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Showing posts from June, 2021

The Biggest Threat to America Is America Itself

NICHOLAS KRISTOF The Biggest Threat to America Is America Itself June 23, 2021, 7:12 p.m. ET Credit...Erin Kirkland for The New York Times 363 Nicholas Kristof By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist “America is back” became President Biden’s refrain on his European trip this month, and in a narrow sense it is. NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Get a behind-the-scenes look at Nick’s gritty journalism as he travels around the United States and the world. Sign Up We no longer have a White House aide desperately searching for a fire alarm to interrupt a president as he humiliates our country at an international news conference, as happened in 2018. And a Pew Research Center survey found that 75 percent of those polled in a dozen countries expressed “confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing,” compared with 17 percent a year ago. Yet in a larger sense, America is not back. In terms of our well-being at home and competitiveness abroad, the blunt truth is that America is lagging. In some respects

The End of US Democracy

Here's how the U.S. will cease to have a democratically elected government https://boingboing.net/2021/06/07/heres-how-the-u-s-will-cease-to-have-a-democratically-elected-government.html?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=heres-how-the-u-s-will-cease-to-have-a-democratically-elected-government Timothy Synder is a Yale University history professor and the author of the excellent short book,  On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century . He's an expert on the history of fascism and totalitarianism and in the  latest issue of his newsletter  he describes how the United State in on a fast track to tyranny. The scenario then goes like this.  The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression.  The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states.  State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote.  The House and Senate accep

Red States

Half a dozen states, including Tennessee, Montana, Iowa, and Texas, have passed legislation allowing gun owners to carry their weapons without a permit. Texas, South Carolina, Idaho, and Oklahoma have passed legislation banning abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, after about six weeks of pregnancy (before women typically even know they are pregnant); Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas also passed virtually complete bans on abortion.   Arizona approved   an extremely restrictive bill that includes barring abortions for certain genetic conditions. Ten states have adopted about two dozen laws in total targeting transgender individuals, including legislation in seven states that bars transgender athletes from competing in school sports. In the U.S., “2021 has officially surpassed 2015 as the worst year for anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent history,” the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ-advocacy group,   recently concluded . “States have now enacted more anti-LGBTQ laws this year than
 https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-do-animal-viruses-like-coronavirus-jump-species-20200225/ Zoonotic diseases like influenza and many coronaviruses start out in animals, but their biological machinery often enables them to jump to humans. Where do these viruses come from? MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV appear to originate in animals, and the same is likely true of SARS-CoV-2. This makes them zoonoses, diseases that can jump between humans and other animals. MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV were originally bat viruses that spread to an intermediate animal (camel and civet cat, respectively), which then exposed humans to the viruses. Genetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 sequences shows that their closest genetic relatives appear to be bat coronaviruses, with the role of intermediate species possibly played by the pangolin, an endangered species trafficked in China for its scales and meat. There are four coronaviruses that cause colds in humans — known as HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1 — and these
Donald J. Trump, 2017-2021 1st President in 28 years to not serve a 2nd term 1st President in 45 years not to release any of his tax returns 1st President in 89 years to lose the Presidency, the house and the Senate in a single term 1st President in 102 years to allow more than 120,000 Americans to die in a single virus outbreak 1st President in 129 years to lose the popular vote twice 1st President in 152 years to boycott his successors inauguration 1st President ever to fail to hit a 50% approval rating at any point during their Presidency 1st President ever to accuse his predecessor of not being an American 1st President ever to be elected with the help of a foreign nation 1st President ever to be impeached twice 1st President ever to have a member of their own party vote for conviction in an impeachment trial 1st President ever to have an arrest warrant ********************************************************************** Democrats: We'd like cops to stop killing minorities. R
Elephant herd razes 500-kilometer path of destruction after escape from China nature reserve A herd of 15 elephants has wreaked havoc in China, trampling crops and causing more than a million dollars' worth of damage, after the animals escaped from a ... CNN 5 hours ago bookmark_border share more_vert