Ya gotta love the partisan practices of the Robert's Court.

June 27, 2021
By Nina Totenberg

In a 5-4 decision (click here) along traditional conservative-liberal ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is a political question — not reviewable by federal courts — and that those courts can't judge if extreme gerrymandering violates the Constitution.

The ruling puts the onus on the legislative branch, and on individual states, to police redistricting efforts.

"We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts," Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the conservative majority. "Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions."

Roberts noted that excessive partisanship in the drawing of districts does lead to results that "reasonably seem unjust," but he said that does not mean it is the court's responsibility to find a solution....

LET'S DO THIS THING!

Governor Pritzker is a hero!!!!!!!

Every Democratic Governor should be doing the same thing!!!!

September 24, 2021

By Rick Pearson

Gov. J.B. Pritzker (click here) signed into law Friday a revised map of General Assembly boundaries designed to ensure Democrats keep control of the Illinois House and Senate through the decade, starting with next year’s elections.

“These legislative maps align with the landmark Voting Rights Act and will help ensure Illinois’ diversity is reflected in the halls of government,” Pritzker said in a statement.

Republicans and several voting rights groups had asked the Democratic governor to veto the latest map plan, contending the vote by Democrats to approve it in an Aug. 31 special session came too quickly to adequately assess its effects on the state’s political, racial and ethnic makeup.

Republicans also said that by signing the revised measure, which was based on delayed federal census data that didn’t come out until mid-August, Pritzker reneged on his initial campaign vow not to approve partisan-drawn maps.....

President Biden handled the crisis at the border there is no reason for more spending on the southern border.

Ted Cruz has no reason to complain. The Haitian refugees at the bridge were an alarming discovery that has been resolved easily and in a short period of time. There is no reason for President Biden to visit Del Rio, his administration handled it.

The idea the Border Patrol on horseback attempted to prevent people from crossing into the USA is not the role of the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol is responsible for lawbreakers like the drug cartels and not unarmed people crossing into the USA. Those people may or may not have a valid reason to be in this country, but, that is for the courts to decide and not people on horseback representing the USA at our southern border.

There was no reason for Border Patrol agents to believe they have to drive people like cattle back across the border. That is a dangerous directive and not proper in this country. These people were unarmed and poor. There are processes that address these issues. The immigrants at the border need to be processed in and then left up to the courts to decide their future in the USA. There is no reason to act as a military unit from the Alamo.

September 24, 2021
By Maureen Groppe, Joey Garrison, Rick Rouan, and Courtney Subramanian

President Joe Biden on Friday (click here) vowed to take action against border patrol agents on horseback whose actions in Del Rio, Texas drew widespread outrage.

“It’s outrageous. I promise you those people will pay. They will be investigated. There will be consequences,” Biden said in response to a reporter's question at the White House.

The remarks, which came after Biden talked about the rollout of booster shoots for those most at risk for the coronavirus, were his first extended comments about the issue since the images emerged.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is already conducting an investigation that he has said will be completed by next week.

The administration has also temporarily suspended horse patrols in Del Rio, Texas....

This is the Republican majority in the State of Michigan practicing politics from their seats of power. (CORRUPTION)

September 24, 2021
By Craig Mauger

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office (click here) plans to a strike a controversial provision embedded in Michigan's new state budget that would ban health orders requiring kids to wear face masks.

Whitmer's spokesman Bobby Leddy labeled the language "dangerous" in a Friday afternoon statement, adding that it's unconstitutional and "the governor will declare it unenforceable."

"The state of Michigan will not withhold funding from local health departments for implementing universal mask policies or quarantine protocols in local schools that are designed to keep students safe so they can continue learning in person," Leddy added....

This is where all the extremists in the country find permission for bleach and internal lights.

The FDA cannot issue an Emergency Use Authorization. That is conducted by the HHS Secretary. At some point, the HHS Secretary has to rescind the Emergency Use Authorization to end the PERMISSION of wacko treatments.

Emergency Use Authorization

...Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), (click here) when the Secretary of HHS declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives. The HHS declaration to support such use must be based on one of four types of determinations of threats or potential threats by the Secretary of HHS, Homeland Security, or Defense.

Please note: a determination under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act that a public health emergency exists, such as the one issued on January 31, 2020, does not enable FDA to issue EUAs. On February 4, 2020, the HHS Secretary determined that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19. Subsequent HHS declarations supporting use of EUAs and based on this determination are described in the blue boxes below.....

Old Wives Tales, Superstition of any kind, Trumpism or Moralizing will result in a more dangerous virus.

September 19, 2021
By Kristen Jordan Shamus

Despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines (click here) and easy access, the U.S. has fallen behind 40 other countries in getting its people fully vaccinated in a pandemic that is still raging.

About 55% of Americans have gotten at least two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center. That compares with top-ranked Malta, which has fully vaccinated 83% of its population. Our Canadian neighbors have a 70% vaccination rate. China is at 72%. The UK is at 66%.

And though the pace of vaccinations rose slightly in August, it has trended downward the last two weeks.

At this rate, "by the end of September, the U.S. will have the lowest vaccination level of all prosperous democracies, With the largest supply & the biggest head start," Andy Slavitt, who stepped down in June as senior adviser to the White House pandemic response team, said in a tweet last week....

The reason some health care workers resist being vaccinated is because they don't understand or CONSENT to the science.

14 September 2021
By Elie Dolgin

How mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Work (click here)

...Realizing that this discovery (click here) might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to “treat RNA as a drug”. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism.

Those experiments were a stepping stone towards two of the most important and profitable vaccines in history: the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines given to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Global sales of these are expected to top US$50 billion in 2021 alone.

But the path to success was not direct. For many years after Malone’s experiments, which themselves had drawn on the work of other researchers, mRNA was seen as too unstable and expensive to be used as a drug or a vaccine. Dozens of academic labs and companies worked on the idea, struggling with finding the right formula of fats and nucleic acids — the building blocks of mRNA vaccines.

Today’s mRNA jabs have innovations that were invented years after Malone’s time in the lab, including chemically modified RNA and different types of fat bubble to ferry them into cells (see ‘Inside an mRNA COVID vaccine’). Still, Malone, who calls himself the “inventor of mRNA vaccines”, thinks his work hasn’t been given enough credit. “I’ve been written out of history,” he told Nature....

Any private detention facility and/or prision needs to be transitioned into publicly owned faciliites.

September 23, 2021

By Salvador Rivera

Community organizations (click here) are calling on the Biden administration to uphold its promise and commit to closing the Western Regional Detention Center in downtown San Diego.

It is operated by a private corporation called the GEO Group.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the Attorney General to “not renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities.”

The order included the Western Region Detention Facility, which can hold up to 770 people.

Its contract was set to expire on Sept. 30.

But GEO announced yesterday that its contract with the U.S. Marshals has been extended for six months, allowing it to continue operating while it looks at ways of extending its operations despite the executive order.

“President Biden forbid the Department of Justice from renewing the contract,” said Bardis Vakili, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego.

According to Vakili, GEO has found a loophole to continue operating the detention facility....

Steve Scalise should check the facts before he boasts about Trump's job record.

"Oh, but, we shut down the country."

That is exactly correct.

And, why was the country shut down? Because Trump took all the scientists in China that monitored such events as a virus outbreak off the budget and brought the scientists home. The job losses are a direct result of that Trump policy.

A DIRECT RESULT OF A PRESIDENT PLACING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN HARMS WAY.

January 8, 2021
By Andrew Van Dam

President Trump (click here) took office at the crest of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. He leaves presiding over the worst labor market in modern U.S. history, as an already-sputtering economic recovery has turned negative.

Friday’s awful jobs report from the Labor Department showed there were still 3 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were on Inauguration Day 2017, when Trump stood in front of the Capitol and vowed to reverse the American carnage.

No other modern president has left the U.S. with a smaller workforce than it had when they took office. Since the government started keeping track in 1939, no other president has even seen significant job losses during a single presidential term — though job growth during George W. Bush’s first four years in office was essentially flat....

This is interesting. Remember how Defunding the Police took such a beating in the right wing media?

That probably won't be the chant of the political right-wing by the next election in 2022. Defunding the Police was never about taking monies away from necessary police staffing. Defunding the Police was about changing the structure of LAW ENFORCEMENT.

There is change occurring, but, it isn't about funding shortages, it is about staffing shortages. That staffing shortage is now taking shape to bring 

September 26, 2021
By Tony Plohetski

Austin Police Department officials (click here) are finalizing plans to dispatch civilians instead of police officers to certain types of calls that do not involve emergencies as a way to maximize patrol staffing and respond to reformers' demands for change.

Interim Police Chief Joe Chacon hinted at his plan Wednesday during an announcement that he would step into the job permanently, pending City Council confirmation Thursday.

On Friday, the department released more information about the plan, which is likely to be announced this week.

"The Austin Police Department regularly reviews response policies and procedures to ensure APD prioritizes calls with an immediate threat to life or property over non-emergency calls for service," the department said in a statement. "As a result of a recent review ... recent staffing challenges and aligning with the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force patrol response recommendations, APD will change call routing and response for non-emergency calls for service effective Oct. 1."...

What is your mask efficacy? Seriously. There may be a difference enough to prevent "the spread."

Vaccination is the answer. I have heard complaints from people who received the J&J vaccine that they got the virus anyway. The J&J vaccine was never about PREVENTING any illness so much as PREVENTING hospitalization. So when I hear anyone state the vaccines don't work because they got the virus anyway, I ask what vaccine they received and when they state J&J, I simply state what they don't seem to remember. The J&J vaccine prevented hospitalization and not illness. Asked if they were hospitalized, the answer is always No.

There needs to be Mask Awareness for the country so they understand all masks are not alike.

September 21, 2021
By Kim Dacey

Baltimore - Wearing masks has become a part of life (click here) over the last year and a half, but with the more contagious delta variant, how can you be sure your cloth mask is still protecting you?

Many have been wearing some of the same cloth masks for the last year and a half, and while experts say there's no specific timeframe to replace them, it's a good idea to check certain key points to make sure they're still doing their job.

"The cloth mask that I wear is meant to protect you and the cloth mask you wear is meant to protect me," said Dr. Esti Schabelman, chief medical officer of Sinai Hospital.

But now that the delta variant is on the scene, can cloth masks protect you from getting sick? Doctors say it is the most contagious COVID-19 variant yet.

"People who are infected with the delta variant shed a lot more virus than other versions of this virus, so any mask is going to be less protective against, for example, the alpha variant," said Dr. Amesh Adalja of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health....

Why is Senator Krysten Sinema being difficult about an obviously affordable budget along with Manchen?

Because Sinema and Manchen have their funding interests elsewhere. Sinema's donors with the heaviest donations are Security and Investment with Goldman Sachs weighing in in that group of donors.

September 3, 2021
By Alex J. Rouhandeh

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee (click here) are discussing proposals to implement a variety of new taxes in an effort to fund President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.

According to a document circulated to a number of news outlets, the taxes could include a levy on stock buybacks where a company repurchases shares it originally placed on the market. The move could also reduce corporate deductions on the compensation of CEOs and impose further taxes on companies whose payment to executives exceeds the average worker pay by a certain ratio. The document also proposed raising taxes on carbon emitters....

That's all folks. It is called corruption and Manchen and Sinema are guilty of it. They want to protect Wall Street and there isn't anything else to understand.

July 21, 2021
By Lucia Mutikani

The U.S. economy (click here) likely gained steam in the second quarter, with the pace of growth probably the second fastest in 38 years, as massive government aid and vaccinations against COVID-19 fueled spending on travel-related services.

The anticipated acceleration in gross domestic product last quarter would lift the level of GDP above its peak in the fourth quarter of 2019. Even with the second quarter likely marking the peak in growth this cycle, the economic expansion was expected to remain solid for the remainder of this year.

A resurgence in COVID-19 infections, driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, however, poses a risk to the outlook. Higher inflation, if sustained, as well as ongoing supply chain disruptions, could also slow the economy. The Commerce Department will publish its snapshot of second-quarter GDP growth on Thursday at 8:30 a.m EDT (1230 GMT)."

I already discussed the issue with the increase in products reflected in the Consumer Price Index (click here) which enters at about 6 percent. That is high, but, it isn't as though the cost of producing goods and services increased, it is just that the HIGHER DEMAND punished those newly empowered to be seeking goods they could not before the stimulus was awarded. The Republican Party prides itself on supply-side economics.

Well, this year is a clear illustration of greed as the driving factor in supply-side economics. It costs no more to produce the products by the increased cost is suppose to slow the demand to "fit" the supply chain and production. The demand is not going to slow down because the Lower Middle Class and impoverished in the USA have been empowered for upward movement. The reality of this new government policy, as illustrated in the child tax credit, is about empowerment. The demand is not going away. The idea product manufacturers could get away with all this greed in the face of empowerment is outrageous.

Consumers have plenty of income and wealth ammunition to support consumer spending, while business inventories remain lean and restocking efforts are poised to support business investment and overall GDP growth substantially in the second half of the year," said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina....

To get back to the current federal budget, the US Senate needs to pass it.

STOP PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE LIVES OF AMERICANS TO BENEFIT WALL STRETT CRONIES!

I found this address by Rep. Steny Hoyer interesting.

Steve Scalise is a White Supremacist (click here) and I take what he has to say with a grain of salt.

I found Rep. Steny Hoyer to bring forth moral values and a real reason why Democrats in the US Senate should be a friend to the American people.