Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

There are only two numbers from this week you need to know if you want to understand the presidential election: 1.3 million and 59,886.

 

That’s the number of new applications for unemployment insurance last week and (by one estimate) the number of new coronavirus cases from Thursday. They’re both disastrous figures for the nation — and for President Donald Trump, who has no apparent plan to deal with either.

 

New infections hit yet another daily record on July 9, according to the New York Times. Cases are rising in 36 states plus Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, DC. Hospitals are filling up in Houston, Phoenix and more. Supplies of personal protective equipment are running low. Testing, while considerably better than a few months ago, is still struggling to keep up. As a result, several states (including California, Florida and Texas) have partially reversed their reopenings and many more have paused.

 

As for the labor market? Despite better-than-expected numbers in April and May, the overwhelming story is that weekly job losses are at what would’ve been a record pace before 2020. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith puts it:

 

The U.S. is in a very odd situation. Even as the official unemployment rate falls, the health of the underlying labor market is deteriorating as the coronavirus pandemic drags on. The country is in the middle of two simultaneous downturns — a short-term seizure caused by fear of coronavirus and a longer-term slump that will look more like a traditional recession. Unfortunately, the latter is just beginning.

There’s no way to predict the direct effects of the pandemic on the election; there simply isn’t a precedent for it. But if there's one relationship that is reliable, it's that hard economic times are terrible for incumbent presidents. It’s possible that voters would give Trump a mulligan on a recession directly tied to something beyond his control. The problem is that the longer the pandemic drags on, the less likely it is that they’ll consider either the public-health disaster or the economic fallout inevitable — especially since the damage has receded in other rich nations.

 

And especially since Trump has so little to offer. Since mid-April, he has basically abandoned any attempt to control the virus. His only consistent message has been to ask everyone to resume normal life. He's recently been repeating the preposterous claim that the spike in cases is simply an artifact of more testing, which hardly accounts for the hospital beds filling up in state after state. Trump's task force established guidelines for reopening businesses, but the president has urged governors to ignore them; now that his focus is on getting schools to open, he's pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gut their recommendations.

 

As for the economy, Trump seems far more willing to provide continued relief and stimulus than the “wait and see" Senate Republicans. But his specific proposals aren't particularly well thought-out or suited for the job (he really wants to restore the deductibility of business-entertainment expenses, which seems more like a long-term benefit for people in the hospitality business than a way to immediately boost the economy). And he hasn't put together a sustained push for new legislation; he's been willing to let Senator Mitch McConnell set the pace, which has meant months of delay. At any rate, as both public-health professionals and economists have been screaming since March, the economy will never be healthy as long as the virus is out of control.

 

The truth is that, in a crisis like this, there just isn’t a substitute for sustained, serious presidential action, and Trump has been more of a passive spectator than anything else. And while there is still theoretically time for him to rebound from his desperate standing in the election, it's hard to see how that happens if he doesn't change the way he runs his presidency.

[Zelandakh]

No but face coverings are controversial in any Western country that I am familiar with. They are cumbersome, unnatural, make it more difficult to be understood, etc. But they help prevent a pandemic from growing, so advocate for them with some empathy for anyone who instinctively doesn't like them and tries to find reasons not to wear them.

My suggestion is to call them "veils" and leave Exodus 34:29-35 sprinkled liberally around churches and other meeting places.

The radiant face of Moses

29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32 Afterwards all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

 

33 When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. 34 But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

It does not really matter of conservatives are protecting others from covid or from the radiance of their Lord. Either way works just fine.

[johnu]

No but face coverings are controversial in any Western country that I am familiar with. They are cumbersome, unnatural, make it more difficult to be understood, etc. But they help prevent a pandemic from growing, so advocate for them with some empathy for anyone who instinctively doesn't like them and tries to find reasons not to wear them.

Nobody likes wearing a mask (maybe with the exception of bank robbers and little kids playing). I have no empathy at all for people who refuse to wear a mask without a legitimate medical reason (are there any? and if not a cloth mask, a clear plastic visor shouldn't have any effect on breathing), in violation of store and/or local/state regulations. And I have active disgust for people who refuse to wear a mask because of some warped belief that coronavirus is a hoax and that not wearing a mask is a political statement.

[Winstonm]

There is corruption, There is absolute corruption. And then there is Donald Trump.

 

President Trump on Friday commuted the three-year prison sentence for Republican operative Roger Stone, who was to report to a federal prison on Tuesday after being found guilty of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress.

[y66]

My friend Roger came from a Republican family and was not so convinced as I was, but he was not really a McCarthy supporter either. I went to Roger's 80th birthday party a couple of years ago and he is, to put it mildly, not a Trump supporter. He and some musical friends did a really quite good rendition of the Dead's Ripple. Reach out your hand....

Perhaps at a future party someone will request "He's Gone".

[Cyberyeti]

Nobody likes wearing a mask (maybe with the exception of bank robbers and little kids playing). I have no empathy at all for people who refuse to wear a mask without a legitimate medical reason (are there any? and if not a cloth mask, a clear plastic visor shouldn't have any effect on breathing), in violation of store and/or local/state regulations. And I have active disgust for people who refuse to wear a mask because of some warped belief that coronavirus is a hoax and that not wearing a mask is a political statement.

 

I find mask wearing very difficult. I cough a fair bit as a side effect of medication I take, and sneeze a lot due to the broken way my body processes viruses, I've had the same cold for 18 months. Disposable masks are ridiculously expensive (the only ones in the shops here are £30 for 50, no smaller boxes) and the cloth ones don't seal over my facial hair so my glasses are dripping wet within seconds. So far, I have cloth masks but have only used them twice, on a bus and at the doctors where they are required, and I took my glasses off on those occasions and was basically blind, I could not shop with a mask on.

[hrothgar]

Learn to shave

 

If the Sikh's - who have had religious prohibitions about this for centuries - can do this, you can as well...

[Cyberyeti]

Learn to shave

 

If the Sikh's - who have had religious prohibitions about this for centuries - can do this, you can as well...

 

My beard has been on all my adult life, it's not coming off now. Shaving gave me the most horrendous painful rash whatever I used which is a large part of why I have it.

 

It also doesn't get round the issue that sneezing inside a mask is just horrible and I wouldn't always have time to remove it and get a handkerchief there in time.

[hrothgar]

My beard has been on all my adult life, it's not coming off now. Shaving gave me the most horrendous painful rash whatever I used which is a large part of why I have it.

 

 

God forbid that you might need to inconvenience yourself...

[Winstonm]

I find it staggeringly demoralizing that so few seem to grasp the significance of Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence: Trump is using the powers of the presidency to protect himself from criminal prosecution as Stone is a witness to his wrongdoing - and even admitted as such to a reporter.

 

The 2016 election placed a criminal enterprise in the highest office in the land and granted them near unchallenged powers. He must be not only stopped but brought to justice.

[Cyberyeti]

God forbid that you might need to inconvenience yourself...

 

As in a bad enough rash I can't actually wear a shirt without being in severe pain, stop being so damn patronising

[shyams]

By the way, a thought occurred to me about Trump's future years. AFAIK, as ex-President, he (and Melania? and possibly Baron until he becomes independent?) will be entitled to Secret Service cover.

 

I assume Trump will insist on travelling to his various properties around the world and then invoicing the US Govt. at exorbitant rates for the Secret Service personnel's stay at his property? That's another cute way to make some more cash off the US Govt, no? :rolleyes: :huh:

[johnu]

By the way, a thought occurred to me about Trump's future years. AFAIK, as ex-President, he (and Melania? and possibly Baron until he becomes independent?) will be entitled to Secret Service cover.

 

I assume Trump will insist on travelling to his various properties around the world and then invoicing the US Govt. at exorbitant rates for the Secret Service personnel's stay at his property? That's another cute way to make some more cash off the US Govt, no? :rolleyes: :huh:

If the Manchurian Prisoner is tried, convicted, and sent to prison, where are the Secret Service agents going to stay? Presumably he won't need to be placed in solitary confinement if he has Secret Service agents protecting him when he is outside his prison cell. I would be more than happy to contribute my fair share of this cost.

[johnu]

Tucker Carlson’s Top Writer Quits After Secretly Posting Racist, Sexist Messages: Report

 

The top writer for Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program has resigned after it was revealed he’d secretly posted racist and sexist messages for five years on an online forum, CNN Business reported Friday.

 

Blake Neff, who worked for the right-wing Daily Caller before moving over to Fox News four years ago, had been posting the messages under the pseudonym CharlesXII and sometimes referred to work he did for Carlson in his messages, according to CNN.

It is not confirmed that Carlson was in a rage that Neff saved the most racist and intolerant stuff for his own posts.

 

Fox News 'Strongly Condemns' Behavior of Former Tucker Carlson Writer

 

Yes, Fox Propaganda Channel writers need to save their most racist, white supremacist, and misogynistic nuggets for the on air talent. Their writers are paid good money to come up with vile hateful scripts and they aren't doing their job if they are freelancing on the side.

[Winstonm]

By Robert S. Mueller III

JULY 11, 2020

The work of the special counsel's office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.

 

Russia's actions were a threat to America's democracy. It was critical that they be investigated and understood. By late 2016, the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled to a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate. And the FBI knew that the Russians had done just that: Beginning in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen by Russian military intelligence officers from the Clinton campaign. Other online personas using false names — fronts for Russian military intelligence — also released Clinton campaign emails.

 

Following FBI Director James B. Comey's termination in May 2017, the acting attorney general named me as special counsel and directed the special counsel's office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The order specified lines of investigation for us to pursue, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. One of our cases involved Stone, an official on the campaign until mid-2015 and a supporter of the campaign throughout 2016. Stone became a central figure in our investigation for two key reasons: He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' release of emails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers.

 

We now have a detailed picture of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel's office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate. We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

 

Uncovering and tracing Russian outreach and interference activities was a complex task. The investigation to understand these activities took two years and substantial effort. Based on our work, eight individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities, including senior Russian intelligence officers, were charged with federal crimes.

 

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks' releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

 

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

 

Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information. Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its witnesses. When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those efforts.

 

We made every decision in Stone's case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law. The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.

[y66]

The Republicans Who Want to Destroy Trump by Frank Bruni at NYT

 

Should you have any doubt about how passionately George Conway and the other Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project want to defeat the president, check out their ads.

 

There are dozens at this point, and the best are minute-long masterpieces of derision, miniature operas of contempt, designed to get into President Trump’s head and deep under his skin. That’s exactly where they’ve burrowed.

 

After the release of “

,” which turned Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning in America” commercial on its head, Trump had one of his trademark Twitter meltdowns. He shrieked at Conway in particular, mentioning his marriage to one of Trump’s brashest aides.

 

“I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband,” the president tweeted, “but it must have been really bad.”

 

Such grace. But if George Conway can just shake it off and the Lincoln Project succeeds, he and his fellow refugees from Trump’s Republican Party will find peace and a place in a restored, recognizable political order on the other side. Right?

 

Wrong. They don’t hope to regain control of the Republican Party, because they expect that Trump-ism will survive Trump and that Trump himself won’t shut up simply because voters shut him down.

 

“I personally think that the Republican brand is probably destroyed,” Conway told me. “It’s destroyed by it having become essentially a personality cult.” He said that he formally left the party, changing his voter registration to unaffiliated, some two years ago, and he doesn’t envision being able to return anytime soon.

 

But the Lincoln Project’s full-court press for Joe Biden, which involves social media and grass-roots organizing as well as internet and television ads, doesn’t mean that Conway and company are looking for a welcome mat in the Democratic Party. Not at all.

 

That’s what’s so fascinating about their quest. They’re not fighting to come in from the wilderness. The wilderness is a given. They’re just fighting to get rid of this one sun-hogging, diseased redwood — or orangewood, as the case may be.

 

I asked Conway, “So you’ll be a man without a party for the rest of your days?”

 

“Probably,” he said. “It makes me tremendously sad.”

 

It’s easy to miss or minimize how remarkable the Never Trumpers — at the Lincoln Project and elsewhere — are. That’s partly because they’ve been around almost since Trump’s presidential campaign commenced, so they’ve lost their novelty and some of their luster.

 

But they’ve gained in ranks and grown in determination, to a point where you have to go back to 1972 — when many prominent Democrats endorsed President Richard Nixon, a Republican, over George McGovern, the Democratic nominee — to find anything close.

 

And even that precedent doesn’t quite hold up. As the historian Timothy Naftali told me, the Democrats for Nixon split with him primarily along ideological lines, and they weren’t trying to undermine an incumbent president. Never Trumpers are doing precisely that, and while they have ideological quibbles with Trump, they’re motivated principally by their belief that he’s something of a monster.

 

“It’s an unprecedented moment,” said Charlie Sykes, a founder and editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a Trump-bashing publication begun in 2018 by Trump-disgusted Republicans like him. Sykes no longer considers himself a Republican. He described himself to me as “a politically homeless contrarian conservative.”

 

The Bulwark shares personnel and DNA with Republican Voters Against Trump and Republicans for the Rule of Law, all bastions of Never Trumpers. There’s also a new super PAC called 43 Alumni for Biden, a reference to George W. Bush, the 43rd president. It comprises scores of alumni of his administration who want to see Biden beat Trump, and it intends to release testimonials from former senior Bush administration officials.

 

As for the Lincoln Project, it’s helmed not by a ragtag band of renegades but by a cluster of strategists who worked for Bush, John McCain or Mitt Romney and were well-connected Republican insiders until Trump’s takeover. The anti-Trump rebellion is distinguished by the pedigree of the rebels.

 

And it exists in paradoxical tension with the equally remarkable loyalty that most Republicans give the president. In the same manner that Trump triggers outsize dissent, he inspires outsize support. He’s just plain outsize. Depending on the moment, about 80 percent to 90 percent of voters who identify as Republican tell pollsters that they stand behind Trump.

 

They’re the reason that some political observers see what the Lincoln Project and its kin are doing as an exercise in protracted political suicide. Even if Trump and his minions get a resounding comeuppance in November, “It seems unlikely that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh will apologize to the Cassandras and say, ‘You were right all along!’” Matt Lewis, a conservative, wrote recently in a column in the Daily Beast under the headline “The Never Trumpers May Destroy Him. Then What?”

 

Sykes at The Bulwark conceded: “It’s naïve to think that the Republican Party is going to snap back to sanity anytime soon. The fact that people are talking about Tucker Carlson in 2024 shows you how far they’ve gone.”

 

So does that make these Never Trumpers some uniquely high-minded breed? It’s complicated. While they broke with the Republican Party on principle, they may well have expected the Trump fever to break — and for other Republicans to follow them — in short order. Meanwhile, Never Trump-ism had its perks, or at least its consolations.

 

There’s an especially rapt audience for takedowns of Trump from conservatives, and Never Trumpers have found themselves in high demand as commentators and book authors.

 

Through some of their anti-Trump organizations, funded by donors, some of them have arranged employment no longer available to them in conventional Republican circles. In The Atlantic recently, Andrew Ferguson fairly called out individual Never Trumpers for inconsistency, hypocrisy and opportunism, and raised questions about the degree to which a few of the people with the Lincoln Project are profiting from it.

 

But the most important syllable in Never Trumper is Trump, and Never Trumpers are essentially sowing the seeds of their own diminished relevance by working to get rid of him.

 

That’s why, when I look at them, I see patriotism, though John Weaver — who, along with Conway, helped to found the Lincoln Project — emphasized a different idea when we spoke. He stressed atonement.

 

Trump’s election made him revisit how he and other Republican strategists had paved the way for Trump. For instance, Weaver worked for the man who was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump for president.

 

“Jeff Sessions wouldn’t have gotten to the Senate had I not overseen his race in 1996,” Weaver told me. “Now I look back at that and say, ‘What kind of ***** penance do I have to pay for that?’”

 

Sykes spoke of “a revelation” that he has experienced, courtesy of Trump. “The heart of politics is not about the policy,” he told me. “It’s about the values. I can disagree with you on eight out of 10 issues, but if you’re an honorable, honest, empathetic human being, we can do business.” Trump is none of those things. Biden is most or all of them — and will get Sykes’s vote in November.

 

In exile he and other Never Trumpers have found clarity. They cut to the heart of the matter. That’s reflected in a Lincoln Project ad from late May that begins with a close-up of body bags and then pulls back until those bags form an American flag. These words appear over it: “100,000 Dead Americans. One Wrong President.”

 

I don’t know that they’ll tip the election. But they sure as hell tell it like it is.

[cherdano]

I find mask wearing very difficult. I cough a fair bit as a side effect of medication I take, and sneeze a lot due to the broken way my body processes viruses, I've had the same cold for 18 months. Disposable masks are ridiculously expensive (the only ones in the shops here are £30 for 50, no smaller boxes) and the cloth ones don't seal over my facial hair so my glasses are dripping wet within seconds. So far, I have cloth masks but have only used them twice, on a bus and at the doctors where they are required, and I took my glasses off on those occasions and was basically blind, I could not shop with a mask on.

 

Let me skip the snark, this post makes me as angry as anything I've read in the WC for a while.

 

If you really have to sneeze and cough a lot due to your medical condition - then I am really sorry, but you should stay the *f* out of shops for the time being (by which I mean, until there is a vaccine or Her Majesty's government finally corrects course and achieves a near covid-free Britain). How many people do you want to infect if catch coronavirus? 10? 50? There is R_t, and there is R_cyberyeti.

 

Of course, given that you can buy decent disposable masks on amazon.co.uk at GBP 6.45, delivery in 3-5 days included, and that there are plenty of guides on The Internet on how to prevent glasses from fogging, I can only hope that your health problems are similarly exaggerated and that you have more sense in real life than your post above suggest.

 

You complain you have to take simple pre-cautions to prevent risking the health of others. And have the guts to complain that Richard is patronising. What an **sh***.

[cherdano]

To a large extent, the population has behaved incredibly responsibly in response to covid, when asked to do so be well-communicated and well-reasoned government guidance. This means governments can avoid making up harsh police-enforced strict mandates - as long as there aren't too many Cyberyetis around. If you want to complain about simplistic rules restricting your freedom - well, you yourself are the problem here.

[Cyberyeti]

Let me skip the snark, this post makes me as angry as anything I've read in the WC for a while.

 

If you really have to sneeze and cough a lot due to your medical condition - then I am really sorry, but you should stay the *f* out of shops for the time being (by which I mean, until there is a vaccine or Her Majesty's government finally corrects course and achieves a near covid-free Britain). How many people do you want to infect if catch coronavirus? 10? 50? There is R_t, and there is R_cyberyeti.

 

Of course, given that you can buy decent disposable masks on amazon.co.uk at GBP 6.45, delivery in 3-5 days included, and that there are plenty of guides on The Internet on how to prevent glasses from fogging, I can only hope that your health problems are similarly exaggerated and that you have more sense in real life than your post above suggest.

 

You complain you have to take simple pre-cautions to prevent risking the health of others. And have the guts to complain that Richard is patronising. What an **sh***.

 

I cough and sneeze into a handkerchief, not often, but as hygienically as I can manage and often enough for it to be irritating (coughing in a mask doesn't worry me, it's a dry cough, it's sneezing that's the issue). The warning I get for a sneeze is enough to let go of the trolley and get the handkerchief, but not to remove the mask as well. I've largely given up on deliveries off the net as the complications of the a/b/c in the addresses around me mean I see about half of them, I'm currently in a dispute about something that hasn't arrived, and have missed several medical appointments because I simply never got the letter (the normal postman is fine, but if he's off for the day, the chance of it being delivered anywhere close is quite small and delivery drivers are terrible, I got somebody else's bread yesterday and had to knock on doors to work out whose it was). I have been in near complete isolation anyway so the chance of me having COVID is very very small. I haven't been within 2 metres of anybody for more than a minute for 4+ months and have observed every rule of lockdown to the letter thus far.

 

Also "stay out of shops" is easy to say, less easy to do. I have nobody to shop for me, am not on the govt's list of priority delivery people so would have waited weeks for a supermarket delivery slot at the start of lockdown, not checked how bad it is now. I only have a small fridge and have to shop twice a week for food (I also don't drive so can't buy more than I can carry home).

[y66]

From Local journalism has collapsed. Can anything save it? at WaPo:

 

Not so long ago, the Youngstown Vindicator sent someone to cover every municipal or school board meeting in the surrounding three-county area.

 

“People knew that,” said Mark Brown, former general manager of the northeastern Ohio newspaper, “and they behaved.”

 

In other words, just the presence of a reporter helped keep local officials honest.

 

Those days are gone. And now so is the Vindicator. Its name and subscriber list were sold to a nearby paper that now has a Youngstown-area edition, but the family newspaper that had served the region for 150 years published its last edition on Aug. 31, 2019.

 

The Vindicator is among the victims of the local-media implosion that Margaret Sullivan chronicles in “Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy.” As her title suggests, the collapse is taking with it one of the foundations of the journalist’s craft: holding city, county and state government officials to account.

 

The damage goes beyond the lack of accountability, argues Sullivan, a media columnist for The Washington Post. The erosion of local news means Americans are more polarized and more disconnected from their communities. They’re less interested in running for office. And taxpayers even pay more, according to one study she cites, as government spending and borrowing costs rise because of a lack of oversight.

 

In Sullivan’s conversations across the country, readers told her they were aware of the problem — they saw local news as increasingly partisan or shallow. But they apparently hadn’t made a crucial connection: The decline in quality is due to the erosion of the industry’s financial foundations. Two surveys last year, one from the Pew Research Center and one from the Knight Foundation and Gallup, showed that a majority of people believe that local news outlets are in good financial shape.

 

This lack of awareness of the threat facing local news is the essential problem Sullivan’s book addresses. She is sounding an alarm. She’s not the first to explore this crisis, but her book succeeds in its aim of delivering an urgent message in a concise way. It is part of a series of novella-length books that Columbia University commissions and publishes on current issues for “curious and busy” readers.

This story feels like its going on 40 years old. Incredible to me that a majority of people believe local news outlets are in good financial shape.

[johnu]

To a large extent, the population has behaved incredibly responsibly in response to covid, when asked to do so be well-communicated and well-reasoned government guidance. This means governments can avoid making up harsh police-enforced strict mandates - as long as there aren't too many Cyberyetis around. If you want to complain about simplistic rules restricting your freedom - well, you yourself are the problem here.

Obviously this does not apply at all when talking about the US.

 

Florida Reports Over 15,000 COVID-19 Cases In Single-Day Record

 

Anti-mask activists organized a protest on Saturday at a grilled cheese restaurant and bar in Windermere, Florida, which is in Orange County about 12 miles (19 km) from Walt Disney World.

 

The restaurant, 33 & Melt, has become a focal point of tension after owner Carrie Hudson said she was not requiring customers to wear masks. County officials have mandated the use of masks in public since June 20.

 

During Saturday’s protest, no customers wore face coverings inside the restaurant. Agents from the state’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco arrived during the rally and served Hudson with a warning, according to a video.

At least these idiots are only putting other idiots at risk with their behavior (with the exception of the State employees who had to show up to deliver a warning from the state.

 

“This is a virus that is very well contained,” said one of the demonstrators, anti-mask activist Tara Hill. “Everyone is responsible for their own health care decisions ... We want our choices respected as well.”

 

In addition to a record 15,000 new cases on Sunday, more than four dozen hospitals in Florida reported that their intensive care units are full due to a surge in COVID-19 patients.

15000 new COVID-19 cases in Florida in a single day and this stable genius believes the virus is well contained??? :rolleyes: As I've said before, this type of person represents a significant portion of the Republicans in the US, if not a majority of them.

 

Hundreds were expected to attend a demonstration at the Michigan state capitol on Sunday afternoon, according to a Facebook event, to protest against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s order that everyone must wear a mask in public, except when outdoors and able to maintain social distance.

 

Protesters were also planning to gather outside city hall in Springfield, Missouri on Monday, where the city council was due to vote on a mask mandate in response to rising cases and a more than fourfold increase in Greene County’s COVID-19 hospitalizations in the last month.

The US has officially become Crazytown.

 

This is without even considering the Manchurian President stooge governors that have refused to order statewide mask wearing orders, and in some cases have prohibited local governments from instituting local mask wearing orders.

 

There is a reason the US has far more COVID-19 deaths and infections than any other country on the planet. The Manchurian President and his stooges have joined the COVID-19 war, but unfortunately for the country have joined on the side of the virus, not the people of the US.

[cherdano]

Also "stay out of shops" is easy to say, less easy to do. I have nobody to shop for me, am not on the govt's list of priority delivery people so would have waited weeks for a supermarket delivery slot at the start of lockdown, not checked how bad it is now.

Quoted without further comment.

 

It's also amazing that your sneezing is timed so perfectly that you can let go of the trolley, grab a tissue, and bring it in front of your mouth - yet's it's not slow enough so you can let go of the trolley, grab a tissue with one hand, remove the mask with the other, and bring the tissue in front of your mouth. I guess you always get exactly 1.87 seconds advance warning?

 

What a piece of bullshit you are inventing there for yourself to give yourself an excuse not to wear a mask.

[kenberg]

From Local journalism has collapsed. Can anything save it? at WaPo:

 

 

This story feels like its going on 40 years old. Incredible to me that a majority of people believe local news outlets are in good financial shape.

 

We subscribe to the Carroll County Times. It was bought a few years back by the Baltimore Sun but it seems to still be a local paper. For example I learned today that one of our county commissioners is opposed to requiring that visitors wear masks in nursing homes. He explained that this is because he is an American and a Libertarian.

 

I delivered the St. Paul Pioneer Press (morning) and Dispatch (evening). Most everyone took the Dispatch ( I had around 120 customers) and many took the Pioneer Press as well. . The newspaper finances worked well for me, I bought a car when I was 15 with the money I had made delivering papers. The Carroll County Times is delivered by a woman in a car and I am not sure anyone else on our block subscribes.

 

But did I actually read local news? Some, of course. I often saw the St. Paul Saints play baseball at University Park, I listened to Marty O'Neill play by plays on the radio and I read about the Saints, and even about the Millers over in Minneapolis, in the paper. The Saints came in first in the American Association in maybe 1949, something like that. And there was this guy, Willie Mays, who played for the Millers for a short period before going on up to the Giants. But who was mayor then? Beats me. I did read the comics and, maybe not in 1949 but soon after, I did the crossword puzzle. I made a list of weird Greek Gods and such that puzzle writers seem to dote on. The Winter Carnival was well covered and I read about that, especially the clues as to where the treasure was hidden.

 

Anyway, yeah, I favor local journalism. Maybe I will read her book. Except I have a long list of books that maybe I will read. Someday.

[Cyberyeti]

Quoted without further comment.

 

It's also amazing that your sneezing is timed so perfectly that you can let go of the trolley, grab a tissue, and bring it in front of your mouth - yet's it's not slow enough so you can let go of the trolley, grab a tissue with one hand, remove the mask with the other, and bring the tissue in front of your mouth. I guess you always get exactly 1.87 seconds advance warning?

 

What a piece of bullshit you are inventing there for yourself to give yourself an excuse not to wear a mask.

 

It's very consistent, yes I could flip the mask off onto the floor but not remove it under control, and then wouldn't wear it again, it takes me TWO hands on the handkerchief to avoid the sneeze escaping and I'm never sure which pocket it's in so I go for both pockets at the same time.

 

And please don't ridicule until you've lived in my shoes, I have ME and anything that causes me extra stress (like shaving or wearing a mask would) is likely to cause that to worsen severely. I'm already about 50% likely to have to go to bed for 2 or 3 hours after shopping and it's only 3-400m to the supermarket.

 

I've checked, the first delivery slot from tesco is in 2 weeks time, and would cost me £4-6 delivery on a £20 order so be uneconomic.

[Zelandakh]

It's very consistent, yes I could flip the mask off onto the floor but not remove it under control, and then wouldn't wear it again, it takes me TWO hands on the handkerchief to avoid the sneeze escaping and I'm never sure which pocket it's in so I go for both pockets at the same time.

 

And please don't ridicule until you've lived in my shoes, I have ME and anything that causes me extra stress (like shaving or wearing a mask would) is likely to cause that to worsen severely. I'm already about 50% likely to have to go to bed for 2 or 3 hours after shopping and it's only 3-400m to the supermarket.

 

I've checked, the first delivery slot from tesco is in 2 weeks time, and would cost me £4-6 delivery on a £20 order so be uneconomic.

Have you considered sneezing into your offhand (ie left for righties) elbow, as per the recommended guidelines? Not having to dig for a handkerchief ought to give you ample time to do all of the other steps and would make the use of a mask somewhat easier, particularly if you can keep the actual physical shopping time down to relieve the stress a little.

 

There are also other ways of minimising shopping trips. One of those would help you in terms of making the online delivery more economic, namely shopping for a longer period. During Covid I have switched from roughly 2-3 small supermarket trips per week to once every 2-4 weeks. It does involve some sacrifices - using coffee whitener to make the fresh milk go further, having certain dishes less often, etc - but those are luxuries that I can live without for a few weeks, whereas I could not live with myself so easily if I were somehow to be spreading the infection around and making the problem worse.

 

The point of this is that if you arranged your shop to cover you for a longer period for as many goods as possible it would increase the cost meaning that the 4 pound charge was much less in proportion to the value of the goods. It would also mean that if you need a top-up shop, for perishable goods that you cannot easily stock up on, it will be quicker and easier, reducing your chances of being involved in transmission, of sneezing excessively and, most importantly, of exacerbating your existing condition. It seems like this would be a huge win for you though obviously you know your personal circumstances better than any of us and I am loathe to push into that sphere too closely.