I hope every veteran had a good day today.

 I am sure it wasn't as good as it could be with the reality of all the restrictions on ease of movement and embraces of friendship with our current national health emergency.

Our country exists because of each and every veteran. It is difficult to show the level of thanks such sacrifices deserve. A day of honor will have to do.

Thank you for your service. It is valued beyond any imagination. 

So long as Chief Justice Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh continue to uphold the UNDERSTOOD "Majority Rule" of the USA Constitution the Affordable Care Act will survive Republican politics.

This is a wrongful use of the USA court system. The minority attempted to carry out activist court actions to end the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was passed into law by bicameral majority legislators in 2009. As McConnell would say, "Elections have consequences." Indeed they do, however, in the case of McConnell and his out of date Republicans in the US Senate those consequences should only apply to the decisions Republicans make. Their politics do not SUPPORT the USA Constitution and this a very good example of it.

I believe it was Chief Justice Roberts who plainly stated, he believed the court action was to impose a legislative activism on the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs wanted judges and justices to destroy a majority supported legislation passed into law within the constitutional processes outlined in the USA Constitution.

That political USE of the courts of the USA is toxic both to the Rule of Law and the politics of the country. When majorities are elected in the USA they have the right and DUTY to carry forward legislation expressing the people's business. When the opposition party attempts to remove a new law, that is Minority Decent and it has no place in a court of law, but, ONLY within the politics of the people. 

The Republicans, when it comes to Obamacare/Affordable Care Act, USED it to win seats over two House and Senate elections and it worked for those two elections. It could be said that nasty attitude toward to affordable health care also allowed Trump to find majorities in states where citizens actually like the ACA. The Republicans staged innumerable attempts to end the ACA in the USA House. I lost count of the number of times. They all were political stunts so their politics were supported at the ballot box. Nothing ever came of those votes.

I might add, FOX News staged most of the political support when attacking the ACA, It was the only real message right wing people would listen to WITHOUT educating the public with EQUALITY of representation in the media. The law already existed and FOX News continually leveraged political demands regarding the ACA in the media. There was no basis for it, but, the POLITICAL TOXICITY, was the product FOX News was looking for, not to correct a real wrong. For the most part, the people of the country have come to love this 11 year old law. But, did that matter to the right wing media? No. They had to use the ACA to some kind of political advantage and the court systems was a means to say, "Republicans can defeat Obamacare." There were even cronies that provided lots and lots of money for Republicans seeking court action to win those cases. Money talks right? Well. Not this time. The Chief Justice and one other conservative judge have found the demand for them to "legislate from the bench" unconstitutional.

I might add, when one looks across the spectrum of those using Obamacare it is the people 400% higher than the poverty line. That is not the wealthy or the Middle Class, but, the class of people struggling the most in the USA to be well and make ends meet. They don't have voices of wealthy lawyers, they have their vote.

The Minority Rule that is a legitimate concern to the courts is about the individual and their rights living within the Majority Rule of the USA Constitution. This case about the ACA isn't it. Understand Warren Burger and his court and then the Individual will come alive in relation to the USA Constitution.

A Minority Rule decision does not destroy the Majority Rule in legislation, but, it allows for important exceptions.

November 10, 2020

By Adam Liptak

Washington - At least five Supreme Court justices, (click here) including two members of its conservative majority, indicated on Tuesday that they would reject attempts by Republicans and the Trump administration to kill the Affordable Care Act.

It was not clear whether the court would strike down a provision of the act that initially required most Americans to obtain insurance or pay a penalty, a requirement that was rendered toothless in 2017 after Congress zeroed out the penalty. But the bulk of the sprawling 2010 health care law, President Barack Obama’s defining domestic legacy, appeared likely to survive its latest encounter with the court.

Both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said striking down the so-called individual mandate did not require the rest of the law to be struck down as well.

“Congress left the rest of the law intact when it lowered the penalty to zero,” Chief Justice Roberts said....

Nitche social environments have become the birth places of the Super Spreader.

When the virus first arrived in the USA it was found to effect families and people like the elderly living in close quarters similar to families. Now that the virus has expanded it's presence in the USA population the same dynamic of people being close in an environment is holding up by studies conducted about Americans. This is an enormous study and cannot be argued with, there is simply too much information.

10 November 2020

By 

Serina Chang, 

Emma Pierson, 

Pang Wei Koh, 

Jaline Gerardin, 

Beth Redbird, 

David Grusky & 

Jure Leskovec

The COVID-19 pandemic (click here) dramatically changed human mobility patterns, necessitating epidemiological models which capture the effects of changes in mobility on virus spread1. We introduce a metapopulation SEIR model that integrates fine-grained, dynamic mobility networks to simulate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in 10 of the largest US metropolitan statistical areas. Derived from cell phone data, our mobility networks map the hourly movements of 98 million people from neighborhoods (census block groups, or CBGs) to points of interest (POIs) such as restaurants and religious establishments, connecting 57k CBGs to 553k POIs with 5.4 billion hourly edges. We show that by integrating these networks, a relatively simple SEIR model can accurately fit the real case trajectory, despite substantial changes in population behavior over time. Our model predicts that a small minority of “superspreader” POIs account for a large majority of infections and that restricting maximum occupancy at each POI is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility. Our model also correctly predicts higher infection rates among disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic groups2–8 solely from differences in mobility: we find that disadvantaged groups have not been able to reduce mobility as sharply, and that the POIs they visit are more crowded and therefore higher-risk. By capturing who is infected at which locations, our model supports detailed analyses that can inform more effective and equitable policy responses to COVID-19.

What this study says overall is that the USA's trend into super spreading is a choice place for understanding the virus. In other words, the American people are very accommodating in spreading the virus so it can be studied and understood. That is not an admirable quality of this country, it is a third world mentality that provides the social dynamic that Americans value their lives less than work and a good time.

But, the research is not about laughing out loud at Americans, it is conducted to hopefully educate them and have them value their own lives enough to end the dangerous behaviors that provided for this research.

There must be a contraction in activity by Americans in social venues KNOWN to be the sources of super spreader events. Americans are supposed to be smart. This study clearly indicates they are not.

In a study reviewing electronic health records of over 62,000 coronavirus patients in the US revealed legally defined Traumatic Brain Injury from COVID-19.

A traumatic brain injury (click here) is brain dysfunction caused by an outside source. Very simply: damage occurs to the brain, and the brain doesn’t function normally after that. 

We refer to a brain injury caused by an outside source as an acquired brain injury, meaning it happens after birth. To be clear, there are other scenarios that can result in brain damage that don’t come from an outside source. A non-acquired brain injury is a brain injury caused by genetic or hereditary factors, birth trauma, or from a degenerative cause, such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Causes can include:

Assault
Sports

MVA
Falls

As well as:

Stroke

Chemo

Virus 

Aneurysm

Carbon monoxide poisoning...

Basically, anything that changes the structure, biochemistry and function of the brain is a traumatic brain injury. That includes the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

In stating there is a changing nature of COVID-19 opens up the idea these NEW discoveries have resulted by a mutation. That is not the case. These symptoms are not so much changing as a discovery. This is new information about the same virus that is causing so many deaths.

The facts are plain, COVID-19 is a coronavirus that has acted as many others have, except, it is much larger than other viruses within that description. It is due to the increased size of SARS-CoV-2 and the trauma to the body's tissue that has resulted in a mind altering and deadly reality.

November 9, 2020

By Robert Yolken

...The changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic (click here) presents a moving target for clinicians, investigators, readers of medical literature, and the general public. Infection rates in different areas are frequently changing. Additionally, new cases, clinical data, and analytic functionalities are being added to available databases. Conclusions based on any one dataset thus require frequent re-examination and re-interpretation. The recent retraction of articles on COVID-19 based on another database highlights the necessity of data sharing and transparency.

More than 100 years have passed since the worldwide influenza pandemic that resulted in a markedly increased rate of neurological and psychiatric sequelae. Despite great advances in medical science, we are faced with some of the same issues relating to the characterisation of a rapidly changing pandemic occurring in different geopolitical environments. Learning to use new tools, such as electronic medical records efficiently should provide some of the essential information needed to understand and control the psychiatric consequences of this pandemic and plan for future ones. In these efforts, we should keep in mind the words of Sir William Osler that, “the best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.”...

COVID-19 is not only a dangerous virus that drastically shortens longevity, it creates it's own comorbidities.

One of the stipulations to people in educating about SARS-CoV-2 is that if people have comorbidities they have to be extra careful in being exposed to the virus. Here and in other medical findings, it i obvious the virus is not only a struggle for healthy people, it also creates it's own comorbiditites through the course of the disease through the body's immune reaction.

These ACQUIRED comorbidities during the course of the disease may explain why young people are not doing as well as expected and result in deaths even after discharge from the hospital. Heart damage can be a silent killer.

If the USA is to have a sincere two party system that loves the country....

...start a new party. Call it the "Real Republicans" or something. Let's face it the old RNC needs to be fumigated, too. It is amazing how self-absorbed people don't recognize it when their time is long past.

November 10, 2020

Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle (click here) are making moves to expand their influence at the Republican National Committee, three GOP sources, including advisers to the President tell CNN. Some sources say they may seek to take over the party structure themselves.

President Donald Trump’s eldest son and his girlfriend, a Trump campaign fundraiser and former Fox News host, have made it clear to campaign and White House officials they are unhappy with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who they view as not having done enough to win a close race.

Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle could seek leadership roles at the RNC to position the committee for a comeback run for the President in 2024, the sources said.

“Don Jr. and Kimberly have an eye on the RNC, through themselves taking over or somebody close to them taking over,” a well-placed Republican Party source close to the White House said....

Power grabs should never be received well in politics. The campaign trail is a proving ground and service is the proof of a legislator loyal to the USA Constitution with the well being of it's citizens in mind.

All of them should consider self-imposed exile.

November 9, 2020
By Martha Ross

The autopsies have begun on Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, (click here) and a lengthy report by Politico this weekend spotlighted Kimberly Guilfoyle’s role as a fund-raiser, which insiders told the publication was lacking in both discipline and professionalism.

The former Fox News host and one-time first lady of San Francisco is Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend and a senior campaign adviser, who was tasked with being one of the president’s top fundraisers. Under Guilfoyle’s leadership, Trump’s finance team “couldn’t compete with Biden’s small-dollar fundraising machine,” Politico reported.

Not only did Guilfoyle “underperform” in the fundraising job, senior campaign officials told Politico she was “an H.R. nightmare.”

“Some donors were horrified by what they described as Guilfoyle’s lack of professionalism: She frequently joked about her sex life and at one fundraiser, offered a lap dance to the donor who gave the most money,” Politico wrote.

Politico’s report is the latest investigative story to allege that Guilfoyle, 51, talked or acted in sexually suggestive ways in a workplace setting.

In early October, the New Yorker followed up on reporting by HuffPost that described the reasons for Guilfoyle’s abrupt departure from Fox News in June 2018. At the time, the popular explanation for her departure was that she left voluntarily to avoid conflicts of interest posed by her new romance with Trump Jr.

The New Yorker story, by investigative reporter Jane Mayer, suggested that Guilfoyle had to leave because of sexual harassment allegations made by a former assistant in a 42-page draft complaint. According to the allegations, Guilfoyle showed lewd photos of male genitalia to colleagues, regularly discussed sexual matters at work, urged the assistant “to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors,” and exposed herself to the assistant and asked for a critique of her naked body.

The story furthermore described efforts by Guilfoyle to cover up the allegations, citing well-informed sources who said the network paid the former assistant up to $4 million to avoid a trial.

In response, Guilfoyle issued a statement saying, “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind.”...

Putin is advising Trump

Trump is placing loyalists in the military during the Lame Duck to create Venezuela. That was the plan all along for his re-election failure.

It is called a military coup. Esper needs to stay exactly where he is in the face of treason. There is a military solution for this, it is called a Court Marshall. Do it now.

It is also why Trump built that ugly wall around the White House. It is a fortress that removed the view of the building from public view. The Secret Service needs to stand down for the arrest and removal of Trump by the military.

Don’t live in denial. This is real.

Pence needs to take the presidency.

White House employees need to leave and all supplies are to stop going in. Turn off water and electric. Make the White House Trump’s prison until he steps down. Station guards.

Don’t allow hostages. The Secret Service can secure any limited amounts of munitions in the White House. Trump will not be provided a helicopter beginning now. He is to surrender to the military police. He will not leave the White House by Limo or the Presidential car. He is to be arrested by military police. 

It is Putin’s Pipe Dream.

There will be no changing in the cabinet between now and January 20th. The US Senate will confirm no one. Espers and everyone else will remain in their office until the Biden administration is in place. Transition will go forward now.

Biden needs to consider placing experienced people from the Obama White House in his cabinet for at least the first year or two. I believe the practice of the past two administrations was to keep current DOD and/or Homeland Security for at least a year for the purpose of national security. All these changes by Trump is a breach of protocols and precedent since September 11, 2001. Department heads for the FBI and CIA will remain and meet regularly with the President-Elect Biden.

No one knows the land mines Trump has placed throughout the government, but, experienced cabinet secretaries will know. They can be expeditious. 

The USA, NATO and allies should consider themselves in conflict with Russia without military confrontation. I sincerely question China’s involvement, but, without evidence the only thing China is guilty of is attempts to extend sovereign borders. The USA military needs to be on alert throughout its expanse. 

Putin so much wanted to command the USA military for his own purposes. I don’t think so.