
We must show up and vote against the Rethuglicans this year. If we take over the House and the Senate, Biden can be forced to move in the right direction. At the very least, Biden will appoint competent people throughout the government bureaucracy. Plus he isn't a narcissistic delusional racist. Yea that too.
Friday, 3 April 2020 at 22h 56m 37s
The recent weekly increase of unemployment in context
The weekly increased of unemployment going all the way back to the 1960's.
From the same people that carried out a fake investigation about Bengazi for years, obtaining not a single indictment or even a conviction against anyone, and then abruptly ending the perpetual House investigation once they got a Republican in the White House. Because it was always meant to be a circus.
Rethuglicans use investigations as political stunts and campaigns to distort truth. Democrats actually want to get to the bottom of malfeasance and corruption, in order to make government better. Rethuglicans want to destroy the government by filtering it through business connections and apparatchiks. And then when everything blows up in their face, they cry fake tears about how the other side is playing politics -- because that's what they do. It's called projection.
No one should be voting for a Rethuglican in 2020. Unless you want more of the same, or worse -- just in case you don't think the various Rethuglican voter suppression antics and stuffing the judiciary branch with ideologues over the last 3+ years is serious enough.
Friday, 3 April 2020 at 16h 17m 14s
Latest SF Coronavirus update from the SF Dept of Public Health
The number of cases jumped up 47. That's the biggest one day jump since 26 March when the data jumped up 54 cases from 223 to 279. Beginning on 26 March, the sequence of increases has been as follows:
+54, +29, +32, +34, +23, +37, +16, +47.
The a value of the model is now 5.56732 and the b value is 0.12054. Notice that the a value is jumping up. Yesterday it was 4.55. At the current a value, there are probably upwards of 82% of cases unknown.
Here are the model's updated 14 and 21 day predictions:
13,613 = 497×5.56732×(1+0.12054)^14
30,197 = 497×5.56732×(1+0.12054)^21
Friday, 3 April 2020 at 5h 14m 27s
It didn't have to be this way
The response to the Coronavirus could have been like Taiwan or South Korea -- both of whom are Democratic Republics.
Without adequate tests we cannot do track and trace. Without the National government nationalizing the distribution and ordering of medical equipment we get a clusterfuck and politically driven policy decisions -- meanwhile the price gougers line up to make profit off of this dysfunctional system.
A longtime campaign operative informed clients that he was leaving politics behind for a new line of work: selling critical medical supplies.
The fundraiser, Mike Gula, didn’t specify his new line of work in the email. But in an interview, he said he’d started a new company selling medical equipment that’s been in short supply during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company, Blue Flame Medical LLC, was formed Monday in Delaware, according to state records. Its website says it sells coronavirus testing kits, N95 respirator masks, “a wide selection” of personal protective equipment and other “hard to find medical supplies to beat the outbreak.”
Asked how he’d managed to procure such equipment when there are shortages in hospitals across the country, Gula said, “I have relationships with a lot of people.”
Gula started Blue Flame with John Thomas, a consultant who until recently worked as chief strategist for Don Sedgwick, a Republican who ran against Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) but lost in the primary earlier this month. Gula’s firm raised money for Sedgwick, according to campaign finance records.
The abrupt move to shutter Gula’s firm has set the Republican operative world ablaze, with many in the business wondering about Gula’s intentions and how he was able to move so swiftly.
Thomas declined to specify how he and Gula had managed to obtain masks that have become so rare that some hospitals have resorted to reusing them or having health care workers tie bandannas or scarfs around their faces. “It’s just relationship-based,” he said. “I can’t say anything else.”
He also declined to reveal how much money the pair had made but said they were not price gouging.
“We are incredibly sensitive to gouging,” he said.
[SOURCE:THEODORIC MEYER and ALEX ISENSTADT | Politico | 27 March 2020]
Of course they are "incredibly sensitive" ... while they take incredible advantage of political connections and sensitively jack the prices up as their fellow Americans need medical supplies. Don't you just feel that patriotism. They got feelings too. Presumably they feel the abject pain of their being deplorable scumbags when they look in the mirror each day. So please, mainstream media, can you just frame these mother fuckers as saints and saviors, and absolve them of these unnecessary daily burdens.
Thursday, 2 April 2020 at 21h 2m 50s
Robert Reich on recent events
In this episode of The Common Good, Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich discusses how Trump is leveraging the coronavirus crisis to favor his friends, boast about himself, and boost his re-election chances; how Amazon represents the worst of our harsh hyper-capitalist system; and the provisions that must be included in the next stimulus (survival) bill.
Thursday, 2 April 2020 at 21h 40m 34s
Latest SF Coronavirus update from the SF Dept of Public Health
Plus 16 and now up to 450. However, keep in mind that the state of california has more than 59,000 tests pending, and that the tests are backlogged. So the positive results reported daily by the San Francisco Department of Public Health is likely to be inconsistent. Hence, I would not yet infer that this is slowing down at all. For instance, we might get plus 52 tomorrow.
If we use the proportion of tests that were resolved which were positive, that is 26.27%, which means around 15,500 positives will result from those 59,000 pending tests. How many of those would be in San Francisco or the Bay Area is unknown. Using the current estimate of 15%, than we are looking at about 2,000 or more cases. And this doesn't include those who are currently being tested, as well as those who are not being tested. There's a lot of unknowns.
Anyway, I updated the model for San Francisco. The a value is 4.555 and the b value is 0.127212. Again, the percentage is dropping, but the a value is increasing -- indicating the level of uncertainty in the data. Hence the model says that we have upwards of 4.555 times more positive cases that are unknown, or only 21.95% of positive cases are known.
Here are the model's updated 14 and 21 day predictions:
10,958 = 450×4.555×(1+0.127212)^14
25,350 = 450×4.555×(1+0.127212)^21
Notice these numbers are increasing, despite the b value decreasing. Potentially 25,000 case by the end of April. Yikes.
Thursday, 2 April 2020 at 18h 50m 59s
Paul Krugman interview
virus denial wasn't an industry before this hit. But the reactions to this, to the whole handling — the coronavirus has been like global warming, but at about a hundred times speed. Right? The same thing. "The scientists are in a conspiracy against President Trump and trying to bring socialism with false warnings." All of that is what sort of laid the groundwork. You basically carried over the whole set of attitudes that came from climate denial, which is one of the most important zombies out there, straight into the coronavirus until like two days ago.
We've been far behind the curve. It was already obvious in January that this was extremely high risk and we should have been doing massive ramping up of testing. We should've been doing social distancing. We should've been doing all these things that help to contain it. We really didn't get serious or Washington didn't get serious, again, until just a few days ago about any of this.
Even now, we're not doing what you always do when you have an emergency, which is you federalize the production of essential equipment. We still haven't done that. We still have this wild uncoordinated scrambled for ventilators and all of that.
The denial, virus denial, which is basically the same as climate denial, has been critical. I mean tens of thousands of people will die unnecessarily in this country because of it.
[SOURCE:Sara Silverstein | Business Insider | 1 April 2020]