Saturday, September 12, 2020

The Wit and Wisdom of A. Fauci

 From Woodward's book: Fauci says Trump's attention span is a negative number. 


By the way, is there any group organizing to raise money to pay the "poll-tax" that the egregious Florida Republican legislature and courts are assessing on ex-felons?  

9 comments:

marcel proust said...

https://wegotthevote.org/finesandfees/

kevin quinn said...

Thanks, Marcel! By the way, where can I find a decent madeleine? Combray? Too far.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Actually I think it is the square root of a negative number, so an imaginary number, :-).

Anonymous said...

September 11, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases ( 6,636,247)
Deaths ( 197,421)

India

Cases ( 4,657,379)
Deaths ( 77,506)

Mexico

Cases ( 652,364)
Deaths ( 69,649)

France

Cases ( 363,350)
Deaths ( 30,893)

UK

Cases ( 361,677)
Deaths ( 41,614)

Germany

Cases ( 259,725)
Deaths ( 9,423)

Canada

Cases ( 135,626)
Deaths ( 9,163)

China

Cases ( 85,168)
Deaths ( 4,634)

Anonymous said...

September 11, 2020

Coronavirus   (Deaths per million)

UK   ( 612)
US   ( 596)
Mexico   ( 539)
France   ( 473)

Canada   ( 242)
Germany   ( 112)
India   ( 56)
China   ( 3)

Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 11.5%, 8.5% and 10.7% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.

Fred C. Dobbs said...

Trump’s onslaught against Biden falls short of a breakthrough, poll shows

NY Times via @BostonGlobe - September 12

President Donald Trump’s weekslong barrage against Joe Biden has failed to erase the Democrat’s lead across a set of key swing states, including the crucial battleground of Wisconsin, where Trump’s law-and-order message has rallied support on the right but has not swayed the majority of voters who dislike him, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

Biden, the former vice president, leads Trump by 5 percentage points in Wisconsin and by a 9-point margin in neighboring Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning state that Trump has been seeking to flip with his vehement denunciations of rioting and crime. ...

Overtaking Biden in some of those four states could be a significant boost to Trump’s reelection chances. He narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016 and barely lost the other three to Hillary Clinton. ...

Voters in Wisconsin and Minnesota are split on the question of which candidate they trust more to handle the subject of law and order, which Trump has tried to elevate. But the poll, conducted among likely voters, showed they prefer Biden by clear margins on the issues of the coronavirus pandemic, race relations and fostering national unity, a sobering result for the president’s supporters.

Further, Trump is still struggling to garner the level of support most incumbent presidents enjoy at this late stage of the campaign. In none of the four states did Trump’s support reach the 45% mark — a particularly ominous sign given the absence of serious third-party candidates, who in 2016 helped him prevail with less than 50% of the vote in a series of battleground states.

And while Trump delivered a focused set of attacks on Biden at the Republican convention, he has swerved far off message in recent days as he has struggled to rebut reports that he disparaged American war dead and told journalist Bob Woodward that he deliberately misled the public about the severity of the pandemic.

In Wisconsin, Biden received 48% support compared with 43% for Trump. That’s a significant drop-off from June, when a Times/Siena poll showed Biden ahead by 11 points.

Nearly all of the narrowing came as a result of Trump’s recovering support from voters to the right of center, some of whom had expressed feelings of disillusionment in the earlier poll amid the ravages of the pandemic and a major wave of racial-justice protests.

Biden is further ahead in Minnesota, 50% to 41%. Although no Republican presidential candidate has captured Minnesota since Richard Nixon’s reelection in 1972, Trump lost it by only 1.5 percentage points four years ago. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said...

Scientific American makes its first endorsement in its history, picking Joe Biden

via @BostonGlobe - September 15

Scientific American, the magazine that has delved into scientific topics for 175 years, is endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time, picking Democrat Joe Biden over Republican incumbent President Donald Trump.

“The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science,” the magazine’s editorial said. “The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges.”

The magazine said it was urging people to vote for Biden, “who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.”

“It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science,” the magazine said.

Laura Helmuth, the magazine’s editor-in-chief tweeted that a vote for Biden would support “science, health, the environment, evidence-based policy, and reality over disinformation." ...

Fred C. Dobbs said...

One of the biggest developments in the 2020 presidential race just happened

via @BostonGlobe - September 15

You probably missed it.

One of the most important developments in the 2020 presidential race took place on Monday. Few noticed it.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Green Party will not appear on the state’s general election ballot, for largely technical reasons — a Green Party error.

But while the rationale is irrelevant, the result is not: the conservative-leaning top court in Wisconsin delivered what might be a huge boon to Joe Biden and Democrats in the election, which is less than 50 days away.

Both Biden and President Trump’s campaigns view taking Wisconsin as vital in their paths to winning the election.

In 2016, Trump won the state and a key to that victory may have been the role that third parties like the Green Party played. That year the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, received roughly 31,000 votes, more than Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton.

The court’s ruling upholds an earlier decision by the Wisconsin Elections Commission to not allow the party on the ballot because its signature petitions listed two different addresses for its vice presidential nominee, Angela Walker, who just happens to live in Wisconsin. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said...

... The decision to prevent the Green Party from getting ballot access in Wisconsin doesn’t bode well for Kanye West, an independent candidate, who hoped to challenge a similar ruling from the state election commission that didn’t let him on the ballot, since his signatures were presented roughly a minute after the deadline.

After all, adding West’s name would also require new ballots, the first batch of which are supposed to be mailed out in Wisconsin on Thursday. Republican lawyers and activists had been helping both the Green Party and West in Wisconsin potentially under the theory that their presence on the ballot would siphon off votes from Biden in the critical swing state.

Over the weekend, the New York Times and Siena College released a Wisconsin poll showing Biden with a 48 percent to 43 percent edge over Trump.

If Biden wins all the states Clinton won in 2016 and flips Wisconsin, his path to the presidency becomes much clearer. For example, he would only need to additionally flip Florida to win.