Clashing Political Realities in the US Senate

In the Senate hearing of Amy Coney Barrett yesterday two of the Senators used some of their time to paint two radically different political realities. Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) described what one can call hell, while republican Ted Cruz (Texas) also painted a vision of hell. The two visions were shocking and utterly partisan but probably mostly factually true. If one ignores the partisanship, the two hells merge into one to some extent.

The two sides made each other look bad at best and at worst, something akin to horrendous or deeply immoral and deceptive. How politics is working today seems to describe what people call making sausage. Who knows what all is going into the grinder, but we do know that one thing that is going in is hundreds of millions of dark money dollars from people who want to radically remake American law and society. The two visions of political hell are described below. Are they fundamentally the same or different? Is the logic of one vision more flawed than the other, or are they both about the same in their validity and soundness? Is the legality of all of this something to be concerned about? Do both sides equally respect facts, true truths and sound reasoning?

Whitehouse

Cruz describes hell at ~7:00 to 13:20

At ~21:00 to 23:53, Whitehouse discusses 80 5-4 decisions that have come out of the Roberts court. All of them were straight party line votes in favor of the republican position. In all 80 cases, the republican donor interest won at the Supreme Court. Does that cast the comments that Cruz made in his attack on the staggering amount of dark money going to democrats in a different light, or does that make no significant difference? It also raises the question of why so much corporate dark money is flowing to democrats in this election. What is going on here?

Herd immunity would save more lives than strict COVID-19 lockdown, study says

Sweeping lockdowns across the U.K. may could lead to more COVID-19 deaths and a prolonging of the pandemic than if the government were to let herd immunity build up in young populations, a new study suggests.

Researchers published a reanalysis of data modelling the British government used as guidance for instituting blanket lockdowns and social distancing measures in March, at the beginning of the pandemic.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal last Wednesday, suggest that while strict public health measures bring cases down, in the long run, the number of deaths rise.

‘Short-term gain, long-term pain’

In one simulation, the researchers ran a model that showed lockdowns, social distancing of those over age 70, and quarantining the sick all significantly stunted the spread of the virus in a first wave. However, when those measures are scaled back, infection rates bound upwards, especially in young people, and push the model into a deadlier second wave.

In that deadlier second wave, young people, who are less susceptible to dying from COVID-19, had helped spread the virus to older populations, who subsequently saw higher rates of death.

The authors described the model as a postponement of the pandemic.

In a different model, where lockdowns are removed and younger people are allowed to go to school and work, while those above age 70 are made to social distance and stay put, the models show significantly less deaths.

“Lockdown does mean that the number of deaths goes down, so there is a short-term gain, but it leads to long-term pain,” the lead author Graem Ackland, a computer simulation professor at the University of Edinburgh told The Telegraph .

“If you had done nothing, it would all be over by now. It would have been absolutely horrendous but it would be over. It wouldn’t even have been completely lunatic to do nothing.”

In the study, the authors suggest that rather than sweeping lockdowns and generalized social distancing, young people should be allowed to go to school while older groups are made to quarantine. This would allow young people to build up a herd immunity while also protecting the most vulnerable populations.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/herd-immunity-would-save-more-lives-than-strict-covid-19-lockdown-study-says/ar-BB19YAVG?li=AAggNb9&ocid=mailsignout

 

The Republican Supreme Court Ends the Census Early

Dictators thru the centuries

The US supreme court has just ruled that the president can end consensus counting early. That has been a major conservative goal in its attempt to not count minorities and illegal residents. NPR reports:

“The Trump administration can end counting for the 2020 census after the Supreme Court approved a request for now to suspend a lower court order that extended the count's schedule.

The high court's ruling, following an emergency request the Justice Department made last week, is the latest turn in a roller coaster of a legal fight over the timeline for the count.

Last-minute changes by the Census Bureau and its skirting of an earlier court order for the count have left local communities and the bureau's workers across the U.S. unsure of how much longer they can take part in a national head count already upended by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lower courts previously ordered the administration to keep counting through Oct. 31, reverting to an extended schedule that Trump officials had first proposed in April in response to delays caused by the pandemic and then abruptly decided to abandon in July.  

More time, judges have ruled, would give the bureau a better chance of getting an accurate and complete count of the country's residents, which is used to determine how political representation and federal funding are distributed among the states over the next decade. 

Despite the Constitution's requirement to include the "whole number of persons in each state" and the president's limited authority over the census, Trump wants to try to exclude unauthorized immigrants from those numbers. That effort has sparked another legal fight that is also before the Supreme Court.”

The point is obvious: Conservative republicans and probably bigoted or racist authoritarian religious and business interests want to limit counting of minorities. The logic is that by undercounting all US residents, that will favor republicans. For the GOP leadership and Trump, this is about the exercise of power, not democratic governance.

Wealth inequality... it’s a growing problem

While there are community safety net programs (band-aids) put in place for most every country out there, we witness the wealth schism continuing to grow between the world’s very rich and very poor.  Finding that elusive/collective “happy medium” tends to get harder to achieve with each passing year.

As most of us would agree, fixes only happen when root causes are identified and successfully addressed.  So, for example… 

The cause of being poor is usually the result of conditions like: being under-educated, feelings of hopelessness (e.g., being poorly-connected, family cycle of poverty), and negative soft-wiring (e.g., abusive upbringing).

The cause of being rich is usually the result of conditions like: a higher education, opportunities (e.g., being well-connected, family inheritance money), and positive soft-wiring (e.g., nurtured upbringing). 

While these contrary conditions are not set in stone, I believe they are more true than not.

Granted, no one answer can fix the world, but left to our own devices, our baser, more primal instincts tend to rule us (e.g., greed, selfishness, fear, self-preservation).  With that intro, now for the question: 

If you agree that wealth inequality is a problem, should there be additional policies put in place to resolve the gap between the rich and the poor?  For example, government subsidized higher education and universal health care, to name two fixes.  (Yes, that would mean proportionally higher taxes.)

1. I completely agree
2. I somewhat agree
3. I’m neutral
4. I somewhat disagree
5. I completely disagree

Identify the country from which you hail, and then explain your answer.

Thanks for participating and recommending.

Meet the New Judge: Amy Coney Barrett

Say hello to your new moral enforcer,  

whether you like it or not

Judge Barrett is a real Christian cult freak. America is in for decades of self-righteous moral outrage and vengeful fixing of things that she believes evil secularism broke, especially legalized abortion and legalized same-sex marriage. The New York Times writes: 

“Judge Barrett is from the South and Midwest. Her career has been largely spent teaching while raising seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome, and living according to her faith. She has made no secret of her beliefs on divisive social issues such as abortion. A deeply religious woman, her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism.

From her formative years in Louisiana to her current life in Indiana, Judge Barrett has been shaped by an especially insular religious community, the People of Praise, which has about 1,650 adult members, including her parents, and draws on the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, like speaking in tongues.

The group has a strict view of human sexuality that embraces once-traditional gender roles, such as recognizing the husband as the head of the family. The Barretts, however, describe their marriage as a partnership.

Around the time of her appeals court confirmation, several issues of the group’s magazine, “Vine & Branches,” that mentioned her or her family were removed from the People of Praise website.

She has made clear she believes that life begins at conception, and has served in leadership roles for People of Praise, and her children’s school has said in its handbook that marriage is between a man and a woman. Her judicial opinions indicate broad support for gun rights and an expanded role for religion in public life.

‘Amy Coney Barrett is everything the current incarnation of the conservative legal movement has been working for — someone whose record, and the litmus tests of the president nominating her, suggest will overturn Roe, strike down the A.C.A., bend the law toward big business interests and make it harder to vote,’ Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, said, referring to the Affordable Care Act. 

After a course on constitutional criminal procedure, Ms. Coney discovered a legal approach that resonated: originalism, or the practice of interpreting the Constitution according to what it meant when it was adopted. 

‘I wasn’t familiar when I entered law school with originalism as a theory,’ she said last year in a speech at Hillsdale, a Christian college in Michigan. ‘But I found myself as I read more and more cases becoming more and more convinced that the opinions that I read that took the originalist approach were right.’”

Abortion

Among other ugly things, it looks like the new radical conservative supreme court court will probably overturn the 1973 Roe abortion decision and the 2015 Obergefell same-sex marriage decision. In the case of abortion, if the court adopts Barrett’s belief that life begins at conception and abortion is murder, it could make abortion felony murder in all states. Before Barrett it seemed that conservatives wanted Roe overturned, with the decision to allow or regulate abortion left to individual states as a matter of state’s rights. 

If the new radical Christian right court goes beyond that traditional conservative position and adopts the fertilized egg and the human fetus is a human being and all abortion is murder, that would be the end of nearly all abortions in America. I do not know how plausible the abortion is murder outcome is compared to simply reversing Roe and leaving the decision to the states. Either way, a national civil right under Roe to have an abortion looks to become extinct in the next couple of years. This change in law will come despite a majority of Americans who support the Roe decision and want it to remain the law.

Same-sex marriage

It seems likely that the 2015 Obergefell decision that created a national right to same-sex marriage is also going to be reversed in the next couple of years. Reversing Obergefell would create a real mess for the people involved in the approximately 293,000 same-sex marriages since Obergefell. The rights of those people will be ripped away. How that will be handled is an open question. This too is a matter of sacred religious belief that the radical Christian right is going to force on the American people against their will.

Lies, authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism & originalism

In terms of lies and deceit, Judge Barrett is starting off with a big bang. She failed to list her affiliation with the People of Praise Christian cult. That is a lie of omission. The cult itself has removed references to her affiliation with the group, which constitutes another lie of omission. One of the things about Evangelical Christianity vs. Catholicism seems to be how the biblical Commandment to not lie is treated. Most Evangelicals in politics seem to have absolutely no moral qualm whatever about lying and deceiving the public. On the other hand, most Catholics in politics seem to have at least some moral regard for truth. Of course, that is just a personal opinion that formed over the last 20 years or so. Some searching did not turn up any published data on this point, so that is just an unsubstantiated personal opinion. 

Regarding authoritarianism, Judge Barrett appears to have the authoritarian mindset. In the name of her infallible,  sacred moral values, she probably will not hesitate to vote to overturn abortion and same-sex marriage laws that most Americans currently support. That fits with my conception of anti-democratic authoritarianism. How else can one describe willingness to engage in extreme judicial activism that a majority of Americans oppose?

The Oct. 6 discussion here on American Christian Nationalism (seems like months ago) described the Christian nationalist mindset. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) (a group I financially support) wrote this in an article, FFRF Warns Barrett would complete Christian Nationalist takeover of Supreme Court: 

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation says that President Trump’s new presumed Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, if confirmed, would be 

‘a disaster for the constitutional principle of separation between state and church’ and would complete the Christian Nationalist takeover of the high court for more than a generation. Both The New York Times and CNN have reported that Barrett is Trump's choice, even though Trump is not scheduled to make the announcement until Saturday afternoon. Barrett, by far the most ultra-conservative of the nominees on his short list, is the one most admired by the Religious Right. .... Barrett’s biography and writings reveal a startling, life-long allegiance to religion over the law.”

Christian Nationalists stand for mixing of the Evangelical church and state and for the dominance of white people over Catholics, atheists and racial minorities. The group Christians Against Christian Nationalism wrote this about Christian Nationalist ideology:

“Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation. We believe that:

• People of all faiths and none have the right and responsibility to engage constructively in the public square. 
• Patriotism does not require us to minimize our religious convictions.”  

That ideology sounds at least significantly bigoted, if not mostly racist. Obviously, Christian Nationalists will deny any bigotry or racism is a motivating factor in their belief system. Their actions contradict their denials. Also, white unease with racial demographic and social changes was by some research the single most influential factor favoring the president in the 2016 presidential election. One researcher described the phenomenon like this in a 2018 paper:

“Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were “left behind” economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a college education. Using a representative panel from 2012 to 2016, I find that change in financial wellbeing had little impact on candidate preference. Instead, changing preferences were related to changes in the party’s positions on issues related to American global dominance and the rise of a majority–minority America: issues that threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status.”

Given her radical Christian background, it is reasonable to believe that Judge Barrett is going to protect white Americans’ sense of dominant group status, and she is going to do that with an unflinching, self-righteous moral vengeance. 

Finally, regarding Originalism, it is an excuse that conservatives dreamed up in the 1980s as a basis to reverse the ongoing legal and social trends that they hated. Originalism holds that the interpretation of the Constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding of the authors or the people at the time it was ratified. This idea is sheer blithering nonsense. The original constitutional authors, and Americans generally, were at each other's throats over disagreements. More or less those same disagreements are still bitterly debated today. One sees it in the urban-rural divide which existed at the time the constitution was written and ratified. 

The constitution is filled with ambiguities and bitterly fought compromises. The ambiguities were necessary as the only way to achieve agreement. Arguing in the 1980s or in 2020 that it is possible to divine intent from the people or the authors is a fantasy that only a rigid ideologue could take seriously. To be blunt about it: Originalism is a radical partisan ideologue excuse to freeze time and society and then to remake society into what conservatives what it to be right now. The historical record on the disagreements among both the Founders and the American people at the time is rock solid and undeniable. That Judge Barrett has latched onto this kind of reality-detached crackpottery is evidence of just how radical and blind she really is.  

Judge Barrett is very likely going to be a disaster of literally Biblical proportions and the American people are going to get it good and hard whether they want it or not.

Covid Brain Fog: ‘I feel like I have dementia’

Nurse practitioner Lisa Mizelle has Covid brain fog 

The New York Time reports on a growing number of what appears to be long-term brain damage in patients who had been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is responsible for the pandemic. This is scary. The NYT writes: 

“After contracting the coronavirus in March, Michael Reagan lost all memory of his 12-day vacation in Paris, even though the trip was just a few weeks earlier. .... In meetings, “I can’t find words,” said Mr. Reagan, who has now taken a leave. “I feel like I sound like an idiot.”

Several weeks after Erica Taylor recovered from her Covid-19 symptoms of nausea and cough, she became confused and forgetful, failing to even recognize her own car, the only Toyota Prius in her apartment complex’s parking lot.

Lisa Mizelle, a veteran nurse practitioner at an urgent care clinic who fell ill with the virus in July, finds herself forgetting routine treatments and lab tests, and has to ask colleagues about terminology she used to know automatically. “I leave the room and I can’t remember what the patient just said,” she said, adding that if she hadn’t exhausted her medical leave she’d take more time off. “It scares me to think I’m working,” Ms. Mizelle, 53, said. ‘I feel like I have dementia.’

It’s becoming known as Covid brain fog: troubling cognitive symptoms that can include memory loss, confusion, difficulty focusing, dizziness and grasping for everyday words. Increasingly, Covid survivors say brain fog is impairing their ability to work and function normally.

‘There are thousands of people who have that,’ said Dr. Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious disease at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, who has already seen hundreds of survivors at a post-Covid clinic he leads. ‘The impact on the work force that’s affected is going to be significant.’

Scientists aren’t sure what causes brain fog, which varies widely and affects even people who became only mildly physically ill from Covid-19 and had no previous medical conditions. Leading theories are that it arises when the body’s immune response to the virus doesn’t shut down or from inflammation in blood vessels leading to the brain.

But research on long-lasting brain fog is just beginning. A French report in August on 120 patients who had been hospitalized found that 34 percent had memory loss and 27 percent had concentration problems months later. 

In a soon-to-be-published survey of 3,930 members of Survivor Corps, a group of people who have connected to discuss life after Covid, over half reported difficulty concentrating or focusing, said Natalie Lambert, an associate research professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, who helped lead the study. It was the fourth most common symptom out of the 101 long-term and short-term physical, neurological and psychological conditions that survivors reported. Memory problems, dizziness or confusion were reported by a third or more respondents.”

If this preliminary estimate of one-third of Covid survivors having some degree of brain fog holds up, that would mean that of the 7.7 million Americans who have been infected so far, about 2.6 million will experience some degree of Covid brain fog. The people who experience this are not all elderly. 

A 31-year old attorney was so disoriented that she washed her TV remote with the laundry and returned a dog she was fostering because she no longer trusted herself to take proper care of the animal. The NYT quoted her: “One morning, ‘everything in my brain was white static,’ she said. ‘I was sitting on the edge of the bed, crying and feeling ‘something’s wrong, I should be asking for help,’ but I couldn’t remember who or what I should be asking. I forgot who I was and where I was.’” 

Doctors simply do not know when or if this brain fog sickness will go away, of if it might worsen over time.

Thirty-one year old attorney Erica Taylor

 “I forgot who I was and where I was”

Our toxic president

In the last few days, the president blithely but falsely stated that people just get over the infection like he allegedly did. His advice: “Don’t be afraid of it.” Not surprisingly, he was wrong about all of that. Not only will none of the roughly 215,000 Americans the virus has killed so far never get over it, it now looks like a significant number of survivors will be mentally impaired to some degree for some period of time, maybe seriously impaired for the rest of the lives of some. 

Is it just me, or does it seem that just about everything our toxic, incompetent, liar president touches gets botched or poisoned and damaged or destroyed? That millions of Americans still support this incompetent, callous president is mind-blowing.