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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

[josh]

The largest burden of Covid-19 has undoubtedly fallen on people older than 65; they account for around 80 percent of deaths in the United States. But if we momentarily eclipse that from our mind’s eye, something else becomes visible: The corona of this virus.

Young adults are dying at historic rates. In research published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we found that among U.S. adults ages 25 to 44, from March through the end of July, there were almost 12,000 more deaths than were expected based on historical norms.

In fact, July appears to have been the deadliest month among this age group in modern American history. Over the past 20 years, an average of 11,000 young American adults died each July. This year that number swelled to over 16,000.

The trends continued this fall. Based on prior trends, around 154,000 in this demographic had been projected to die in 2020. We surpassed that total in mid-November. Even if death rates suddenly return to normal in December — and we know that they will not — we would anticipate well over 170,000 deaths among U.S. adults in this demographic by the end of 2020.

~NYT

[facilitatorn]

Sit the fuck down


You are neither funny nor  tough, Cable Guy.

You still haven’t shown up for your curb stomping, grandpa.

[LarryBnDC]

Who do you think should play Rudy in the movie?


Is Carla's husband from CHEERS stiill alive?

Steven Van Zandt a close second (he of Lillehammer fame as well as Sopranos and E Street).

No. He’s dead.

Rudy is no Sil.

[facilitatorn]

Gilbert Gottfried should play Giuliani, the ghoulish ex-mayor and disgraced lawyer in search of a blanket pardon. 

[LarryBnDC]

Sit the fuck down


You are neither funny nor  tough, Cable Guy.

I don’t believe I was addressing you so don’t come unless you’re called.

Tough?

Hell, I haven’t thought about “being tough” since I became responsible for others.

[bodiddley]

Pistons owner Tom Goes part of the prison phone call racket:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30564414/activist-calls-nba-pressure-sale-pistons-tom-gores-ownership-jail-telecom-business

The advertisement refers readers to a website that says how Gores' ownership of Securus Technologies, which his Beverly Hills-based private equity firm Platinum Equity purchased in 2017, "undermines [the NBA's] sincerity" about its stance on social and racial justice issues. Securus helps to set the pricing for phone calls for jailed inmates in hundreds of counties nationwide, in some cases charging more than $14 for a 15-minute call.

In a January 2020 press release naming a new chief executive officer, Securus and its parent company announced a series of reforms and said it had lowered the average cost of prison phone calls by 30% over the previous three years. The company also pledged an additional 15% reduction in rates in the next three years.

Securus charges more than $14 for a 15-minute call in several counties, according to rates provided on the company's website. Tylek's organization has asked Securus to lower its rate for a 15-minute phone call to 75 cents. In 2018, she and other advocates successfully campaigned to make phone calls free for inmates housed in New York City jails.

Securus says its recent rate reductions have lowered the average price of a call to less than 15 cents per minute.

Advocates for criminal justice reform have long maintained that high fees on phone calls are barriers to inmates remaining in touch with their outside support systems. Strong family relationships can often help lower recidivism rates, according to the 2015 report compiled by a collection of nonprofits.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed lowering rates on interstate phone calls to 14 to 16 cents a minute from 21 to 25 cents, and has called on state governors to address the "too-often exorbitant rates and fees" for inmates making in-state calls. The FCC does not regulate rates on intrastate calls.

25 cents a minute might not sound like a lot to some, but that's $15/hour.  And prison work pays roughly $1/hour +/- 50 cents.

I use Skype from China and call anywhere in the US for $0.02 per minute.
So even charging 20 cents a minute is 10x what I pay calling from China.
Hell, you call Skype to Skype and it's free (though some prisoners families might not have computers(?).  But Skype to any landline is incredibly cheap.  Easy enough for prisons to have some computers with Skype on them and headsets for calls.

Why are people and companies allowed to gouge prisoners and make big profits off of poor people?  Tom Gores owns a freaking NBA team and he and his billionaire equity firm pals need to pick the pockets of prisoners?  Jeez ....

[LarryBnDC]

Pistons owner Tom Goes part of the prison phone call racket:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30564414/activist-calls-nba-pressure-sale-pistons-tom-gores-ownership-jail-telecom-business

The advertisement refers readers to a website that says how Gores' ownership of Securus Technologies, which his Beverly Hills-based private equity firm Platinum Equity purchased in 2017, "undermines [the NBA's] sincerity" about its stance on social and racial justice issues. Securus helps to set the pricing for phone calls for jailed inmates in hundreds of counties nationwide, in some cases charging more than $14 for a 15-minute call.

In a January 2020 press release naming a new chief executive officer, Securus and its parent company announced a series of reforms and said it had lowered the average cost of prison phone calls by 30% over the previous three years. The company also pledged an additional 15% reduction in rates in the next three years.

Securus charges more than $14 for a 15-minute call in several counties, according to rates provided on the company's website. Tylek's organization has asked Securus to lower its rate for a 15-minute phone call to 75 cents. In 2018, she and other advocates successfully campaigned to make phone calls free for inmates housed in New York City jails.

Securus says its recent rate reductions have lowered the average price of a call to less than 15 cents per minute.

Advocates for criminal justice reform have long maintained that high fees on phone calls are barriers to inmates remaining in touch with their outside support systems. Strong family relationships can often help lower recidivism rates, according to the 2015 report compiled by a collection of nonprofits.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed lowering rates on interstate phone calls to 14 to 16 cents a minute from 21 to 25 cents, and has called on state governors to address the "too-often exorbitant rates and fees" for inmates making in-state calls. The FCC does not regulate rates on intrastate calls.

25 cents a minute might not sound like a lot to some, but that's $15/hour.  And prison work pays roughly $1/hour +/- 50 cents.

I use Skype from China and call anywhere in the US for $0.02 per minute.
So even charging 20 cents a minute is 10x what I pay calling from China.
Hell, you call Skype to Skype and it's free (though some prisoners families might not have computers(?).  But Skype to any landline is incredibly cheap.  Easy enough for prisons to have some computers with Skype on them and headsets for calls.

Why are people and companies allowed to gouge prisoners and make big profits off of poor people?  Tom Gores owns a freaking NBA team and he and his billionaire equity firm pals need to pick the pockets of prisoners?  Jeez ....

Part of a system that has endured for centuries; deriving profit from black bodies.

[josh]

Not at all surprising that in any 2-3-4-6-8-10 month stretch of COVID era there would be more "young death"

Gee, weren't you one of those claiming the colleges should just reopen because the younger folks were at substantially less risk?

[josh]

I was thinking more about the JAMA paper.

The authors carefully supported their assumptions about Years of Life Lost (YLL) from COVID-19 and their extrapolations based on children's loss of educational time's impact on life expectancy without intervention, resulting as I said in 84 days shorter lives, on average, using their figures.

The total, across the 24.2 million children was a total more than 3 times that of the YLL from COVID-19 total in their evaluation or the prevented YLL because of the closure.

But a couple of items confound their calculations:
1) Their examination of YLL from COVID was based on early months, before this autumnal wave that has blown away the highs of the Spring. Their calculations of deaths from COVID - both caused and prevented - are grossly out of whack. 88,241 deaths through the end of May, according to their figures. (Setting aside that they took the "through end of May" numbers before May was done being calculated, leaving them more than 21,000 shy of the real death total and the real YLL and a more real extrapolated YLL prevented!)

2) There is no mention of nor hint of awareness of the "long haulers," those with symptoms impinging on their lives long past the presence of the virus itself. One paper in Nature suggested that that percentage was certainly below 10% of those who had tested positive, though how much below they were as yet unsure.

The result is that they don't know the YLL for those folks, but if we assume it is only 1% who suffer from lifelong debilitating neurological or organ damage, that is still an additional 180,000 or so people losing some parts of their lives to COVID-19. How much? We don't know. Not even slightly...

3) Their estimate is that for every person who died in the US, the average number of years lost to COVID was 17. Seventeen years lost vs. 83 days lost.

----------

We've kept more kids home, without totally shutting down the schools in most places. I am sure a bunch more kids will have had their lives shortened by lack of educational attainment caused by these days of missed school, but not nearly so many, while the saving of lives continues, to an extent, with the online schooling.

They might even be averaging 100 days shorter, versus the 17 years in those whose lives they are saving.

Ask them if they would make that trade.

[josh]

1951:

[facilitatorn]

Tax breaks for business meals made it into the relief package on republican insistence.

If congressional republicans were ground up into sausage patties and fed to the poor, they’d be more use to the average American than they are in their current roles.

McConnell’s grudging largesse works out to $50 a week per recipient over the course of the pandemic so far.

Trump has stolen more than republicans are willing to allocate towards relief while they encourage him to keep stealing.

We have to combat the racism and gullibility in America that lets republicans cling to power in far too many places. Republicans are clearly trying to kill us all. They are to lazy and blood crazed now to even bother to dress up their intentions with shambolic rhetoric as they did in the days of the bushes and slimy Ronald raygun.

[facilitatorn]

http://prospect.org/power/its-not-a-big-tech-crackdown-its-an-anti-monopoly-revolution/

Merry merry merry Christmas!

[facilitatorn]

http://thebulwark.com/the-origins-of-a-warning-from-voltaire/

[Hamilton Samuels]

What responsible American would vote for this sycophantic lightweight weasel?

https://news.yahoo.com/kelly-loeffler-refuse-joe-biden-155757271.html

[Hamilton Samuels]

Straight up wrong, assholes!

https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-rollout-begins-rich-californians-141002863.html

My Concierge MD, a health facility in Beverly Hills, California has been getting numerous phone calls from wealthy clientele willing to pay any amount to bypass waiting for a dose of the potentially life-saving shot. Dr. Abe Malkin, Concierge MD’s founder, said that some of the patients offer to give a charitable “contribution” in order to “get themselves bumped up in line.”