Posts by: Jack Altschuler

Required Reading


Reading time – 5:12  .  .  .  – Updated July 20, 2020

Dave Nelsen is a colleague who penned the essay that follows and, at my request, is allowing me to post it for you. His message isn’t just timely; it’s going to remain urgent for a long time because this pandemic isn’t going away any time soon.

Dave describes himself as an engineer, entrepreneur (5 start-ups), and professional speaker focused on helping business people raise their TQ’s (Technology Quotients), because technology is how we get things done with greater success.

What I’ll tell you is that he is a highly sought after presenter because of his obvious knowledge and expertise and his compelling presentation skills. I’ll also tell you that he’s a most generous guy, which explains his offering to you today.

On Masks and Social Distancing

First, the bottom line:

Whenever you are closer than 6 feet to another person and not wearing a mask, you are probably helping to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, damaging the US economy, killing jobs and potentially causing more people to die.

Even if every American were to become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (331 MM of us), there are vastly different consequences based on the speed of the spread of the disease. If COVID spreads slowly, statistically 3.3 MM people will die* but the economy can be kept open.

If COVID spreads too fast, we will overwhelm the healthcare system. In that case, it’s not just additional people infected with the virus who will die; it’s potentially anybody else who needs access to a fully functioning healthcare system. Public health authorities are unlikely to allow our healthcare systems to collapse, so instead, they’ll call for renewed lock downs (which is more likely to happen regionally than nationally), causing economic damage to both our economy and to our people who won’t be able to earn a living. Both could otherwise have been avoided.

Whenever you are closer than 6 feet to another person and not wearing a mask, you are probably helping to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, damaging the US economy, killing jobs and potentially causing more people to die.

If you wear an improvised mask or face covering (as opposed to a NIOSH-approved N95 grade mask certified to block at least 95% of virus-size particles), it provides relatively little protection to you. Instead, it provides protection to the people who are near you (see The Logic of Improvised Masks below). So, flipping the situation, if everyone near you wears an improvised mask and you do not, you are the one who is most protected. Sadly, you are potentially infecting everybody else.

Similarly, if you wear an improvised mask and do not socially distance from people around you who are not wearing masks, you are putting yourself at risk. By putting yourself at risk, you are putting your friends and family at risk, and their friends and families, and their friends and families. Here’s how the math works.

As of July 19, COVID was accelerating in 43 of our 50 states. Of those states, Oklahoma is near the mid-point in terms of speed of spread. In that state, every COVID infection is currently spreading to 1.13 other people (on average). Person-to-person infection time appears to average about 5 days. If you take a risk of getting COVID-19 and you do become infected, on average 30 days later, 2 additional people will be infected because of you, likely those family members closest to you. Not a big deal, right?

A sobering thought experiment

If that exact rate of spread were to continue for a full year, 7,494 total people would be infected because of you (multiply by 1.13 every 5 days for one year). Statistically, that would result in 75 deaths. In terms of killers, that doesn’t put you in the same league as Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin. Instead, you would be in the class of “small-time” serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and the Golden State Killer (AKA Joseph James DeAngelo).

Granted, that rate of spread would be unlikely to continue for a full year because almost every American citizen would become alarmed at the progression and change their behavior. And yes, some of the 7,494 people would almost certainly get infected by somebody else, if not by you. Nevertheless,

Whenever you are closer than 6 feet to another person and not wearing a mask, you are probably helping to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, damaging the US economy, killing jobs and potentially causing more people to die.

Some key parameters about COVID-19

Per the CDC and other scientists:

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is 3-times more contagious than modern influenza.

Roughly one-third of people who have COVID-19 have no symptoms (i.e. they’re asymptomatic) yet can still spread the virus.

The remaining two-thirds infected with the virus are likely most contagious in the two days immediately before they develop symptoms (i.e. while they are pre-symptomatic).

As you’ve probably realized, it is the “silent propagation” that makes battling COVID-19 so challenging.

More COVID Math

Click me

While we now have more than 3MM known cases in the US, the CDC estimates that there are 10X that many actual cases. More than half of the known cases are currently active cases. If the 10X multiplier holds true for actual cases (and it probably does), and assuming (generously) that just 25% of active cases are currently in a contagious stage, every person you break social distance with brings a 1% risk of exposure, which is about what scientists find when randomly testing any large group of US citizens. If you have an event with 10 friends, it’s a 10% risk of exposure. And so on. To be clear, exposure does not mean that you’ll definitely get sick. But is it worth the risk, given the consequences? [See the inset at left. JA]

Whenever you are closer than 6 feet to another person and not wearing a mask, you are probably helping to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, damaging the US economy, killing jobs and potentially causing more people to die.

The Silver Bullet

The other reason to try to slow the spread of COVID-19 is that it buys us time to find a silver bullet. There are several potential silver bullets in the works, including many vaccines under development based on four different strategies. In addition, countless existing drugs are being tested for therapeutic efficacy and scientists are trying to develop fast and accurate self-tests. Any of these may be helpful but all take time. We can all help to buy that time.

Recently, we’ve seen a new study that shows that 13% of people who had a symptomatic COVID infection and 40% of people who had an asymptomatic COVID infection, have no detectable antibodies 2 – 3 months later. That means that even if you’ve had COVID, you might be able to get it again. This is true with other coronaviruses, such as the common cold. We may lose our immunity relatively quickly after infection. So, try not to get COVID-19 the first time . . .  or there might be a second time.

Until we have that silver bullet we have two very effective strategies to battle this disease: 1) Wear a mask, practice good social distancing, wash your hands well and frequently and be careful with surfaces; or, 2) Lock down the economy. Can we all agree that #1 is the better way to go?

The Logic of Improvised Masks

While the science is not yet definitive, here’s what we think we know based on studies of SARS-CoV-1 (a 2002 coronavirus that had a 9.6% mortality rate) and our understanding of filtration, gravity, etc.

In order to get sick, you need to “receive” about 1,000 virus particles. They’re very small and in the scheme of things, that’s not an exceptional amount. If you receive less than 1,000 virus particles, you probably won’t get COVID-19.

1,000 virus particles must be “expelled” in a relatively large droplet (sneeze, cough, yell, karaoke, etc.; – yes, even that last one is true). Large droplets are subject to gravity. They fall. It’s hard for a large droplet to travel 6 feet between two people at face height. That’s the reason social distancing works.

If you have COVID-19 and wear an improvised mask, any large droplets expelled by you will get caught (mostly) in the mask. While the virus particles will “aerosolize” (leave the mask, inwards and outwards as you breathe), this will happen slowly over time. Anyone around you is unlikely to inhale enough of the virus to get sick.

However, if you wear an improvised mask and a non-socially distanced infected friend does not, large droplets expelled by them can land on your mask. These virus particles will aerosolize (leave the mask, inwards and outwards as you breathe), and while this will happen slowly over time, you are likely to inhale half of them as you spend equal amounts of time inhaling and exhaling. It takes more time but it’s still easy to breathe in more than 1,000 particles.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to matter if you inhale 1,000 particles all at once or over the course of a day. Either way, you’ll get sick. Your improvised mask provides very little protection for you. Instead, it provides protection for the people who are near you. If everyone near you wears an improvised mask and you do not, you are the one who is most protected even as, ironically, you are potentially infecting everybody else. Don’t be a COVID-19 propagator. Wear a mask AND social distance yourself. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

We can stay safe and help keep the economy moving and our people employed. Or not.

Remember:

Whenever you are closer than 6 feet to another person and not wearing a mask, you are probably helping to accelerate the spread of COVID-19, damaging the US economy, killing jobs and potentially causing more people to die.

For more information on COVID-19, my favorite non-partisan site is: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

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* Because we are unable to test 100% of our population to determine actual infection numbers, mortality rate is not precisely known. However, if we’re sticking with integers, a 1% death rate currently appears to be a better estimate than the original 2% estimate from WHO’s analysis of the Wuhan outbreak. Most current, credible estimates put the infection fatality rate (IFR) somewhere in the 0.4% to 1.4% range. We will have more definitive numbers in the future.

Dave Nelsen is the:

¤ Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
¤ Vistage Worldwide Speaker of the Year

You can reach him at [email protected].

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Nagging COVID Questions


Reading time – 3:21  .  .  .

On The Hunt

It makes good sense not to put all our eggs into one basket in pursuit of a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19. That’s why we have Operation Warp Speed, wherein we are stimulating the development of vaccines along several different avenues to find one that works and to do it as quickly as possible.

We just awarded $1.6 billion to Novavax to develop enough doses of a vaccine to treat 50 million Americans (2 doses each) by early 2021. If they can do that it will be quite an accomplishment, because the world record for vaccine development for a new virus is 5 years.

In addition, “.  .  .  an international group, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, awarded up to $388 million to Novavax in May to make its coronavirus vaccine available globally.” In addition, “In June, Novavax secured a $60 million contract from the Defense Department to guarantee the delivery of 10 million doses to vaccinate American troops for the coronavirus.”

That’s a lot of money to give to a company that has never brought a product all the way to market. Why would we do that?

The Trump Administration is doing its best to prevent transparency of where our taxpayer money goes in pursuit of a vaccine. What we know is that we have sent $4 billion to a total of 6 companies to produce a vaccine and we haven’t a clue how those companies were chosen, whether they have a track record suggesting they might succeed, if there are penalties for failing to produce a vaccine or where the money is coming from – i.e. which existing programs will become underfunded in order to pay these companies to develop safe and effective vaccines five times faster than such a thing has ever been done.

Because of Trump’s secrecy we also don’t know whether there has been favoritism or any other shady behavior involved in these significant public financial awards to private companies. This may all be on the up-and-up; maybe not. But the secrecy may well become damaging to our future health and the sleight of hand would be a scandal in any other administration. Today, it’s just another day at the White House.

Oh, and by the way, vaccines are only valuable to us if We the People take them, and there is considerable resistance to doing so. Only half of us say we’ll get the vaccine when it’s available; 30% are unsure what they’ll do; and 20% of us will refuse a COVID-19 vaccine. How will we deal with that in the absence of strong scientific, medical, social and moral national leadership?

Our Government and Your Health

The mission statement of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) begins this way:

The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices;

Sounds great. We want them to ensure the safety and efficacy of the medicines we put in our bodies. That’s why they did the slow work to make sure that if you contract malaria that hydroxychloroquine will be both effective against the disease and safe for you to use.

They didn’t do all the same work looking into that drug when used to treat COVID-19. But they did review its use in VA hospitals and found that it was useless against the coronavirus and an all too likely side effect of that malaria drug used against the coronavirus was death.

Now a Henry Ford study is claiming that the FDA review was flawed and – surprise! – Donald Trump is using that claim to once again promote hydroxychloroquine as a preventative and a treatment for COVID-19.

In the absence of a standard FDA approval based on its guidelines and procedures for safety, efficacy and security, why would Trump promote this drug to fight COVID-19? He’s a total know-nothing about medical and pharmacological science and has no authority to prescribe medications. That leaves us wondering about his motivation for his outrageous insistence on using this drug that has the potential to kill Americans. What’s in it for Trump to do that? Who is benefiting? As always, follow the money.

Schools

Click me

Last week Trump told us that he will “put pressure on governors and everyone else” to fully open schools in fall.

  • Nobody knows how to safely open schools in the presence of this pandemic and no nation has ever tried to send kids back to school with a virus raging at the level this one is in America. Said one school nurse in New York, “It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette with our kids and our staff,”

  • Click me

    Shouldn’t we instead consider the CDC’s clearly and consistently outlined dangers from this disease and give strong consideration to its recommendations for “opening” as we make decisions for our kids? And doesn’t our own common sense scream in our ears not to do stupid stuff?

  • Gambling with our kids’ health just isn’t a great idea. And caving in to the unhinged and self-serving demands of Donald Trump is exactly as nuts as it sounds.
Where Do You Get Your Information?

This is for our rugged individuals who refuse direction that impinges on their individual freedom or who simply don’t trust easily.

Karen Hughes

If you were to receive your coronavirus advice from a conservative Republican and if the advice were strong, clear and consistent, would you be willing to set aside your personal desires in order to do your part for the welfare of us all, including you?

Then read this essay by Karen Hughes, counselor to the president and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs during the George W. Bush administration. Yes, that kind of conservative Republican. Then put on your mask whenever you leave home, because we can defeat this pandemic if at least 95% of us take this simple step.

And send along a link to Hughes’ essay to your friends and family who have found reasons not to wear a mask. Surely, they don’t want to put us all at greater risk, so help them to get the message.

Separate and Timely Issue: Voting By Mail

The president, vice-president and a significant proportion of senators and congressmen vote by mail. So do most of our military personnel, as do citizens who travel. Millions of people routinely vote by mail and there isn’t even a whisper of voter fraud to be heard, except what comes from the fraud-spouting mouths of politicians who are afraid for their jobs should the people make their voices heard and the majority at last rules.

Click me to learn about voting by mail in your state.

Because you don’t want to stand in line for hours with unmasked voters, you need to learn what to do to ensure you can vote by mail. Here’s a link if you live in Illinois and here’s a link if you’re a Wisconsin resident. Every state has its own website and procedures, so check for yours. I recommend doing a search on “vote by mail in ______” replacing the underscore with the name of your state. And don’t include the quotation marks in your search. Or you can click on the logo to the left and they’ll direct you. Pay careful attention to the instructions for your state because you’ll have to apply for a mail-in or absentee ballot within a defined and limited time range. Then VOTE!

Bonus Question

There are 195 countries in the world. For 10 points, list each country that erects statues to and names their military bases for traitors to their country. Submit your answer below.

Special hint (we normally don’t offer hints): This list is very short.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Pence


Reading time – 1:51  .  .  .
·
This is offered on the eve of our 3-millionth COVID-19 case, with over 130,000 Americans dead. Most of our dead would never have even become infected, much less have died, if we had bold leadership focused on our individual and collective welfare. (See the Dying for Leadership section of this post from June 21.)
·
Mike Pence is nominally leading our Coronavirus Task Force, the job of which is to say many things which have no connection to reality and are entirely misleading and unhelpful. It’s the administration’s pat on the back of our hand to keep us quiet as we die from this pandemic, gasping our last breaths from a ventilator hose in a hospital. Alone.
·
Here’s Steve Schmidt’s Twitter feed as published, June 26, 2020:
·
“Mike Pence will pray. He believes in the power of prayer not so much as a means to commune with Providence but rather to advance his political agenda. He believes prayer is a “cure” to homosexuality because he believes Gay Americans are less than. He Prays for no deaths in the
·
“same moment he knows the cause of death is now the policies of the Administration and the unforgivable negligence, idiocy, malfeasance and incompetence of Trump. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with power and politics. Pence is a profoundly
“Cynical and insincere man. It is clear he has no regrets from his work with the Cigarette companies and their campaign to deny the health danger of smoking. He has risen on a tide of sanctimony and a talent for squinting with pious conviction in defense of the indefensible.
·
“Mike Pence will pray and America will suffer and die. This most obsequious of Trumps bootlickers and Vassals, Pence has shamed himself for four years defending all he once condemned. He is a political whore without equal. If only he loved his country a tenth as much as loved
·

“His position of power. [See point #4 of this post from June 28] He is Trumps faithful adjutant. The death, economic collapse, division, decline and chaos in our country are every bit as much his ignominious legacy as they are Trumps. @ProjectLincoln. No American should look at this contemptible man without scorn.

·

From The Onion, of course. Click the pic for the short satire.

“Prayer is not a strategy. Prayer is not an excuse. None of this had to be. It has come to be because of Trump/Pence. MAGA has turned to catastrophe. If there is to be prayer let it be that America be liberated from these miscreants and fools and that the rancid tide of division

·
“And racism they have stoked and nurtured begins to recede so the American nation can heal and recover. If Mike Pence is to pray let it to be ask Providence’s favor and forgiveness for the tragedy he has helped architect.”
·
End of Twitter Feed
·
Brothers and sisters, let me hear your AMEN! Sing it loud and clear on November 3.
·
Bonus question:

Who benefits from the human suffering and our national economic enfeebling caused by our bumbling pandemic response?

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A Most Unusual Fourth of July


Reading time – 3:11  .  .  .

My post last Wednesday – What’s Most Important – was about the baseline, the sine qua non obligation of any President of the United States: national security. It is the president’s solemn, sworn duty to protect our nation and our people from foreign threats. Yet now we are at greater risk because this president has once again failed us, as Russia pays bounties to Taliban fighters to kill Americans.

Trump is always in attack/excuses/blame mode and he didn’t disappoint this time. First he claimed the story was fake news. Then he claimed he had never been briefed, that he didn’t know anything about it. Then he said it was a hoax. But he can’t know that it’s a hoax if he doesn’t know anything about it, so there’s some lying going on.

Regardless, that brings us to the obvious: it doesn’t matter what Trump’s perfidious story is. What matters is that the Russians – Trump’s BFF, Putin – are paying to get our people killed and Trump not only hasn’t done a thing about it, but he’s letting it continue.

How do you think the world feels about America as Trump once again goes subservient to Putin and fails to protect and defend? That question has an answer: pity.

Today’s Russian murder story is heaped atop our national death spiral, now accelerating past 50,000 conscripts per day and over 129,000 dead.

Thanks to Trump’s ongoing failures, there are no holiday parades, few fireworks displays, next to no way to safely gather with our families and fellow citizens. At the same time, our troops are in greater danger. This is a most unusual Fourth of July that teaches us what we Americans need to understand quickly.

If we allow Trump to fold in the face of Russian aggression and at the same time allow this pandemic disease to decimate our country; if we allow our economy to collapse; if we fail to at last learn the lessons of our racism; if we continue to put Bandaids on the gushing wound of police brutality; we will cede world leadership to the dictators Trump worships and democracy will be over. Ref: Trump’s “Nuremberg rally” at Mt. Rushmore on Friday.

The good news is that we seem to be awakening from our crippling national slumber.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA

 


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What’s Most Important


Reading time – 2:12  .  .  .

Let’s see if we can zero in on what’s most important about the Russian bounty on the heads of American military personnel in Afghanistan.

What’s most important actually isn’t that Vladimir Putin set up this incentive to the Taliban to murder our troops. And it isn’t a bit surprising that Putin has denied what our intelligence people have found and about which they are 100% certain. Lying and killing is what Putin does. Just ask his political rivals. Oh, wait; you can’t do that because he killed them.

And what’s most important isn’t that Trump wasn’t told what has been happening. There isn’t even the remotest possibility that our intelligence people, including the DNI, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, director of the CIA, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense and others weren’t aware of Putin’s incentive to murder months ago. And their being aware of it and understanding the lethal implications for our troops and our national security means that there isn’t a chance that this slightly indirect act of war wasn’t brought to the president a long time ago.

It was in the PDB – the President’s Daily Briefing – but, of course, Trump doesn’t read and rarely reviews any PDB and refuses to hear bad things about Russia. However, our security types know that he doesn’t read and would have brought this critical issue to this president in various other ways that would get his attention and focus. There would have been walk-in meetings; short PowerPoint presentations using only single-syllable words; crayon and coloring book narratives; and Choose-Your-Own Adventure comic books. They would have had a beautiful model in a tiny bathing suit and heels parade past the Resolute desk waving pictures of dead American personnel with captions reading “PUTIN’S BOUNTY.” Our national security people would have used whatever it might take to get this president to absorb the key information.

In other words, there isn’t even a small possibility that Trump didn’t know about this until the past few days, as he has hollowly claimed.* Even that isn’t what’s most important.

Here’s what’s most important about this scandal:

Our military people are being murdered and Commander in Chief Trump has done nothing about it.

Click this pic and watch the video. Then  send this to independents and Trump supporters you know.

No threats of military action. No sanctions. No “Back off!” call to Putin. No coordination with NATO partners. No counter measures at all. Trump has sold out our military people.

I really don’t care what Putin has on Trump – pictures and videos, evidence of money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, whatever – except when it results in traitorous actions against our people and our country by the President of the United States.

Our people and our country are what’s most important and Trump is betraying both.

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*From Congressman Brad Schneider’s (D, IL-10) newsletter of June 30, 2020:

“.  .  .   yesterday it was reported that as early as April, 2019 [emphasis mine – ed.] U.S. officials were aware of evidence of a Russian effort to pay bounties for the killing of U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan. Further reports indicate that President Trump received written intelligence on the Russian actions as far back as February. I spoke about this issue on the House floor this morning.”

Finally, a curious comment

The mayor of Tampa, Florida reported on Juiy 1 that they are experiencing a significant spike in coronavirus cases among 20- & 30-somethings. This comes just a few short weeks after the bars and restaurants in Tampa were re-opened.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA

 


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Full Explanation


Reading time – 4:15  .  .  .

I’ve been clubbing Republicans for a long time. Let me be fair to them and say, in all humility and from the heart, that every bit of it is deserved.

I’ve called them things like “invertebrates” and “jellyfish” specifically for refusing the call from the very values they claim to hold. Instead, they have consistently knuckled under to Trump and allowed his evil doings to ratchet our country downward. What I saw was simple cowardice. It turns out the explanation for their behavior is far more complex and nuanced than I had imagined.

Anne Applebaum’s remarkable essay History Will Judge the Complicit, is a stunning and thorough analysis of collaboration with the Trumpian assault on our country. It’s published in the July/August edition of The Atlantic under the title.The Collaborators.

Applebaum unmasks what is at work to influence otherwise principled people to relinquish their values and submit to the will of this hateful, self-serving president. Her work is long and detailed and draws on clear historical parallels – yes, this has happened before. If you have ever asked, “How could otherwise good people sell their souls to a tyrant?” I urge you to read her piece in its entirety for the answer.

Here’s a summary of the rationalizations Trump collaborators use.

1. We can use this moment to achieve great things. This is the rationalization used by the true believers. They ignore the abhorrent to achieve something they think is important, like seating conservative judges.

2. We can protect the country from the president. This is the rationalization of people like Gary Cohn, Trump’s first economic advisor, as well as Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s umpteenth chief of staff and by “Anonymous,” the author of the New York Times piece describing Trump’s erratic behavior, his inability to concentrate, his ignorance and more. Cohn and Kelly are gone from the administration now, so they have no influence and can no longer protect the country. Worse, they have yet to speak out and, “their silence now continues to serve the president’s purposes.”

3. I, personally, will benefit. Nobody says this out loud, but Trump’s Cabinet heads and their staffs are full of self-serving industry insiders, lobbyists and incompetent drones. Think: Sonny Perdue and his vigilantes of industry association lobbyists now regulating their own industries.

4. I must remain close to power. It’s the “intoxicating experience of power, and the belief that proximity to a powerful person bestows higher status.” Applebaum wrote, “A friend told me that each time he sees Lindsey Graham, ‘he brags about having just met with Trump’ while exhibiting ‘high school’ levels of excitement, as if ‘a popular quarterback has just bestowed some attention on a nerdy debate-club leader.'”

“The Russian language  .  .  .  has a word – prisposoblenets – that means ‘a person skilled in the act of compromise and adaptation, who intuitively understands what is expected of him and adjusts his beliefs and conduct accordingly.”

5. LOL nothing matters. “If there is no such thing as moral and immoral, then everyone is implicitly released from the need to obey any rules.

“If the president doesn’t respect the Constitution, then why should I? If the president can cheat in elections, then why can’t I? If the president can sleep with porn stars, then why can’t I? .  .  .  Nothing means anything, rules don’t matter, and the president is the carnival king.”

6. My side is flawed, but the political opposition is much worse. It’s about portraying the opposition as an existential threat and is seen in the accusations against liberalism and cultural degradation that they claim Hillary Clinton would have brought. It’s the flood of rationalizations to get the judges that conservatives want and the Evangelicals to get the path to salvation they hallucinate is needed.

“If you are convinced we are living in the End Times [included in the list of these believers are Barr, Pompeo and Pence], then anything the president does can be forgiven.”

7. I am afraid to speak out. This, of course, is the spinelessness explanation. It is what led Republican lawmakers to mock and whine and rail at Democratic House leaders during the impeachment hearings and to refuse to judge Trump guilty of the nefarious, unconstitutional acts they knew he had committed. They had to be playground bad kids to satisfy the biggest playground bully. It’s the extreme of refusing to speak against the president’s wrongdoing, the wrongdoing that violates their stated principles;  it’s hypocrisy at the highest levels.

In speaking of our economic catastrophe and the death of over 125,000 Americans to a pandemic we could instead have fought well and thereby protected the thousands who didn’t have to die, Applebaum writes,

“This utter disaster was avoidable. If the Senate had removed the president by impeachment a month earlier; if the Cabinet had invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment as soon as Trump’s unfitness became clear; if the anonymous and off-the-record officials who knew of Trump’s incompetence had jointly warned the public; if they had not, instead, been so concerned about maintaining their proximity to power; if senators had not been scared of their donors; if Pence, Pompeo, and Barr had not believed that God had chosen them to play special roles in this ‘biblical moment’ – if any of these things had gone differently, then thousands of deaths and a historic economic collapse might have been avoided.

“The price of collaboration in America has already turned out to be extraordinarily high.”

——————————

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Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Continues To Be Frighteningly True


Watch this video from back in the good ol’ days.

Drop mic.

—————————–

Call John Bolton whatever accurate and disparaging names you prefer, nothing in what he’s said in promoting his book strains belief. Trump is exactly what you know him to be.

Drop mic again

—————————–

“WASHINGTON — Four months into a pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black, Latino, and Native American communities, leading minority health experts within the Trump administration remain conspicuously quiet and have conducted minimal outreach to communities of color.”

Makes sense. Why would Trump alienate his base and waste White House podium time on people who won’t vote for him?

Drop mic yet again.

—————————–

The Future of COVID-19 – Click on any chart for more

Higher on this chart = faster COVID-19 case doubling rate = WORSE – like it is now

The Narcissist-in-Chief continues to lie about the pandemic and wants to curtail testing, while the Vice President claims the pandemic is all but over. These charts tell us that our over-worked, front line healthcare workers likely don’t agree, nor do our citizens who are gasping for breath in our maxed-out hospitals.

Drop mic one more time.

—————————–

An Open Letter

 

Dear Undecided Voter,
·
Really? You’re undecided? Seriously?!?!

Click me to download a PDF of The U.S. Constitution

·
Still clinging to hope,
·
Your Constitution

Co-signed & endorsed by:

    • Your job
    • Your children’s food
    • Your retirement
    • Your health – perhaps your life
    • Your safety
    • Your freedom
    • Your right to vote
    • Your dreams for your children and grandchildren
    • The rule of law
        • and
    • We The People – like it says to the right.

It all continues to be frighteningly true.

Last time: Drop mic.

——————————

Click me

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

My Weekly Reader


Reading time – 3:57  .  .  .

We’re taking a break from the gigantic stories of the day, the pandemic, racism, our teetering economy and our perennially incompetent government to have a look at other vitally important stories that belong on the front page but have been pushed back to Section B beneath the fold.

Bully Barr

Did you ever wonder why Attorney General William Barr is such an immoral creep? Turns out it’s a lifelong obsession of his. Read about his commitment to being a bully here.

Popeye Point

There is a never-ending commentary on the Sociopath-In-Chief and the anti-democratic, self-serving and illegal things he does. So, it isn’t the slightest shock to learn that Trump begged President Xi of China to buy more farm products from the U.S. so that Trump could win farm states and get reelected. Hint: That’s the same kind of presidential election tampering that got him rightly impeached.

Meanwhile, there are the moral and ethical perversions of President Caligula that by now seem almost normal. Here’s a smart analysis by someone who knows a bit about such things. Rabbi Wolkoff has reached his Popeye point, where it’s all he can stands, he can’t stands no more.

Foreign Danger

Perhaps you think international affairs and national security are important things. I have warned about the danger to the U.S. (here’s one example) when weakened by things like a pandemic, a ravaged economy, deeply damaged alliances with friends, civil unrest and, of course, our sucking up to tyrants. But that was just me talking. How about the view from an expert with decades of experience and keen insight? Have a look at what Richard Haass, now President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has to say.

Anti-Corruption Wins!

Just taking a chance here, but you might care about corruption in government. I’ve done countless presentations on the corrosive impact of big money in government because it is both damaging to the Constitution and it’s anti-democratic.

For example, since those kids and teachers at Sandy Nook Elementary School were massacred 8 years ago 90% of Americans have wanted universal background checks on the sale of any firearm. Since that atrocity there have been mass shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Mother Emanuel AME Church, the Pulse Nightclub, the Las Vegas outdoor concert, the Sutherland Springs, TX church, Ft. Hood, the El Paso Walmart, Tree of Life Synagogue and more and we still don’t have those background checks. (BTW – had those Sandy Hook kids not been gunned down they’d be entering high school this fall.) Watch this video (scroll down just a bit to find it) by the remarkably clear-headed and hugely effective folks at Represent.us. They’re successfully fighting the corruption that drives Congress to ignore We the People.

Migrant Health

Trump has waged a war on immigrants, regardless of their documentation, ever since the abhorrent escalator rant against Mexicans in 2015. That war went on to include his baby and child cage farms, his ripping babies from their mothers’ arms and separating them for life, his slandering all people from “shit hole countries” and far more. For those who have made it to our shores there is nothing easy, including healthcare during this pandemic, especially for migrant workers, many of whom are immigrants.

Download and read this piece of advice from Diane Harrison at HealthPSA.info and pass it along to those in need, because they’re pretty well forgotten otherwise. Like you and me, they want to live and they want their children to live, and that’s much harder for migrant workers in the age of coronavirus.

Dying for Leadership

It turns out that the Columbia University study that I reported to you on May 24 showing that approximately 30% of American COVID-19 deaths were preventable was right in concept, but things are far worse than they calculated.

A new Oxford University study detailed in “STAT” shows that 70% – 99% of American coronavirus deaths could have been prevented. That would have required early, aggressive, responsible, competent national leadership. We didn’t have that. We still don’t. One could argue that the avoidable death of 84,000 – 118,000 Americans is in the past – nothing we can do about that now. One would be right – and completely missing the point.

That same inept or completely absent leadership continues to allow and indirectly encourage massive numbers of unnecessary deaths of Americans. Read about it here.

Weekly Snark

Surely you’ll recall that President Trump proudly proclaimed following a visit with the brutal, murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in 2018 that they, “fell in love.” That suggests a solution to several issues.

Since Trump and Kim love each other, Trump should move to North Korea to live with his lover. Maybe Kim will allow Trump to build Trump Tower Pyongyang or a golf course at Mar-a-Demilitarized-Zone. Of course, since it’s a closed society and nobody from the rest of the world vacations there, both properties would go bankrupt. That would be okay, though, because for Trump that’s just another genius day at the office.

Also, each year the Darwin Awards recognize those who have done the most to improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it. Could it be that last night we had 6,100 applicants in Tulsa?

Trump had bragged it would be 19,000 or 100,000 or a million, but he couldn’t fill the place – gobs of empty, appropriately blue seats in the arena – and there was no overflow crowd to watch him on the outdoor look-at-me big screen. Still, there were 6,100 Darwin volunteers. Thanks go to MSA for the Darwinian insight.

From the ‘Hood

10-year-old Elisa asks, “What’s orange and ugly?”

You supply the answer.

Closing question:

Trump is notoriously ignorant on even the most basic things. For example, John Bolton reports in his new book that Trump asked if Finland is part of Russia. Yes, really. That kind of demonstration of his boundless ignorance goes on every day.

He’s clueless enough that he couldn’t pass even a middle school geography test, much less succeed at a top university. Plus, payoffs are in his blood (think: Stormy Daniels). Given his boundless, bottomless ignorance and reliance on pay-to-play, how much did he or his daddy pay for his Wharton diploma?

Far more important: how much are we paying for his constant fraudulence?

——————————

Click me

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Comparative Disasters


Reading time – 2:47  .  .  .

I used to wake up in the morning and turn on the TV as I made coffee. I did so with trepidation over the anticipated shock of learning what might have happened overnight. Did we invade another country? Did we insult another ally? What new lies is the president telling us?

That was during the George W. Bush presidency.

He lied about the yellow cake. He lied about the aluminum tubes. He lied about Saddam being in cahoots with al Qaeda. He lied about WMDs. He lied about pursuing Osama bin Laden. He lied about the Taliban. He lied about Mission Accomplished. He lied about tax cuts.

His accomplishments over 8 years were:

    1. Two unnecessary and possibly illegal wars – BOTH OF WHICH ARE STILL GOING ON. That’s not an abstract concept. People continue to die. Plus, the wars were “off-budget” – essentially he lied about the financial cost, too.
    2. Complete disruption of the Middle-East, which invited ISIS, the Syrian civil war and Assad’s atrocities. It eventually led to ceding the Middle-east to Russia and Iran.
    3. Multiple tax cuts that caused the largest budget deficits in history. We will never get out from under that debt.
    4. He abandoned victims of Hurricane Katrina.
    5. He managed to fulfill his two stated goals: first, he “finished” his daddy’s war against Saddam; second, he got to be a wartime president. Goody-goody for him.

There is more, but it’s pretty much a continuation of this list of sordid “accomplishments.” But one thing he did not try to do is to destroy our culture, our democracy or our Constitution.

I still turn on the TV as I make coffee in the morning and I continue to have a sense of dread over what I’ll learn the president has destroyed overnight. Now, though, my dread is deeper, which is a hard thing to admit, considering the comparative is pointless, unjustified, unending war. But regular readers of these posts know well my view of today’s Republicans as invertebrates, having surrendered their spines in cowardly supplication to the playground bully living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Together they are dismantling everything.

The funny thing about “tearing it all down” is that something has to fill the void and I’ve yet to hear from any of the destroyers of our bedrock an acceptable candidate for that job. All we’re offered is a dictator wannabee and destruction.

If that works for you, there’s nothing you need to do.

If that doesn’t work for you, you better dig in to help us change course, because our course is set in a downward direction and if we do nothing, we’ll continue into oblivion. I don’t think you or I will like what we find there.

Grab a shovel and get to work.

And speaking of disasters  .  .  .

“FDA revokes emergency use ruling for hydroxychloroquine, the drug touted by Trump as a Covid-19 therapy”

 

It’s been known for quite a while that hydroxychloroquine wasn’t reliably effective in treating Covid-19 and that a not-uncommon side effect was death. Nevertheless, Trump promoted it, even saying that he was taking the drug. Of course, he lies about so many things we’ll likely never know if he was actually taking hydroxychloroquine. The more interesting question is why this anti-science, medical know-nothing would promote this drug like a carnival barker peddling snake oil.

The “carnival barker peddling snake oil” part is obvious: that’s what he always does about everything. But why this drug? You don’t suppose that he has some pals in the pharmaceutical industry, do you?

——————————

Click me

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Out of Control


Reading time – 3:49  .  .  .

The tectonic plates are shifting rapidly, leaving lots of us wobbling a bit and looking for something secure to hold onto. Indeed, a recent NBC/WSJ poll reported that 80% of Americans think our country is “out of control.”

I don’t know what “out of control” means. Absent a restating of the survey question to something specific, all we have is speculation as to its meaning. I’ll take a stab at that.

My guess is that this poll suggests that with the pandemic well underway and continuing to worsen, coupled with police murders and weeks of street demonstrations, plus the ongoing divisiveness made worse by the President, Americans are agitated. It feels like chaos in our lives. The familiar has disappeared and that makes us feel out of control. We humans don’t much like feeling out of control, so perhaps that’s what the term “out of control” in this poll means,* although if you’re Black this might feel like the beginning of being in control – at last.

Given the enormous outpouring of sorrow, anger, frustration and indignation triggered by the murder of George Floyd, and given the ubiquitous Black Lives Matter imperative found on T-shirts, on hand-carried signs and in enormous yellow letters on the street leading to the White House, it would be reasonable to think that this is a moment of change, a moment for progress; that this is a time that will begin to stop racial atrocities and begin a national reform. I’ll give you a “maybe” on that – here’s why.

People have tried for over 100 years to create federal legislation to stop lynchings, but those efforts were always frustrated by the work of southern legislators who either liked having the option of lynching open to them or were cowards who caved into the hateful demands of their segregation loving constituents. That happened over 200 times in the first half of the 20th century during some of the ugliest parts of Jim Crow.

Now the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching bill has been passed in the House and been carried to the Senate. It should be in front of that august body to deliberate over it for not more than 8 minutes and 46 seconds and then passed unanimously. But that isn’t what’s happening.

In a blazing, brain-searing moment of déjà vu, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has stuck his screwdriver into the spokes of the wheels of justice just as they were actually beginning to turn. He has stalled the process.

Rand Paul just can’t seem to find a way to support a bill that would make lynching a federal crime and help to stop it. He claims that he wants to narrow the focus so that minor offenses don’t result in major jail time. He has his finely tuned principles, you see, and he adheres to them to the point of tying up the bill. It seems that the principle of black men and boys staying alive just isn’t quite as important to him, so he’s making the perfect the enemy of the good. Rand Paul is way out of control.

Let’s be clear: This bill is about lynching! You know, binding a man’s hands behind his back, tightening a rope around his neck, then dropping him until the rope snaps tight and breaks his neck. Or he just dangles and gurgles as he slowly suffocates. Lynching!

At the same time there is a police reform bill making its way through Congress and it has nearly 200 co-sponsors. Fantastic! Here’s the key question: Why aren’t there 535 co-sponsors? What is it that the foot-draggers just don’t understand when they see hundreds of thousands of people in the streets and demonstrations in every city of our country? The foot-draggers are out of control.

But, don’t worry about those guys, because we have something for them.

Dear foot-draggers,

Figure it out fast, or we will make you available for alternative employment in November.

Most sincerely,

We The People

Last thing

President Trump was accompanied by Ivanka and Attorney General Big Lies Barr from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a deeply spiritual religious moment. Just kidding! Trump knows nothing about spirituality or religion. He does know about photo ops and that’s why he was there.

This less than divine moment came after anonymous thugs from various federal agencies had tear gassed, shot, pepper sprayed and beaten peaceful demonstrators whom they then corralled using horses to make Lafayette Square Park ready for the president and his unholy entourage to stroll to the aforementioned, disingenuous photo op. Included in the president’s group was Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was wearing his camouflage fatigues and looked like a battlefield commander who was entirely complicit in the martial law coup.

Apparently, good sense finally caught up with Gen. Milley on June 11, when he apologized for his actions, saying his participation was “a mistake” and saying his presence “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Ya think?!?!!

Better late than never, Gen. Milley, but the visual of your presence at that reprehensible event is seared into the public record and no apology will erase the fact that, through you, our military was involved in a domestic attack on innocent American citizens doing nothing more than exercising their rights as citizens.

You’re Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. MIlley. Top dog, main man. You’re supposed to know better. Where were you when We The People needed you? You were way out of control.

————————–

*Control is an illusion, grasshopper.

——————————

Click me

Ed. note: We need to spread the word so that we make a critical difference, so

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Sometimes I change my opinions because I’ve learned more about an issue. So, educate me. That’s what the Comments section is for.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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