"Really bad" is likely apocalyptic for a normal human

John Sipher, tweeted a chart he got from Molly Jong Fast of the Daily Beast. The text:

Deadliest days in American History 1. Galveston Hurricane – 8,000 2. Antietam – 3,600 3. September 11, 2001 – 2,977 4. Last Thursday – 2,861 5. Last Wednesday – 2,762 6. Last Tuesday – 2,461 7. Last Friday – 2,439 8. Pearl Harbor – 2,403 Wear a mask and avoid gatherings.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about Operation Warp Speed and a big problem with it. This operation was created and touted by the nasty guy to get a coronavirus vaccine to the people as quickly as possible. It did the wise thing in funding several of the efforts, also in ordering hundreds of millions of doses of the various contenders before they were ready. But OWS did not adjust its orders as various vaccine companies made progress. That means they ordered lots of doses from companies that won’t have a product until spring. And of the two companies that have a vaccine ready now OWS didn’t buy enough, only for 50 million people, and had turned down a chance to buy more. Those doses have now been bought by other countries and more won’t be available until spring. The shortage will stretch into summer – as the pandemic rages, with more illness and death. Rob Swanda created a three minute video to explain how the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines work. The science geeks among us will appreciate it. The first part of the video got cut off and was posted lower in the thread. Also in the thread are definitions for some of the terms he used. Laura Clawson of Kos compares COVID economic relief policies of Canada, Germany, France, and Britain to the pittance offered by Moscow Mitch and fellow Republicans. And they can’t manage to pass a second pittance. Vinny Arora is a tenured professor at University of Chicago teaching how to improve medical care. She tweeted a thread. Here’s part of it:

I was watching some news stories this week featuring hospital leaders and healthcare workers talking about how things are in surge states. Reporter always asked if they were 'overwhelmed' and did 'they have beds/staff?’ Sadly, you won't get the real answer this way. The thing is that hospital leaders can't go on TV and scare people with how bad things are because of the real concern that patients who are indeed sick won't come in leading to more deaths. They also are managing concerns of risk management and reputation/financial damage too. So they may say something like "our staff are doing our best" or I am "so proud of our teams" This is true! Everyone IS trying their best. But please know that's not a business as usual signal. "everyone is doing their best" is code for "yes s*(& hitting the fan but we trying" ... So when healthcare workers say they're "overwhelmed" or it's "really bad"... Keep in mind healthcare workers (esp ICU!) are used to death, stress, high workload & long hours. "Overwhelmed" is code for I'm drowning. "Really bad" is likely apocalyptic for a normal human. Trust us. We aren't complainers. Why would we start now?

Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Rep. Katie Porter has had enough of Mitch and the GOP. They are still demanding any relief package includes liability protections for companies whose employees get sick because of inadequate on-job virus protections. Democrats call this a license to kill.

I’m filling you in on Senator McConnell’s attempts over the last 8 days to tank a *bipartisan* COVID relief bill. Everyone at the negotiating table—including Senate Rs—has agreed to a compromise. Except one. Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to the floor unless it wipes away all COVID-related lawsuits filed that ‘allege injury or death’ due to corporate negligence. These lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life—cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe prioritized cutting costs over protecting them. The same McConnell who said that President Trump is ‘100% within his rights’ to pursue baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud is now refusing to pass urgently-needed relief unless it strips those same rights from the most vulnerable among us. This must be exposed.

A quote of the day (from last Saturday)

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatizing chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners. ~~Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (1994)

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Kurt Bardella of USA Today:

For Trump, everything is learned behavior. If he does something and gets a reaction, he will continue to do that. Trump is the living embodiment of positive reinforcement. You just have to understand that his measure for what constitutes “positive” is simply and exclusively attention.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported there is a growing battle within the GOP between state party chairs and state legislators. The party chairs are siding with the nasty guy, calling on legislatures to overturn the election and give the win to the nasty guy. Actual GOP state lawmakers are refusing. One example is Michigan. The GOP party chair, Laura Cox, is calling on the GOP controlled legislature to ignore the voters. The lawmakers say they don’t have the power to do so. I’ve reported before that though the US Constitution gives them that power, state law (maybe even state constitution) forbids it. One of the things driving this battle is that the nasty guy drew out more voters this time than in 2016. Yeah, I’ve lamented before that he did, 10 million more nationwide. But that ignores an additional 18 million who voted for Joe Biden than did for Hillary Clinton. There was talk that the nasty guy and Moscow Mitch rushed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court so she could vote for him when a case to overturn the election came their way. So far, one case got that far and was promptly swatted away – none of the justices wanted to touch it. It was a recent case from Pennsylvania asking votes to be thrown out. So Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, is trying another route. Joan McCarter reported he sued to challenge election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He’s taking it directly to the Supremes because this is a conflict between states, which only the Supremes can handle. Dana Nessel, AG for Michigan blasted this as a publicity stunt, one contributing to the “erosion of confidence in the U.S. democratic system.” McCarter reported that Texas suit has been joined by seventeen other states, all run by Republicans, who gave the Electoral College votes to the nasty guy (except for one EC vote in Nebraska). They accuse the defendant states of election practices they also do. An example is accusing Pennsylvania of allowing ballots received after election day to be counted. As does Kansas and Mississippi. Rep Adam Schiff tweeted:

Demanding governors overturn results. Coercing state election officials. Insisting state legislators appoint new electors. Trump lost, and these attacks will not succeed. But if you believe in democracy, silence is complicity.

Lilliana Mason, a professor of Government and politics, expanded on that in a thread. Here’s part of it:

The fact that most GOP leaders don't condemn any of this means that we don't have a polarization problem, we have a democracy problem. I study polarization and I'm increasingly convinced that it's the wrong problem to address. The two parties are not equally extreme. The fact that Dems and Reps hate each other (affective polarization) is bad - but worse is that Republican leaders and voters are actively undermining democracy on a regular basis, and Democrats are trying to defend it. By focusing on polarization, we're avoiding the thing directly in front of us: the Republican Party is the problem. They cannot win a fair contest, and don't need to try, because Republican voters' votes count so much more than Dem voters' votes. 17% of the electorate can elect a majority of the Senate. Republicans can win a majority of House seats with a minority of American votes. All of these imbalances benefit rural places - which are reliably Republican. Republican voters are super-voters. They are also being riled up by resentment about the limited progress that has been made in civil rights - threatened by the incomplete status gains of Black Americans and women. Conservative policies are not popular - they must campaign on identity threats. … We don't need to depolarize American politics. We need to democratize it.