Sorry, folks for different type sizes. Such things happen on the cyber world, that's all I can say. Thanks for your understanding.
Life is one damn surprise after
another. As I may have observed before, whoever slaughtered that pangolin or
other infected wild animal at the Hunan wet market last year never
expected to set off a chain reaction like this. As per chaos theory, the flap
of a butterfly's wings can trigger a storm across the sea.
We have had demonstration here in DC
all weekend, including at the capitol and on streets near my house. It is a
direct response to the police killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, but also because people are frustrated by virus restrictions and
fed up with Trump and so are expressing frustration and just letting
off steam in pleasant weather. More virus spread will follow. Mr. Trump, instead
of trying to reduce tensions, is fanning the flames by threats of shooting and
fierce dogs. Biden has an opportunity to step in with a calming and
uniting message, but has yet to do so.
Since listening to a few radio biographies of Covid victims of all ages who passed away recently, I have to remark on the wide reach of this illness, how it attacks people of all ages, races, and in all walks of life. Health care workers are bearing the brunt and so many do pass away and so very quickly, within days of falling ill and with no family by their side. It’s a silent, unseen killer.
Meanwhile, on Memorial Day weekend, Trump was out playing golf and refusing to wear a mask, encouraging people to go to church and to go out to spend money and “open up the economy.” It’s always a judgment call when the incidence is low enough to allow opening up. Until there is a reliable vaccine, we really cannot rest easy and that’s still a way’s away. Since then,
Political analysts and historians will be spending a lot of brain power looking back at the Trump presidency, analyzing the strange convergence of factors that led to his ascension to office. It was a fluke that he became president in the first place, but he ma now be brought down by the fluke of the pandemic. Logical, rational forward-looking planning is essential for human survival and well being, but so much is chance and accident, beginning with our own conception when a given sperm pierced the ovum while a different one coming a nanosecond later would have produced someone else entirely.
Since May 3 was World Press Freedom Day. I tried to drum up interest in imprisoned Cuban journalists by the mainstream press, but it’s hard to compete with virus news. We in Amnesty Int’l have named some Cuban journalists prisoners of conscience, including two whom I’ve had the privilege of having actually met, José Daniel Ferrer and Roberto Quiñones, so their situation is personal for me.
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/27/doj-memo-offered-to-buy-out-immigration-board-members
The Trump administration, perhaps under
the surreptitious guidance of Stephen Miller, is trying to stack immigration courts
with judges who have a track record of being anti-immigrant and of denying
asylum requests.
RSF - Reporters
sans frontières
https://rsf.org/en/cuba
Cuban
and Venezuelan medics treat migrants near U.S. border
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuban-venezuelan-medics-treat-migrants-223943449.html [These are refugee medics, also waiting at the border.]
News
out of Honduras: Hondurans block
highway to prevent COVID-19
burials, AFP, https://www.yahoo.com/news/hondurans-block-highway-prevent-covid-19-burials-192033966.html
Honduras ex-police
chief faces US drug trafficking charges, BBC
President of Honduras
took bribes to protect cocaine kingpin, feds say
ICE To Deport COVID-Positive Immigrants To Haiti
In rural Honduras, women
often greet each other not by shaking hands or embracing, but rather by extending
both arms and touching forearms, which might be a fairly safe strategy during the
virus pandemic. In the US, touching elbows has also been promoted, but maybe
just waving “hello” from a safe distance would be best. So far, the Honduras
lockdown has worked fairly well, as it was instituted as soon as cases
appeared. Now, in the less affected south, people are already back at work.
Just looked on the Operation Smile website, because I was at their Honduras brigade in March of this year. I see nothing there about the impact of the pandemic. Surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and other volunteer practitioners from around the world arrive at local hospitals to carry out cleft palate and harelip surgeries, which must have been suspended worldwide for now. Furthermore, families with affected children typically congregate at a local hospital to be evaluated and wait to be put on a surgery schedule. Such gatherings cannot take place now or for the foreseeable future.
Presumably, Operation Smile is reorganizing its procedures to adapt to the post-pandemic world, as are many such charitable medical services, including Doctors Without Borders, another organization with which I have volunteered, as well as International Health Services of Minnesota, with which I have participated numerous times. Medical brigades will have to take a break to figure out new tactics, at least until widespread ad effective Covid testing and vaccination are available I would be surprised if I will be able to return to Operation Smile in Honduras in 2021.
China
is taking advantage of the virus turmoil around the world to crack down again
on Hong Kong while the media is distracted.
The following message
came in from a friend in Bhutan: (My
expected visitors from Bhutan never arrived this year, because their program
was cancelled.)
we have few cases
which are all imported, people who flew from third countries are tested
positive so all are keep in quarantine for 21 days, cross my
fingers we don't have community transmission as of now, our king is
doing so much, he give priorities to his people health than to
economy so we are in safe hands
Wherever
was Tara Reade, Biden’s female accuser, during the 8 years that he was
vice president, just a heartbeat away from the presidency? So, wouldn’t that
have been the right time to have sounded the alarm? And now her educational credentials
are in doubt and her lawyer has resigned. Sex abuse cases where she was an
expert witness are being reexamined. Whatever Republican operatives might have
paid her, she is now losing her work and her reputation. Granted that Biden has
been too patronizing and touchy-feely toward women in the past, though less so
recently. And is it credible that Biden would accost Reade in a very public and
well-trodden Senate hallway, with people passing by at all hours and guards on
duty? Did she scream out? Compared to Mr. Trump, Biden has been a veritable monk.
Why does
Trump keep attacking the Post Office, demanding higher charges for package
deliveries, even though packages are making a profit?. Since billionaire Jeff
Bezos, a man far richer than Trump will ever be, owns the Washington Post, which has not exactly toed
the Trump line, and since Bezos’ Amazon ships a lot of packages via the Post
Office Trump wants to put the squeeze on him by charging more for package
delivery. Trump is nothing if not vindictive and there is nothing subtle about
the man. Nor does he worry about us ordinary citizens having to pay for sending
packages.
Another
transparently ridiculous stunt, which Trump bullied his staff into helping him
carry out, was his recent appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, where he equated
himself with Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Trump’s obsessive attempts to get rid of Obamacare,
just because he wants to obliterate Obama’s legacy, is another ham-fisted
effort. Let’s hope and pray that Trump is defeated in November before the
Supreme Court decides on that issue, after which President Biden and a Democratic
Congress can bolster Obamacare against further political attacks.
The latest attack
against Obama is Trump’s call for an Obamagate investigation, which few
Republicans are picking up on, now fearing for their own political survival.
Aligning themselves too closely to Mr. Trump may take them down with him.
Probably Melania
is secretly hoping her husband is defeated. So. then she and her son can go
back to their private lives. Maybe Jared and Ivanka, keeping a low profile
lately, are hoping for the same, as they must be embarrassed by Trump’s continued
antics. If he should be able to finagle
another victory, he will be even worse next time.
Those of us
who have become increasingly appalled by Trump over these last few years might
dare to hope that his defeat and the backlash against his tactics will usher in
a more rational and humane national government. The whole world is feeling pretty
sorry for Americans right now, instead of envious for a change.
Ebola was another
fatal human disease that came from wild animal slaughter, but thankfully was
contained, Covid 19 apparently can be passed through saliva and semen, not to
mention just the mere touch of a hand or even of a surface that hand has
touched.
That the
virus has even hit the White House now shows how easily it can be spread, even
with precautions and daily testing. It can be transmitted, apparently, before
someone becomes symptomatic and possibly after recovery. And how long immunity
lasts, if at all, in unknown. Trump and Pence refuse to wear masks at public
events, even to set an example, perhaps fearing that would make them appear more
vulnerable and not as strong and in charge? Or because they want to make sure
viewers see and remember their faces and that their faces show up in photos of
the event?
It’s poetic
justice, just when Trump is pushing for the country to re-open and has decreed
that meatpacking plants and churches are essential, now the virus has invaded the
White House. How can he protect us all if he cannot even protect himself? Trump
may be tested daily, but a test alone is not protective. He seems to be having
frequent meltdowns at press briefings, perhaps over his own exposure?
Thank
goodness that governors have stepped into the breach, especially Democrats,
notably New York’s Andrew Cuomo, whose daily briefings are straightforward and
honest. Among Republicans, Maryland’s moderate Governor Larry Hogan is
charting his own course, paying no attention to Trump.
When he
first assumed office, some of us were prepared to give novice politician Trump the
benefit of the doubt and allow him and his staff time to learn on the job. But
he and they have never learned, instead doubling down on harmful and ridiculous
policies that have threatened the whole wide world and our own international
standing, now attacking and killing American citizens via a botched virus
response.
It’s a
gamble to decide just when the virus numbers are sufficiently low to warrant opening
up at least parts of the economy, since the odds of contracting the virus then
would be small. But, of course, if the numbers start going up again, then retreat
becomes necessary.
After the
virus challenge has passed, assuming we actually survive it, we’ll appreciate
ordinary, everyday activities, such as grocery shopping, riding public
transport, and eating out with a friend. Even pumping gas or putting a letter
in the mailbox without gloves will be a triumph.
The Trump
administration has been very stingy with poor and minority people, though an
election is coming up. So, Trump is now trying to appeal to "your
community, you folks out there, you know who I mean; I've done a lot for you
African Americans, an awful lot, no president has ever done more for you
blacks." That's not a direct quote, but a paraphrase of what he's said to
various constituencies. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, gays, women--each
category is bunched all together into its own monolithic group—each of them being
“other” –not part of the standard brand, that is. upstanding straight white
native-born males like himself.
We now see
that the Electoral College definitely needs to be abolished, as it can
deliver us a president who not only “won” with a massive shortfall of citizen
votes, but who now has daily inflicted harm and even death by neglecting and
downplaying the signs of the advancing Corona virus—and dismisses death reports
and projections as “fake news.” He seems to airily dismiss the virus deaths of
“old” folks like himself, as well as the prospect of more than 100,000 eventual
US virus deaths (we’re getting there fast), se la vie, all this from a guy who
gets tested daily when tests are so scarce. He’s supposedly “pro-life?” yet considers
the “economy” and his own reelection more important than actual human lives?
Keep meat packing plants open, open up the beaches, treat people with unproven
chloroquin in whose manufacture he has a stake, and praise governors who don’t
impose restrictions.
When Trump fires or demotes someone precipitously, no specifics are offered, only that
the person is “terrible,” “a disaster.” Trump has said that his mother indulged
his every childhood whim; now that Mother’s Day has passed, then is Mom to
blame?
It was bad
enough that the Electoral College gave us George W.,, who lost his first
election by a handful of votes, to our great detriment in regard to the Iraq
war and “weapons of mass destruction.” But Bush doesn’t look so bad now in
comparison with Trump. Yet neither should have “won” and now we are seeing the
sustained harm that can result.
The reverse of
that letter was in Spanish, reaching out to the Hispanic voters, whom Trump has
alienated. Those millions of letters, trolling for votes, are
costing a pretty penny to mail, but I suppose they might be helping the Post
Office stay afloat.
Hearing an NPR
program about Trump’s
“Wait in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, I couldn’t help remembering when I used to interpret telephonically for asylum hearings at the border years ago. Trump and his administration are actually making me feel ill. He needs to retire to Mar-A-Lago for the sake of the mental health of so most of us!
“Wait in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, I couldn’t help remembering when I used to interpret telephonically for asylum hearings at the border years ago. Trump and his administration are actually making me feel ill. He needs to retire to Mar-A-Lago for the sake of the mental health of so most of us!
Mr. Trump’s
Republican critics, including Kellyanne Conway’s husband (is Trump afraid to
fire her because she knows too much?), point out what is certainly true, that
our country’s standing in the world will be further eroded and American citizens’
and residents’ wellbeing and health permanently jeopardized if Trump serves 4
more years as president. If he goes away now in 2020, we may still have a
chance to recover, but 4 more years will bring about an irreversible
decline. As it is, Joe Biden will have a monumental task, which he may not be
well equipped to handle, but our country and our government have to start the
repair process now, as it’s almost too late. The UK lost its empire and we now risk
losing the gains made these last few decades unless we get rid of Mr. Trump
ASAP. Can we possibly also jettison the Electoral College fluke that made this
calamity possible? And give Congressional Representation to DC while we are
at—and to Puerto Rico too at the same time? It doesn’t hurt to wish for the
moon.
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