Sunday, December 27, 2020

In the news, Friday, December 18, 2020


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DEC 17      INDEX      DEC 19
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from Crux: Taking the Catholic Pulse

One of Christianity’s leading theological minds said Wednesday that believers who strive to make rational arguments for the faith in conversation with secularists should have fairly modest aspirations – basically, he said, their humble role is to keep a “foot in the door” until a saint comes along. “You may not see this, but we do not inhabit completely separate universes,” is how Archbishop Rowan Williams, who served as the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion from 2002 to 2012, put the message believers should strive to deliver to secularists. “We continue to do so until there’s a moment of recognition,” he said, suggesting the most effective form in which such a moment occurs is an encounter with a role model of holiness.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Thursday, December 17, 2020


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DEC 16      INDEX      DEC 18
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

Ever since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, Russia has steadily lost influence in neighboring countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, and as far away as Cuba. Now, however, it is attempting to rebuild international influence with a presence in Sudan, thereby inserting itself more firmly into security issues – and eventually energy ones – in northeast Africa, the Middle East and further afield. Moscow is planning to build a naval base in Sudan – no completion date is yet apparent – that will be able to berth up to four warships at a time, including nuclear-powered vessels. The deal with Sudan also will allow Russia the right to use Sudanese airspace.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro seemed to be walking on a tightrope, apparently favoring cooperation with China at the recent BRICS summit but doing his best to ban Huawei and Chinese-made vaccines from Brazil. These contradictory postures risk sinking the Brazilian economy and worsening the country’s Covid-19 epidemic. At the 12th BRICS Summit last month, Bolsonaro pledged to work with the other four leaders (of Russia, India, China and South Africa) to address Covid-19 and economic recovery in the post-pandemic period. God only knows that Bolsonaro needs the support of his fellow BRICS leaders because it is the third-worst-hit country, after the US and India, in the world, in terms of infections and deaths from the disease.

Forty-two years ago, Iran was a crucial party to the alliance of Western powers, crowned by US president Jimmy Carter as “an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world.” Today, the same country, having undergone a political metamorphosis, is the bête noire of that alliance, aggregated by George W Bush into an “Axis of Evil,” blamed as culpable for a catalogue of challenges facing humanity. As a comeuppance for its post-1979 policies and actions seen by the world as destructive and malign, Iran has been disciplined with unsparing economic sanctions. The United States, the foremost enforcer of these punitive measures, oversees sanctions regimes targeting nearly 30 countries. Yet the sanctions on Iran are more broad-ranging, forceful and sophisticated than any country in history has ever been subjected to. ... In the case of Iran, there are nearly 85 million human beings who have been helplessly bearing the brunt of this perdition, only to witness their economies shrinking, their purchasing power eroding, their civil liberties vanishing, their international mobility tapering off, their educational opportunities ebbing away, their health deteriorating and their jobs slipping out of their grasp.

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from Crosscut
News & Media Website in Seattle, WA.

Nine months into the pandemic, the state’s unemployment system is still rife with issues, and thousands are stuck in limbo. ... As of Dec. 5, the agency said 1.8% of people who had filed for unemployment since March were still waiting for ESD to resolve their claims. But with this year’s deluge of unemployment applicants, 1.8% still amounts to nearly 27,000 people. And, while ESD normally aims for claims with issues to be resolved within three weeks, the department is now taking nearly 10 weeks to resolve complicated claims, on average.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Our eighteenth Center of Progress is Edinburgh. The city was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment – a vital period in intellectual history that spanned the 18th and early 19th centuries. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment made important breakthroughs in economics, mathematics, architecture, medicine, poetry, chemistry, theatre, engineering, portraiture, and geology.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

This week’s subject is the technology behind WA Notify, the nickname for Washington Exposure Application. While it will be another layer in the Swiss cheese model for reducing the inherent risks of living with an endemic virus, it won’t be an easy fix. It has more holes than cheese.

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from Sputnik
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED, Broadcasting & Media Production Company out of Moscow, Russia

In a recent speech to the nation, 74-year-old King Carl XVI Gustaf described 2020 as a terrible year, emphasising that Sweden has failed to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic. "I believe we have failed. We have a large number of people who have died, and that is terrible. It is something we all suffer together", Carl XVI Gustaf said, as quoted by national broadcaster SVT. "The Swedish people have suffered enormously in difficult conditions", he added. "You think of all the people who have been unable to say farewell to their deceased family members. I think it is a heavy and traumatic experience not to be able to say a warm goodbye", he added about the public health restrictions.

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In the news, Wednesday, December 16, 2020


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DEC 15      INDEX      DEC 17
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from BBC News (UK)

As you enter the mountainous village of Pera Melana in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, you’re likely to hear the roar of scooters zooming down narrow roads and the chirps of birds stealing ripe fruit from trees. But if you approach the village’s central cafe, you’ll hear a rather unusual sound. It’s the buzz of conversations among elders in a 3,000-year-old language called Tsakonika. The speakers are the linguistic descendants of ancient Sparta, the iconic Greek city-state, and part of a rich cultural heritage and population called Tsakonian.

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from The Christian Post
RIGHT BIAS, MIXED, American nondenominational Evangelical Christian newspaper in Washington, D.C.

Leaders from within America’s most broken communities are the ones best situated to help people out of poverty, said former civil rights activist Robert Woodson Sr. at a Heritage Foundation virtual discussion on restoring low-income communities Monday. Woodson is president of the nonpartisan Woodson Center, which he founded in 1981. The center helps residents of low-income neighborhoods to address the problems in their own communities. “We’ve spent $22 trillion dollars to address poverty. People on the right conclude that since what we’ve spent doesn’t work, we should just cut these programs. People on the left say we haven’t spent enough on these programs. Solutions are exactly in the same ZIP code as the problems are. But it’s fundamental elitism that prevents us from recognizing that," he said during the discussion about his book, Lessons From the Least of These. 

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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

Joe Biden and Donald Trump were two very different presidential candidates, but they agreed on at least one key point. Too bad it’s one they’re both wrong about: The importance of “Buying American.” The catchphrase sounds nice, but behind the rousingly patriotic rhetoric is a seriously misguided economic philosophy that hurts American individuals and businesses. 

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from MedPage Today

The idea that old vaccines might have a role in the fight against COVID-19 has been floated since the early days of the pandemic. Vaccines stimulate the broad, innate immune response, which appears to play a key role in fighting COVID-19. Can the approach bridge the time until entire populations are vaccinated specifically against SARS-CoV-2? Three vaccines dominate the discussion: bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) against tuberculosis; measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR); and oral polio vaccine (OPV).

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

Insisting on being called “Doctor” when you don’t heal people is, among most holders of doctorates, seen as a gauche, silly, cringey ego trip. Consider “Dr.” Jill Biden, who doesn’t even hold a Ph.D. but rather a lesser Ed.D., something of a joke in the academic world. President-elect Joe Biden once explained that his wife sought the degree purely for status reasons: “She said, ‘I was so sick of the mail coming to Sen. and Mrs. Biden. I wanted to get mail addressed to Dr. and Sen. Biden.’ That’s the real reason she got her doctorate,” Joe Biden has said.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Tuesday, December 15, 2020


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DEC 14      INDEX      DEC 16
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from Bloomberg
Media/News Company

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic. The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth.

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from Orthodox Christianity – orthochristian.com
Religious Organization in Moscow, Russia

A petition has appeared online for citizens of Rostov-on-Don to vote for authorities to officially consider replacing a monument to Vladimir Lenin on the central city square with a monument to the Royal Martyr Tsar Nicholas II. The petition, published on the Active Rostovite site of the Rostov-on-Don city administration, also calls for the historical names to be restored to all city streets.

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from The Seattle Times
LEFT-CENTER,  HIGH,  Newspaper in Seattle, WA

Washington state schools chief says his hands have been tied in pandemic
While he campaigned for a second term as state schools chief this year, Washington state superintendent Chris Reykdal played the role of a public education optimist. But in a meeting with state lawmakers two weeks ago, he was a tired dad, worried about how his kids have struggled being away from school. “This is a shitty system to be in right now,” he said in an education committee meeting aired on TVW. The remote instructional model “doesn’t work for a lot of kids.” The pandemic has found Reykdal grappling with the many roles he plays. To Gov. Jay Inslee, he is a key adviser on some elements of the pandemic response, but Reykdal does not have the ability to issue executive orders. To superintendents in 300 school districts, he is a messenger of best practices for health and academics, but can’t intervene with reopening decisions. To lawmakers, he’s a staunch school funding defender, but he cannot pass laws, only suggest them. “I have little authority,” he said in an interview. “And I’ve come to grips with that in the crisis.”

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

After the Senate’s top Republican congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday for winning the Electoral College, some Northwest GOP lawmakers followed suit and acknowledged the Democrat’s victory while President Donald Trump continued to claim the election was rigged. In statements Tuesday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane, Central Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo acknowledged Biden’s win and promised to uphold conservative principles when the Democrat moves into the White House in January.

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In the news, Monday, December 14, 2020


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DEC 13      INDEX      DEC 15
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Federal regulators are ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and teens. The Federal Trade Commission’s action announced Monday goes to the heart of the tech industry’s lucrative business model: harvesting data from platform users and making it available to advertisers so they can pinpoint specific consumers to target. ... The other five companies are Reddit, Snap, Discord, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, and Google’s YouTube.

Katie Blair: The terms “equality” and “equity” are used interchangeably in the media, whether a story covers prison reform or gender-based violence. But equity is what governmental systems, nonprofit organizations, and entire corporations should aim for. Equality is an overused term in our current political climate. Bolstering everyone in an entity to gain the same opportunities is easier said than done. Should a company prioritize some marginalized groups over others? Both privilege and equity come into play when analyzing which groups need more support.

Geiger Corrections Center in Airway Heights reported 79 positive inmates and the downtown jail reported two cases in inmates. Eleven detentions employees had tested positive. A week prior, Spokane County Detention Services had confirmed nine cases in inmates. “We’ve really got our focus set right now on our Geiger facility,” Mike Sparber said at a Friday news conference. “We have a strategy for downtown, but we’re just not seeing what we’re seeing at Geiger.” Geiger had 138 inmates as of Friday and capacity for 360. Of the two buildings, A and B, A is housing all COVID-positive inmates and has room for more than 130. ... In the jail, all new inmates coming in are isolated from the rest of the population for 14 days before being integrated in, she said.

Decadent and savory, this recipe starts with thick-sliced slabs of Yukon Golds that are tossed in butter and herbs, then roasted on high heat and finished off with garlic and chicken broth. They’re golden and crisp on the outside and lusciously creamy in the middle. Elegant yet simple, they’re perfect for weeknight dinners and holidays alike and are sure to please the pickiest of eaters.

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 300,000 Monday just as the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots in a monumental campaign to conquer the outbreak. The number of dead rivals the population of St. Louis or Pittsburgh. It is equivalent to repeating a tragedy on the scale of Hurricane Katrina every day for 5 1/2 months. It is more than five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. It is equal to a 9/11 attack every day for more than 100 days. “The numbers are staggering – the most impactful respiratory pandemic that we have experienced in over 102 years, since the iconic 1918 Spanish flu,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said days before the milestone. The U.S. crossed the threshold on the same day health care workers rolled up their sleeves for Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot, marking the start of the biggest vaccination campaign in American history.

A narrowly divided Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his election loss in the battleground state about an hour before the Electoral College cast Wisconsin’s 10 votes for Democrat Joe Biden. In the 4-3 ruling, the court’s three liberal justices were joined by conservative swing Justice Brian Hagedorn who said three of Trump’s four claims were filed too late and the other was without merit. The ruling ends Trump’s legal challenges in state court.

The Trump administration on Monday imposed sanctions on its NATO ally Turkey over its purchase of a Russian air defense system, in a striking move against a longtime partner that sets the stage for further confrontation between the two nations as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. The extraordinary step against a treaty ally comes at a delicate time in relations between Washington and Ankara, which have been at odds for years over Turkey’s acquisition from Russia of the S-400 missile defense system, along with Turkish actions in Syria, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in the eastern Mediterranean. The sanctions, which were required under U.S. law dating to 2017 if the administration deemed there to be violations, add another element of uncertainty to the relationship as Trump winds down his term. The move is the first time that law, known as CAATSA, has been used to penalize a U.S. ally. Prior to Monday, the U.S. had kicked Turkey out of its F-35 stealth fighter development and training program over the S-400 purchase, but had taken no further steps despite persistent warnings from American officials who have long complained about that the system is incompatible with NATO equipment and a potential threat to allied security.

What could be the main event in Georgia’s twin U.S. Senate runoffs — early in-person voting — got underway Monday, with lines trending shorter than during the first days of early voting for the general election. More than half of the record 5 million votes in the Nov. 3 general election were cast during its three-week early voting period. Early in-person voting could be even more important in the Jan. 5 runoffs because of the short time frame for voters to request and send back ballots by mail, as the two races decide which party will control the U.S. Senate.

Fort George Wright Drive is now Whistalks Way. The name change, an acknowledgment of the brutality imposed on Native American tribes in Spokane by Col. George Wright and the United States government, was approved unanimously by the Spokane City Council on Monday.

Idaho hikers and historians have teamed up in an effort to uncover a 120-year-old route used by miners during one of the last gold rushes in American history, and this week they shared updates on the project during a virtual gathering. Morgan Zedalis, assistant forest archaeologist for the Payette National Forest’s Heritage Program, gave the backstory on Idaho’s Three Blaze Trail during an Idaho Trails Association Zoom presentation Thursday. ... The Idaho Trails Association has partnered with the Forest Service to try to survey three sections of the trail, which Zedalis said was originally about 50 miles long. According to a Heritage Program history of the trail, it was created after brothers Ben and Lou Caswell struck gold in the late 1890s near Thunder Mountain, about 75 miles east of McCall in what is now part of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The Caswells sold their mining claims to investor William H. Dewey in 1900, spurring a gold rush. Miners heading to Thunder Mountain from the north needed a more accessible route, so homesteaders William Campbell (of Campbell’s Ferry) and W.A. Stonebraker decided to create one.

Spokane’s South Hill and Browne’s Addition are known for large, sometimes historic, homes built between the city’s 1880s founding and World War II. An aerial survey of northwest Spokane shows thousands of uniform, two-bedroom homes north of Wellesley, almost all built after WWII. During the post-war construction boom, most of these homes were built by Western Mortgage Co. and Western Builders Inc., and their subsidiary businesses, including Alberta Homes, Northhill Homes, Wellesley Villages, Decatur Homes, Endicott Homes and Westview Investments, each one focused on a particular northside development.

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In the news, Sunday, December 13, 2020


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DEC 12      INDEX      DEC 14
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

British pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca, which is finalizing a vaccine against Covid-19, said Saturday it was buying US biotech firm Alexion for $39 billion to boost its work on immunology. 

Italy overtakes Britain with highest death toll in Europe as world fatality total approaches 1.6 million.

The man who would break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 at Muroc field would teach us important lessons. Chuck Yeager once said, “You’ve got to know when to push it, and when to back off.” And yes, the great man himself, passed away last week at the age of 97 in Los Angeles – the man who broke the sound barrier and would inspire Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, and the movie of the same name.

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Jonathan Sacks remembered by Rowan Williams
The former archbishop of Canterbury recalls the former chief rabbi, a friend and inspiration who was an eloquent defender of classical liberal values.

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

The most telling aspect of the Wisconsin federal district court’s rejection of another Trump campaign lawsuit on Saturday is so obvious it is easy to miss. And no, it is not that the rejecting was done by a Trump-appointed judge, Brett H. Ludwig, or that it was done on the merits. After all that’s been said over the last six weeks, this fleeting passage near the start of the court’s workmanlike, 23-page decision and order should take our breath away (my highlighting): "With the Electoral College meeting just days away, the Court declined to address the issues in piecemeal fashion and instead provided plaintiff with an expedited hearing on the merits of his claims. On the morning of the hearing, the parties reached agreement on a stipulated set of facts and then presented arguments to the Court."

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Saturday, December 12, 2020


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DEC 11      INDEX      DEC 13
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

United States President-elect Joe Biden has acquired a growing cult following among numerous Chinese intellectuals and ordinary netizens who find his “from average Joe to president” life story intriguing and inspiring. ... Biden-loving media coverage continued until this week, when state broadcaster China Central Television ran a program calling out the “American fans” in China who it said were brainwashed by the “insidious infiltration of US soft-sell and propaganda.”

Germany’s attitude toward the Iran nuclear issue is changing, hinting at a possible new EU policy on the hot button issue.

EU and US weigh punitive measures that if imposed would send Turkey’s collapsing economy into free fall.

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When the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship suffering from an outbreak of covid-19, arrived in Japan in February, it seemed like a stroke of bad luck. A small floating petri dish threatened to turn the Japanese archipelago into a big one. In retrospect, however, the early exposure taught the authorities lessons that have helped make Japan’s epidemic the mildest among the world’s big economies, despite a recent surge in infections. In total 2,487 people have died of the coronavirus in Japan, just over half the number in China and fewer people than on a single day in America several times over the past week. Japan has suffered just 18 deaths per million people, a higher rate than in China, but by far the lowest in the g7, a club of big, industrialised democracies. (Germany comes in second, at 239.) Most strikingly, Japan has achieved this success without strict lockdowns or mass testing—the main weapons in the battle against covid-19 elsewhere. “From the beginning we did not aim at containment,” says Oshitani Hitoshi, a virologist who sits on an expert panel advising the government. That would require identifying all possible cases, which is not feasible in a country of Japan’s size when the majority of infections produce mild or no symptoms, argues Mr Oshitani: “Even if you test everyone once per week, you’ll still miss some.”

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Pride, the first black inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, died from complications related to coronavirus.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from USA Today

The Supreme Court's refusal to help Donald Trump change the result of the 2020 election should come as no surprise for the very reason the president hoped to win the case: The court is conservative. That means the three justices who owe their seats on the nation's highest bench to Trump, as well as others nominated by Republican presidents, profess adherence to the Constitution and the precise text of federal statutes. They don't just make stuff up. So when Texas, backed by Trump and a cadre of Republican state attorneys general and members of Congress, asked the court to block election results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it stood no chance of prevailing. "The hallmark of conservative jurisprudence is respect for established law," said Michael McConnell, director of the constitutional law center at Stanford Law School and a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush. "No one should be surprised that the justices, like the Trump-appointed lower court judges in all these election cases, followed the law."

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from The Washington Post
Newspaper in Washington, D.C.

One of the most complicated logistical missions in U.S. history now begins, marking a new phase of the pandemic. Hospitals that have spent months seeking a silver bullet against a virus that has killed more than 295,000 people in the United States will begin receiving shipments of the first coronavirus vaccine on Monday, U.S. officials said, comparing the start of distribution this weekend to the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

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from The Week
LEFT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, Media/News Company in New York, NY

The Constitution has an answer for seditious members of Congress
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under investigation for bribery and abuse of office, filed a baldly seditious lawsuit calling for the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and hand their electoral votes to Trump. It was flatly an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, end constitutional government, and install Trump in power. Before the Supreme Court threw the suit out Friday night, 17 other Republican state attorneys general had joined him, along with 126 members of the Republican caucus in the House, while Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has agreed to represent Trump. And this is just one of dozens of attempts that Republicans at all levels of government have concocted to overturn Trump's loss.

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Sunday, December 20, 2020

In the news, Friday, December 11, 2020


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DEC 10      INDEX      DEC 12
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH;  News & Media Website based in Hong Kong

Seoul may be forced to enact its first lockdown as current social distancing measures fail to curb new outbreak.

Health officials reported 613 virus deaths over the past 24 hours, crossing the 600 mark for the first time.

Recent research shows SARS-CoV-2 seems to have a slower rate of mutation than other RNA viruses.

The US government has wholly failed to deal with China's blind eye and unmitigated shipments of the lethal opiate.

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from BBC News (UK)

UK and Russian scientists are teaming up to trial a combination of the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines to see if protection against Covid-19 can be improved. Mixing two similar vaccines could lead to a better immune response in people. The trials, to be held in Russia, will involve over-18s, although it's not clear how many people will be involved. ... Russia was the first country to register a Covid vaccine for emergency use - in August, despite only having been tested on a few dozen people.

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from BuzzFeed News
LEFT BIAS, MIXED, Media/News Company in New York

These 126 House Republicans threw their support behind a Texas attempt to overturn the election results in key battleground states.

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from DW News (Deutsche Welle)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Bonn, Germany

Researchers say global carbon emissions dropped by an estimated 2.4 billion metric tons this year due to the coronavirus-induced lockdowns. They have also warned that the emissions may rebound once the pandemic ends.

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from KHQ Local News (NBC Spokane)

“As I have said before, President Trump has every right to pursue legal recourse in response to claims of voter fraud and election impropriety. With historic turnout, razor-thin margins, and massive changes to voting processes in the midst of a global pandemic, many people have had questions about the election and its results. This case is about the Supreme Court answering those questions for the American people so we can move forward. This amicus brief specifically focuses on Constitutional requirements for elections and the legal requirement that changes to election processes be approved by state legislatures, as well as the state laws which require election officials to check signatures on mail-in ballots. These are Constitutional principles of free and fair elections, and if they have been violated, the American people have a right to know.” — Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05)

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from National Review  RIGHT BIAS

The odds of the Texas election lawsuit prevailing in the Supreme Court might not be less than one in a quadrillion, but they are extremely remote — and should be. Texas is asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the presidential election in four battleground states won by Joe Biden because, it argues, election procedures in those states violated the Constitution, and the resulting irregularities impermissibly diluted the votes of Texans.

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from Reason Magazine
Magazine in Los Angeles, California

This week a Los Angeles County judge ruled that a local ban on outdoor dining at restaurants, ostensibly aimed at reducing transmission of the COVID-19 virus, was "not grounded in science, evidence, or logic." Around the same time, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly admitted that the same thing is true of a state ban on outdoor dining that currently applies to all of Southern California, including Los Angeles County. Ghaly said that ban, which is one of many restrictions that are triggered when a region's available ICU capacity drops below 15 percent, is "not a comment on the relative safety of outdoor dining" but is instead aimed at discouraging Californians from leaving home.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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from The Washington Post
Newspaper in Washington, D.C.

By George P. Shultz: Dec. 13 marks my turning 100 years young. I’ve learned much over that time, but looking back, I’m struck that there is one lesson I learned early and then relearned over and over: Trust is the coin of the realm. When trust was in the room, whatever room that was — the family room, the schoolroom, the locker room, the office room, the government room or the military room — good things happened. When trust was not in the room, good things did not happen. Everything else is details.

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In the news, Thursday, December 10, 2020


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DEC 09      INDEX      DEC 11
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from The New England Journal of Medicine
world’s leading medical journal and website

As Covid-19 cases surged in the United States in March 2020, stay-at-home orders were put in place. Schools closed, and many workers were furloughed, laid off, or told to work from home. With personal movement limited and people confined to their homes, advocates expressed concern about a potential increase in intimate partner violence (IPV). Stay-at-home orders, intended to protect the public and prevent widespread infection, left many IPV victims trapped with their abusers. Domestic-violence hotlines prepared for an increase in demand for services as states enforced these mandates, but many organizations experienced the opposite. In some regions, the number of calls dropped by more than 50%. Experts in the field knew that rates of IPV had not decreased, but rather that victims were unable to safely connect with services. Though restrictions on movement have been lifted in most regions, the pandemic and its effects rage on, and there is widespread agreement that areas that have seen a drop in caseloads are likely to experience a second surge. This pandemic has reinforced important truths: inequities related to social determinants of health are magnified during a crisis, and sheltering in place does not inflict equivalent hardship on all people. One in 4 women and one in 10 men experience IPV, and violence can take various forms: it can be physical, emotional, sexual, or psychological. People of all races, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic classes, and religions experience IPV. However, such violence has a disproportionate effect on communities of color and other marginalized groups. Economic instability, unsafe housing, neighborhood violence, and lack of safe and stable child care and social support can worsen already tenuous situations. IPV cannot be addressed without also addressing social factors, especially in the context of a pandemic that is causing substantial isolation.

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from The Seattle Times
LEFT-CENTER,  HIGH,  Newspaper in Seattle, WA

With the news Monday that Mayor Jenny Durkan will be yet another one-term leader for the city, and that schools Superintendent Denise Juneau is out after just one term of her own, the city’s core public institutions are facing upheaval and vacuums of leadership at maybe the worst possible time. Add the resignation a few months back of police Chief Carmen Best, and it’s been a rough go for some of Seattle’s “firsts.”  The city’s first lesbian mayor, first openly gay and Native American schools superintendent and first Black woman police chief — all drubbed out after just a few years in the Seattle protest and process machine. The reasons vary for each one, and all faced huge challenges they sometimes failed to meet. But there is one overarching theme. Despite being trailblazers, each was seen, instead, as not blazing enough.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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In the news, Wednesday, December 9, 2020


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DEC 08      INDEX      DEC 10
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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

The collateral damage of lockdowns is well documented. Their benefits, however, remain murky.

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Stunning dark ages mosaic found at Roman villa in Cotswolds
Life at the start of the dark ages in Britain is generally thought of as a pretty uncomfortable time, an era of trouble and strife with the departure of Roman rulers resulting in economic hardship and cultural stagnation. But a stunning discovery at the Chedworth Roman villa in the Cotswolds suggests that some people at least managed to maintain a rich and sophisticated lifestyle. National Trust archaeologists have established that a mosaic at the Gloucestershire villa was probably laid in the middle of the fifth century, years after such homes were thought to have been abandoned and fallen into ruin.

A key that opened the doors of an 11th-century tower has been returned almost 50 years after it disappeared. The brass key was sent by post to English Heritage, with an anonymous note admitting it had been “borrowed”. The mystery sender apologised for the delay in returning the large object. The key still fits in the keyhole of the doors to St Leonard’s Tower, a Norman tower in Kent, although it no longer rotates. New locks were built into the tower, constructed between 1077 and 1108, some time after the key‘s disappearance.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

Erdogan Will Play Biden, But Stick To Putin
A key foreign policy challenge for President-elect Joe Biden is going to be getting along with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and managing Washington’s ties with Ankara. To this end, Biden needs to understand the dynamics and fears that inform the decisions of Erdogan, Turkey’s powerful president, including the latter’s view of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

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from KOMO News (ABC Seattle)

Burglars taped the back-door window of the Matthew Steele barber shop in Ballard before they shattered the glass with a slingshot. In the six minutes the thieves were inside, they stole $4,000 worth of goods, owner Matthew Humphrey said. He figured they would sell the stolen high-end jackets and hair products online to make some money. But when he heard that Seattle lawmakers were considering a proposal that would allow people to steal and then re-sell the items in order to generate money to meet a basic need, like food or rent, he couldn’t believe it. “I think it’s absolutely insane,” Humphrey said. The Seattle City Council is discussing adding a poverty defense to the city code that municipal court judges must consider when a case comes before them. The council is expected to continue its deliberation of the proposal in January.

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from Los Angeles Times

Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow. It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment in which he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in southwestern South Korea, where diners contracted the coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who became infected after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.

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from Reason Magazine
Magazine in Los Angeles, California

San Mateo County, California, was one of the first jurisdictions in the United States to fight the COVID-19 epidemic with sweeping restrictions on social and economic activity. It joined five other San Francisco Bay Area counties in issuing "shelter in place" orders on March 16, three days before Gov. Gavin Newsom made California the first state to impose a COVID-19 lockdown. San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow's misgivings about reviving that policy are therefore especially striking. "I'm not sure we know what we're doing," Morrow confesses in a remarkable statement he posted on the San Mateo County health department's website this week.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Part One of “Safety First or Safety Third” (Dec. 3) described safety as a priority, but not the highest priority. So what are the highest priorities? There are no risk-free choices in life. If safety is third, what’s first and second? Getting the job done and finding joy, according to a 2018 Journal of Emergency Medical Services article.

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In the news, Tuesday, December 8, 2020


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DEC 07      INDEX      DEC 09
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from Axios
LEFT-CENTER BIAS,  HIGH,  news website

Exclusive: Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians
A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation. The alleged operation offers a rare window into how Beijing has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles. The alleged operation offers a rare window into how Beijing has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles.
 
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from DW News (Deutsche Welle)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Bonn, Germany

Breathing issues, brain fog and a lingering loss of taste are just some of the long-term effects seen in coronavirus patients. Now, experts are warning that COVID-19 could also make it difficult to get an erection. As the world awaits a coronavirus vaccine, experts in Italy and the US are warning of another potential long-term consequence of COVID-19: erectile dysfunction. During a recent interview with the US broadcaster NBC, American physician Dena Grayson said there was growing concern that COVID-19 could cause long-term difficulty getting an erection. "We know that it causes issues in the vasculature," Grayson said. "So this is something that is of real concern — not just that this virus can kill, but can actually cause long-term, lifelong potential complications." 

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from EURACTIV
media network for Europe publishing free, independent policy news debates in 12 languages

‘NATO-option’ gets majority in Swedish parliament
For the first time in Sweden’s history the so-called “NATO-option” has obtained a majority in parliament, meaning that while the country edges closer to Finland’s defence and security policy which has the ‘NATO-option’ as its cornerstone, it is also keeping the possibility of NATO membership alive. In 1949, Sweden chose not to join NATO and declared a security policy aiming for non-alignment in peace and neutrality in war. Since the 1990s, however, there has been an active debate on the question of NATO membership. The parliament’s second-largest opposition and populist party, the Sweden Democrats party  , joined the rest of the opposition – the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats and Liberals – in their stance on defence matters, the broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet reported.

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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California

U.S. Middle East Policy In The Next Four Years
President-elect Joe Biden and his administration will inherit a very full agenda of problems on January 20, 2021 both foreign and domestic. The Biden team has already signaled that its overriding priority will be to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and to put the economy on the path to recovery. Given voter concerns on both sides that focus is only to be expected. One exit poll in Virginia, where I live, showed that foreign policy barely registered with voters as an issue. Only 1% said it affected their vote. The Biden Administration will likely not want to pick fights early on that distract from its COVID agenda. Yet foreign policy will impose itself on the Biden Administration, as it inevitably does with all administrations, and no region will present a greater challenge than the Middle East. There is a basis for a bipartisan consensus that China and Russia represent long -term strategic challenges to the United States, and although there may be differences of emphasis and tactical approaches, those issues are likely to be manageable for the Biden Team.

In America today, populists on both sides of the political aisle demand that allies should carry more of the burden, especially the military burden, of upholding the international order. Meanwhile, the fear of a rising China cuts against the grain of this thinking. Chinese leader Xi Jin Ping’s more aggressive foreign policy has generated an equally strong impulse to marshal resources and organize allies to contain China. In an effort to reconcile the contradictory impulses, many analysts and political leaders have fastened onto the idea of retreating from the Middle East. It was President Obama who first planted seeds of this thinking, with his “pivot to Asia.” A similar strain of thought runs through the Trump administration. “We’re getting out. Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand,” President Trump said in October 2019. “The job of our military is not to police the world.” Trump was referring specifically to Northwest Syria, but many heard in his words a desire to leave the Middle East as a whole.

Does The US Need A Lebanon Policy?
The season of offering advice to the next administration is upon us once more. When it comes to American policy toward Lebanon, the purveyors of advice are faced with two key questions. The first question is: Does the US even need a Lebanon policy? At first glance, the question appears flippant, especially when considering the amount of attention the US routinely lavishes on it. ... But one is hard-pressed to find a compelling national interest that would warrant it. Lebanon is not a US ally. It is, rather, an Iranian satrapy under the control of Hezbollah, the local arm of the Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

Managing The Relationship Between The U.S. And Saudi Arabia
The new Biden administration will encounter a Middle East that is very different from the one President Trump inherited from President Obama in 2017, and nowhere is the change more obvious than in Saudi Arabia.  The kingdom is undergoing a dramatic process of transformation that includes the unprecedented consolidation of power in the hands of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the adoption of policies of social liberalization focused primarily on youth and women, and the implementation of a plan for economic diversification to lessen dependence on oil revenue. In addition, Saudi Arabia is asserting itself as a regional power and is no longer hyper cautious as it once was about making its influence felt.  For example, it is leading an anti-Islamist and an anti-Iranian alliance of Arab states, is on the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, and is deeply involved in Yemen’s civil war, which has turned into a quagmire.

The Biden Administration Can And Should Rectify America’s Failures In Syria
It has been almost a decade since the Syrian people rose up against the Assad regime, demanding their freedom. While the world was hesitant to support the protestors, malign powers gladly stepped in to help Assad, creating an unmitigated disaster that has devastated Syria and sent shockwaves around the world. Half of the population, around 13 million people, has been displaced, and more than a quarter of all Syrians have fled the country. Over 50% of the country’s critical infrastructure has been destroyed, over 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, and an entire generation of children knows nothing but war, dilapidated tents, and the squalor of camps. Still, the crisis has yet to be addressed in any clear and meaningful way by the most important actor on the world stage, the United States.

Putting Human Rights Into Negotiations With Iran
During the presidential campaign, candidate Biden never spared his words criticizing the Trump administration's Iran policy, in particular the decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This so-called "Iran Deal" was the signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Obama administration, which his successor revoked in May 2018. In its place, the U.S. has been pursuing a "maximum pressure campaign"--if not always consistently--through sanctions, with the goal of forcing Iran back to the negotiating table. The prospect of a return to the JCPOA fit into the Biden campaign's general political narrative of returning to the policies of the Obama era. Reestablishing the status quo ante Trump as far as Iran is concerned could additionally contribute to rebuilding trans-Atlantic ties, since the European allies are eager to see the U.S. back in the JCPOA. More broadly, a return would amplify Biden's stated goal of reasserting an American commitment to multilateralism, by drawing a clean line separating him from the Trump-era unilateralism associated with the program of "America First." Getting back into the Iran Deal is a likely priority of a Biden agenda.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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