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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[Echo4]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/meet-the-4-frontrunners-in-the-covid-19-vaccine-race/?fbclid=IwAR3NcYnrNMJNRZNo1ySIQuXjqA15B3akKEQM8ckXXkZQnRgDHIKLjl6kiJw

[Echo4]

Worth a read for those of us inclined to think and to acknowledge that a key aspect of science is that as new information arrives opinions change:

https://www.ucsf.edu/magazine/covid-body?fbclid=IwAR2JFf4qybi6jz5aP_fRb5fnevVgLRE5Pqek4yiJpj3H9zxDnB5VaobXymA

[Echo4]

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democratic House candidates have raised $457 million so far in this election to $365 million for their GOP counterparts as of July 1. And the gap is even wider in the most competitive races; in a baker's dozen of most competitive races with primaries in June and July, Democratic incumbents have nearly nine(!) times more on hand -- $40 million to $4.5 million -- than the best-funded GOP challengers.

[Echo4]

For your consideration:

https://cognitiontoday.com/2020/07/collective-narcissism-nationalism-toxic-groups/

The concept is fairly new, with one of the earliest well-done studies published in 2007. Authors Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Aleksandra Cichocka, Roy Eidelson, and Nuwan Jayawickreme define collective narcissism as “an ingroup identification tied to an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief about the unparalleled greatness of an ingroup.” Collective narcissism is an idealized identity for a group and members of that group fall in love with the image of that group. The keyword here is image.

Here, an in-group is any social group that is held together by a theme. That theme could be a country’s border, a religious text, a historical claim, or a deluded politician. Sports fandoms, music fandoms, cult fans of a musical genre, lifestyle choice advocates can all be collectively narcissistic too. Every group under the sun has the potential to demonstrate excessive group-pride. Collective narcissism emerges from individual narcissism in a social context. In collective narcissism, members of a group are emotionally invested in the group’s identity to the point of excessive pride and a sense of superiority. According to the 2007 paper, there is a need to show social dominance and not favor equality (which they see as a threat).

[Echo4]

That noted Left Wing Rag, the Financial Times, had this to say about what is going on in Portland, Oregon:

https://www.ft.com/content/32c00506-7177-4a0b-b472-39f6f440c96e

Donald Trump’s little green men

   Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
   https://www.ft.com/content/32c00506-7177-4a0b-b472-39f6f440c96e?fbclid=IwAR11Pn5ZUImolxXv7Zo5dbHRHzj-CCxqR0--HRN-4Ceg0f8Ngb3knWP6w-c

   They wore no badges, drove unidentified vehicles and whisked people off into the night. Vladimir Putin’s “little green men” were a tool of Russian hybrid warfare: everyone knew who gave the orders but there was plausible deniability.

Portland, Oregon is neither Crimea nor eastern Ukraine. But Donald Trump is playing similar mind games with America’s cities. Russia’s state media claimed Russian-speaking civilians were slaughtered in the Donbass. Mr Trump says America’s cities are “far worse than Afghanistan”. The US’s urban carnage is caused by thugs, killers and violent anarchists, he said.

That is the kernel of Mr Trump’s re-election campaign. Since the economy is drifting back into recession, and coronavirus will still be around in November, he is putting most of his chips on the culture war. A better description would be “anti-city”.


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   https://www.ft.com/content/32c00506-7177-4a0b-b472-39f6f440c96e?fbclid=IwAR11Pn5ZUImolxXv7Zo5dbHRHzj-CCxqR0--HRN-4Ceg0f8Ngb3knWP6w-c

   The president of the country that invented the skyscraper is running against its cities. All of America’s big cities are multiracial and tend to be liberal. Of the largest 10 in the US, only one, San Diego, has a Republican mayor. Although it is on the US-Mexico border, it is a safe bet that unidentifiable federal agents are not heading to San Diego. Their next “surge” is to Chicago, said Mr Trump. Albuquerque may not be far behind.

The question is whether Mr Trump’s hybrid tactics will work. Most of the evidence suggests they are a long shot. The ostensible reason to send semi-militarised agents into America’s urban “theatres” is to protect federal property.

The larger message is that radical secularists are desecrating American culture and spreading crime. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is their prisoner. For this campaign to take hold, Mr Trump needs three things to happen.

First, the protesters must step up to the role he has allotted them. Most are not obliging. By the standards of the 1960s and 1970s, today’s protests are mild.

Second, he needs voters to conflate the stars and stripes with confederate statues and military bases. That’s much harder than he supposed. Even Mississippi has voted to remove the confederate symbol from its state flag. The Pentagon has also banned the secessionist flag.


   Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
   https://www.ft.com/content/32c00506-7177-4a0b-b472-39f6f440c96e?fbclid=IwAR11Pn5ZUImolxXv7Zo5dbHRHzj-CCxqR0--HRN-4Ceg0f8Ngb3knWP6w-c

   Third, Mr Trump wants suburban voters to believe Mr Biden is inciting lawless protesters and will be beholden to their agenda. Again, this is ambitious. People might joke about Mr Biden’s verbosity. But it is hard to clothe this avuncular 77-year-old in radical garb.

Mr Biden has rejected the left’s “defund the police” campaign and has said nothing that could be construed as pro-violence. By none of these yardsticks is Mr Trump’s campaign likely to capture the public imagination.

But there is a darker potential to Mr Trump’s little green men. For the first time in US history a sitting president is refusing to say whether he will accept the verdict of the American people.

“I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?” Mr Trump told Fox News on Sunday. He still alleges millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Several times a week, Mr Trump predicts the upcoming election will also be rigged — whether by absentee ballot fraud, fake voter rolls or pro-Biden interference by China.


   Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
   https://www.ft.com/content/32c00506-7177-4a0b-b472-39f6f440c96e?fbclid=IwAR11Pn5ZUImolxXv7Zo5dbHRHzj-CCxqR0--HRN-4Ceg0f8Ngb3knWP6w-c

   Projecting his desires is one of Mr Trump’s poker tells: he often accuses others of things he has done or would like to do. Should he fail to reignite the culture wars, Mr Trump can fall back on claims of an impending stolen election. Agents can be deployed to prevent ballot fraud. Any incident could trigger emergency powers.

In Bill Barr, Mr Trump has a US attorney-general who would be happy to draft the pretexts. In Chad Wolf, the acting DHS secretary, Mr Trump has a loyalist in charge of a semi-private army. It was Mr Wolf who drew up the segregation orders that resulted in migrant children being separated from their parents.

The DHS’s Border Patrol units have been involved in most of the shadowy arrests in Portland. Their day job is chiefly to deal with border violence, especially narcotics gangs. Oregon’s biggest city is nowhere near a border.

What effect would Mr Trump’s agents have on voters in crowded neighbourhoods? The question answers itself. Polls suggest he will probably lose to Mr Biden in November. The novelist Maya Angelou, said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Mr Trump keeps telling us he will not go quietly into the night.

[bankshot1]

From Josh's FT article

Portland, Oregon is neither Crimea nor eastern Ukraine. But Donald Trump is playing similar mind games with America’s cities. Russia’s state media claimed Russian-speaking civilians were slaughtered in the Donbass. Mr Trump says America’s cities are “far worse than Afghanistan”. The US’s urban carnage is caused by thugs, killers and violent anarchists, he said.

I made a similiar point a few days ago.

i know we like to compare Trump with Hitler etc, and the secret police trampling human rights in Portland as SS, but this reminds me of the Putin's army of unmarked military enforcers injected into Ukraine several years ago to disrupt the democratic growing process there.

SSD Dictator

FYI-I'm not a left-wing rag either
 
I can't vouch for Josh though.

[Hairy Lime]

....to Boz's Sequoia-sequestered but not sesquipedalian report, a sequential reply:   

Seems like a good choice, in July.   

Well, exactly. 113 sucks. Clean mountain air, cool breezes. Huge huge huge fucking trees. Even managed to convince the rangers to let us use the handicap lot to see General Sherman (though not stickered, a family member has physical limitations). Trust me, the walk from the real parking lot is a fucking killer.

Re:  Ward - we've had the food deserts chat before.   Nothing stuck.   

Good governance is what you do when families are eating junk and it's setting them up for lifelong ill health... instead of twiddling your thumbs and waiting for everyone to become educated,  informed,  and in reach of a supermarket with healthy selections.  Funny no one questions regulations that protect your skull from shattering in a car,  but try to keep a pancreas from shattering and suddenly it's tyranny.   

Diabetes rates aren't high due to heredity but primarily due to stuff like "nutrition bars" that are mostly sugars and simple carbs.   Nobody's genes are designed for what's in a quick mart in a food desert.   For 99% of our evolutionary history, we didn't even eat grains,  let alone highly processed ones with most of the fiber removed.    We're built to eat roots,  shoots,  fruits,  nuts,  eggs,  fish,  game....hunter/gatherer stuff.

For what it is worth, Caucasians have a higher prevalence of Type 1 diabetes - the kind you are born with and which is genetic - than African Americans. Type 2 diabetes, the kind brought on by diet and life style, is where African Americans are hit disproportionately. The reasons for this are well known, probably even by Red.

[LarryBnDC]

Products have labels identifying nutrition information, recommended daily allowances etc.
People are not stupid when they shop, nor do they more government nannies as consultants.
America’s diabetes rate is not soaring but is higher than we want. But much of the problem is heredity since Native Americans, Americans of Asian descent, and Black Americans have historic higher rates of diabetes.

I love it when you get stupid and racist.

The figures you quoted reinforced my previous post. And it is you that stoops to racism contending that Americans don’t read labels and accept”what they are being fed”.

Why not just call them deplorable?

 Ever heard of food deserts, have you?

[LarryBnDC]

Re Build The Wall!

https://twitter.com/larrybndc/status/1287509008220401666?s=21

heh

[Echo4]

Re Build The Wall!

https://twitter.com/larrybndc/status/1287509008220401666?s=21

heh

Wow!

Those drug smugglers and human trackers are getting cleverer by the day.

Or as the president is likely to say, "Nobody could have guessed that the US-Mexico border might get hit by a hurricane."

[kiidcarter8]

1000 a day dying from Covid-19.


Actually - no

Its 1000 a day being reported as COVID and added to the death toll.

[kiidcarter8]

And if kids start getting sick in September and then parents get infected etc. and covid spikes around the country and schools and the economy have to shut down again, it will be a disaster on so many fronts (for the committee to reelect)


Yeah - Dems figuring what they can do to make this so (by PR)- and get Biden elected.

Sad.  COVID numbers up is their positive - and has them smiling

[kiidcarter8]

Chris Christie cashes in on coronavirus lobbying

Thanks for the link

Good for him

[Echo4]

1000 a day dying from Covid-19.


Actually - no

Its 1000 a day being reported as COVID and added to the death toll.

Actually, yes.

It's ~1000 per day of CONFIRMED cases in the vast majority of states, not merely "probables," which ought to be included but aren't because dipshits (like some unnamed people) object to calling things what they are.

It's still murder in most cases if a victim dies from a heart attack during a robbery.

The number of deaths from COVID-19 is higher, not lower, than the public figure.

[bankshot1]

And if kids start getting sick in September and then parents get infected etc. and covid spikes around the country and schools and the economy have to shut down again, it will be a disaster on so many fronts (for the committee to reelect)


Yeah - Dems figuring what they can do to make this so (by PR)- and get Biden elected.

Sad.  COVID numbers up is their positive - and has them smiling

Kid you really are a moron.

You would rather blame the dems for the likely 150-200K dead by Labor day, and hospitals breaking under the strain of this exploding disease, rather than admit to the complete disaster that Trump has mismanaged covid-19 into.

Rather than admit everyone who warned Trump to listen to the science and the doctors, to prepare for this curse, and take sensible actions, you stupidly and persistantly blame dems for Trump's ignorance and the prolonged coming disaster.

there really is nothing left to say.

other than you are a pathetic fool.