TrickstaPriest

I just went to a memorial. The service was performed outdoors because indoor gatherings were not allowed. Since my county has a new lockdown in effect, social distancing rules were in effect. Others couldn't come to the memorial. The eulogies were performed via smartphone.

One of my co-workers, who's been working remotely from his isolated property since early March thanks to our CEO's foresight, is plastering "but muh FREEDOMS!" anti-mask and social distancing screeds all over his social media. I plan to refuse to share physical office space with him until a safe and effective vaccine has been made available and my mom has received it. I shouldn't need to go so far as a he-goes-or-I-go ultimatum as working from home has turned out pretty well for me, but it's still galling.

Every time I think about how we got here, I realize that there are no easy answers on how to get out. There are generations of families that teach their offspring the most vile interpretations of community, philosophy and religion; additionally, some of these families are passing on characteristics that make paranoia, xenophobia and plain old stupidity more likely to manifest. There are environmental pollutants capable of causing brain damage that won't be removed until whatever structure/infrastructure they are part of is completely demolished. There are politicians that know how to manipulate those people who are disadvantaged from Day 1 and they have enjoyed the benefits of a system that was rigged long before most of us were born. There are powerful individuals - politicians, sure, but they're not alone in this - that are dedicated to ensuring that public education is abolished or at least corrupted. On top of all of that, we're causing problems abroad that eventually end up creating enemies whose very presence justifies the aforementioned paranoia and xenophobia those people are cursed with.
 
It's all a mess.

In case anyone's interested, last Saturday (Aug. 1) All Things Considered interviewed Washington state  \Secretary of State Kim Wyman on conducting elections by mail. She told of one serious attempt to defraud the system, by paid signature-gatherers who decided it would be easier if they made their own voters through fraudulent aplications. They were caught PDQ. Ms. Wyman said that in the last major election about 140 fraudulent ballots were caught -- people voting twice, for instance -- out of more than 3 million ballots cast, which statistically is microscopic.
 
This does not mean someone might not attempt such a scheme as Archer described. I could imagine Russian trolls suggesting it to Trump zealots. But the (Russian) goal is not actually to swing elections -- it's to *be caught* and so create doubt in the election's result. Because even if the attempted saboteurs are caught quickly, some peoploe will wonder how long they managed to steal ballots, and if the ever-distrusted Authorities are "covering up" the extent of the damage.
 
Dean Shomshak

I'm sure voting by mail can become a target for malfeasance.
 
Which the current administration could secure instead of suggesting we delay the election.  Instead of directly trying to sabotage that system, close polling locations, or, you know... anything to service themselves at the cost of a stable country with an actual future.

More to the point, even now among my friends I'm talked to about how the 'democratic party' and 'woke culture' is 'bringing us close to civil war'.  Literally, that woke culture is so apparently bad in this country that they are willing to destroy the country over it.  As if they haven't been paying attention to what Trump has been saying, and how he has been saying it, over the literal last three years of my life.
 
The point is that people (like my friends) are telling themselves they need it to have a future.  That a literal purge is necessary.  That it's a requirement to defeat this great evil and potential horror 'the left' will unleash. 
 
As if they (the Republican Party) haven't literally lied for nearly literal lifetimes about global warming, as if there aren't dozens of literal paramilitary right wing terrorist organizations in the US that have military training camps churning out 'warriors' for decades, as if they didn't entirely lie repeatedly about coronavirus and literally destroyed the US economy and future over it (but no, its the democrats fault for wanting to try and spend money and do things to 'prevent' an 'inevitable' problem.  As if the spent money is why the economy is in shambles).
 
This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis.  That 'democrats' are the problem.  That 'democrats' (not homeless, unemployed) are the protesters, and that's why they must be dealt with. 
 
And when we have ten million more homeless, protesting people, what do you think they are going to say?  I've literally seen advertisements on right wing channels talk about 'wellfare people' as cockroaches, while literally suggesting that they (cockroaches) need to be exterminated.
 
Let me tell you, 'left wing violence' has barely ever been a thing in this country.  The last time it existed in real form was when America created the unions, because workers were attacked for daring to complain about job conditions.  As if the Ludlow Massacre was justified.  Protesters are protesters, and pretending that things are so explosive solely because of a 'democrat issue' wholly ignores the literal economic situations that have built this into a roaring fire.
 
 
As a thought experiment - remove the man who died, those protesters could still be out there.  Protesting different things, from a different spark, but there are so many sparks that protests of this size could easily still exist.  But if you removed coronavirus - or gave us an actual government response - would you still have the protests, huge and desperate, like this?  If you didn't have Trump literally charging up his base for years with violent, almost literal "kill the other guy for me" rhetoric, while the rest of the country watched in anger and frustration, would you have that level of opposition to it?  If you didn't have the Federal response literally use tactics in the military Field Manuals marked as "DON'T DO THESE THINGS AGAINST PROTESTS IN SYMPATHETIC AREAS UNLESS YOU WANT A CIVIL WAR OR INSURRECTION"?  These protests may have already been winding down.
 
Literally I listen to friends talking about how woke culture is tearing America apart when the reason we are in a near civil war is Republican voters are listening to Republican leadership.  There is literally no simpler common denominator.

More to the point, even now among my friends I'm talked to about how the 'democratic party' and 'woke culture' is 'bringing us close to civil war'.  Literally, that woke culture is so apparently bad in this country that they are willing to destroy the country over it.  As if they haven't been paying attention to what Trump has been saying, and how he has been saying it, over the literal last three years of my life.
 
The point is that people (like my friends) are telling themselves they need it to have a future.  That a literal purge is necessary.  That it's a requirement to defeat this great evil and potential horror 'the left' will unleash. 
 
As if they (the Republican Party) haven't literally lied for nearly literal lifetimes about global warming, as if there aren't dozens of literal paramilitary right wing terrorist organizations in the US that have military training camps churning out 'warriors' for decades, as if they didn't entirely lie repeatedly about coronavirus and literally destroyed the US economy and future over it (but no, its the democrats fault for wanting to try and spend money and do things to 'prevent' an 'inevitable' problem.  As if the spent money is why the economy is in shambles).
 
This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis.  That 'democrats' are the problem.  That 'democrats' (not homeless, unemployed) are the protesters, and that's why they must be dealt with. 
 
And when we have ten million more homeless, protesting people, what do you think they are going to say?  I've literally seen advertisements on right wing channels talk about 'wellfare people' as cockroaches, while literally suggesting that they (cockroaches) need to be exterminated.
 
Let me tell you, 'left wing violence' has barely ever been a thing in this country.  The last time it existed in real form was when America created the unions, because workers were attacked for daring to complain about job conditions.  As if the Ludlow Massacre was justified.  Protesters are protesters, and pretending that things are so explosive solely because of a 'democrat issue' wholly ignores the literal economic situations that have built this into a roaring fire.
 
 
As a thought experiment - remove the man who died, those protesters could still be out there.  Protesting different things, from a different spark, but there are so many sparks that protests of this size could easily still exist.  But if you removed coronavirus - or gave us an actual government response - would you still have the protests, huge and desperate, like this?  If you didn't have Trump literally charging up his base for years with violent, almost literal "kill the other guy for me" rhetoric, while the rest of the country watched in anger and frustration, would you have that level of opposition to it?  If you didn't have the Federal response literally use tactics in the military Field Manuals marked as "DON'T DO THESE THINGS AGAINST PROTESTS IN SYMPATHETIC AREAS UNLESS YOU WANT A CIVIL WAR OR INSURRECTION"?  These protests may have already been winding down.
 
Literally I listen to friends talking about how woke culture is tearing America apart when the reason we are in a near civil war is Republican voters are listening to Republican leadership.  There is literally no simpler common denominator.

More to the point, even now among my friends I'm talked to about how the 'democratic party' and 'woke culture' is 'bringing us close to civil war'.  Literally, that woke culture is so apparently bad in this country that they are willing to destroy the country over it.  As if they haven't been paying attention to what Trump has been saying, and how he has been saying it, over the literal last three years of my life.
 
The point is that people (like my friends) are telling themselves they need it to have a future.  That a literal purge is necessary.  That it's a requirement to defeat this great evil and potential horror 'the left' will unleash. 
 
As if they (the Republican Party) haven't literally lied for nearly literal lifetimes about global warming, as if there aren't dozens of literal paramilitary right wing terrorist organizations in the US that have military training camps churning out 'warriors' for decades, as if they didn't entirely lie repeatedly about coronavirus and literally destroyed the US economy and future over it (but no, its the democrats fault for wanting to try and spend money and do things to 'prevent' an 'inevitable' problem.  As if the spent money is why the economy is in shambles).
 
This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis.  That 'democrats' are the problem.  That 'democrats' (not homeless, unemployed) are the protesters, and that's why they must be dealt with. 
 
And when we have ten million more homeless, protesting people, what do you think they are going to say?  I've literally seen advertisements on right wing channels talk about 'wellfare people' as cockroaches, while literally suggesting that they (cockroaches) need to be exterminated.
 
Let me tell you, 'left wing violence' has barely ever been a thing in this country.  The last time it existed in real form was when America created the unions, because workers were attacked for daring to complain about job conditions.  As if the Ludlow Massacre was justified.  Protesters are protesters, and pretending that things are so explosive solely because of a 'democrat issue' wholly ignores the literal economic situations that have built this into a roaring fire.
 
 
As a thought experiment - remove the man who died, those protesters could still be out there.  Protesting different things, from a different spark, but there are so many sparks that protests of this size could easily still exist.  But if you removed coronavirus - or gave us an actual government response - would you still have the protests, huge and desperate, like this?  If you didn't have Trump literally charging up his base for years with violent, almost literal "kill the other guy for me" rhetoric, while the rest of the country watched in anger and frustration, would you have that level of opposition to it?  If you didn't have the Federal response literally use tactics in the military Field Manuals marked as "DON'T DO THESE THINGS AGAINST PROTESTS IN SYMPATHETIC AREAS UNLESS YOU WANT A CIVIL WAR OR INSURRECTION"?  These protests may have already been winding down.
 
Literally I listen to friends talking about how woke culture is tearing America apart when the reason we are in a near civil war is Republican voters are listening to Republican leadership.  There is literally no simpler common denominator.

Yesterday, I discovered the Republican Voters Against Trump channel on Youtube.  I binged watched it and found it a balm for my soul.
 
Prior to Trump, I believed that, while Democrats and Republicans argued about many things, they actually agreed on far more than they disagreed.  That while there might be Republican values and Democratic values, there were American values which were greater than both.  Then came Trump.  Trump has no American values or values at all that aren't self serving.  Even after Trump's election, I held out hope for common shared American values.  Maybe they had been just voting against Hillary, who had after all been demonized by right leaning media for decades, or maybe they had simply fallen for Trump's con.  In time they would see through it and turn on him.  Then about two years into Trump's presidency, I learned that Trump enjoyed a same party approval rating of over 80%.  More of his own party approved of his performance than any president in the history of polling at that point in their first term.
 
This was quietly devastating for me.  By this point Trump had shown his true colors so many times, that it seemed inconceivable that by the majority of Republicans would not have seen who he really was.  Yet they loved him.  Damn, the man was out screwing porn stars when his youngest son was 4 months old.  That didn't matter.  Or it did matter in a positive direction.  The average Republican male must be wishing that he had super model wife and was able to screw porn stars on the side as well.  And what was the average Republican woman thinking?  That if they had a billionaire husband who kept them in a gold plated penthouse, he could screw as many other women as he wanted?  I don't know.  Still, they clearly loved Trump.  Perhaps they had been waiting their entire lives for a president that would show them by example that they could be selfish ***holes and that was all right.  I still haven't come to terms with the Trump presidency and the Cult of Trump.
 
Back to Republican Voters Against Trump.  I don't think that I would agree many of their specific political views, but I recognize in them what I used to consider common American values.  In them I see fellow American citizens and worthy political opposition.  After the removal of Trump and his congressional enabler (something they wish is for as badly as I do) it is voters like these that could potentially restore the Republican party to something worth having around.  It is good to know that they are out there.

https://bato.to/chapter/1413576
 

They vacated a few of the charges, they over turned the death sentence on procedural grounds, and remanded to the original court for re-trial on that phase. 
 
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's convictions on Counts 13, 15, and 18 are reversed, and the district court is directed to enter a judgment of acquittal on those counts," the ruling, which was entered at 3 p.m. on Friday said. "Dzhohkar Tsarnaev's death sentences on Counts 4, 5, 9, 10, and 14 are vacated, and the matter is remanded to the district court with directions to hold a new penalty-phase trial."
 
They did not commute the sentence.  You can be happy knowing that he will probably still fry (or whatever means they use...) and the continuation of the case will cost 10-15 times more than if they had simply tried him on murder with special circumstance, and throw him into a deep, dark, dank hole for the rest of his life.
 
 

As was seen in Georgia 

beside the point.  Easy to “hack” a single vote...and pointless.  When you start talking about a scale needed to actually make a difference you look to concentration points- too much noise to do individual on a large scale.

Best way to think of that is the scale needed to have any impact.
 
is it possible (easy, even) to get at an individual ballot without detection?  Yes.  Full stop.
 
but that’s like saying that you can get full access to one user’s Facebook account - doesn’t really get you anything.
 
is it possible to get at ballots on a scale that would impact a regional election (without being detected)?  Probably not.  Vastly easier to focus on concentration points like polling locations.

One positive development out of all of this mayhem is the unmasking; specifically, the unmasking of too many people among us that are casually in favor of fascism. It truly is fascinating watching someone throw their fellow citizen under the bus while simultaneously wiping their ass with The Constitution*.
 
* Note that, unlike some, I don't treat the United State's Constitution as some sort of holy text; while there are some coincidentally good ideas contained within, it was - at the end of the day - drafted by a bunch of privileged slave owners that lived during a time when firearms could fire roughly one shot per minute. There needs to be some revision applied to The Constitution...if only to clear up ambiguity caused by centuries of linguistic drift.

If this gets enough coverage, I think it could really backfire...of course, I've said that before.  Even my father, who is a die-hard Trump supporter, has said he'd better not mess with the election and should win or lose gracefully.

We lost about 2/3 the current US Covid-19 death toll to suicide and drug overdose last year, so I wouldn't lay the whole blame for their 2020 death statistics on the pandemic.

Official Texas numbers are known to be trashed since the administration forced hospitals to report to HHS instead of the CDC starting a week ago.  At minimum there has been a backlog while they figured out the new procedure.  The hospitals post their own data, but I haven't had time to run around collecting it all, which may be the point.
 
Regardless of the cause there have been similar reporting spikes in other states and countries all along, for various reasons.  It just means the death toll was worse than we thought it was over the past few days.

You're welcome.  The article has a ton of great photos in it and I think the AP did a pretty bang on job of covering it.
 
The "inside the courthouse" side of the article stood out for me as I've seen the DHS propaganda, but I hadn't seen a press perspective on it.  What the reporter detailed were serious injuries that in most cases would justify lethal force.
 
And kudos to the reporter for getting in there and taking the ride.  Sounded very scary.
 
Honestly, I'm so tired of watching say CNN and then Fox and then trying to Frankenstein it together to get an actual story instead of a political opinion.  This AP story was award worthy.

Don't be satisfied.  Don't feel we've achieved anything.  It's a very bad, very dangerous process, in that the next step is, well GEE, we're doing better so we can relax things, right???

HECK NO.
 
We're still at 1 new case per ~ 5000 people *every day*  Every single stinkin' day.  Saying that's "settling down" is looking at it through rose-colored glasses.  Sure, it's better than last week, but that's like saying a tornado is less damaging than a hurricane.  The infection rate is OUTRAGEOUSLY high.  A bit of spreadsheet work with the WorldOMeters data from yesterday (so a closed data set now), the US has the second highest new infections per capita rate in the world;  only South Africa is worse, and that...not much.
 
Built this chart just now...hope it come thru.  Countries are on the Y axis.  The X axis is per capita new infections, so SHORTER is BETTER.  I copied the data for about the top 70 countries in the world by population, but had to take out around 10 because they reported no new cases.  This is the first 21 rows...I lost Ukraine in the formatting, they're the next up at 1 per 47000 people.  

EVERYONE ELSE IS 1 case per 50,000 people OR BETTER.  Even if there under-reporting in some countries, due to inadequate testing, politics, data collection issues...at most that might mitigate this a tiny bit.  

I'll say we're starting to see things improve when we have more like 15,000 to 20,000 new cases a day...CONSISTENTLY...for at least 2 weeks.  Mind, that's still gonna be high...on the order of 1 case per 15-20,000 people.  STILL bad, but showing maybe, just maybe, we're growing up.  That said, the American people have given me no reason to think this'll happen any time this year.
 

Hell of time for you to drop the Gandhi signature.
 
 
Let's wait until we can reach celestial bodies, yeah ?

My brother-in-law tried to argue to me that there's no such thing as over-population since you could have everyone in the world live in a space the size of Texas if that area was as densely populated as Hong Kong.
 
I started out by asking him if he'd ever been to Hong Kong to see how they lived. Then I went on to talk about water shortages, lack of arable land, fertilizer shortages, pollution from industry which is necessary to support the population, what to do with trash created by people....
 
There's a near infinite amount of resources, for all practical purposes, if we were to spend the money to harvest all the resources. Growing food inside cities. Windmills and solar panels on every roof. Tidal power. Thorium reactors. Recycling. Going into space to get resources from asteroids. Financially supporting people in their old age in every country so they don't feel the need to have a huge family in hopes that one of their offspring will be able to support their parents (that's a huge driving force for over-population).
 
On the other hand, we don't have infinite resources if we're exploiting the planet like we're still living in the 1800's.
 
< /rant >

I worry that we've become too dependent on the technological fix, to the point that we all too often don't consider it necessary to change our reckless, wasteful ways.  We just assume someone will invent something that will let us keep on the same way.