Showing posts with label coronavirus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coronavirus. Show all posts

Sunday, November 22, 2020

In The News (17)

U.S. Passes 12 Million Confirmed Coronavirus Cases Cases of COVID-19 are rising at an alarming rate in nearly every state as the nation approaches Thanksgiving. The cumulative case count passed 12 million on Saturday, six days after the previous million mark was crossed, which was six days after the previous million........ To avoid an even starker increase in the spread of the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people to not travel for Thanksgiving at all. The CDC says Thanksgiving should be spent only with people actively living in your own household for at least 14 days before the holiday, advice many medical professionals are echoing.   




सावधान ! मधुमेहका रोगीलाई कोरोनाले छिटो संक्रमण गर्न सक्छ ! महामारीमा मधुमेह रोगीको स्वास्थ्य अवस्था झन जटिल बन्दै : वीर अस्पतालका मधुमेह रोग विशेषज्ञ डाक्टर दीपक मल्ल
Elon Musk: First Mars City Will Start With Glass Domes "At least a future spacefaring civilization — discovering our ruins — will be impressed humans got that far." 
100 Notable Books of 2020 The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review

Trump Using Last Days to Lock In Policies and Make Biden’s Task More Difficult At a wide range of departments and agencies, Mr. Trump’s political appointees are going to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent Mr. Biden from rolling back the president’s legacy.

US coronavirus cases top 12 million. An expert says spread is now 'faster' and 'broader' than ever November already accounts for almost a quarter of all Covid-19 cases ......... the real case count is likely to be "multitudes" higher than the 12 million reported because not enough people are getting tested. ......... more than 50% of Covid-19 infections are spread by people who exhibit no symptoms. .......... a negative test result will not guarantee a person isn't carrying the virus to a Thanksgiving gathering, because a test won't necessarily pick up on fresh infections .............. in the 24 counties that required people to wear masks in public, there was a net decrease of 6% in cases. Meanwhile, in counties without the mandate, the disease continued to surge, with a net increase in cases of about 100%. 

Bill Gates on his WFH schedule during the pandemic, including what he likes about it  he hasn’t been to a physical office since March. .......... Now, “it’s a simpler schedule.” .......... traveling can also disrupt “being thoughtful,” as well as his reading time and even his sleep quality ............. These days, Gates said, he has mostly been reading about the pandemic ........... Gen-Z adults, those ages 18 to 23, reported the highest levels of stress during the pandemic compared to other generations.  

Here’s what President-elect Joe Biden wants to include in a coronavirus stimulus bill It is possible that Democrats could take control of the Senate when Georgia hosts a runoff election for two seats in January, potentially making it easier to pass a bill. ......... millions of people could lose unemployment benefits altogether by December 31, 2020 and housing advocates warn about an impending eviction crisis if more relief isn’t made available. ........ he will work with Congress to extend the extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits that expired at the end of July for “however long this crisis lasts.” ......... Biden has advocated making all testing and treatment for Covid-19 free for everyone, including any possible vaccines. 

Biden calls for Congress to pass another coronavirus relief package. But there’s no sign of a stimulus deal as holidays approach  Biden said he supports a stimulus package like the HEROES Act, the $3 trillion relief package passed by House Democrats in May, that included provisions for enhanced unemployment benefits, a second stimulus check, aid for state and local governments and housing relief. He also noted that sick leave and more money for child care are economic imperatives 

What's next for the Trump show? "They don't want the ride to end," when Trump leaves office. .........  focusing instead on his TV star bona fides and his packed rallies. "He is," declared Ruddy, "a very great TV personality." ........... Trump has been building his persona since his early days in New York City, when, before completing a single building project, he sold himself as a rich, sexy and much sought-after young man. "He looks ever so much like Robert Redford," a New York Times reporter gushed in 1976. Over time, celebrity became Trump's main product. As Donald Trump played Donald Trump on TV and at public events, he netted hundreds of millions of dollars more in some years than he earned in his real estate business ............. Trump's true money-making talent lies in media and not real estate .......... Trump ran for President in 2016 not to gain office but to increase his visibility ......... The campaign was a "political infomercial" ...... $2 billion worth of free publicity as the press became transfixed by his tirades and insults ............ allowed Trump to expand his fan base to include 70 million voters and 90 million followers on Twitter. ............ From the Trump family's perspective, January 20, 2021 need not mark not an end, but a beginning. To quote Kimberly Guilfoyle, "The best is yet to come!"

When the World Seems Like One Big Conspiracy Understanding the structure of global cabal theories can shed light on their allure — and their inherent falsehood........ at its heart, Nazism was a global cabal theory based on this anti-Semitic lie: “A cabal of Jewish financiers secretly dominates the world and are plotting to destroy the Aryan race. They engineered the Bolshevik Revolution, run Western democracies, and control the media and the banks. Only Hitler has managed to see through all their nefarious tricks — and only he can stop them and save humanity.” ...........  Global cabal theories argue that underneath the myriad events we see on the surface of the world lurks a single sinister group. .............. Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything. ............ The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world’s mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle — the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class .............. The key premise of global cabal theories is that it is relatively easy to manipulate the world. .............. Particularly remarkable is this group’s ability to see 10 moves ahead on the global board game. .............. it is incredibly difficult to predict and control human affairs. ......... Lenin, for example, would never have won power in Russia by avoiding the public gaze. And Stalin at first was much fonder of scheming behind closed doors, but by the time he monopolized power in the Soviet Union, his portrait was hanging in every office, school and home from the Baltic to the Pacific.  









Friday, November 20, 2020

In The News (16)

Detailed Turnout Data Shows How Georgia Turned Blue By Nate Cohn, Matthew Conlen and Charlie SmartNov. 17, 2020 Democrats have long dreamed of turning Georgia blue, with young voters and nonwhite voters leading a progressive charge. Now, a blue Georgia is a reality, but with a winning coalition that might have stunned the party not that long ago. ......... Republican candidates won more votes than Democrats in the state’s two Senate contests, even as President Trump was defeated at the top of the ticket. ............ the relatively low Black share of the electorate could mean that Democrats have the potential for a better showing, perhaps even in the two Senate runoffs in January. ............. Over all, Mr. Biden ran well ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 showing in well-educated, wealthy and increasingly diverse precincts around Atlanta, while making relatively few gains elsewhere in the state.  





Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind A constricted view of the world leaves progressives surprised by the world as it is.   ....... Trump once again stunned much of the liberal establishment by dramatically beating polling expectations to come within about 80,000 votes of another Electoral College victory. .......... The old liberal left paid attention to complexity, ambiguity, the gray areas. A sense of complexity induced a measure of doubt, including self-doubt. The new left typically seeks to reduce things to elements such as race, class and gender, in ways that erase ambiguity and doubt. The new left is a factory of certitudes. ......... Trump won a majority of the vote of white women against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. ......... He also improved his vote share over 2016 with both Latino and Black voters, while losing most of the advantage he previously had with college-educated white males — precisely the demographic his policies had supposedly done most to favor. ............. “Trump did a much better job at understanding Hispanics. Sometimes, Democrats see Hispanics as monolithic.” Latino voters in his South Texas district were particularly turned off by progressive rhetoric about defunding the police, opposition to fossil fuels and decriminalizing border crossings. .......... People are rarely reducible to a single animating political consideration. Nor should they be subject to a simple moral judgment. Motives are complicated ..................  the unemployment rate reached record lows before the pandemic hit   


American health care workers issue a call to arms for wearing masks as the coronavirus pandemic rages across the United States, breaking records nearly every day for deaths — and cases — in state after state. ........... the frustration felt by some of the nation’s health care workers over the refusal of so many Americans to wear masks ..........  It’s a call to arms. “We put our lives on the line daily to keep you safe. So, do something for us. Wear. A. Mask,” the caption reads.  

Hospitals Know What’s Coming “We are on an absolutely catastrophic path,” said a COVID-19 doctor at America’s best-prepared hospital. ........... One unit solely provides “comfort care” to COVID-19 patients who are certain to die. “We’ve never had to do anything like this,” Angela Hewlett, the infectious-disease specialist who directs the hospital’s COVID-19 team, told me. “We are on an absolutely catastrophic path.” ..............  “We’re watching a system breaking in front of us and we’re helpless to stop it,” says Kelly Cawcutt, an infectious-disease and critical-care physician. ............ “I don’t see how we avoid becoming overwhelmed,” says Dan Johnson, a critical-care doctor. People need to know that “the assumption we will always have a hospital bed for them is a false one.” ............. What makes this “nightmare” worse, he adds, “is that it was preventable.” The coronavirus is not unstoppable, as some have suggested and as New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, and Hong Kong have resoundingly disproved—twice. Instead, the Trump administration never mounted a serious effort to stop it. Whether through gross incompetence or deliberate strategy, the president and his advisers left the virus to run amok, allowed Americans to get sick, and punted the consequences to the health-care system. And they did so repeatedly, even after the ordeal of the spring, after the playbook for controlling the virus became clear, and despite months of warnings about a fall surge. .............   UNMC’s preparations didn’t fail so much as the U.S. created a situation in which hospitals could not possibly succeed. “We can prepare over and over for a wave of patients,” says Cawcutt, “but we can’t prepare for a tsunami.” ...........  with the third national surge, “all the trends have gone out the window,” Sarah Swistak, a staff nurse, told me. “From the 90-year-old with every comorbidity listed to the 30-year-old who is the picture of perfect health, they’re all requiring oxygen because they’re so short of breath.” ................  UNMC is struggling not because of any one super-spreading event, but because of the cumulative toll of millions of bad decisions. ..........  When the hospital first faced the pandemic in the spring, “I was buoyed by the realization that everyone in America was doing their part to slow down the spread,”  Johnson says. “Now I know friends of mine are going about their normal lives, having parties and dinners, and playing sports indoors. It’s very difficult to do this work when we know so many people are not doing their part.” The drive home from the packed hospital takes him past rows of packed restaurants, sporting venues, and parking lots. ................ the Midwest has taken entirely the wrong lesson from the Northeast’s ordeal. Instead of learning that the pandemic is controllable, and that physical distancing works, people instead internalized “a mistaken belief that every curve that goes up must come down,” he said. “What they don’t realize is that if we don’t change anything about how we’re conducting ourselves, the curve can go up and up.” ............... some of the people who get infected over Thanksgiving will struggle to enter packed hospitals by the middle of December, and be in the ground by Christmas. .................  Patients with strokes and other urgent traumas aren’t getting the normal level of attention, because the pandemic is so all-consuming. ........... “many of us feel like we haven’t had a day off since this thing began” ........ people with COVID-19 are far sicker than the average patient. In an ICU, they need twice as much attention for three times the usual stay. To care for them, UNMC’s nurses and respiratory therapists are now doing mandatory overtime ............... “I used to be able to leave work at work, but with the pandemic, it follows me everywhere I go,” she said. “It’s all I see when I come home, when I look at my kids.” ............. Long and other nurses have told many families that they can’t see their dying loved ones, and then sat with those patients so they didn’t have to die alone. Lindsay Ivener, a staff nurse, told me that COVID-19 had recently killed an elderly woman whom she was caring for, the woman’s husband, and one of her grandchildren. A second grandchild had just been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. “It just tore this whole family apart in a month,” Ivener said. “I couldn’t even cry. I didn’t have the energy.”  



Thursday, November 19, 2020

In The News (15)





China GDP: Xi Jinping says ‘completely possible’ to double size of economy by 2035, despite foreign hostility China can become a high-income country by 2025 and double size of economy by 2035, President Xi Jinping says Xi also says the country can rely on its domestic market for growth as the world grows less friendly .........  double the size of its economy, as well as per capita income, by 2035

Barack Obama: ‘I could not have a trade war’ with China due to global financial crisis Former US president Barack Obama explains that he was ‘hamstrung’ on dealing with China’s trade policies by global economic meltdown Obama says he ‘had to make sure we did not start a trade war that tipped the world into a depression’, on the back of the global financial crisis of 2008-09 ...... China’s role in the global economic recovery from the crisis, caused in large part by defaults on subprime mortgages in the United States, “hamstrung” his ability to tackle China’s “mercantilist policies that violated international trade rules”, Obama said in remarks made to the The Atlantic, which expanded on similar themes in his new book, A Promised Land.

Abandoning its loose approach to virus controls, Sweden clamps down. “Don’t go to the gym, don’t go the library, don’t have dinner out, don’t have parties — cancel!” .......... While Sweden’s number of Covid-19 deaths still pales in comparison to those of some European countries like Italy or Spain, it is more than 10 times higher than in Finland or Norway. Over the past five days, Sweden has recorded more than 15,000 new infections and Mr. Lofven warned that “it will get worse.”  

The Coronavirus Is Airborne Indoors. Why Are We Still Scrubbing Surfaces? Scientists who initially warned about contaminated surfaces now say that the virus spreads primarily through inhaled droplets, and that there is little to no evidence that deep cleaning mitigates the threat indoors. .......... All over the world, workers are soaping, wiping and fumigating surfaces with an urgent sense of purpose: to fight the coronavirus. But scientists increasingly say that there is little to no evidence that contaminated surfaces can spread the virus. In crowded indoor spaces like airports, they say, the virus that is exhaled by infected people and that lingers in the air is a much greater threat. ............  Hand washing with soap and water for 20 seconds — or sanitizer in the absence of soap — is still encouraged to stop the virus’s spread. ......... Viruses are emitted through activities that spray respiratory droplets — talking, breathing, yelling, coughing, singing and sneezing. .......  the virus could stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhaled — particularly in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation. .......... the coronavirus could spread by air in any indoor setting ........ indoor aerosol transmission could lead to outbreaks in poorly ventilated indoor places like restaurants, nightclubs, offices and places of worship. .......... transmission of infectious respiratory droplets was the “principal mode” .........  coronavirus droplets could spread through air vents in offices  

McDonald’s Is Making a Plant-Based Burger; You Can Try It in 2021 One of those options is plant-based foods, and not just salads and veggie burgers, but “meat” made from plants. Burger King was one of the first big fast-food chains to jump on the plant-based meat bandwagon, introducing its Impossible Whopper in restaurants across the country last year after a successful pilot program. Dunkin’ (formerly Dunkin’ Donuts) uses plant-based patties in its Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwiches. ......... McDonald’s announced last week that it will debut a sandwich called the McPlant in key US markets next year. Unlike Dunkin’ and Burger King, who both worked with Impossible Foods to make their plant-based products, McDonald’s worked with Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat, which makes chicken, beef, and pork-like products from plants.  ......... customizing the items displayed on the drive-thru menu based on the weather and the time of day, and recommending additional items based on what a customer asks for first (i.e. “You know what would go great with that coffee? Some pancakes!”). ......  Drive-throughs, shouting your order into a fuzzy speaker with a confused teen on the other end, and burgers made from beef? So 2019.

China Macro Economy 


Monday, November 16, 2020

In The News (14)



Karl Rove to helm massive GOP fundraising drive for Georgia runoffs Rove is serving as national finance chair for a joint fundraising effort between the NRSC and Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. ......... Haley is also seen as a likely 2024 presidential contender. ....... the fund, which was formed by NRSC chair Todd Young, took in nearly a quarter of its overall goal since it was launched last week. 

I Was a Military COVID Planner. The Vaccine Rollout Is Going to Be a Nightmare. WHAT CAVALRY? Our long winter with COVID could turn into a slog through the spring and summer, even with an effective vaccine. ........... The incoming administration will inherit one of the most daunting challenges any president has ever faced: planning and executing a national mass-vaccination campaign in the middle of a global pandemic. ........... With cases spiking to over 10 million, the virus is everywhere, and spreading deeply into every corner of the country. ............. in 2019, Texas budgeted $17.7 million for infectious disease surveillance, prevention, and epidemiology—and over $400 million for border security. So even when a vaccine is delivered, it will be going to a state that is understaffed and underfunded. .............  The Pfizer vaccine, now the leading contender, will require ultra-cold storage of at least -94 degrees Fahrenheit and two rounds of shots. Another leading vaccine candidate from Moderna also requires cold storage, albeit not to the same extent, according to the company. Typically, hospitals and large clinics have this capability. Small towns lacking even the most basic health clinics do not. .............. An uncoordinated federal roll out of vaccines requiring ultra-cold storage could leave state and local governments competing for resources much like they were competing for PPE earlier in the pandemic. .......... it just isn’t realistic to think the military can replicate the hard work of state and local health-care planners. ....... Instead of a military miracle, it will take nearly flawless coordination between local, state, and the federal government to execute the plan. Our long winter with COVID could turn into a slog through the spring and summer even with an effective vaccine. ...........  One can also hold out hope that a successful vaccination campaign can begin to restore America’s tattered faith in its public institutions. Either way, the people in isolated, underserved communities from rural Texas to hallowed-out manufacturing cities to the overwhelmed Dakotas deserve our best shot.

Fauci says Biden transition is key to quick distribution of Covid vaccine  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the "incompetent" Trump administration has not "thought through" the vaccination distribution process. ........  by the end of December, there will be doses of vaccines available for people in the high-risk category from both Pfizer and Moderna ..... "The vaccines are effective. We want to get it approved as quickly as we possibly can. We want to get doses to people starting in December, and then we want to really get the ball rolling as we get into January, February and March," Fauci said.

‘We could effectively end this pandemic in 2021’ with Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines Both Pfizer and Moderna are using mRNA-based vaccines, a new technology that uses genetic material to generate an immune response.   

In The News (13)

The Pandemic Is Showing Us How Capitalism Is Amazing, and Inadequate Why big business needs big government and vice versa.

What Democrats Are Up Against in Georgia The Senate contenders face not just Republicans but also the state’s political history, which shows that change doesn’t come easy.........  Georgia has almost 160 counties, second in number only to the state of Texas. The story goes that the legislature carved out small counties so that a farmer in a mule-drawn wagon could make it to the courthouse and back in a single day. The real consequence was that under Georgia’s county-unit system, the more rural counties there were, the more leverage they would have against urban interests in Atlanta. ........... The field general of the conservative culture wars of the 1990s was a Georgia Republican, Representative Newt Gingrich, who played a singular role in bringing forth the scorched-earth tactics of the modern Republican Party.  ...........  “One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” Mr. Gingrich told the Georgia College Republicans in 1978 during his third, and ultimately successful, race for Congress. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics.”  ......... What Mr. Gingrich pioneered in culture-war politics Mr. Trump has escalated. Two days after Election Day, Donald Trump Jr. was in Georgia at a rally outside Republican Party campaign headquarters, castigating Republicans who did not defend his father’s specious claims of fraud. ............. Two Democratic victories would not only give Democrats control of the Senate but could also help turn the page on Donald Trump’s influence in American politics.

The Evolving Travel ‘Experience’: Virtual, Actual and In Between Socially distanced craft classes, virtual tango lessons, a city tour accompanied by an avatar guide: how experience companies — which now include Amazon — are adapting to the pandemic.

How to Have Better Family Meals 

Biden Can’t Be F.D.R. He Could Still Be L.B.J. He has the power to make transformational progress look like “C’mon Man” common sense. Will he use it? 

How the Polls Got the Election Wrong, According to One Pollster Who Got It Right

COVID-19 Is Out of Control. What Can We Do? We need a one-two punch to knock the virus down and then keep it down.

सहरभरि शंकास्पद संक्रमित उपत्यकाका मेयरहरुलाई गृहमन्त्रीले भने , ‘लकडाउन गर्ने योजना बनाउँदैछौं ।’

Japan’s New Leader Sets Ambitious Goal of Carbon Neutrality by 2050 The announcement, coming weeks after a similar pledge by China, will require a major overhaul of the infrastructure in Japan, which remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels.


A New Breakthrough Just Brought City-Wide Quantum Communication Into Reach


In The News (12)

Smart Concrete Could Pave the Way for High-Tech, Cost-Effective Roads  Of the 614,387 bridges in the US, for example, 39 percent are older than their designed lifetimes .......... The cost to repair and improve nationwide transportation infrastructure ranges from nearly US$190 billion to almost $1 trillion. ......... These new systems self-monitor the condition of roads and bridges quickly and accurately and can, sometimes, even repair themselves. ............. At an early stage of a crack, for example, self-healing pavement would activate super absorbent polymers to absorb water and produce concrete-like material that fills in the crack. Cracks as small as a few microns could be healed to prevent significant damage by preventing or delaying the later stages of the freeze-thaw cycle.  


You Can Buy This Electric Car for $7,999 in California

Why We Need a Collective Vision to Design the Future of Health

This Coronavirus Surge Does Not Have to Be So Horrific America is entering a difficult period. But the outcome is not foregone. ........... The nation is entering its third, and potentially most dreadful, coronavirus surge. Earlier this month, the daily nationwide case count reached 100,000 for the first time. On Thursday it passed the 160,000 mark. Hospitalizations are at their highest point yet. Unlike previous surges, there is no epicenter. The virus is spreading everywhere. ............ Death isn’t the only bad outcome of contracting the coronavirus. Debilitating symptoms can last for months, and some doctors worry they may lead to permanent disability. Also, lower death rates are contingent on a high standard of care, which will be difficult to maintain across the country as case counts grow. In any case, death tolls are a lagging indicator. ................. “It’s like we survived the Titanic............Now we’re looking at the tip of an iceberg and pretending that the tip is the whole thing.” ........... If Americans want to get the current surge under control through this long, dark winter, they need to skip indoor gatherings, including for the holidays. They need to avoid nonessential travel. They must wear face masks in all public places. They all need to practice social distancing. They need to quarantine when they think they’ve been exposed to the virus and isolate if they get a positive test result, even if no symptoms emerge.  

Here’s How Trump’s Stalling Risks Our National Security I’ve seen my share of presidential transitions. The administration hurts the country by not cooperating with President-elect Biden. ........... Tragically, but not surprisingly, Mr. Trump appears determined to take a final wrecking ball to our democracy and  national security on his inevitable way out the door.

China-Led Trade Pact Is Signed, in Challenge to U.S. The deal sealed on Sunday stands as a potent symbol of Beijing’s growing economic sway in Southeast Asia at a time of uncertainty over Washington’s economic ties with the region.

Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem.

Economic Demands Test Biden Even Before Inauguration With the recovery slowing and coronavirus cases surging, Democrats must decide whether quick action on federal aid is more important than its scale.

Newton’s Daunting Masterpiece Had a Surprisingly Wide Audience, Historians Find The discovery suggests that “Principia” had a stronger impact on Enlightenment science than previous research suggested............ It had a reputation for unreadability. ......... First editions of the Principia, the scholars say, today sell for between $300,000 and $3,000,000 on the black market and at auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s. They estimate that the book’s first edition consisted of some 600 and possibly as many as 750 copies — hundreds more than the 250 or so that historians had previously assumed.




In The News (11)

Was Reagan a Precursor to Trump? A New Documentary Says Yes “The Reagans,” a new Showtime docu-series, presents Ronald Reagan as an early practitioner of dog-whistle politics. But some historians and journalists disagree with that position...............  a glorified actor who won election with a coded racist appeal to white voters ........... The episode opens with 40-year-old footage of Reagan in Mississippi, affirming his support for “states’ rights” at a county fair filled with white voters. ............. his 1980 campaign slogan — “Make America Great Again” .......... the parallels between a movie star and a reality television star, both of whom knew how command the attention of the American public and the media. .............. the notion of Reagan as an early practitioner of dog-whistle politics, a member of the generation of politicians who used coded appeals directed at an attuned audience of white voters. .................. “Reagan is the antithesis of Trump in so many ways,” he added. “He was uniformly courteous and nice and decent to people. Trump, by the way he acts, has made us see that human decency in a political leader is important. Second, he was a compromiser. He always said that he was willing to take half a loaf. He got legislation through because of that.” ..............  the former president’s invocation of states’ rights was halfhearted, buried midway into his speech, inserted at Lott’s suggestion. (And to what end? Reagan barely squeaked by Jimmy Carter in Mississippi.) ................ impressed that this former actor clocked in for the 60-second advertisement at 57 seconds ........... “What was really astonishing to me was seeing how much film there was of Reagan in the act of dog whistling,” Tyrnauer said. “And some of his dog whistles at the time would be considered foghorns today.” ................. The coronavirus crisis is not his first experience with either a pandemic or a president who failed to deal with one: Reagan largely ignored the deadly AIDS epidemic during its early years, and the documentary presents this as one of his most consequential failures as president. ...................... Tyrnauer argues that Reagan has been protected by historians, Republicans and journalists because of his political success and likability.  

Padma Lakshmi: Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris Moved Me to Tears Imagine how wide the ripples of impact can be when a woman of color is vice president. ...........  When I first came to this country at age 4 from India, walking around New York City, I was excited to see all kinds of people — with different colors of skin, styles of dress and ways of moving through the world. But slowly I became aware of a different world, through magazines and TV, where almost everyone was white. ........... I figured out how to navigate the time a boy called me the N-word when I was 11; and navigate the times I auditioned for acting roles in my 20s, only to be told they weren’t “going ethnic”; and navigate the times in my 30s when I didn’t know to negotiate full credit for my work. ............... Over the summer, I learned that Ms. Harris’s mother’s family comes from the same city in India as my family. Her grandparents lived right around the corner from mine in the Besant Nagar area of the city of Chennai. Our grandfathers might have strolled together in the same walking group of retirees on Elliot’s Beach. ...................  President Trump’s attacks on women, on people of color and on immigrants feel personal to us. As he allows a pandemic to run rampant in our country and even threatens our democracy, it feels like a betrayal that so many Americans persist in supporting him. His vitriol encourages those who hate us. In comments under my Instagram and Twitter posts, people frequently tell me, “Go back to your country.” .............. The Trump era she is ending empowered people to show their racism nakedly, in slights and jeers and acts of violence.  

A Republican Senate Would Be Bad for Business What’s bad for America would be bad for corporations, too. ...........  Corporate interests appear to imagine that they will flourish under a Biden presidency checked by Republican control of the Senate. ......... Divided government is all too likely to mean paralysis at a time when we desperately need strong action. ..........  Despite the vaccine news, we are still on track for a nightmarish pandemic winter ........... I’m not sure how many people realize just how ruinous a prospect we’re facing for the next few months. .......... By the time Biden is finally inaugurated we may well be having the equivalent of a 9/11 every day. .........  In addition to bringing death as well as long-term health damage for many survivors, the exploding pandemic will bring immense economic hardship. ............ What we need, clearly, is a very large-scale program of disaster relief, providing families, businesses and, not least, state and local governments with the help they require to avoid financial ruin until a vaccine arrives. And you might think that a Republican Senate would be willing to work with the Biden administration on such an obviously necessary program. That is, you might think this if you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past 12 years. ..................  The good news is that the misery will abate when we finally have widespread distribution of a vaccine. In fact, we’ll probably see a sharp jobs recovery late next year. .................  We desperately need to spend trillions on repairing our crumbling infrastructure, caring for our children and meeting the urgent need for action against climate change. .......... given where we are, divided government would mean paralysis in a time of crisis, which could very well be catastrophic for everyone. The truth is that even in its own interests, the big money should be rooting for Democrats in those Georgia runoffs.

 


Sunday, November 15, 2020

In The News (10)

Are Cities Our Greatest Invention?  the cities that spread across the Indus Valley in today’s Pakistan were watery Edens: They had no temples or palaces but granaries, assembly halls and systems for sewage and water that may instead have been the sacred centers of the communities’ lives. ................. Hell was Babylon, or what it stood for — the “original Sin City,” rife with the unsavory aspects of urbanity decried since at least 2000 B.C. A line from the Hebrew Bible might easily have appeared in a recent political ad: “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” Ditto the 18th-century writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau describing the city as “depraved by sloth, inactivity, the love of pleasure.” .............. Dinocrates of Rhodes imposed a grid of streets on the anarchy of the Greek public space, making Alexandria encyclopedic; irregular Athens, by contrast, was “spontaneous and experimental.” When Romans conquered the world, they brought their built environment with them, like a subdivision to the wilderness. Bathing, Wilson argues, made the barbarous clean, Roman and urban. ..................  The author links Baghdad’s messier, more organic development with a dynamism that generated some of the ideas it took Europe centuries to comprehend. .........  Into the 1600s, Amsterdam made a kind of meta-trade of urbanization, with the government connecting corporations, banks and merchants to create the world’s first securities market and its attendant financial devices. Forwards and futures, hedges and margin-buying were inventions Amsterdamers classified as windhandel, or trading in the wind, as opposed to trading something tangible. .................   Friedrich Engels called Manchester’s poor neighborhood “Hell upon Earth.” Ideologues that came to be known as the Manchester School believed their free trade policies would lead to a world harmony that — spoiler alert! — has yet to arrive. ......................   Tenochtitlan, bigger than Paris in the 1500s ............... Crucial to Lisbon’s conquest of land and bodies were the papal bulls that granted Portugal the right to, in 1455, take slaves and then, in 1493, to “discover” land — lay claim, in other words, to territory inhabited by non-Christians. .................  in a chapter titled “Annihilation,” which compares Hitler’s destruction of Warsaw to the American bombing of Tokyo. In landscapes of horrific violence, the most damaged communities find creative ways to survive.   


Abby Phillip Is Next-Gen CNN In an election dominated by fast-talking policy dudes, her deliberate commentary and context stood out. ..........  And while “Donald Trump’s political career began with the racist birther lie,” she continued, “it may very well end with a Black woman in the White House.” ............ and asked Mr. Trump if he hoped Mr. Whitaker would tamp down on the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “What a stupid question that is,” he said. “What a stupid question. I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.” ............. “He insults a lot of people and a lot of the time, the insults aren’t true.” 

The Post-Presidency of a Con Man Out of office, Trump might seem a lot less formidable.  .......... It’s hard to tell whether Donald Trump is attempting a coup or throwing a tantrum. ...........  most of the money is actually going to a PAC, Save America, that “will be used to underwrite Mr. Trump’s post-presidential activities.” ........ Trump is considering starting a digital media company to undermine Fox News, which he now regards as disloyal. ............ and will be a favorite for the party’s nomination in 2024. ........ “If he runs in 2024, he’ll certainly be the front-runner, and then he’ll probably be the nominee.” ........... he’s personally on the hook for $421 million in debt, most of it coming due in the next four years. If a long fight with the I.R.S. goes against him, he could owe at least $100 million more. ...........  There are several examples of once-formidable right-wing leaders reduced to footnotes after leaving office.

Trump Floats Improbable Survival Scenarios as He Ponders His Future There is no grand strategy. President Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next. 

‘Women’s Work’ Can No Longer Be Taken for Granted New Zealand is pursuing a century-old idea to close the gender pay gap: not equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for work of equal value. ......... Instead of “equal pay for equal work,” supporters of pay equity call for “equal pay for work of equal value,” or “comparable worth.” They ask us to consider whether a female-dominated occupation such as nursing home aide, for instance, is really so different from a male-dominated one, such as corrections officer, when both are physically exhausting, emotionally demanding, and stressful — and if not, why is the nursing home aide paid so much less? ................ the gender pay gap remains a feature of nearly every economy on earth. ............. caring for elderly people was just as demanding and dangerous as better-paid jobs mostly performed by men, including, notably, prison guards .......... other female-dominated occupations, including midwives, social workers and school support staff ........... Economics 101 says wages are set by the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve — if demand for say, data scientists is high, and there aren’t enough of them to fill the available roles, data scientists will have more pricing power over their wages. But in the real world (and, sometimes, in Economics 201), most people recognize that wages encapsulate a host of other factors: monopoly and monopsony (buyer’s monopoly) power, the quirks of a given firm or institution, and, most relevant to pay equity, social beliefs about the relative value of a job. These social beliefs inevitably intersect with biases like racism and sexism, which then manifest in ways both formal and informal. ............... Most job evaluation methodologies ignored what the sociologist Arlie Hochschild called “emotional labor” — adjusting one’s feelings in order to competently perform a job ................ pay equity, when done properly, challenges us to think deeply and objectively about a job and its components. This can be a messy process, one that requires unlearning decades of bias about gender and work, as well as political good will and a spirit of collaboration. ............  What skills are being deployed to, say, deal with someone who is angry and doesn’t want to be there, and several hours later, with someone who is needy and crying, all while maintaining meaningful boundaries? To describe this capacity to navigate “these emotionally complex situations — how to be both emotionally present but not emotionally enmeshed,” as Ms. Ross put it, the group eventually came up with the term “emotional dexterity.” .............  hesitated to classify “listening” as a skill, arguing that anyone can listen ..............  active listening entails not just hearing, but also picking up on what goes unsaid, the way things are said and what that means in context .............. air traffic controllers, for example, “operate within a highly codified environment,” which reduces the need for interpersonal skills.) ..................  problem-solving skills, physical demands, interpersonal skills and emotional demands .................  many social workers found the analysis of their work “more valuable” than the pay raise itself ................ Several New Zealanders pointed to the unanimous vote on the pay equity law as an important sign of where the public had moved on the issue. .......... The thing that so many of today’s most underpaid and essential workers have in common is simply that they are women. ............   New Zealand’s experience in the coming years will serve as an experiment in what happens when an entire society, led by a feminist prime minister, decides, in effect, to say yes. 






In The News (9)

Powerful Aide to Boris Johnson Quits in Britain, Report Says Dominic Cummings, who masterminded the Brexit campaign in 2016 and helped vault Mr. Johnson into office, resigned amid fierce infighting. 

London Police to Recruit 40% of Officers From Minority Backgrounds The Metropolitan Police also announced a review of all road traffic stops, as Commissioner Cressida Dick acknowledged that her force was “not free from racism or discrimination.” ......... The London Metropolitan Police will aim to hire 40 percent of new recruits from Black, Asian, and other minority backgrounds by 2022, Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Friday ......... the Metropolitan Police should be more inclusive; work more closely with local communities; and gain the trust of minorities, who are treated differently than white Londoners.  ....... Mr. Khan said that the Black Lives Matter protests this summer had highlighted the need to change the perceptions of the police ....   the goal was for 16 percent of the force to be from minority backgrounds by 2022, and 28 percent by 2030 ......... officers will also review footage from body cameras to identify potential patterns in the use of stop-and-frisk tactics, and how de-escalation methods could be used more frequently. 

How Exercise Might Affect Immunity to Lower Cancer Risk Working out may enhance the immune system’s ability to target and eradicate cancer cells, a study in mice suggests. ...........  highly active people were found to be much less likely to develop 13 different types of cancer than people who rarely moved.   

Trump Remade His Party and the World He transformed both the Republican coalition and the way other countries see America. His legacy will be with us for generations.  


Why Trump is suddenly replacing Pentagon officials with loyalists It seems scary, but the answer may be simpler than you think.




घरघरमा ‘अनियन्त्रित’ फैलिएको कोरोना संक्रमण : कहाँ चुक्यो नेपाल ? अब गर्ने के ? कतै वरदान त कतै अभिशाप बन्यो लकडाउन, के यो समयको बर्बादी मात्रै हो ?

Election Showed a Wider Red-Blue Economic Divide Some partisan differences were scrambled, but places with brighter future prospects swung toward Biden.

Biden Wants to Be the Climate President. He’ll Need Some Help From Xi Jinping. The U.S.-China relationship is at its lowest point in a half century, but there are also converging interests on global warming.........  Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi, though, are locked in a very difficult relationship that makes climate cooperation a bit like a couple in divorce court trying to plan their child’s wedding. ............. The countries represent the two biggest economies, two leading military powers and the two biggest sources of the climate problem, together producing 40 percent of the greenhouse gases that currently go up into the atmosphere and heat the planet to dangerous levels. ............ and nudging other major emitters — India, Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil — to do their part. .......... There’s conflict over trade. China’s human rights abuses are hard for Washington to ignore, and growing nationalist sentiment in both countries makes diplomacy politically tougher. ........ climate change offered Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi a real opening to work together. .......... could spur healthy competition over clean energy technology and, in turn, drive down prices of renewable power for the rest of the world. ............. China would have to peak its carbon emissions by 2025, five years earlier than the country has promised, and phase out coal by 2040 in order to keep global temperatures close to the upper limits laid out in the Paris Agreement. ............. China’s addiction to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which supplies the bulk of the country’s electricity despite its expansion of solar and wind power. ............. Four of the world’s top coal-plant builders are Chinese. 




2020 Shows Why the Electoral College Is Stupid and Immoral It doesn’t just distort presidential elections. It infects the entire political process. 


Put On A Mask

Do you want to be
A superhero?
Put on a mask.

Now that you have 
Poked into
The hornet nest of nature
Just please
Put on a mask.

You can not see the virus
The virus need not see you
But in the sea of people
Coughes and sneezes
And heart attacks
To last
Put on a mask.

A strand of DNA
That fells titans
Of lies and disguise
To ask
Put on that damn mask. 



Friday, November 13, 2020

In The News (8)

Stacey Abrams on minority rule, voting rights, and the future of democracy In 2020, democracy is on the ballot.


Why Trump is suddenly replacing Pentagon officials with loyalists It seems scary, but the answer may be simpler than you think.




Google Photos is ending free unlimited storage in 2021 — so what are your options?  all photos uploaded before June 1 next year will still be available under the free unlimited storage option. ....... Google Photos, which has more than 1 billion users, has offered free unlimited storage for high-quality photos (read: compressed) for users across platforms. ........ Photos hosts more than 4 trillion pictures and videos, with users uploading 28 billion every week. It added that while media uploads would count towards your 15GB free data cap, 80 percent of users won’t reach that limit for 10 years.  ......... Luckily, the Big G said that it’ll roll out a new storage management tool for Google Photos next year, so that you can easily clear up images that might not be worthy. .......... Plans start from $1.99 per month for 100GB of storage ...... Then there’s Dropbox, which offers 2TB space for an annual plan of $9.99 per month for individuals. ....... Google Photos’ unlimited storage has been a beloved feature all across the world.
Wearing a mask isn’t just about protecting other people, the CDC says. It can help you — and might prevent lockdowns. As part of a push for stronger messaging, the agency acknowledged masks work both as ‘source control and personal protection’ ........... Masks are neither completely selfless nor selfish — they help everyone. ............  the widespread wearing of face coverings can help prevent the need for national lockdowns. ...........  the more people wearing masks in the community, the greater the individual benefit. ........... “Wearing a mask blocks you from inhaling potential virus-containing particles in the air.......But most of the benefit to a mask is to block particles coming out of people who don’t know they are infected from exposing others.” ..........  Masks create a barrier that stops some of the droplets from flying outward when someone breathes, talks, sings or coughs. ......... in experimental conditions, simple fabric masks blocked about three-fourths of the particles expelled by coughing volunteers.........  masks can filter out the types of incoming particles able to carry virus .......... personal protection for the mask-wearer is not absolute. “The real benefit is when all of us do it, that’s how we bring down the viral load of covid-19 in communities”  .............  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in late June putting on a mask was the “single most important thing you can do” until vaccines were available. ......... conservatives are strongly motivated by a personal responsibility to care for themselves. ...............  laboratory, epidemiological and population-based studies all showed “very substantial benefits” of mask-wearing .............. science suggests face coverings “of higher thread count, more than one layer, and those that employ ‘electrostatic filtration’ like surgical masks” provide the best protection. ............ the dose of virus that people are exposed to may impact the seriousness of disease ..............  face coverings could filter enough droplets to lead to asymptomatic or mild illness in some cases — and lead to some immunity.    



Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Coronavirus News (310)

He Already Saw the Election as Good vs. Evil. Then His Tractor Burned. In Nebraska, President Trump’s supporters hope he wins a second term, and that they get four more years of feeling like the country’s leader understands and defends them.

Trump Is Now ‘Biohazard-Curious,’ Says Trevor Noah After the president offered to “kiss the guys and the beautiful women” at his Florida rally, Noah speculated that he might have lost Mike Pence’s vote.


Don’t Grieve Alone. Reach Out. Finding emotional support during a crisis often means turning to long-established networks already built for distance. ..............  and often felt like I was having one long, sustained panic attack. .......... friends kept vigil with me, lighting up my phone with support and listening when I called to vent or cry. ..........  We can share stories, cry and laugh together over Zoom, but we can’t simply sit in quiet companionship or hold each other when words fail us. After my loss, I ran out of words to share; I couldn’t imagine calling anyone. ............ As it turned out, socially distanced grieving didn’t mean grieving alone — so many people found ways to offer support, as if they knew what I needed even when I didn’t. It occurred to me that most of them hadn’t needed to dig deep in order to understand what I was going through. ..............  starting with “just one person who has been consistently good about reaching out” to you. “This gives that person positive feedback” for being such a good friend to you ............ the intimacy that can take root when we have a bit of physical distance, and at the same time get these powerful glimpses into each other’s homes and daily experiences. ............... Whenever I rise and get back to it — to help my family, to do my job, to support my friends the way they’ve generously supported me — I often think of my mother, the person most responsible for showing me that love can defy distance and be an endless source of strength and resilience. 

He Won’t Concede, but He’ll Pack His Bags All evidence suggests that the president would run from the responsibility of overseeing the violent fracture of America.

Trump Is Suffering From Trump Derangement Syndrome The president’s abnormal comments may be the best evidence that, deep down, he really is normal.

ActBlue’s stunning third quarter: $1.5 billion in donations Democratic online donors are pouring cash into 2020 campaigns, from Joe Biden down to state legislative candidates.

Bidenworld fires warning shot against Cabinet jockeying Members of Joe Biden's transition team have been fuming at the recent flood of stories listing people in contention for top administration posts.

Coronavirus News (309)

A Framework for Leaders Facing Difficult Decisions
How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest Within weeks of the gathering that drew nearly half a million bikers, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita.
Jimmy Kimmel Rips Into Trump’s  ‘Superspreader’ Rally “Even though his own White House put out guidelines saying there should be no gatherings in central Iowa with more than 25 people, they’re doing this,” Kimmel said of President Trump’s rally.
Biden’s Covid Response Plan Draws From F.D.R.’s New Deal Mr. Biden has staked his campaign on a more muscular federal role in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But some of his big government proposals may be difficult to put into effect.
Nerd Wars Nate Silver and G. Elliott Morris are trying to make sense of the 2020 election — and each other..............  When FiveThirtyEight first published its forecast for the 2020 race, it put Biden’s chances to win at 71 percent, while The Economist set them at 87 percent. Today the two have gotten significantly closer: FiveThirtyEight has an 87 percent chance of a Biden win, and The Economist has 91 percent.  








Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Coronavirus News (308)

LinkedIn Top Startups 2020: The 10 Indian companies on the rise

5 takeaways from Xi Jinping’s speech during 40th anniversary visit to Shenzhen Chinese president full of praise for people of southern tech hub on visit to mark 40th anniversary of it becoming China’s first special economic zone ‘This is a global development miracle that the Chinese people have created together,’ he says

President Xi calls on more young Hongkongers to work, study, live in mainland China in speech holding up Shenzhen as model city Xi gives Shenzhen a mission to revitalise ‘one country, two systems’ as he launches new era of integration for southern China President appeals to Hong Kong’s youth to experience life on the mainland to ‘bring their hearts closer to the motherland’

Progressives don’t love Joe Biden, but they’re learning to love his agenda “The most transformative presidents in our nation’s history — Lincoln, FDR, LBJ — were not ideologues.”

Barrett, Declining to Detail Legal Views, Says She Will Not Be ‘a Pawn’ of Trump President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee refused to weigh in on critical matters that could come before the court, including health care, abortion rights and a possible election dispute.

China Got Better. We Got Sicker. Thanks, Trump. With a different leader, the United States could have contained the coronavirus. ......... the out-of-control antics of an incoherent American president, a man clearly desperate to stay in office because losing could mean his prosecution, humiliation and liquidation all at the same time. ............. Alas, we aren’t who we think we are. Covid-19 was supposed to be China’s Chernobyl. It’s ended up looking more like the West’s Waterloo. .......... Some of China’s facial recognition technology is so good, you don’t even have to take off your face mask. Your eyes and upper nose will do. ............. we have a uniquely individualistic culture, a highly fragmented local-state-federal power-sharing system, a frail public health system, a divided body politic, a Republican Party whose business model has long been to cripple Washington, and so many people getting their news from social networks that amplify conspiracy theories and destroy truth and trust. ............. we now have a president whose political strategy for re-election is to divide us, to destroy trust — and to destroy truth — and to declare any news hostile to his goals as “fake.” And without truth and trust in a pandemic, you’re lost. .............  a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine. ............. what ails us today is something that cannot be cured by a Covid-19 vaccine. We have lost the trust in each other and in our institutions and a basic sense of what is true — all necessary to navigate a health crisis together. We had them in previous wars, but not today’s.  


Don't Ignore the Good News On Covid-19 From Asia There’s light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, provided the right lessons are learnt. ........... The U.S. looks to have given up on controlling the pandemic until a vaccine arrives. ........... The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam, China and others do still seem to be paying off. While the total Covid-19 death toll is between 500-700 per million people in France, the U.K., Spain and the U.S., in China and South Korea it is below 10 per million. Cases are a less perfect measure, but there’s a similar observable gap. Wuhan, once the epicenter of Covid-19, is welcoming tourists again. .................   If the key to avoiding more lockdowns is finding a way to “live with the virus” — through widespread testing, tracing of contacts and isolating positive cases to slow transmission — Western countries have made structural, not cultural, errors. ..............  Even the famously organized Germans failed to halt the second wave. ...............  South Korea tested early, and often, using walk-in centers and drive-throughs. In Wuhan, the authorities tested 11 million people over 2 weeks. The share of tests coming back positive in South Korea and Vietnam is below 1%; in France and Spain it has risen to 10%.   



Jack Ma's Blunt Words Just Cost Him $35 Billion China just showed the billionaire who’s boss in derailing fintech giant Ant Group’s monster IPO. Regulators might do better to heed his words instead. ...........   In that speech, apart from labeling the global banking Basel Accords as an “old people’s club,” Ma said “systemic risk” is not the issue in China. Rather, China’s biggest risk is that it “lacks a financial ecosystem.” Chinese banks are like “pawn shops”, where collateral and guarantees are the hard currencies. As a result, some decided to go so big they are not allowed to fail. “As the Chinese like to say, if you borrow 100,000 yuan from the bank, you are a bit scared; if you borrow a million yuan, both you and the bank are a little nervous; but if you take a 1 billion yuan loan, you are not scared at all, the bank is,” Ma said.


Sunday, November 01, 2020

Coronavirus News (307)

Biden’s space policy: One giant leap for climate change Biden’s pledge to rededicate the U.S. to combating climate change would mean a greater role for NASA’s Earth science research. ..........  the “sheer amount of experience, background, and temperament that Joe Biden possesses in dealing with international coalition and partnership arrangements.”  

Biden makes late push to flip the Senate The Democratic nominee is hitting Georgia and Iowa this week, while Jill Biden campaigned with the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine. ......... “If we win both of these Senate seats in Georgia, it's almost mathematically impossible for Mitch McConnell to remain majority leader.”  


Poll: Donald Trump set to win US presidency by electoral college landslide DONALD TRUMP is on course to win four more years in the White House with a one point lead in the popular win, the final Democracy Institute poll for the Sunday Express has found. ..........  The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll has throughout the campaign been one of the few to predict a Trump victory since March. This is because unlike other polls it only looks at people identifying as likely voters instead of just registered to vote and it has tried to identify the shy Trump vote. According to this latest poll almost eight in ten (79 percent) of Trump supporters would not admit it to friends and family compared to 21 percent of Biden supporters.


In the wilds of Arizona, a hunt for bipartisanship While their parties stage an epic clash, these Republicans and Democrats are joining together to promote deal-making through bonhomie. .........  in all spending nearly a full day getting to know each other out of sight of the cameras and the raucous debates back in Phoenix. .......... Democrats have a shot at taking control of the statehouse for the first time in more than half a century while sending two U.S. senators to Washington for the first time since the 1950s. ........... Arizona is on a path toward becoming another Colorado, which went from solidly red to solidly blue in a few election cycles. .........  "We don't have time to be ideological." ........ There is more goodwill in the hearts of individual politicians than in the collective atmosphere in which they operate. ..........  “As the inner suburbs turn purple and newer families are moving in, families who are more conservative are relocating out to the farther suburbs,” Archer explained. “Those areas are swiftly becoming more Republican.”  ........... “Sometimes it means a change in tone and a change in the way that you address an issue with the same principles. Some folks are here for show. You can sit here for a day or two and you can pick out who's trying to get recorded, or get their viral video, so they can make that a plank of their next campaign.” ..........  The challenge now, he said, is to find new ways to join forces with Democrats to overcome the extreme elements in both parties.  .........  Chávez credited bipartisanship with birthing some of the most far-reaching policies to benefit his constituents. He said Democrats and Republican worked together on the legislation that transformed his own life — the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It was passed by a Democratic House and signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan. It gave his family a path to citizenship. .............  As for George Floyd, who died in police custody and set off nationwide protests, he said, “No one should die that way." “But we are sending a message to young black kids that that is a hero?" he asked. "It is not a hero. He had at least seven drug offenses. He held a gun to a pregnant woman's stomach. George Floyd died a long time ago because the system killed him. A lot of that was the community. A lot of that was his own decisions that he made. How about if we would have taken care of George Floyd when he started in the criminal justice system, making sure that he had the drug treatment?” ............. Alma, who at 14 was brutally attacked by police officers, worked with Ducey, the Republican governor, to secure $1 million for training police officers in deescalation tactics. .............  We've got 10 percent fringe right, we’ve got 10 percent fringe left. The 80 percent in the middle probably aren't that far apart on 90 percent of the things we are trying to solve.