In the primaries? Florida and South Carolina are unlikely to go for Bernie; he has pulled even in Massachusetts and Texas. But at this stage things could change very quickly.
No known cases in VT yet (knocks wood), but we have begun to prepare. I’m particularly concerned about Daughter and new Grandbaby flying between ME and Philly several more times in the coming month.
We're working on it. We have cleared out our jelly cupboard for storing food and a tool top desk for storing meds. Folks are also advised to store some extra soaps. And pet food. And we *did* order two washable cloth masks and some N95 filters. I know we don't need to wear one most of the time, but if the virus begins to infiltrate our area, I would wear it to the store. Bigger thing is to scrub your hands for 20 seconds a lot, especially every time you come home. I am hopeful of being able to still get the one medication I use daily to ward off shingles. Favorite brand is made in India, but it's also made in Florida and Toronto, Canada, so I'm hopeful.
Laugh du jour: Trump Officials Discussing Emergency Tax Cuts [Click] Maybe everyone who gets the coronavirus gets a tax credit? Somehow I think it is more likely that the wealthy and corporations get a tax cut. ================================= Quote from politicalwire.com: “The latest registration totals reveal that there are now more registered independents than registered Republicans. This is the first time in U.S. history that one of the two major parties has been outnumbered by registered independents.” So once again the future happened first in California…
A new CNN poll in Texas finds Bernie Sanders leads the Democratic field with 29%, followed by Joe Biden at 20%, Michael Bloomberg at 18% and Elizabeth Warren is at 15%. No other candidate reaches double-digits.
In California, Sanders leads with 35%, followed by Warren at 14%, Biden at 13% and Bloomberg at 12%.
A Berkeley IGS poll in California finds Sanders at 34%, Warren at 17%, Bloomberg at 12% and Buttigieg at 11%.
A new Univision/University of Houston poll in Texas finds Sanders leading with 26%, followed by Biden and Bloomberg tied at 20%. ==========================
Last time Bernie got 86% of the vote in Vermont. Of course, we didn't have as many options.
📪 Anybody else getting fed up with being snailmail bombed by the Bloomberg campaign? Does anyone have a phone number or email address one can contact to get off their list? All I have is a smailmail address. What a massive waste of paper.
I've never seen anything -- and I mean _anything_ from the Bloomberg campaign. No snail mail, no email, and if there was a Facebook ad I didn't notice it. But I tend to automatically tune out ads.
I haven't seen anything at all in the mail from Bloomberg. He said California was going to be his Iowa, but it's looking more like his Waterloo. Or Austerlitz. Or Little Bighorn. For a while I occasionally saw his ads on YouTube, but that quit. My sweetie was getting his ads on the page where she gets her Japanese news commentary, but I haven't heard that for several weeks. We don't do Facebook, so he can't purchase our contact information there. Your experience confirms my impression that Bloomie's campaign is wasting a lot of money and effort; it will be interesting to find out how much money he paid per vote when all is said and done.
Recently I had an e-mail from his campaign, but I unsubscribed ASAP. Facebook ads are totally wasted on me. I either don't see them at all or can't read them.
Listener, write to the snail mail address with a firm request to be taken off their lists. That's all I can think of to tell you.
Rachel Bitecofer: There Are Few Swing Voters, Just Non-Voters. [Click] Certainly not news, although the establishment/moderate/New/corporate Dems seem never to have realized it. But after some notably successful predictions based on this principle, Ms Bitecofer is attracting attention.
From The Economist United States Feb 22nd 2020 edition Feb 22nd 2020
ONE AFTERNOON in 1896, a Bostonian socialite called Harriet Lawrence Hemenway read an article about the devastation of a colony of nesting birds by plume-hunters. Disgust at their grisly trade, which was eradicating millions of birds a year to meet Americans’ demand for feathery swank, surged in her like a ball of regurgitated feathers and crustaceans from a grebe’s crop. This would prove to be a turning-point in America’s relationship with nature.
Following the example of some similarly well-connected British women—originators of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—Hemenway launched a campaign against wearing feathers for fashion. It was audacious. During two strolls through Manhattan, an ornithologist identified the remnants of 40 native species, including warblers and woodpeckers, on over 500 women’s heads. Yet Hemenway’s Massachusetts Audubon Society, named after the bird-painter James Audubon, was replicated by like-minded women in over a dozen states. The National Audubon Society they formed in 1905 was even more effective. It had heavyweight fans such as Theodore Roosevelt and a flair for sensationalism. “Woman as a bird enemy” was the title of one of its lectures.
Lobbying by Audubon groups helped produce a remarkable series of bird protections, including the Lacey Act of 1900 and, following a pro-bird pact with British Canada, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918, which made it illegal to harm most native birds not hunted for sport. This landmark environmental law—and model for later ones such as the Endangered Species Act—probably saved several decorative birds, such as the snowy egret and sandhill crane, from extinction. Following additional pro-bird treaties with Mexico, Japan and the Soviet Union, the act now covers over 1,000 species. Since the 1970s its implementation has been mainly focused on warding off the threat they face from industrial development and pollution. After over a million birds were killed in 2010 by an oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company responsible, BP, was fined $100m under the MBTA. Most of the money was spent on restoring contaminated bird habitat.
The success of the avian conservation movement has changed people as well as the outlook for birds. According to a survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), America has 45m birdwatchers—roughly three times the number of people who watch American football on television. Diverse and widely spread—though with a tendency to be white, well-educated and female—they are estimated to spend $41bn a year on bird-related travel and kit. This mass enthusiasm, which Lexington observed on a recent visit to the St Marks wildlife refuge in Florida—the first and last landfall for millions of avian migrants across the Gulf of Mexico—is not merely a response to America’s even more diverse birdlife. As in similarly bird-dotty Britain, it is a culture that has sprung from a political decision to treat birds as precious and inviolable.
Donald Trump’s administration wants to devalue them. A new regulation published by the FWS this month would eviscerate the MBTA by ending the decades-old practice of penalising the “incidental take” of protected birds. So long as a person or company can claim to have killed or injured birds accidentally, he or it would be free to do so. Thus, a contractor could hose cliff-swallow nests off a road bridge, because cleaning the bridge, not killing swallow chicks, was his intention. If BP killed another million seabirds, it would face no penalty under the MBTA.
Assailed by Hemenway, the powerful millinery industry claimed that most of its feathers had been shed naturally. The arguments for the Trump rewrite are equally hollow. Pointing to the statute’s ambiguous language on incidental take, the administration claims it “hangs the sword of Damocles” over economic development. In fact, after decades of fairly consistent implementation of the law, America’s industrial-scale bird-killers understand perfectly well the potential cost of failing to alert birds to their electric lines or to cover their oil pits. They also understand the benefits of working with the FWS to mitigate the slaughter. The administration’s depiction of government and industry at war over the MBTA is inaccurate. Its predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike, tended to view the law mainly as a means to improve industrial practice, and they therefore penalised only persistent or egregious offenders. The number of birds drowning in oil-pits, meanwhile, fell by half, to around 750,000 a year. ADVERTISING Ads by Teads
Despite improvements in signalling electric lines, these kill even more: perhaps 25m a year. Climate change and habitat loss may be bigger threats; a recent study found America’s bird population had fallen by 30% over the past 50 years. The fact that the administration is nonetheless intent on gutting birds’ main legal protection shows how far it is from honouring its spirit—and the decades-old bipartisan consensus behind it. A pronounced conservative association with bird-watching, and conservation more broadly, was a feature of that. Prominent Republican birders include John McCain and Laura Bush. Mr Trump prefers corporatism. The overseer of the MBTA rewrite, David Bernhardt, the secretary of the interior, is a former oil-industry lobbyist. Tar and feathers
What of America’s bird-loving millions? If Mr Trump wins re-election, they are unlikely to stop his scheme. Like gun control or taxing the rich, conservation is something most voters support, but not forcefully enough to overcome resistance from a well-funded, politically favoured lobby. The fact that the FWS is already advising companies that they can get away with killing birds, accidentally on purpose, has sparked little protest.
Another question, if the administration gets its way, is what will become of America’s mass enthusiasm for the beauty and elusiveness of birds? It is a culture founded on law, regulation and the high status that birds have gained from them. If birds are less protected, that suggests, they may in time be less loved.
AP Will Not Declare a Winner In Iowa Democratic Caucus [Click]
ReplyDeleteKrugman: When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult [Click]
We Knew Disease X Was Coming. It’s Here Now. [Click] “We need to stop what drives mass epidemics rather than just respond to individual diseases.”
Judge voids nearly 1 million acres of oil and gas leases, saying Trump policy undercut public input [Click]
Trump says he can bring in coronavirus experts quickly. The experts say it is not that simple. [Click] “They have stable jobs with retirement plans,” he said. “They are not going to quit their job at the university or quit their job in the local government to go join the U.S. federal government for six months because of coronavirus. It doesn't work like that.”
This particular grouping of news stories gives one both a “we’re all gonna die!” feeling and hope that Bernie may yet save us.
DeleteWell, we are all going to die. And in my opinion we are all Hellbound if we rely only upon ourselves.
DeleteThat is so true, Alan. The best of humans needs external help, much less the rest of us poor slobs.
DeleteUtah Democratic Primary
ReplyDeleteDeseret News/Hinckley
Sanders 28%, Bloomberg 19, Warren 15, Buttigieg 18, Biden 6, Klobuchar 4
Sanders +9
Yes!
DeleteWe need to start a list of states likely to go for Bernie.
VT
NH
WI
UT
CA
Maybe
IA
...
In the primaries? Florida and South Carolina are unlikely to go for Bernie; he has pulled even in Massachusetts and Texas. But at this stage things could change very quickly.
DeleteFlight attendant on South Korea-Los Angeles route tests positive for coronavirus
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wcnc.com/mobile/article/news/health/coronavirus/korea-flight-attendant-positive-coronavirus-lax/507-636b84f8-eef9-4c4f-b856-a605edde02df
Planning for pandemic: what supplies to have ready for coronavirus
https://www.wcnc.com/mobile/article/news/health/coronavirus/planning-for-pandemic--supplies-to-have-ready-for-coronavirus/275-55b30557-81d8-48d6-a03a-d7279fd29041
No known cases in VT yet (knocks wood), but we have begun to prepare. I’m particularly concerned about Daughter and new Grandbaby flying between ME and Philly several more times in the coming month.
Have a two week supply of food on hand? Great--we can empty the freezers!
DeleteWe're working on it. We have cleared out our jelly cupboard for storing food and a tool top desk for storing meds. Folks are also advised to store some extra soaps. And pet food. And we *did* order two washable cloth masks and some N95 filters. I know we don't need to wear one most of the time, but if the virus begins to infiltrate our area, I would wear it to the store. Bigger thing is to scrub your hands for 20 seconds a lot, especially every time you come home. I am hopeful of being able to still get the one medication I use daily to ward off shingles. Favorite brand is made in India, but it's also made in Florida and Toronto, Canada, so I'm hopeful.
DeleteMy nominee for Best Column of the Week:
ReplyDeleteIs It Race or Class? Darrick Hamilton Showed Bernie the Answer. [Click] ‘How the ‘intellectual giant’ behind the study of the racial wealth gap has shaped the 2020 policy debate.’
Informative article. Thanks, Alan.
DeleteLaugh du jour: Trump Officials Discussing Emergency Tax Cuts [Click] Maybe everyone who gets the coronavirus gets a tax credit? Somehow I think it is more likely that the wealthy and corporations get a tax cut.
ReplyDelete=================================
Quote from politicalwire.com: “The latest registration totals reveal that there are now more registered independents than registered Republicans. This is the first time in U.S. history that one of the two major parties has been outnumbered by registered independents.” So once again the future happened first in California…
Federal Court Halts Trump’s ‘Remain In Mexico’ Policy [Click]
Sanders Holds Big Leads In Texas and California [Click]
A new CNN poll in Texas finds Bernie Sanders leads the Democratic field with 29%, followed by Joe Biden at 20%, Michael Bloomberg at 18% and Elizabeth Warren is at 15%. No other candidate reaches double-digits.
In California, Sanders leads with 35%, followed by Warren at 14%, Biden at 13% and Bloomberg at 12%.
A Berkeley IGS poll in California finds Sanders at 34%, Warren at 17%, Bloomberg at 12% and Buttigieg at 11%.
A new Univision/University of Houston poll in Texas finds Sanders leading with 26%, followed by Biden and Bloomberg tied at 20%.
==========================
Berkeley IGS poll is the best in California.
DeleteLA Times on the new Berkeley/IGS California poll [Click]
DeleteLast time Bernie got 86% of the vote in Vermont. Of course, we didn't have as many options.
Delete📪 Anybody else getting fed up with being snailmail bombed by the Bloomberg campaign? Does anyone have a phone number or email address one can contact to get off their list? All I have is a smailmail address. What a massive waste of paper.
I've never seen anything -- and I mean _anything_ from the Bloomberg campaign. No snail mail, no email, and if there was a Facebook ad I didn't notice it. But I tend to automatically tune out ads.
DeleteI haven't seen anything at all in the mail from Bloomberg. He said California was going to be his Iowa, but it's looking more like his Waterloo. Or Austerlitz. Or Little Bighorn. For a while I occasionally saw his ads on YouTube, but that quit. My sweetie was getting his ads on the page where she gets her Japanese news commentary, but I haven't heard that for several weeks. We don't do Facebook, so he can't purchase our contact information there. Your experience confirms my impression that Bloomie's campaign is wasting a lot of money and effort; it will be interesting to find out how much money he paid per vote when all is said and done.
DeleteRecently I had an e-mail from his campaign, but I unsubscribed ASAP. Facebook ads are totally wasted on me. I either don't see them at all or can't read them.
DeleteListener, write to the snail mail address with a firm request to be taken off their lists. That's all I can think of to tell you.
Sanders barnstorms Super Tuesday states in pursuit of knockout blow [Click] "He’s now in a fortunate situation where he’s able to spread the playing field everywhere.” Nice news report.
ReplyDeleteYes, quite good. Except the video is of Biden. Bleck!
DeleteOops! I didn't watch the associated video.
DeleteBernie events hereabouts. [Click] I think this is absolutely unprecedented.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRachel Bitecofer: There Are Few Swing Voters, Just Non-Voters. [Click] Certainly not news, although the establishment/moderate/New/corporate Dems seem never to have realized it. But after some notably successful predictions based on this principle, Ms Bitecofer is attracting attention.
ReplyDeleteSecond wild case of coronoavirus in California. [Click]
ReplyDelete‘THE. Nina. Turner.’ Bernie Sanders’s most visible and passionate surrogate is helping him connect with black voters [Click] “How do I know Bernie Sanders? … I know him because I trust Nina Turner, and I talk to her,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said at [a] breakfast with black ministers.
ReplyDeleteAs for myself, I remain grateful for Senator Turner’s male reproductive health advocacy.
From The Economist
ReplyDeleteUnited States
Feb 22nd 2020 edition
Feb 22nd 2020
ONE AFTERNOON in 1896, a Bostonian socialite called Harriet Lawrence Hemenway read an article about the devastation of a colony of nesting birds by plume-hunters. Disgust at their grisly trade, which was eradicating millions of birds a year to meet Americans’ demand for feathery swank, surged in her like a ball of regurgitated feathers and crustaceans from a grebe’s crop. This would prove to be a turning-point in America’s relationship with nature.
Following the example of some similarly well-connected British women—originators of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—Hemenway launched a campaign against wearing feathers for fashion. It was audacious. During two strolls through Manhattan, an ornithologist identified the remnants of 40 native species, including warblers and woodpeckers, on over 500 women’s heads. Yet Hemenway’s Massachusetts Audubon Society, named after the bird-painter James Audubon, was replicated by like-minded women in over a dozen states. The National Audubon Society they formed in 1905 was even more effective. It had heavyweight fans such as Theodore Roosevelt and a flair for sensationalism. “Woman as a bird enemy” was the title of one of its lectures.
Lobbying by Audubon groups helped produce a remarkable series of bird protections, including the Lacey Act of 1900 and, following a pro-bird pact with British Canada, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918, which made it illegal to harm most native birds not hunted for sport. This landmark environmental law—and model for later ones such as the Endangered Species Act—probably saved several decorative birds, such as the snowy egret and sandhill crane, from extinction. Following additional pro-bird treaties with Mexico, Japan and the Soviet Union, the act now covers over 1,000 species. Since the 1970s its implementation has been mainly focused on warding off the threat they face from industrial development and pollution. After over a million birds were killed in 2010 by an oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company responsible, BP, was fined $100m under the MBTA. Most of the money was spent on restoring contaminated bird habitat.
The success of the avian conservation movement has changed people as well as the outlook for birds. According to a survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), America has 45m birdwatchers—roughly three times the number of people who watch American football on television. Diverse and widely spread—though with a tendency to be white, well-educated and female—they are estimated to spend $41bn a year on bird-related travel and kit. This mass enthusiasm, which Lexington observed on a recent visit to the St Marks wildlife refuge in Florida—the first and last landfall for millions of avian migrants across the Gulf of Mexico—is not merely a response to America’s even more diverse birdlife. As in similarly bird-dotty Britain, it is a culture that has sprung from a political decision to treat birds as precious and inviolable.
[To be continued]
Donald Trump’s administration wants to devalue them. A new regulation published by the FWS this month would eviscerate the MBTA by ending the decades-old practice of penalising the “incidental take” of protected birds. So long as a person or company can claim to have killed or injured birds accidentally, he or it would be free to do so. Thus, a contractor could hose cliff-swallow nests off a road bridge, because cleaning the bridge, not killing swallow chicks, was his intention. If BP killed another million seabirds, it would face no penalty under the MBTA.
DeleteAssailed by Hemenway, the powerful millinery industry claimed that most of its feathers had been shed naturally. The arguments for the Trump rewrite are equally hollow. Pointing to the statute’s ambiguous language on incidental take, the administration claims it “hangs the sword of Damocles” over economic development. In fact, after decades of fairly consistent implementation of the law, America’s industrial-scale bird-killers understand perfectly well the potential cost of failing to alert birds to their electric lines or to cover their oil pits. They also understand the benefits of working with the FWS to mitigate the slaughter. The administration’s depiction of government and industry at war over the MBTA is inaccurate. Its predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike, tended to view the law mainly as a means to improve industrial practice, and they therefore penalised only persistent or egregious offenders. The number of birds drowning in oil-pits, meanwhile, fell by half, to around 750,000 a year.
ADVERTISING
Ads by Teads
Despite improvements in signalling electric lines, these kill even more: perhaps 25m a year. Climate change and habitat loss may be bigger threats; a recent study found America’s bird population had fallen by 30% over the past 50 years. The fact that the administration is nonetheless intent on gutting birds’ main legal protection shows how far it is from honouring its spirit—and the decades-old bipartisan consensus behind it. A pronounced conservative association with bird-watching, and conservation more broadly, was a feature of that. Prominent Republican birders include John McCain and Laura Bush. Mr Trump prefers corporatism. The overseer of the MBTA rewrite, David Bernhardt, the secretary of the interior, is a former oil-industry lobbyist.
Tar and feathers
What of America’s bird-loving millions? If Mr Trump wins re-election, they are unlikely to stop his scheme. Like gun control or taxing the rich, conservation is something most voters support, but not forcefully enough to overcome resistance from a well-funded, politically favoured lobby. The fact that the FWS is already advising companies that they can get away with killing birds, accidentally on purpose, has sparked little protest.
Another question, if the administration gets its way, is what will become of America’s mass enthusiasm for the beauty and elusiveness of birds? It is a culture founded on law, regulation and the high status that birds have gained from them. If birds are less protected, that suggests, they may in time be less loved.
Boeing admits it failed to test the Starliner spacecraft adequately before its maiden flight [Click] “The company cut a key test short and used faulty software, setbacks that led to a flawed mission.” Gee, what a surprise. Anybody want to buy a Boeing 737 Max, cheap?
ReplyDeleteMaybe on the next test flight the passengers should include Boeing's CEO and chairman of the board of directors.
DeleteAppeals Court Blocks Wisconsin Voter Purge [Click]
ReplyDeleteFrom poll results at realclearpolitics.com
ReplyDeleteSanders increasing lead in Texas, seems to have pulled slightly ahead in North Carolina.