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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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I agree, found this a great article, extremely useful to help people assess the risks in the places they go and things they do
(Reuters) - Bret Chiafalo had his bags packed in the weeks following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If somehow his gambit worked and Donald Trump were blocked from officially being declared the winner, the information technology specialist from Washington state figured all hell might break loose.
Chiafalo, 41, served in the role of presidential elector - an individual who plays a pivotal role in the complicated Electoral College process set out in the U.S. Constitution to determine the winner of presidential elections.
In most states, electors - typically party loyalists - must pledge to vote for their party’s candidate if that person wins state’s popular vote. Chiafalo, desperate to thwart Trump, had other intentions and voted for someone else.
Chiafalo is now at the heart of one of two closely watched cases being argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday that will determine whether electors have the constitutional right to exercise independence and defy the will of the voters - a question touching upon the integrity of American democracy.
Records kept by medical examiners in Florida offer a window into how the coronavirus has killed more than 1,600 people there. Many died at home.
By Patricia Mazzei, Rebecca Halleck and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. @ NYTimes.com, May 8, 2020
MIAMI — A 71-year-old woman with nausea who was sent home from the emergency room, even though a doctor wanted to admit her. A 63-year-old nurse who was self-isolating while she waited for results from her coronavirus test. A 77-year-old man who was prescribed antibiotics by a doctor in another state for his fever and dry cough.
All were found unresponsive at home — the nurse on the sofa, where she was found by her husband — their lives claimed by Covid-19 before they ever had a chance to check into the hospital.
The agony of how the coronavirus has killed at least 1,669 Floridians, many of them older, is brief and matter-of-fact in the unadorned language of medical examiners, who summarize death in sometimes less than 200 words.
But a trove of short narratives from nearly all of the state’s deaths so far show that a substantial number of people have died suddenly after returning home from the hospital or visiting a doctor or a clinic. Many worsened, returned to the hospital and died there.
Mostly, the cases — 1,490 are included in records released on Wednesday — show the many ways the unrelenting virus has found to cause death [....]
By Jeff Zeleny @ CNN.com, May 9
Former President Barack Obama delivered a blistering critique of the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus crisis, describing it as "an absolute chaotic disaster" during a private call Friday night with people who worked for him in the White House and across his administration.
The searing comments, confirmed to CNN by three former Obama administration officials on the call, offered the starkest assessment yet from the former president [....]
In a 30-minute conversation with members of the Obama Alumni Association, the former president said the response to the coronavirus outbreak served as a critical reminder for why strong government leadership is needed during a global crisis. The call was intended to encourage former Obama staffers to become more engaged in Biden's presidential campaign
"This election that's coming up -- on every level -- is so important because what we're going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party," Obama said. "What we're fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy -- that has become a stronger impulse in American life."
The comments were first reported by Yahoo News, which obtained an audio recording of the call.[....]
Trump has never had to confront any problem that somebody else didn’t just make disappear. Trump has always used an army of attorneys, accountants and corrupted officials to make his problems go away—whether it was with women, creditors, contractors, or law enforcement... Now that he is president. there is no accountant, lawyer, or public official who can use clever paperwork to make the virus disappear. Solving this problem would require the sort of dedicated attention, tough choices, and hard work that Donald Trump has been able to spend his entire life successfully avoiding...
Gwynyth Paltrow & Kendall Jenner, maybe not so much, but this foodie fight and biz description from Chrissie Teigen - maybe it's not all so quick and easy and soulless as we assume, more labor of love, less social media vamping?
By Kate Proctor @ TheGuardian.com, May 8
Stringent quarantine measures to be announced to prevent second wave of coronavirus