Berated, Belittled And ..... Brutalized?

 It is beginning to look like our erstwhile and volatile Governor General, Julie Payette, did not limit herself to verbal abuse of staff. CBC reports the following:

Complainants who took part in an independent probe into claims of a toxic workplace culture at Rideau Hall claim former governor general Julie Payette's verbal harassment of staff crossed over into instances of physical contact, CBC News has learned.

The claims of physical contact were reported in testimony given to Quintet Consulting during interviews and will be included in the final report, multiple sources said.

Several sources with direct knowledge of the final report say Payette's workplace behaviour went beyond screaming at, belittling and publicly humiliating employees — and included unwelcome physical contact that caused some participants in the review to feel threatened.

As has been noted by others, the appointment of Payette calls into question both the judgement of Prime Minister Trudeau and the integrity of the vetting process. Let's hope due deliberation is given before choosing Canada's next representative of the Queen.

 

Summing Up The Last Four Years Under Trump

 Randy Rainbow does it with panache:

More On Our National Embarrassment

 I recently posted about our national embarrassment known as Conrad Black, sycophant extraordinaire.

The following, by editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder, was tweeted by Neil MacDonald, who observes.

And a grateful Black is now vigorously pushing back against any idea that the attack on the Capitol was violent. Just high spirited patriots.

 

Oh, The Insensate Crowd

While we can take some comfort that the kind of madness that grips the United States is absent in Canada, we would be wrong to think there aren't seeds of it here:

 Toronto police have arrested three participants in two separate anti-lockdown protests downtown Saturday afternoon, the same day the province saw 3,056 new COVID-19 cases and a record number of 420 patients in intensive care units.

Videos surfacing on social media show hundreds of protestors gathered at Nathan Phillips Square and Yonge-Dundas Square defying public health measures and denouncing the provincial stay-at-home mandate.

Below is one sample of the insensate crowd, mostly unmasked and gathered closely together to protest the abrogation of their 'freedom' to spread disease. 

White, Affluent AND Being Held To Account?

 What has happened to America? You decide.

Our Own Rudy Guiliani

I'm sure I am but one of millions who have followed  the antics of Rudy Guiliani, deriving bittersweet amusement from his addled but staunch defence of his master, Donald Trump, who has reportedly now turned against his lapdog and is refusing to pay his legal bill. 

Standard operating procedure in Trumpland.

But Canadians envious of the dark comic relief afforded by the hapless Giuliani need not despair. As Bob Hepburn writes, we have our own version in Canada: Conrad Black.

Not to be outdone by Giuliani, Black has in recent weeks kicked up his loud, long-held support for Trump and now ranks among the president’s most fawning loyalists.

Like Giuliani, the former Canadian business mogul and ex-U.S. convict has appeared on American talk shows spreading the same conspiracy theories and misinformation about the election, including discredited allegations of widespread voter fraud on the part of Democrats.

Stunningly, in the aftermath of last week’s riots on Capitol Hill, Black continues to heap praise on Trump.

 He insists on conservative talk shows that Trump did nothing wrong in the lead-up to the Capitol Hill insurrection, that the rioters “were not Trump supporters” and that top Republicans who are now distancing themselves from Trump are “repulsive” and “disgraceful.”

 For years, Black has stuck with Trump, from sex scandals to dog whistle appeals to white supremacists. He capped it with a 2018 book titled “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”

And Black has reaped a rich reward for his sycophantic servitude. 

Trump pardoned him in 2019. Black was convicted in 2007 of fraud and obstruction of justice and served 3½ years in a Florida prison before being released and deported to Canada.

In 2020, Black continued to fawn over Trump, writing last month in The Hill, a top U.S. political website, that Trump’s record in office “has been a tour de force.”

Shamelessly, and without any apparent moral or intellectual (despite his propensity for pretentious language designed to hide his paucity of real thought) compass, Black has supported the risible Trump fantasy that he lost the election, and even worse, mocks the seditious events last week at the Capitol building.

On Jan. 6, the day of the riots, Black retweeted a Twitter post that appeared to mock the damage and frightened lawmakers. “The damage to the Capitol was really quite shocking,” the retweeted comment read. “Very disturbing picture below showing that plastic water bottles were littered on floor of Capitol, rather than being properly placed in recycling. One can hardly blame congressmen for abandoning premises.”

Trump has had a series of lapdogs before and during his presidency. It is to our shame that some of them (are you listening, Brian Mulroney?) have been Canadian in origin. 

 

Der Speigel And Donald Trump

The following was sent to me by a friend:

No American president has been more incendiary than Donald Trump. He has been the subject in recent years of 28 DER SPIEGEL cover stories. Many featured the work of illustrator Edel Rodriguez. The covers were often criticized as being exaggerated. Here are the most important ones.

As you will see, each of the covers represent an aspect of Trump that the world, much to its dismay, has come to know. You can see the full array of them, with links to cover stories, by going to their website:

                                            DER SPIEGEL, Issue 45/16 (Nov. 5, 2016)

"The Next President: The Script of a Tragedy"

DER SPIEGEL, Issue 46/16 (Nov. 12, 2016)

Madness: Donald Trump, America's Agitator

America First

Donald Trump's True Face

The Firestarter: A President Sets His Country on Fire

Trump's America: What Will Remain of Him Even If He Has to Go

All of which goes to show that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

Be Careful Who You Associate With

Thanks to the salamander for alerting me to the following story.

Randal Lane, the chief content officer and editor of Forbes has a warning for all companies: Be careful who you hire. Avoid anyone who worked for Trump, especially his many press secretaries:

In this time of transition – and pain – reinvigorating democracy requires a reckoning. A truth reckoning. Starting with the people paid by the People to inform the People.

From Day One at the Trump White House, up has been down, yes has been no, failure has been success. Sean Spicer set the tone with the inauguration crowd size – the worst kind of whopper, as it demanded that people disbelieve their own eyes. The next day, Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s lie with a new term, “alternative facts.” Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied at scale, from smearing those who accused Trump of sexual harassment to conjuring jobs statistics. Her successor, Stephanie Grisham, over the course of a year, never even held a press conference, though the BS continued unabated across friendly outlets. And finally, Kayleigh McEnany, Harvard Law graduate, a propaganda prodigy at 32 who makes smiling falsehood an art form. All of this magnified by journalists too often following an old playbook ill-prepared for an Orwellian communication era.

Lane's message is a simple but powerful one: Reward egregious dishonesty at your peril:

Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

Lane ends his editorial with a timely reminder about healthy democracies:

… as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, in a thriving democracy, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Our national reset starts there.

It is an observation that all of us would do well to always remember. 

 

 

 

 

Too Soon?

 You decide:

The Mike Harris Abomination

 

Those who live in Ontario and are of a certain age will remember the disaster that was the Mike Harris premiership. Yet despite all the damage he did to this province, (and continues to do as the Chair of Chartwell which, by the way, is rewarding its investors handsomely while presiding over a multitude of deaths in its homes), he has been awarded an Order of Ontario.

To say that this appointment has met with controversy is to understate the resulting outrage. For example, almost 68,000 have signed a Change.org petition to stop this betrayal of all who suffered under him.

And, as always, Toronto Star letter-writers have not held back. June Mewhort of Woodville, Ontario writes:

Mike Harris receiving the Order of Ontario is a slap in the face for Indigenous people in Ontario. It is also a slap in the face to all Ontario educators, all Ontario nurses, all Ontario single moms and all Ontario municipalities.

Municipalities are still struggling with the egregious downloads the Harris government burdened them with.

And now, we have the long-term-care debacle. It was Harris who opened up the LTC arena to private consortiums and he became a beneficiary of his own legislation by becoming chair of Chartwell.

This awarding of the Order of Ontario to this man is the Progressive Conservatives rewarding a man who has done nothing positive for this province.

Doug Ford is stroking his back for future favours.

Wasn’t Harris also the politician who sold Highway 407?

It is unconscionable that he be given this prestigious award.

Peter Voth of Ajax, Ontario reminds that some things are unforgivable:

 The article about Mike Harris being appointed to the Order of Ontario dealt mostly with his connection with private long-term-care homes, but he should be denied the appointment simply based on his record as premier.

In a time when statues of Sir John MacDonald or Egerton Ryerson are questioned, why is Harris even considered for an appointment for anything?

Ask the citizens of Walkerton, or the First Nations of Ipperwash.

What about the stripping of the school curriculum, and the removal of the word “environment” from those documents? What about the hospital closures? What about the downloading of our secondary highways to the regions and the confusing renaming of roads across the province? What about the famous strategy to “create a crisis” in education (to use the words of John Snobelen, Harris’s education minister)?

Harris wasn’t called “Mike-the-knife” for nothing.

Perhaps we should build a statue of him so that we can rip it down the next day.

We live in a time when public morality seems to be but an increasingly quaint notion. Mike Harris's 'reward' is just another sad illustration of this. 

Time For Some Sober Second Thought

 

A recent poll shows that about half of all Canadians are ignoring the Covid guidelines telling people to socialize only with those in their own household:

A new survey suggests nearly half of Canadians visited with family or friends over the winter holiday period.

The Leger/Association for Canadian Studies poll found 48 per cent of those surveyed visited with people outside their households, compared to 52 per cent who said they did not.

Public health officials had pleaded with Canadians to sharply limit their contacts during the holidays to avoid massive spikes in COVID-19 cases.

But it appears something gave for Canadians, said Leger vice-president Christian Bourque.

“Usually we Canadians are sort of much more, I would say, disciplined when it comes to going by what governments are recommending in terms of our behaviour, but over the holidays, apparently, it was sort of tougher on Canadians,” he said.

A study from Korea suggests that it is more than time that such people give a sober second thought to their recklessness. It is a story that suggests the easy transmissibility of the virus and calls into question whether the two-meter social distancing guidance is adequate

Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow.

It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment when he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in the southwest of South Korea, where diners contracted coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who was infected with the coronavirus after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.

It appears the culprits here are being indoors with others and airflow.

Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who studies the transmission of viruses in the air, said the five-minute window in which the student, identified in the study as “A,” was infected was notable because the droplet was large enough to carry a viral load, but small enough to travel 20 feet through the air.“‘A’ had to get a large dose in just five minutes, provided by larger aerosols probably about 50 microns,” she said. “Large aerosols or small droplets overlapping in that gray area can transmit disease further than one or two meters [3.3 to 6.6 feet] if you have strong airflow.”

Lee, a professor at the Jeonbuk National University Medical School who has also been helping local authorities carry out epidemiological investigations, went to the restaurant and was surprised by how far the two had been sitting. CCTV footage showed the two never spoke, or touched any surfaces in common — door handles, cups or cutlery. From the sway of a light fixture, he could tell the air conditioning unit in the ceiling was on at the time.

Lee and his team recreated the conditions in the restaurant — researchers sat at tables as stand-ins — and measured the airflow. The high school student and a third diner who was infected had been sitting directly along the flow of air from an air conditioner; other diners who had their back to the airflow were not infected. Through genome sequencing, the team confirmed the three patients’ virus genomic types matched.

Clearly, there is still much to be learned about Covid-19. Those who think they know it all and conduct themselves blithely may not live to regret it. 

A Timely Reminder

 With the travel circuit as busy as it is, now is a good time to remind each other that our political 'leaders' have advised all Canadians to avoid unnecessary travel:

Nothing Seems To Deter Him

 The him here, of course, would be Donald Trump who, true to form, will never accept the fact that he has been voted out of office. Despite failed efforts at promoting outrageous claims of voter fraud and bogus lawsuits being filed and rejected, the Orange Ogre is still clinging to the delusion that he can remain president.

As reported in News and Guts, the Washing Post writes of an extraordinary call Trump made to Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger:

In the call, Trump urges the fellow Republican to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the president’s defeat in the state. The Post writes:

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected his assertions, explaining that Trump is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 12,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

You can listen to excerpts of that call below:

It would seem you can take the Donald out of the White House, but you can't take the Don out of the Donald.

 

.

A Warning From The WHO

 I doubt there is anyone amongst us who doesn't wish this pandemic were over. The cost in lives, health and jobs has been unprecedented in modern times. Yet to think that the vaccines, remarkable achievements that they are, will end all of our Covid-19 troubles, is akin to wishful thinking, as the following video attests.

Looking At Ourselves In The Mirror

If you have access to the New York Times, there is a piece well-worth reading by Michael Benson. Entitled Watching Earth Burn. it includes photos of our planet taken from three weather satellites in geostationary orbit high above the Equator. These photos attest to the ravages of climate-change induced wild fires plaguing the world, although Benson does not ignore human-caused destruction, as in the ravages of the Amazonian rainforest where, thanks to 

the rapacious policies of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, predatory agricultural, logging and mining interests had set his country ablaze. By late September the already hellish 2019 escalation in deliberately set forest fires had been exceeded by 28 percent, with more than 44,000 outbreaks recorded in the Amazon and Pantanal this year.

The entire article makes for grim reading, and is a cogent reminder of just how late in the day it is for mitigating the worst of  the damage threatening the very existence of our species and countless others with whom we share the earth.

Yet the piece ends on a cautiously optimistic note:

If the war has started and we’re losing, what can we do about it? Or to put it another way, what would I like to see happen over the next year, even if I won’t yet be able to observe it directly from my Olympian perch among the satellites?

Actually, our response to the pandemic already suggests the way forward. Faced with an existential crisis of a scale not seen in living memory, we deployed the planet’s best minds, funded them well and turned them loose on the problem. They in turn were able to draw on a wealth of prior knowledge about how viruses infiltrate our bodies, and three decades of hard-won experience in learning about and finally creating RNA — purpose-built synthetic copies of a natural molecule integral to our genes — devised to prompt an immune response within our cells. This paid off spectacularly. And all this was accomplished in record time — months instead of the previous standard of a decade or more.

We need to follow this immediately with another sustained global effort. Imagine what human ingenuity could produce if unleashed in comparably coordinated, well-funded fashion on the climate crisis. The good news is that, as with the new RNA vaccines, we have significant prior research to draw on. It covers carbon-neutral power production, energy conservation strategies, carbon capture and sequestration, global reforestation and an intercontinental effort to build a high voltage, DC power network 40 percent more efficient than AC and thus able to compensate for the daily fluctuations in wind and solar power systems.

In short, we need an all-hands-on-deck fusion of the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan, only this time funded by all of the world’s major economies and led by the largest: the United States, the European Union and China.

Time is obviously short, but as I commented on Marie's blog entry about the existential threats we face, human beings seem much more able to respond to acute threats than long-term ones. If we cannoit change that propensity, there really is little basis for hope. 

Let's Give Him A Classy Sendoff

 I think the following fits the bill:

A Masterful Takedown

 No one does it better than Chris Cuomo. 

Even if you only watch a couple of minutes of the above video, you will see that he has taken the true, full measure of Donald Trump.

Squeal Like A Pig

 One of our true national treasures, Linda McQuaig (why has she not received an Order of Canada?) recently wrote an article detailing the abysmal conditions under which pigs await slaughter. It is a piece that should make all of us cringe, whether or not we regularly eat pork:

Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

That’s why the Canadian pork industry, sensitive about its public image, decided to eliminate the practice — a move hailed by Canada’s Humane Society as “a watershed moment for farm animals in Canada.”

This led to a rare round of positive coverage for the beleaguered industry, with the media reporting that the move would please Canadian consumers and bring Canadian animal welfare practices in line with more advanced European standards.

All that happened back in 2014. Yet, six years later, millions of pigs in Canada continue to spend their lives locked in these narrow cages — because the ban doesn’t actually come into effect until 2024.Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

In fact, that leisurely 10-year phase-in period seems about to get longer. The pork industry has decided it needs more time and has indicated its desire to grant itself a further five-year extension.

How is this possible? In a word: self-regulation, a self-regulation that is aided and abetted by the Doug Ford government, which

just made it easier for the industry to shield its operations from public view, passing legislation last month aimed at cracking down on trespassing activists and journalists who often work undercover on industrial farms in order to take photos and videos.

Those videos have done a great deal to raise public awareness of the conditions under which our food makes its way to our table:

 One undercover video, aired last month on CTV’s national investigative program W5, included graphic footage of adult pigs being hit with heavy objects and baby pigs squealing and squirming in pain as workers cut off their tails and castrate them.

Lest we be inclined to think of animals as insensate beings, consider this:

As renowned anthropologist Jane Goodall notes: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain.”

The intensity of animal emotions has been captured on videos of rescued farm animals experiencing their first taste of freedom. They run, romp and play — even enormous adult pigs — and certainly appear to be experiencing something akin to joy.

 Of course, any dog owner can confirm that animals feel emotions. And any dog owner would gasp at the thought of their dog trapped in a confining cage, 24 hours a day, unable to even turn around.

But the factory farm industry is counting on us not making the connection. And the best way to ensure that, as Doug Ford knows, is to prevent us from seeing photos of locked-up pigs looking every bit as sad and scared as our own dogs would be in those cages.

Whether we are vegetarians, vegans or regular or occasional consumers of animal flesh, it is incumbent upon all of us not only to be aware of the deplorable conditions under which our food is processed but also to demand much better both from the industry and the Doug Ford government.  

 

 

Capturing A Certain Ethos

Be sure to click on the image so as to enlarge it:

 Unfortunately, the mentality depicted above is not confined to the United States.

Some Frank Talk

 

I readily admit to being intolerant of childish, narcissistic adults. And never have those defects of character been more evident than during our Covid-19 world crisis. People whining that they won't wear masks or maintain social distancing, that such stipulations are an assault of their personal freedom bespeak minds untutored and character unspeakably selfish.

It was therefore with some satisfaction that I read Vinay Menon's latest column, one devoted to a rant actor Tom Cruise engaged in as he rebuked two of his crew for not following protocols during work on his latest film. Audio of the rant has been leaked, but there is nothing that Cruise said that should offend anyone with a sense of social responsibility:

“We are the gold standard,” he says at the start of the clip, reportedly addressing 50 staffers at the Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden. “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of US! Because they believe in US and what we’re DOING!”

"I’m on the phone with every f---ing studio at night,” Cruise continues, the weight on his shoulders now crushing any hope of a PG-13 scolding. “Insurance companies! Producers! And they’re looking at us and using us to make their MOVIES. We are creating thousands of jobs, you MOTHERF---ERS!”

He ends by issuing an ultimatum: termination if this behaviour happens again.

There is more to Cruise's rebuke than I have included here, but the full measure of it wins Menon's full approval:

One of the most depressing tentacles of this global pandemic — and it has been a Kraken of misery — is the absolute ignorance of too many among us. If I had my druthers, I’d load every antimasker and anti-vaxxer on a rocket ship and shoot them to Venus. What these people really are is anti-other. Their brains are poisoned by misinformation. Their hearts are infected with an incurable selfishness.

To refuse to do the bare minimum to keep everyone else safe does not make you a freedom fighter — it makes you a public menace. Trying to frame COVID-19 as about personal liberty is like arguing you should be allowed to drink and drive or set random fires on your block.

In the early stages of this pandemic, I had the impression that most of us were on the same page regarding our collective responsibility to contain this deadly virus. However, as time has gone on, the fault lines that divide us have become increasingly apparent.

And that spells danger and greater deprivation for all of us.

 

When You Think About It

... this makes perfect sense for the times we find ourselves in:

You’re watching Sportsmax. The network for REAL Jets fans. pic.twitter.com/Y5rGuZMLez

— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 13, 2020

Such Compelling Rhetoric

...requires no commentary on my part:

Overheard at a "freedom rally" in Regina... a day in the life of a journalist in 2020 I guess🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/4sw9jOsGuS

— Connor O'Donovan (@ConnODonNews) December 13, 2020

Beware Mr. Covid

It has been several months since my last post. Originally I had anticipated but a short break,, but events conspired against me and I wound up in the hospital for several weeks. Although my hospitalization had nothing to do with Covid-19, the latter has been much on my mind, particularly owing to the fact that so many people, judging by the surging numbers, lack the maturity and character to do what is necessary to keep this dread disease at bay. 

 I was therefore not surprised at Alberta's effort to bring home the gravity of the situation by producing an ad that reveals what the government thinks of its child-like citizens:

A Short Note

Just to let regular readers know that I probably will not be posting much for a little while, as my time is required on a family matter (trying to get my brother into a seniors' residence).

Hope to be back soon.

For Your Saturday Consideration

With apologies to anyone (well, almost anyone) who suffers from a reading disability, I enjoyed this, and hope you do too:

Fox News is right: Any idiot can read off a teleprompter pic.twitter.com/3S1EE2ky4x

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 21, 2020

The Dismantling Of Democracy

I'm not writing much in the way of commentary these days, partly because other matters require my attention and partly because I feel almost anything I say may simply be stating the obvious, especially at it pertains to our benighted neighbours to the south. Nonetheless, when I see items that others might have missed, I like to post them on this blog.

The following is one such item; the story is essentially another in an ongoing series of efforts by Donald Trump and his enablers (in this case Louis DeJoy, the new Postmaster General) to disrupt and dismantle what is left of American democracy. The images are disturbing, the implications frightening.

Please start at about the 13:15 mark:

Americans Do Love Their Snake Oil

Fortunately, people like Anderson Cooper have the real cure:

I had to phone a friend to turn on CNN and watch Anderson Cooper mocking with a serious face the MyPillow shyster and Donald Trump stan because it was so LOL and yelling at the TV. BRAVO! https://t.co/A7AYc7aJEj

— Antonia Zerbisias (@AntoniaZ) August 18, 2020

Know Your Limits

Having worn glasses since I was nine, I learned early in life about limitations. Being myopic meant having to accept that I could never become an airline pilot, play most contact sports (not that I was ever so inclined), be a 'cool-looking' guy, etc. Nonetheless, I managed to eke out a reasonably successful life within those parameters. A mark of maturity is accepting things you cannot change.

Since the advent of Covid-19, a new and apparently widespread affliction has emerged: the 'inability' to wear a mask to mitigate the spread of the disease. This has led to an array of problems, not the least of which is the accusation that 'sufferers' don't give a damn about their fellow citizens. And no amount of effort to convince them that they will not suffocate or become ill if they wear a mask seems to help.

I therefore have a modest proposal for such people. Like I did long ago, learn to live within your limitations:

The Bottom Line

While the emphasis thus far has been on the fact that wearing a mask protects others from contracting Covid-19, new research suggests that they are also effective in protecting the wearer.

The Journal of General Internal Medicine reports that there

are two likely reasons for the effectiveness of facial masks: The first—to prevent the spread of viral particles from asymptomatic individuals to others—has received a great deal of attention. However, the second theory—that reducing the inoculum of virus to which a mask-wearer is exposed will result in milder disease [italics added]...has received less attention and is the focus of our perspective which compiles virologic, epidemiologic and ecologic evidence.

Masks, depending on the material and design, filter out a majority of viral particles, but not all. The theory that exposure to a lower inoculum or dose of any virus (whether respiratory, gastrointestinal or sexually transmitted) can make subsequent illness far less likely to be severe... has been propounded for some time. Indeed, the concept of the 50% lethal dose (LD50), the virus dose at which 50% of exposed hosts die, determined via controlled experiments in which a range of exposure doses are administered to animals to calculate a dose-mortality curve, was first described in 1938. Other studies have examined the LD50—or the dose that leads to severe disease or death—for a variety of viruses in hosts or animal models.

The bottom line: Wear a mask.

When Pathological Liars Speak

Hold them to account.

I've been complaining for four years about interviewers not fact-checking Trump to his face.

In the past few weeks, we've gotten some good evidence that this is not only necessary in principle, it actually works. My video this week: https://t.co/VJdortztoR pic.twitter.com/SFMDWdiPyZ

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 8, 2020

O Brave New World

I have reached the point in my life where whatever optimism about the future I might have once held has given way to a searing, even corrosive pessimism. Looking at the world as it is would seem to preclude any other position.

And yet...

There are still those among us with vibrant visions of what could be, what is still possible even at this late date. It is perhaps best represented by what is known as the Green New Deal. One of its chief proponents in the United States is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasion Cortz who, along with Avi Lewis, scripted and narrated a short film of what could be, the idea being to use art to fire the imagination of people. Writes Naomi Klein:

Just as [Molly] Crabapple and I started mulling over the idea of a Green New Deal short film, The Intercept published a piece by Kate Aronoff that was set in the year 2043, after the Green New Deal had come to pass. It told the story of what life was like for a fictionalized “Gina,” who grew up in the world that Green New Deal policies created: “She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program.” After free college, “she spent six months restoring wetlands and another six volunteering at a day care much like the one she had gone to.”

The piece struck a nerve with readers, in large part because it imagined a future tense that wasn’t some version of “Mad Max” warriors battling prowling bands of cannibal warlords. Crabapple and I decided that the film could do something similar to Aronoff’s piece, but this time from Ocasio-Cortez’s vantage point. It would show the world after the Green New Deal she was championing had become a reality.

The following is the film that seeks to dispel the pessimism so many of us feel about the future.



Should you be interested in becoming more informed about the possibilities, I recommend Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Green New Deal, which offers substantial detail on how this brave new world can be accomplished.

On The Covidiot, Anti-Masker Cohort

Those who read this blog with any regularity will likely know that when it comes to those who refuse to don masks as their contribution to our collective safety, I have only withering contempt. It is a contempt fueled by the fact that almost no medical condition exists precluding the use of these simple but effective life-saving devices.

Recently, Christine Sismondo wrote about some of the factors fueling these covidiots:

... social and cultural psychologists like [Hilary] Bergsieker have found the greatest correlations to be related to the society and culture people live in.

“People in more collectivist societies may be more willing to adopt things like mask-wearing that maybe impinge on individual preference but are good for the collective, which is one explanation for why mask-wearing has become so normative in East Asian societies dating back at least to the SARS epidemic of 20 years ago,” she says. “People have been more willing to wear masks out of a sense of care for and connectedness to others versus the individualistic tradition of a lot of the western nations.

“The issue is whether you see society as just made up of disconnected individuals, each of whom maximizes his or her own self-interest and their own preferences, versus seeing people as fundamentally interconnected,” she explains.

The pandemic, however, should be a massive object lesson in the fallacy of libertarian-ish notions about disconnectedness and individualism. No matter how wealthy and privileged someone is, it is next to impossible to protect oneself entirely against a contagious disease. Just ask Louie Gohmert. Or Bolsonaro. Or Herman Cain. Oh no, wait. You can’t ask Cain. He asserted his right not to wear a mask at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., and didn’t live to tell about it.

Wise words, but I leave the final ones to this astute letter-writer, whose suggestion earns my unequivocal approval:

Psychology behind mask resistance isn’t new, Sismondo, Aug. 4

Christine Sismondo’s questioning of people’s psychology to discover what motivates them to resist following the rules is fascinating human-interest reporting.

But focusing on quirks of personality overlooks a more meaningful discussion of the social responsibility a dissenting individual owes to society.

Henry David Thoreau maintained convincingly that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. Those among us who don’t want to follow the safety rules — masking, distancing, testing and contact tracing — during this deadly pandemic don’t have to.

But then, just like Thoreau, they must isolate themselves from society. Thoreau stopped paying taxes to protest his government waging war and withdrew from society to live alone beside Walden Pond.

Those advocating civil obedience as their legal human right should exile themselves during this pandemic.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

Too Quick On The Draw

Newly-released bodycam footage of the arrest of George Floyd reveals he was in a blind panic when officers drew guns on him. His revelation that he had been shot in the past suggests he was suffering from a form of post traumatic stress, which would explain his resistance to the officers' attempts to detain him.

The following is disturbing to watch, and one wonders what the outcome would have been had the police not been so quick to point their firearms at an unarmed man.

Begin at the 11:00 mark.

I'm Sure It's All Just A Big Misunderstanding

The Keilbergers probably just really like Bill Morneau. But you be the judge:

Some Days, I Truly Despair

Mendacity, the constant litany of lies that defines Donald Trump, is one thing, but when the Incompetent-In-Chief extols people who believe that illness is demon-caused and science is experimenting with hybrid human-alien DNA, the world has entered a whole new level of crazy.

Watch this video for context, then read about the viral video that Facebook, Twitter and You Tube have deleted due to the misinformation it conveys.



For Trump, the obvious allure of this group, which is called America's Frontline Doctors (whose website has suddenly disappeared), is their promotion of the now-discredited Covid-19 treatment, hydroxychloroquine, which he has so vigorously advocated for. The Incompetent-In-Chief's ego requires constant fluffing. However, there was some heavy baggage accompanying that extollment:

The video Trump shared Monday night showed a collection of doctors speaking in favor of treating COVID-19 patients with the antimalarial drug. The clip focused on the testimony of a woman named Stella Immanuel, who received a medical license in Texas last November, according to state records. The doctor did not return a request for comment.

Immanuel says she previously worked as a doctor in Nigeria and also calls herself a "Deliverance Minister" who is "God's battle axe and weapon of war." She has given sermons attacking progressive values and promoting conspiracy theories including, in her words, "the gay agenda, secular humanism, Illuminati and the demonic new world order." Another doctor shown in the video, a noted Trump supporter, called Immanuel a "warrior."

"You don't need a mask," Immanuel claimed in the video, contradicting the widely accepted medical advice that has been promoted even by the White House coronavirus task force and Trump himself. She repeatedly called studies questioning the safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine "fake science."

But wait. As they say, there's more:

The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that Immanuel has claimed in the past that some gynecological ailments are caused by people having sex in a dream-world with demons, with the demonic semen as the origins of the afflictions.

Immanuel has also claimed that doctors used alien DNA in medical treatments, and that lizard-like “reptilian” aliens are involved in the United States government. She thanked The Daily Beast on Tuesday for “summarizing” her work. “The Daily Beast did a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus. Thank you daily beast. If you need deliverance from these spirits. Contact us,” she tweeted.

Years ago, Carl Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, which in part discussed how to think skeptically and critically, explaining methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. A tough medicine for some, perhaps, but it would seem to be the cure for much of what ails those who lap up the twaddle dished out by the likes of Donald Trump and Stella Immanuel.

The World Judges Donald Trump's Covid-19 'Strategy'

The New York Times offers a report on how people around the world evaluate the response of "the greatest nation on earth" to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Coles Notes version: unlike many Americans, they are not taken in by Donald Trump's empty rhetoric and outright lies.

From Beyond The Grave

It's been 12 years since George Carlin left us, yet the ensuing years have made him even more relevant than he was in his day. The following video uses his profanity-laced upbraiding of the system to good effect, I think you will agree.

This video is completely devastating for Trump. George Carlin gives him the finger from the grave. Whatever you do don’t make it go viral! #AmericaWakeUp pic.twitter.com/vy2zz0j8DB

— Mrs. Krassenstein (@HKrassenstein) July 26, 2020

Makes Sense To Me

I get the sense that Jonathan Pie is a tad vexed about government irresolution and people's stupidity when it comes to the wearing of masks: