Sunday, June 20, 2021

Flower Power, Good riddance both to Trump & Netanyahu, China Lab leak? Amnesty News, Raccoon Update

Apologies for the location of the previous posting, which is out of order. When I discovered it had been left as a draft some time ago, I uploaded it, but it has appeared now, not it its rightful place. Also, please excuse odd spacing near the end of this posting. Trying to fix it would only make it worse. 
  
Back to the present day. Before getting into the nitty gritty, I’ll share a few photos I took of flowers around my immediate neighborhood. Living in proximity to the capitol now has its challenges, thanks to Mr. Trump, but my neighbors and I still try to make our front yards look welcoming. Now that we can walk outside without masks, it's nice to breathe fresh air and enjoy all the flowers. 
























Business Insider, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely claims Trump will be 'our real president' in 6 months

Lindell also has said Trump is the only president not “in it for the ego.”

[Is he trying to sell more pillows? His sales must have fallen off.]


NBC, Nearly a third of GOP say Trump likely to be reinstated

Why keep this scam going about Trump’s immanent return to the presidency? Didn’t the attack on the capitol do enough damage? Yet, I can bear personal witness that some folks in both Texas and W Va. still expect Trump’s triumphant return to office. Why do we have so many seriously misguided fellow Americans? It’s more than just a political difference, it’s frankly delusional. Even Trump finally admitted in a recent interview, “We didn’t win.” He never enjoyed majority support, even during his presidency, which shows the folly of an electoral system that allows a loser to “win” via the Electoral College.

 

Mr. Trump says he’s now writing his own blockbuster memoir about his greatest-of-all-time presidency and has had 2 offers from major publishers, though no one seems able to confirm this. His book will doubtless double-down on the narrative of a “stolen” election. Trump could even write gibberish and his cult followers would buy his book. He would certainly insist on a profit-sharing deal with any publisher. Meanwhile, Mike Pence and son-in-law Jared have both inked big book deals, to Trump’s certain envy.

 

Rep. Adam Schiff notes that Donald Trump has indicated interest in running for Congress in Florida and replacing Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. If he should happen to win a seat, would he say the election was rigged? Trump has said that his first priority in Congress would be the impeachment of President Joe Biden. He is out for blood, a nightmare scenario. But, at least, we all have now been forewarned, so we need to mount a full-court press to head off such a dreadful eventuality. We are only too well aware of how destructive Donald Trump can be in office, making it imperative to prevent his election again to any office and assuring that Republicans don’t gain a majority in either chamber of Congress as long as he is still alive.

 

President Biden gave a refreshingly coherent press conference after his meeting with Putin, in contrast to Trump’s famously chaotic appearances. Trump was so terrible that now Biden, just a normal guy, seems like a really great president.

 

Trump’s former physician is asking Biden to take a cognitive test, all well and good, if Trump takes it first under the administration of a neutral party. As Trump described the cognitive test that he “aced” while in office, I recognized a routine dementia screening test I was given by my health care provider. A man so mentally and emotionally challenged deserves our sympathy, but not license to visit chaos on our nation and the world.

 

Putin has been depicting America as a fading power, mirroring the demise of his own country. Trump and Covid have definitely brought us down, but a further decline is not inevitable. If our country does decline either relative to other powers or absolutely, it will be because we have too many uninformed and rigid-thinking fellow citizens, too many Trump followers, meaning that the rest of us have not done our duty.

 

Good riddance to Mr. Netanyahu, another leader whose departure is welcome! Israelis have been out celebrating. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is still standing fast, not moving out of the official residence.

NY Times, Israel's New Coalition Takes First Steps, Including Mending Fences With U.S.

 

A Methodist Hospital in Texas, requiring its employees to be vaccinated, is facing legal challenges by those alleging infringement on their rights. Such a requirement is not arbitrary, rather, quite reasonable to protect vulnerable patients, nor do workers have a right to employment there. A local hospital where I once worked as an on-call Spanish interpreter had vaccination requirements for us as well as for regular staff.

 

ABC News/Washington Examiner, Evidence mounts Wuhan lab studied live bats despite denials

If Covid, which has sickened and killed so many around the world and created so much economic havoc, actually escaped from a Wuhan lab, the Chinese government will do everything in its power to prevent this from ever seeing the light of day.

 

Gun killings in the US are becoming an escalating epidemic. Many are probably copycat crimes. 

 

A man in NC, Charles Ray Finch, was found not to have committed the capital crime for which he was almost executed and for which he served 41 years, another example of one reason why many of us oppose the death penalty.

 

A South African Woman Claims She Gave Birth to a Record 10 Babies. Their ‘Dad’ Thinks It’s a Hoax. [He says he’s never even seen the babies.]

 

Good news! See Amnesty Int’l Outcome UA 055/21 on prisoner of conscience Luis Manuel Otero, a member of the San Isidro Movement, who was released on 31 May 2021 without any charges presented against him nor conditions for his release. At Amnesty, we will continue to monitor his situation.

Cuba is developing Covid vaccines. A friend with close access to Cuban information sources tells me: Cuba might transfer its vaccine technology with a licensing fee to other countries. Iran, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, and Kenya have expressed interest. The export and transferring of the technology of Cuban vaccines will become an important source of foreign exchange for the island during the second semester of 2021.

Dominico-Haitians Are

#StillStateless: The Plight of Dominicans of Haitian Descent

Miami Herald, Four Cubans land on Marathon beach, continuing migrant wave to Florida

 

Miami Herald, Haiti already had a child hunger problem. Now COVID and gang clashes are making it worse.

    Looking out our windows on a recent evening, we saw a mother raccoon with 3     young ones, plus 2 males fighting, on an adjacent roof. They all scurry around     between adjacent houses, thanks to a handy tree in between. The tree can be     removed, but not while the raccoons might be marooned on a rooftop. They do     provide an entertaining spectacle and the offspring might be considered cute if     the whole bunch didn’t make us feel so trapped inside our own home. I still        have not figured out the most effective, cost-effective, and humane way to            tackle this problem, the first time it has arisen in the more than half-century        I’ve lived in my venerable house. Last year, the dead maple tree provided a        major logistical and financial challenge. This year’s big home owner’s problem     comes from raccoons! With beady eyes staring out from their furry faces,           


they almost seem to be mocking us.

 

      Once again, while my modest book sales on Amazon mainly enrich Amazon, a little extra goes to a small educational charity for kids in developing countries selected by me and other authors.

   

        Dear Barbara Joe, This is the quarterly notification to inform you that       AmazonSmile has made a charitable donation to the charity you’ve selected, Pencils of Promise, in the amount of $54,854.98 as a result of qualifying purchases made by customers who have selected this charity.

 


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