Tag Archives: Journalism

“Republicans finally get “death panels,” Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, July, 26, 2020 Dr. Jose Vasquez, the health officer for Starr County, Texas located on the US-Mexico border “The situation is desperate.” At the only hospital in the county, over 50% of patients are testing positive for the COVID-19 virus — 40 new coronavirus cases were reported Thursday. Starr County Memorial Hospital in Rio Grande City made plans to set up a committee to decide which...

Dig Him Up! by Ken Melvin On our TV and computer screens we saw right-winged protesters armed with semiautomatic weapons displaying swastikas, nooses, and replicas of supposed confederate battle flags guarding the entrance and filling the chambers of Michigan’s State Capitol. How did they get by with this? Does the Second Amendment of the US Constitution give them the right to try to intimidate a duly elected Governor, government, with assault weapons and...

Via Diana Ravitch’s blog on a Time magazine article What the U.S. Can Learn from 3 Countries About Reopening: TIME Magazine just published a story about school reopening in Denmark, South Korea, and Israel, with lessons for the U.S. Lesson #1 from Denmark: Get the virus under control before reopening schools. Unlike Denmark, the United States is bungling that, and the virus is spreading in the south and west. Perhaps states that have taken the necessary...

Selection by Ken Melvin The times they are a changing. And they are changing at pandemic speed. Five months ago is ancient history. Now is a but a fleeting interval. From now, the future. What will our world look like six months from now? What will it look like in three years? So much for being the ‘Greatest Nation Ever Known’. We just got rolled by a virus whilst beset with incompetent leadership, inadequate healthcare, a global warming crisis, and a...

The 2020 Presidential election nowcast based on State polling: Trump support deteriorating even in red States For the past four weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days. Here’s how it works: – States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups. – States where the range is between...

RIP Tonu Puu Seems like more people I know are dying.  In this case it is a good friend of mine and occasional co-author, the Swedish economist, Tonu Puu, who was born in Estonia of an Estonian father and a mother of German ancestry.  As it was, he ended up speaking a very large number of languages, as well as being very cosmopolitan in many other ways. He was 83 years old and had cancer for some time, which is what I presume he did of, although the...

Truth Is The Daughter Of Time This is a frontispiece to a 1951 mystery novel by Josephine Tey (real name: Elizabeth Makintosh) named _The Daughter of Time_It is about the question of whether or not King Richard III ordered the murder of the “Little Princes in the Tower,” his nephews Edward and Richard, as has  long been alleged, and for a long time was simply accepted as historical fact.  This bestselling and very well and wittily written novel makes...

As posted by Anne: #Coronavirus data has been removed from the U.S. CDC website after the Trump administration’s order to re-route hospital data directly to the administration. Missing are current inpatient and intensive care bed occupancy, health worker staffing, and PPE supply status. pic.twitter.com/mwBjw4QE7d — CGTN America (@cgtnamerica) July 16, 2020 Pope Francis “All dictatorships, all of them, began like this, by adulterating communication, by...

Me Worthies by Ken Melvin If 40% of Americans think like Trump thinks, is America worth saving? At his rallies, we see C-SPAN shots of mostly overweight middle-aged and somewhat older whites; so we certainly can’t blame his ascendancy on recent immigrants. As Walt’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pretty good bet that Trump is both a narcissist and a sociopath. And his supporters, they too? No doubt some of his supporters care more about...

(Dan here…via Diane Ravitch’s blog…) Philly-Area Charters Collect $30 Million+ in PPP Funding by dianeravitch Charters in the Philadelphia area received more than $30 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds, while public schools in Philadelphia continue to be systematically underfunded. The big winner in the PPP sweepstakes is the for-profit Chester Community Charter School, owned by a major Republican donor and billionaire. One of the largest...