Update no.988

 Update from the Sunland

No.988

14.12.20 – 20.12.20

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

 

            To all,

 

After nearly four years of abuse, I note with some pleasure the comparative lull in the nonsense from the Bully-in-Chief (BIC).  I never thought I would be grateful for an absentee president who is spending the majority of his remaining time in office on the golf course, but I say golf on.  We do not need to hear from you ever again.  I like peace.

I knew the peace was just too good to be true.

Then, at the end of the week, we begin to hear seditious talk from the felon Flynn about declaring martial law in the five contested states and also declaring the election in those states null and void; thus, such an action would require new elections to resolve, and of course, the BIC would have to remain president until the situation is remedied.  This is exactly the kind of stuff dictators do to retain power.  The BIC has unilaterally destroyed any credibility we once had regarding the value and benefit of democracy.

To the freedom-loving people of the world, what you bear witness to in the United States of America now and for the last four years is NOT democracy.  It is a wannabe dictator doing his damnedest to destroy whatever was left of this once grand republic.  I never believed I would witness the degeneration of the republic.  I always believed in the resiliency of the republic.  Unfortunately, my confidence has been sorely shaken, if not eradicated by the BIC.  I have always said, we shall overcome; but now, I am not so sure.

 

            The follow-up news items:

-- After the Pfizer COVID19 [946] vaccine received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA [987], vaccinations began on Monday across 50 states and territories.  The ModernaTX, Inc. vaccine received its FDA EUA on Friday.  Distribution of the Moderna vaccine began on the weekend with initial vaccinations expected to begin this coming Monday.  Perhaps, this is the beginning of the end of COVID19 pandemic.  Yet, as long as there are sufficient anti-vaxxers among us, the virus will continue to find ready hosts to multiply, spread, and saturate our medical treatment capacity.  While the vaccine, once administered and effective, may protect the majority of people in this country, we cannot force anyone to take the vaccine, which in turn means the anti-vaxxers will retain the capacity to saturate our critical care facilities and deny treatment for other illnesses to the rest of us.  Individual freedom of choice does not exceed the common good.

-- The Electoral College completed its constitutionally mandated casting of votes for president and vice president.  Through the miracle of modern communications, the Press counted the votes for all of us.  The Electoral College votes will be officially tallied by a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, 6.January.2021, which will end the 2020 election process [982].  President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris will be sworn into office two weeks later, on Wednesday, 20.January.2021.  Our long dark nightmare will soon be over.

-- Minutes after the Electoral College completed their constitutionally mandated voting in the presidential election process [982], Attorney General Barr resigned on 14.December, effective 23.December.2021, after threats by the BIC, following Barr’s public statement that the Justice Department found NO evidence of widespread fraud that might have even remotely affected the election results.  Yet, the BICP conspiracy theorists continue to spin wild accusations.  I suspect we are going to be asked de facto to endure the BIC and the BICP niggling away as a shadow government for the next few years, at least until (if ever) what is left of the Republicans gather their cojones to be rid of the bastard, or he is charged, tried, convicted, and sent to prison where he will not have access to Twitter.

 

Just a related side note: I suspect the motivation behind the BIC’s relentless antics to remain in office despite his overwhelming defeat in the election and his embarrassing, three-dozen-plus failures in court, is the man is scared to death of not being protected by the qualified immunity associated with the office he holds for another month.  So we do not forget, the BIC is a dangerous, cornered cat likely to do any outrageous thing to preserve his limited protection from the law.  I suspect and expect his days are numbered.

 

            Continuation from Update no.986:

“Same goes for any infectious disease .. seems combined with pneumonia or heart ailments it can kill .. it’s also how people die from the flu.”

My reply:

Yes, absolutely, but not all viruses are equally infectious, i.e., the ability of the virus to spread.  Isn’t it at all troubling that we are saturating our medical treatment capacity with COVID19 hospitalizations?  We are burning out our doctors and nurses.  I do not recall any other infectious disease saturating our medical capacity.  This virus is NOT the same as common influenza.  Who will treat you when you have a heart attack?

 

            Comments and contributions from Update no.987:

Comment to the Blog:

“I’m glad you finally got rain.  That matters a great deal.

“We’ve reached a point where sedition is almost a position of the Republican Party.  Certainly, those who filed and supported the Texas suit to overturn other states’ laws give the appearance of supporting the dimwit militias that are, in fact, making seditious statements.

“Aside from the concerns about anti-vaccination people, the vaccination process should be interesting.  The logistical factor of the vaccine requiring transportation and storage at -94 degrees Fahrenheit makes a demand for dry ice and special containers, which has ripple effects.  Our government refused to buy enough units of the vaccine, so that makes a potential for shortages.  The priorities for vaccinations are controversial, too.  Most of all, the decision-makers are ignoring the hot-spots in prisons.  That’s irrational.  Also, medical people and hot-spots ought to be first, but others with high public contact should be prioritized immediately after hot-spots.  Retail workers, for example, should come ahead of the general public, old or not.

“There are also other vaccines in the pipeline, some of which may have better bottom-line factors (cost, logistics, etc.) than the Pfizer product.  Thus, the refusal to buy enough of the first vaccine for the need could become an advantage if one of the others works better or reduces the time and trouble of distribution.

“On the anti-vaccine people: given that they know as much about this as we do, why don’t we let them take their chances?  There’s not enough vaccine to go around yet anyhow.”

My response to the Blog:

Yes, indeed, which is exactly why I wrote what I did and meant what I said.  The Texas suit [592 U.S. 22O155 (2020)] [987] will go down as a very low point in the history of this once grand republic.  That suit also graphically displays the enormous distance we must travel to recover from the debacle of the last four years.  This episode may be a greater challenge to representative democracy than anything in our past including the Civil War.  I hope not, but I can see the potential.  We shall overcome.

Agreed as well.  The vaccination phase is going to take months to play out and is a monumental logistics effort.  I do not agree that the USG “refused to buy enough” vaccine.  Last spring, when these orders were placed, the USG fronted extraordinary amounts of money across a half dozen or more developers to prime the pump and hedge their bets.  They had absolutely no way to predict which vaccine would be the first or the best, most successful variant, and they were also faced with what they recognized would be enormous demand worldwide.  I cannot find fault with the objective and execution of Operation WARP SPEED, and the administration deserves appropriate credit for front-loading the vaccine development process.  It will be interesting to see what dynamics evolve with multiple effective vaccines available.  There are undoubtedly rough patches ahead before we are done with this virus.  Yes, prisons are problematic.  But, if we think of this early phase of vaccine deployment as a triage process, I think the USG is making the correct choices, i.e., I think health care frontliners and first responders should be ahead of us.  Priority for retail workers does make sense to help get the economy running on all eight-cylinders as soon as possible.

True.  You cite some of the dynamic factors that may well play out in this phase of the pandemic.  There are other factors as well.

Re: the anti-vaxxers.  I don’t think we have a choice.  They are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what is logical or reasonable.  That is one of the other factors mentioned above.  I would be perfectly accepting of their freedom of choice (to decline the vaccine) if their choice was not a threat to the rest of us.  If the demographic assessments are correct, 40% of our population (132M people) are anti-vaxxers.  If we assume only 20% of those get infected; that’s 26M people.  With the current rate of hospitalizations among infected individuals, that yields almost 3M people demanding intense medical treatment; that saturation of the medical capacity would deny treatment for other reasons to the rest of us who did get vaccinated.  To me, the choice that results in denial of medical treatment to others is a public threat and thus not acceptable.  If the choice of rejecting vaccination had an associated confirmation of rejecting medical treatment for COVID19 symptoms, like a DNR, then I’m good with their freedom of choice.  Unfortunately, such filtering criterion is not workable.  So we must tolerate the freedom of choice of others threatening our lives.  I see this question in very stark terms.

 . . . follow-up comment:

“Your point about spreading R & D money across multiple developers is valid and could be very important given that the Pfizer vaccine has a major logistical issue.  Well stated.

“One of the responses the United States didn't make to this virus was to increase and re-direct hospital capacity.  That may or may not be needed in the future.  Surely, those anti-vaxxers wouldn't equal the peak numbers we're seeing now.  Nevertheless, a company here has provided equipment to the city's space at our Convention Center.  While that's primarily a way for Ohio Health to make a little money on outdated equipment from its storage facility (so says an inside source I won't name), it could certainly handle overflow patients if they ever show up.  So far, it's been sitting unused since April or May.  Similar situations may apply in other places.”

 . . . my follow-up response:

Thank you.  I try to be balanced when I am able.

I agree with your assessment as far as it goes.  However, I believe you missed a vital element in the medical capacity observation—knowledgeable personnel.  The hardware and supplies are one aspect as you note.  They can be increased in fairly short order by mobilizing U.S. industry by invocation of the Defense Production Act of 1950 [PL 81-774; 64 Stat. 798; 8.9.1950] [949].  It is not so easy to produce and deploy doctors and nurses.  Further, those we have are being burned out at an alarming rate.  Perhaps we can deploy IBM’s Watson AI platform to assist; that would be quicker.

 

Another contribution:

“Cap, I’ve been silently following your well written tirades and enjoying your occasional fair acknowledgment of some folk’s good faith admiration for those several very important positive actions of our POTUS over four years.

“I’ve always agreed with your observations critical of his personality and careless tongue, and for various reasons I voted and rooted for the Libertarian candidates.  I do, however, continue to regret that you and most liberal and centrist observers will not place and express sufficient blame for our divided nation upon whom it primarily lies: the leftstream press, the Democratic socialist party including the previous POTUS and left wing educators and economists, the gutless robotic Repandercrats of the obsolete GOP, and the poorly educated and apathetic American electorate, in descending order of course, IMHO.”

 . . . to which the contributor added:

Here’s another observation of a positive Trump legacy, which might bear discussion in any unbiased blog: the remarkable record of Trump appointees to the federal bench who have ruled according to their interpretations of the constitution rather than to favor Trump’s positions as cynics night have predicted, just one of many positives that bear mention occasionally among the boring tirades.

My reply:

Wow!  Tirade = a prolonged outburst of bitter, outspoken denunciation.  I suppose that accusation is reasonable in that the BIC has been quite persistent in his outrageous, unpresidential behavior; there has always been plenty of material to criticize his conduct.  He deserves no slack.

Quite a bit of Red baiting in your words.  Respectfully, I shall pass on comment.  Let it suffice to say I do not share such a hardened view of the opposition.

I do not know whether you have stood duty within the intelligence branch.  I have . . . several times.  It was very valuable service for a variety of reasons.  Foremost among those reasons was the technique of assessing information. Intelligence always involves a wide array of information sources that demand careful examination regarding reliability and accuracy.  We often have to add in misinformation, propaganda, false flag, deception, and a spectrum of adversarial techniques to confuse or misdirect the assessment process.  I listen, read, watch, and try to understand a range of information sources to assess the truth.  Just a related FYI, my friend, your words imply that only the left are fake news; the right never does such things.  That may not be the meaning you intend, but that is the image I am left with in this discussion.

I criticize and praise judges / justices by criteria I believe are most meaningful in my understanding of the genesis and evolution of the Constitution and the law.  Case in point, Roe v. Wade [410 U.S. 113 (1973)] [319].  The strict constructionists see the ruling as an abortion case.  The interpretative branch sees it as a decision affirming a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy and freedom of choice.  The justices of the day sought some balance in those opposing forces.  I worry about justices who want us to maintain society as it was 230 years ago.  Such a rigid view of the Constitution is NOT supported in the related founding documents, in my humble opinion.  None of the Founders / Framers saw themselves as omniscient or omnipotent; they all recognized that they were flawed human beings like all the rest of us; and, I believe they recognized that interpretation had to be done in the context of contemporary society within the guidelines and principles as they evolved under the aegis of the Constitution.

Just a FYI: I believe I have been giving plenty of credit to the BIC’s SCOTUS nominees.  In this context, I have been far more critical of McConnell’s reprehensible conduct in defying the Constitution than I have any aberrant interpretation by any justice.

The BIC offered up so bloody much to be critical of in our politics.  The conduct of the BICP (the GOP is no more) in the light of the BIC’s outrageous behavior has left me no choice but to be critical.  I am sorry you feel my criticism is excessive or misapplied.  I do not know if you read the Texas v. Pennsylvania [Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin] [592 U.S. 22O155 (2020)] [987] filing, amicus, and SCOTUS decision, but that one case alone speaks volumes.  I have also noted the contributions of the three BIC nominees in this instance and others.  What do you expect from me?

 

A different contribution:

“Did you catch this 2018 Executive Order ?  It was a great warning that the robbers did not heed ... rather than catch the robbers as they leave the bank, he’s letting the whole world watch the attempts at coverup.” [Emojis removed]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-imposing-certain-sanctions-event-foreign-interference-united-states-election/

My response:

I am quite familiar with the BIC’s EO 13848, but I’m not sure of your point.  Would you be so kind to give me a little more information about what you are trying to say in your citation?

 

            My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)