Tag: finance

The English-language press is generally no fan of Philippines’ pseudo-‘Strongman’ Rodrigo Duterte (half of the Americans who know who he is probably mistakenly believe him to be an autocrat due to the general tone of the coverage, although he was Democratically elected). Nonetheless, they’ve begrudgingly given him credit for his military-imposed lockdowns, and for reimposing the restrictive measures in and around Manila. Still, none of this has stopped Southeast Asia’s biggest outbreak from  clearly still has a long way to go to bring COVID-19 to heel.

And as South Korea is showing us right now, the virus can be surprisingly difficult to eradicate completely, just one more reason why the world needs to find a more sustainable way to live with COVID-19, rather than resorting to lockdowns as the only tool in the kit.

But there’s one variable that could upend all of this thinking, and effectively force all vulnerable populations into strict lockdown mode: that would be a mutation that causes it to become even more deadly. As Dr. Fauci once warned, mutations could make the virus more virulent and more infectious, and there’s already some evidence that certain strains of the virus are much deadlier than others.

And as Bloomberg reported on Monday, Southeast Asia – Malaysia specifically – has seen evidence that a certain mutation is more infectious, just like other mutations catalogued in the UK, NY and elsewhere. They call the mutation “D614G”. It’s also the “predominant variation of the virus” seen in Europe and the US – meaning it’s the same “world-conquering” virus we reported on back in June.

Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the Philippines, which faces the region’s largest outbreak, is studying to see whether the mutation makes it more infectious.

The strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in a Malaysian cluster of 45 cases that started from someone who returned from India and breached his 14-day home quarantine. The Philippines detected the strain among random Covid-19 samples in the largest city of its capital region.

The mutation “is said to have a higher possibility of transmission or infectiousness, but we still don’t have enough solid evidence to say that that will happen,” Philippines’ Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing on Monday.

And now, we can add ‘Southeast Asia’ to its list of conquered territory.

Though the often intransigent WHO has yet to fully acknowledge the mutation’s potential, it “is said to have a higher possibility of transmission or infectiousness, but we still don’t have enough solid evidence to say that that will happen,” Philippines’ Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told BBG.

Some argue the mutation won’t have an impact on vaccines being developed. But we can’t say any of this with 100% certainty, as much as some scientists would like to dismiss the risks out of hand.

One HK University professor told BBG that the mutation “might be a little bit more contagious. We haven’t yet got enough evidence to evaluate that, but there’s no evidence that it’s a lot more contagious,” University of Hong Kong’s Cowling said.

Others have claimed it’s “ten times more infectious” than the original.

Still, as more evidence suggests that the variation is linked to higher levels of mortality, understanding its potential will be key to bringing the vicious pandemic to heel.

Via DKAnalytics.com,

AG Barr to the rule of law rescue?

In a nutshell, don’t hold your breath.  Leading conservative/constitutionalist radio talk show host Mark Levin had a fine interview with Mr. Barr on his “Life, Liberty and Levin” TV show last weekend.  It was a pivotal discussion about how destructive, violent, anarchist, un-American, uncivil, and rogue the left has become in its efforts to fundamentally transform America.  That transformation is away from an erstwhile codified citadel of liberty to an increasingly Marxist nation featuring iron-fisted tyranny (for flavor, consider the Corona virus policy responses, especially in blue states, where prolonged lockdowns have led to serious and widespread behavioral issues).  This effort, of course, is being led by the party of slavery, the party of segregation, the party of re-segregation, the party of the KKK, the party of internment of Japanese Americans, the party opposed to civil rights, and the party that led to unbridled third world amnesty which fueled ever growing voter disenfranchisement, Balkanization, and stagnant US jobs (for Americans).  I’m talking, of course, about the  power-obsessed, “Constitution, Americans, and America-be-damned” Democratic party. 

So far, so good.  It’s a great thing that Barr and his Department of Justice (DOJ) are at least calling the left out.  But there is a huge fly in the ointment, in my view.  It isn’t just about restoring law and order in America’s crime-infested, burning cities under racist/Marxist BLM and Antifa siege with local, state-level, and national Democratic power holders either approving or enabling rank lawlessness, and RINOs generally too intimidated to speak out against it.  

It is also about going after the very lawless elected officials and bureaucrats that have made a mockery of the rule of law while the same cast of characters has often set the stage for the anarchy and destruction that law-abiding urban Americans have faced, and are currently facing in unprecedented terms, from coast to coast, especially in Democratically-run cities (the vast majority of them).  This prosecution of rogue of former and current public officials is precisely what isn’t happening.  That is the devastating fly in the ointment.

I addressed this in an email with a friend of mine who who initially drew Barr’s interview on Mark Levin’s TV show to my attention. 

Here is what I wrote my friend: 

Got a chance to listen.  GREAT interview.  Barr nails it, as does obviously Mark.  Allow me a criticism or two; you may well consider it “majoring in minors,” but I think it goes to the heart of any honest system of government, and that starts with telling the truth. 

Barr mentioned that Trump’s economy until recently saw virtually zero percent unemployment, and that this will recur.  This is disingenuous at best.  Trump himself called the unemployment rate fake as a candidate when it was around 5% (U3, or the most flattering measure).  Furthermore, Trump mentioned, as a candidate, that real world unemployment was likely north (if not well north) of 20%.  Translation: take the U3 measure, turn it into the U6 measure, and then add back all the discouraged workers that have been looking for a job for more than a year and were conveniently taken out of the job seeker category back in the Slick Willy (Clinton) administration, and you a get “real world” US unemployment rate of around 30%.  Today!

One more point, arguably an even much, much  bigger one concerning honest government – a government run by people that are not above the law.  Here we are, some 3.5 years into the Trump administration.  Barr has (thankfully) been on board since February of 2019, or about 1.5 years.  We have mountains of evidence of treasonous and felonious acts by the heads/the top brass of former Obama and early Trump administration politicians and bureaucrats ranging from Hillary to the former Obama AGs to the top brass of the FBI and the CIA to the judges that recklessly (or worse!) issued warrants to spy on Americans, a clear Bill of Rights violation if there ever was one.  Former FBI head Comey, in the summer of 2016, not only still “toiled” as the top (bad) cop of America, but he also put on a judge’s hat and effectively told America, after reading a litany of indictable charges against Madam Clinton, that Hillary “didn’t really mean any harm,” but if the average American acted in such a manner, then the full force of the law would come down on him.  Comey even wagged his finger “at us” as he issued his stern warning for us little people.

Have we seen ANYONE of at least a few handfuls of high level top brass bureaucratic and elected criminals even get indicted by the supposedly lawful, ethical DOJ that supposedly eminently capable, rule-of-law man Barr heads?  Should we wait until Biden assumes the presidency to finally indict these varied disgusting, oath-shredding, Constitution-curdling crooks??  What a freakin’ pathetic banana republic with above the law power brokers running free and making millions in the MSM and by giving speeches!  Yet everyday Americans get fined for not wearing masks, wanting to run their businesses only to find that they’re forced to shut down or that their power and water have been shut off (L.A.).  Yet everyday Americans get treated by the IRS like quasi criminals (or worse) if they fall short in terms of filing or declarations or payments.  And don’t try to defend your home in red state America; just accept the violence and destruction of often organized rioters and then call 911, but no one may answer because your police force is being defunded.

Now I know a lot of the harassment, intimidation, and Bill of Rights violations are state-based affairs (I’d argue that the 14th Amendment should offer state like Bill of Rights protections), but I’m trying to make a bigger point: Mark Levin and AG Barr and others can talk the big talk, but until our governing elites are no longer above the law (the Constitution), all this is a bunch of talk with precious little “here’s the beef” walk as far as everyday Americans are concerned — and rightly so.  No wonder governmental institutions are often held in such low esteem.

Are all these mega crooks that have abused their elected or appointed positions of power going to skate?  Are sorely needed indictments going to be pushed aside by all the sickening diversions the left is continuing to cook up for us from Russia Gate to Ukraine Gate to the virus policy scam to Marxists/anarchists tearing the crap out of the fabric of both our cities and society?  And will this BR style “looking askance policy” be thanks to neither Trump or Barr or the man from Connecticut having enough guts to finally go after these above the law creeps?  Or could it be that both sides of the aisle are so steeped in corruption and so eager to sustain their power, prestige, and crony/fascist advantages that this is just all a big, bad, throw us a bone of hope pretend game that we fall for until we realize we’ve been had again?

I, for one, won’t be holding my breath.  Less talk, just walk, 3.5 years into the Trump admin, on this VITAL, no one is supposed to be above the law front.  And Barr definitely knows the ropes, so why hasn’t he had  the decency and guts to start the process of trying to show the country that DC ain’t above the law while he still has the chance?

Here is how my friend responded:

Of course, I agree completely that Barr is not the be all and end all, or even close, for the reasons you mention, and more. The biggest one to me, because it (not the unemployment rate) is squarely in his wheelhouse is the lack of any prosecutions of arguably the biggest political criminals in the country’s history – i.e., starting with Hillary, Comey, Brennan, McCabe and… yes, Obama, the messiah himself.

That said, he is very refreshingly honest in a relative sense. Could and should he (and countless other bureaucrats, representatives and putative “leaders”) be 500% better? Absolutely. The closest one to that ideal that I can think of is probably Ted Cruz, but I have no doubt that if he were president, on the SCOTUS and/or AG, he’d disappoint as well.

So I basically agree with your critique but as many have said, politics is the art of the possible. That is the framework within which he exists, and that inevitably skews and corrupts. Right now, he’s light years better than Sessions was, and Universes better than Holder or Lynch were. Am I 100% happy with him? No, not even close. But am I much happier with him than many/ most other currently available alternatives? Absolutely.

To which I responded:

Your first paragraph says it all, as far as I am concerned.  Politics is indeed the art of the possible.  Yet for a man of conscience (Barr), a man that self-identifies as a rule of law constitutionalist, a man who has had under his “wheelhouse belt” the “machinery” with which to prosecute “arguably the biggest criminals in the country’s history” for about 1.5 years yet has prosecuted no such person … — this speaks sobering volumes about his true dedication to a system in which no one is above the law, else you can’t have the rule of law. 

To me, this is sadly less than politics being the art of the possible, and more about rank dereliction of duty, dereliction of the oath he took, and, perhaps most stunningly and destructively of all, sustaining the very “Department of Injustice” that he inherited from the mega crooks Holder and Lynch and the absolutely incompetent, scared crapless Jeff Sessions.

Sure, Barr is 100x better than hapless Jeff and extremely crooked Holder and Lynch, but what good is that if he doesn’t take a potentially rapidly fleeting opportunity to at least attempt to yank America back from its B.R. status in which way too many elites are above the law crooks and way too many of us law-abiding citizens often get treated as if we were crooks by the an alphabet soup of un-elected, unrepresentative, untouchable federal and state bureaucrats that have long and unconstitutionally issued the vast majority of our de facto legislation, thousands upon thousands of often effectively cloaked regulations (how can anyone keep up with 72,561 Federal Register pages?) frequently featuring stout fines and even incarceration teeth?”

President Trump, despite some of his beyond the pale assertions, especially as a candidate and early into his presidency, has often displayed the very uncanny knack for sharing “the resonating bottom line” with Americans that won him the 2016 election.  In this regard, here is what he recently said: 

Attorney General William Barr could go down in history as “the greatest attorney general” or just as “an average guy,” but that will depend on what U.S. Attorney John Durham reveals from his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, President Donald Trump said Thursday. 

“Bill Barr and Durham have a chance to be — Bill Barr is great most of the time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy,” Trump said during an extensive interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. He said he hopes Durham is “not going to be politically correct.”

“I hope he’s doing a great job,” Trump said. “[President Barack] Obama knew everything. Vice President [Joe] Biden, as dumb as he may be, knew everything, and everybody else knew.”

Trump added that former FBI Director James Comey, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “were all terrible and they lied to Congress.”

Is the first Ex-FBI lawyer pleading guilty for falsifying documents to investigate the Trump campaign a hopeful sign? 

Or, is this just a token, “orchestrated prosecution” by the bigwigs in both parties to throw citizens a middle management bureaucratic “sacrifice” before the top echelon power brokers revert back to widespread, bi-partisan corruption, and cronyism, also called B.R. business as usual?

A recent appeals court decision to overturn the Hillary Clinton deposition order that Judicial Watch won under the Freedom of Information Act suggests the heads of the above-the-law fish are as foul as ever.  Said differently, the jury is still out whether we will sustain an arbitrary, capricious, rapacious, despotic rule of man system over a rule of law system based on the US Constitution.  If only “the jury” got to decide such cases, for if it is ultimately principally up to leftist circuit (appeal) courts or to the Supreme Court of America, any remaining fidelity to our Constitution and the associated Bill of Rights won’t just be hanging by an ever thinner thread, but these seminal documents will have fallen deeply into a grave with dirt being rapidly heaped on top, quickly replacing daylight that was already rapidly dimming.

What if AG Barr falls short?

As you can surmise, I think this is much more likely than not. 

If we cannot bring back fidelity to the rule of law for our elitist politicians and bureaucrats, how can we expect to rein in increasingly “green-lighted” anarchy, racism, and destruction?  How can we address the highly destructive “cancel culture”* (OURS) and “virtue signalling“* that is increasingly making policy in the US for all of us if our leaders act lawlessly and destructively? 

The short answer is, we can’t. 

In such an unraveling world, how can we reconstitute free market capitalism, stouter property right protections, smaller government, balanced budgets, and sound money, the elixirs of invention, productivity enhancement, deflationary growth, and a wealth of nations trajectory lifting more boats and generating more happiness than any other system? 

The short answer is, we can’t. 

With our toxic public policy stew run, in essence, by lockdown fascists in bed with anarchistic and racist hoodlums, we threaten to careen further and further into stagflation, revisited — this time laced with with record debt, unmatched public sector and pension deficits, unparalleled financial repression, plummeting productivity (prior to an even stronger embrace of “not so green” energy), and an increasingly threatening loss of a functioning (civil) society.  Not exactly confidence-inspiring.  Not exactly a “wealth of nations” trajectory, shutting down supply and printing money like never before.  More like 1970s’ style stagflation on steroids laced with rising civil unrest and destruction.  

In plain English, eventually our asset bubbles, especially in global bonds and US stocks, will be pierced, ending over four decades of bull markets as reversion beyond the mean gets really mean, and screaming buys proliferate.  This will not only reflect unheralded and expanding balance sheet weakness, a secular reduction in corporate earnings power stated in today’s currency terms, and hugely rising monetary inflation risks, but it will also reflect plummeting confidence in the currency in which those increasingly unsound, overvalued assets are based.   In short, we will have a stability-eviscerating and purchasing power-crushing fiat currency crisis led by the currency that has been abused the longest and the most flagrantly, the US dollar.  This is how the end of a financial system is spelled.

In such a world, people and investors have always resorted to safe haven, purchasing power-protecting real money, which is physical gold and silver.  It won’t be different this time.  If the central bankers/central planners want to keep from being rendered fully academic (which history suggested would be wonderful), they will have to again back their currencies with a stout amount of gold — around 40%.  As so much fiat money has been printed, and gold (and silver) remain very limited, we could easily be looking at $11,500 gold per Troy ounce and over $230 silver per Troy ounce (history coupled with a bit of simple math as in “15:1” silver-to-gold ratio suggests silver could reach into the $700 range per Troy ounce).  Those precious metals dollar prices would be prior to even more money supply expansion both domestically and abroad.  In this regard, note that the US money supply has rising at a 42% annual rate in  M1 terms.  

While an adequate allocation to physical precious metals in your own possession at current price levels will help to take the economic and financial edge off of what will likely prove tumultuous times ahead, they can’t address our increasingly dysfunctional political and societal systems.  But, as the saying goes, it’s better to be relatively well-off financially during hard times than poor.  Plus, someday, when Blue Chip crony plays will again be trading for a sub-10 P/E with a 6 – 8% dividend yield (a blast from the not too distant 1970s past), you will likely have the PM purchasing power to “back up the truck” to avail yourself of a possibly once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity, i.e., if our current fascist system doesn’t morph into full-blown communism, where there is no more private property.

But with rising gold and silver prices, don’t wait too long to get adequate precious metals diversification, especially not with Big Warren of Berkshire Hathaway wading into gold stock(s), which will make it suddenly acceptable for all the Wall Street lemmings to embrace the very gold the talking financial news heads have long been panning (together with Warren) as a barbarous relic earning not a dime of interest.   Well, with negative real interest rates abounding and with goods and services inflation on the rise, physical gold and silver in your own discreet possession don’t look so bad.  Meanwhile, precious metals stocks have tremendous operating and financial leverage to rising precious metals prices with which to fatten your dividend income. Pretty salivating, those barbarous relics …

Conclusion: go for the PM “bar” instead of placing too much trust in Barr (and our heavily compromised system)

Hope you found this post of interest!

Greetings,

Dan

*- In case these psychobabble terms confuse you, let me cut to the chase: cancel culture and virtue signalling express what amounts to kindergarten bullies enforcing the alpha male’s tyranny, which they have voluntarily subjected themselves to and now insist that everyone else also has to abide by.  THAT is what is really going on.  Welcome back to kindergarten.  Where are the cops?

A little over a month ago we were told that Russian military intelligence was paying the Afghan Taliban to kill American troops. As many predicted, that “bombshell” – later admitted by some of the same sources that initially promoted it to be of “sketchy” intelligence origin – was very short-lived, grabbing headlines for a few days, only to be rapidly memory-holed akin to the fate of other Russiagate-related ‘anonymous sources say’ type stories.

In the foreign-policy-think of the D.C. blob, the cast of “rogue” actors constantly threatening US national security seamlessly rotates, entering in and out of familiar narratives when convenient, and now CNN is out with the latest: “US intelligence agencies assessed that Iran offered bounties to Taliban fighters for targeting American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, identifying payments linked to at least six attacks carried out by the militant group just last year alone, including a suicide bombing at a US air base in December, CNN has learned.”

Administration officials say it was US intelligence’s uncovering of the Iranian bounties plot which was decisive in convincing President Trump to assassinate IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani on January 3rd. 

The killing by drone of Soleimani came less than a month after a particularly devastating attack on Bagram Air Base which resulted in two civilian deaths, and injuries to four American personnel, among more than 60 others wounded. That attack was on December 11, 2019.

CNN writes:

“The name of the foreign government that made these payments remains classified but two sources familiar with the intelligence confirmed to CNN that it refers to Iran.”

So there it is — the largely debunked ‘Russian bounties’ story lives on apparently, in new form, fed to the public by anonymous intelligence sources. The CNN story even links the two threads together, suggesting that two major American enemies, Russia and the Islamic Republic, are now essentially handing out vast amounts of cash to mujahideen to kill Americans in Central Asia.

Specifically identified as Tehran’s alleged proxy mercenaries being paid off with Iranian money is the notorious Haqqani Network:

While US intelligence officials acknowledge that the Haqqani Network would not necessarily require payment in exchange for targeting American troops, the internal Pentagon document reviewed by CNN notes that the funding linked to the December 11 attack at Bagram “probably incentivizes future high-profile attacks on US and Coalition forces.”

But there are some immediate and obvious red flags to the story which should give serious pause and cause for skepticism. 

For starters, the Haqqani Network and more broadly the Taliban considers Iran to be the worst among heretic and apostate regimes, given Iran is a Shia Republic at war with Sunni fundamentalism. The feelings are mutual, given Haqqani Network is basically the poster child for Sunni jihad and Takfirism which ultimately seeks to wipe out Shiism. Historically, the Taliban has been a near constant violent persecutor of Afghanistan’s own minority Shia community.

And as CNN perhaps begrudgingly pointed out of its own story: the radical Sunni Haqqani organization has never needed monetary incentive to attack American forces and their allies.

It’s crucial to remember that Sunni global jihad started with war against what early al-Qaeda propaganda speeches and documents dubbed the “near enemy” — that is, against secular regimes like Baathists and ‘heretics’ and ‘apostates’ like Shia, Alawites, and the popular “folk” Sufi movements of Mideast/North Africa which firebrand Saudi and Pakistani clerics have railed against for decades and even centuries (Haqqani has long found safe-haven in northwest Pakistan).

This fault line remains the key driver of proxy war in the region, meaning these two sides are still at war, which it should be remembered is largely what the Syria conflict is all about (the Sunni Saudi axis & Western allies fighting jihad against the so-called ‘Shia axis’), and the continuing US-led ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran (the latest Israeli-UAE deal is largely focused on cooperation in countering Iran as well).

This is precisely why just after 9/11 very few authentic Middle East analysts with experience of the region believed the neocon lie that secular Baathist autocrat Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to unleash WMD on the United States. Neocons have actually continued until now to push a narrative of “Iran was behind Sept. 11”.

Pence blames Iran for 9/11.
Bush blamed Iraq for 9/11.

Maybe the GOP just really sucks at national security. And thinkin’. https://t.co/Ss3WPXl7TN

— Bryan Behar (@bryanbehar) January 5, 2020

Remember that in the days after Soleimani’s death Vice President Mike Pence actually tried to link the top Iranian commander to 9/11. This new ‘Iranian bounties’ story is cut from the same neocon cloth, and thus demands a high threshold of evidence presented publicly — not the mere usual anonymous intel sources and regurgitated paranoid headlines.

While it’s true that “anything is possible” especially when it comes to competing ‘dirty wars’ where proxies are used of state actors for plausible deniability, any narrative which claims the world’s vanguard of hardline Shia Islam is working with the global vanguard of international Sunni jihad (and throwing around lots of cash at that!) should again be met with a high degree of skepticism. It should be noted that indeed over the past few years there’s been a growing number of Western think tanks linking Iranian intelligence and Taliban factions  born out of a pragmatic desire to create “managed instability” for occupying US forces in Afghanistan.

But just like with the prior “Saddam and bin Laden working together” story, or the “Iran behind 9/11 attacks” theory advanced by Bush-era think tank policy wonks, the public is very unlikely to ever get anything in the way of hard evidence concerning this new “Iran bounties” story.

Authored by John Miltimore via RealClearPolitics.com,

This past week Minnesota became the second state to reject regulations that effectively ban the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine for use by COVID-19 patients…

The decision, which comes two weeks after the Ohio Board of Pharmacy reversed an effective ban of its own, was rightfully praised by local health care advocates. 

“We are pleased that Governor [Tim] Walz lifted his March 27 Executive Order 20-23 restrictions on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine,” said Twila Brase, president of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom.

The reversal by Walz, a first-term Democrat, clears the way for doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine, a drug commonly used to treat malaria and other conditions but one the FDA has declined to recommend for COVID-19 treatment.

The decision is the latest development in the weird saga of arguably the most divisive drug in modern history.

The acrimony began in March after President Trump tweeted that hydroxychloroquine had the potential to be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” as a treatment for the coronavirus. 

The tweet and similar statements provoked an avalanche of media criticism, with many claiming that the president was going to get people killed. Critics pointed out that medical evidence suggests the medication is linked to a fatal arrhythmia and some trials show no benefits in coronavirus treatments.

Though his critics are likely loath to admit it, there’s reason to believe the president may have been on to something. In recent weeks a chorus of voices in the medical community has emerged to challenge the view that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective as a COVID treatment. Dr. Harvey A. Risch, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said a full analysis of the literature suggests hydroxychloroquine may be the key to defeating the coronavirus.

“Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic,” Risch wrote in Newsweek, adding that a full review of the COVID literature on the drug shows “clear-cut and significant benefits.”

Prescribing hydroxychloroquine in the early stages of the virus is key, Risch said, and others agree. Steven Hatfill, a veteran virologist and adjunct assistant professor at the George Washington University Medical Center, says the literature supporting hydroxychloroquine is overwhelming.

“There are now 53 studies that show positive results of hydroxychloroquine in COVID infections,” Hatfill wrote in RealClearPolitics.

“There are 14 global studies that show neutral or negative results — and 10 of them were of patients in very late stages of COVID-19, where no antiviral drug can be expected to have much effect.”

One of the positive studies, published by Henry Ford Health System, was a large-scale retrospective of six hospitals. Analyzing 2,541 patients, it found that those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died at about half the rate of patients not treated with it.

It’s unclear if it was this research that prompted Walz to reverse his March ruling, which ordered the Board of Pharmacists to instruct pharmacists to not issue hydroxychloroquine prescriptions unless the diagnosis was “appropriate” — which halted any off-label prescription requests. 

The reason it’s unclear is that Walz has been mum on why he rescinded his order. There’s been no announcement or new stories. Local lawmakers told me they had no idea Walz had reversed course.

“There’s been absolutely no transparency here,” said Dr. Scott Jensen, a Republican state senator who criticized Walz’s approach. Jensen, who has practiced medicine for more than 30 years in Minnesota, told me pharmacists he’s worked with for years told him they could not fill a hydroxychloroquine prescription for COVID because of the March executive order.

He agrees that hydroxychloroquine is terribly misunderstood by the public and said politicians need to take a step back.

“Hydroxychloroquine is one of the most studied drugs in the history of mankind,” Jensen said. “My wife was on hydroxychloroquine for 15 years. It’s been on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines for decades. It’s been in play since 1955, the year after I was born.”

Hydroxychloroquine might be politically controversial, but that hasn’t stopped some of its critics from taking advantage of the drug. In a May interview, former presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar admitted her husband was successfully treated with hydroxychloroquine, a medication she had mocked on Twitter.

The politics of hydroxychloroquine are unlikely to cool before November’s presidential election.  Yet, if Walz’s decision is any indication, at least some leaders are starting to recognize the ethical dilemma of using the long arm of government to stand between suffering patients and a drug that may have the potential to save them.

“Cake lives matter” was actually written on a sign of one of the protesters who showed up outside Coccadotts Cake Shop in New York, just outside of Albany. The bakery drew huge protests over the last couple of days for doing what a bakery does: baking a cake.

But, of course, this wasn’t just any cake. This was a cake with feelings: a super-racist, super-homophobic capitalist cake. And the protesters knew that because it was made in the shape of a red hat that said “Make America Great Again” on it. 

The bakery’s owner, Rachel Dott, had posted images of the cake on social media in late July, which catalyzed the protests. 

But supporters of the bakery also showed up. According to the Times Union:

The Black Lives Matter protesters, who also alleged a member of the Cocca family was sympathetic to the right-wing group known as the Proud Boys, were equipped with bullhorns but they were greatly outnumbered by anti-protesters who waved American flags and encouraged passing vehicles to honk in support. 

Colonie police officers stood between the two groups keeping them separated as much as possible. State Police troopers and Albany County Sheriff’s deputies also were on the scene.

The two groups got “face-to-face” and were “yelling at each other”, the article says. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, racism has got to go,” the BLM group was shouting (reminder: still about a cake).

One protester said: “They’re able to feel what they feel about their politics. We have issues when it comes to social injustice as in firing someone because they’re gay, wearing ‘All Lives Matter’ masks.”

None of those things were reported to have happened at the bakery they chose to protest at. 

Dennis O’Kane of Delmar showed up in support of the bakery, telling reporters he was there to “support America”. “I’ve known these people for 30 years. These people are really nice,” O’Kane said about the bakery owners.

You can view video of the protest below. As the first YouTube comment says so succinctly: “Imagine living in a world where people are triggered over a cake.”

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

During questioning by Senator Ron Johnson in 2013 about the false narrative of a Prophet Muhammed video spurring a spontaneous demonstration, presented by National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding the Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, Clinton angrily responded with her now famous quote.

“With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference at this point does it make?”

 – Hillary Clinton

I’ve lately found myself saying “what difference does it make” regarding the outrages being inflicted upon myself and my fellow citizens on a daily basis.

I’ve been railing for years against out of control government spending; undeclared never-ending wars across the globe provoked by the military industrial complex; un-Constitutional surveillance of Americans by our Deep State government overseers; the extreme greed and criminality exhibited by Wall Street bankers as they pillage the national treasure; corrupt politicians of both parties paid off to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors; propaganda spewing fake news media corporations; the Deep State running things behind the curtain; and the destroyer of worlds – the Federal Reserve – debasing our currency as they enrich the few at the expense of the many.

I naively thought back in 2008 when I started writing articles, I could be part of a movement to change the course of the country. I went to Ron Paul rallies, got involved with the Concord Coalition, participated in the financial crisis documentary Generation Zero, convinced senior administration at Wharton to play David Walker’s documentary I.O.U.S.A. for the MBA students, did radio interviews, and spent most of my free time writing article after article about what needed to be done to reverse our downward spiral as a nation.

When I was censored on sites like Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense because they had sold out to the Wall Street cabal, I stumbled into blogging, with partner dust-ups, server issues, denial of service attacks and ad company censorship along the way. But I’m still slogging and blogging away twelve years later, through presidential coup attempts, market crashes, the Federal Reserve rescuing the .1% once again, the most overhyped flu in the history of mankind used as a means to destroy our last vestiges of liberty and freedom, and the evil oligarchs attempting to seize complete and final control over all the economic, social, political and military levers of our society.

I’m convinced there will be no consensus regarding an agreed upon presidential victor on November 4th, or possibly weeks after, or possibly ever. The amount of incompetence in handling mail-in-ballots by the USPO and those tasked with counting them will be off the charts. The level of fraud in attempting to win this election will be on a level never seen before, making Daley’s shenanigans to get Kennedy the necessary votes in 1960 seem like child’s play.

When a system is specifically designed in such a way that cheating is easy, there will be a significant amount of cheating. The stakes in this election have never been higher. The future path of the nation will be set in motion by the outcome of this election. But the truth is, no matter the outcome, the losers will not accept the verdict. That is when this Fourth Turning moves into its truly violent stage, making these urban riots in Democrat stronghold cities seem like minor league play acting.

I thought the situation in this country was dire in 2007 when David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., made this declaration:

“The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.

There are striking similarities between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. The fiscal imbalance meant the US was on a path toward an explosion of debt.

With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiraling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks. Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also are on an unsustainable path. Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernize everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems.” 

– David Walker – 2007

Hence, the name for my blog was ordained, as I concurred with Walker’s assessment and decided the purpose of my blogging would be to warn others about the unsustainability of our path in an effort to avert a disastrous outcome. It’s almost comical I thought our fiscal situation was dreadful in 2007, when the national debt stood at $9 trillion after 218 years as a nation, and our annual deficit was $161 billion. With the national debt currently totaling $26.5 trillion, our feckless politicians have added $17.5 trillion of debt in 13 years. Our current deficit is on pace to reach $4 trillion.

That is $11 billion per day. We are generating a deficit on par with 2007 every two weeks. If you told someone in 2007, when they were earning 5% on their Vanguard money market fund, thirteen years later they would be earning .06% on that same money market fund, unemployment would be over 10%, the country had averaged annual budget deficits exceeding $1 trillion per year, and GDP had averaged less than 2% per year, but the stock market was up 125% to all-time highs, they would have committed you to the loony bin.

The only way politicians could possibly get away with this outrageous level of debt spending is with the encouragement and collaboration of the Wall Street owned and controlled Federal Reserve.

When reckless, greed driven, myopic, sociopath politicians are allowed to implement “solutions” geared towards benefiting their corporate masters and getting themselves re-elected, with no immediate adverse consequences for their actions because a bunch of spineless toady academics employed by the oligarchs will drop interest rates to zero and bailout badly run companies and governments by electronically producing $7.6 million PER MINUTE to cover these ultimately fatal “solutions”, the fate of the country is sealed.

It’s not a matter of if this empire built on debt implodes, it’s just a matter of when. And the “when” appears to be approaching rapidly, based upon the desperate measures being taken by the powers that be since the cracks in the system appeared in September 2019 , with repo market disfunction.

Any critical thinking, rational, peace-loving, law-abiding, golden-rule-following citizen of this country must be baffled, disillusioned, angry and depressed by the path being forced upon us by elected and unelected tyrants as they attempt to implement their formerly hidden agenda. The agenda of sociopathic, egomaniacal, billionaire oligarchs has always been the same – accumulating more wealth, power and control, using whatever means necessary to accomplish this mission in life.

We are allotted maybe 80 or so years on this planet to try and make a difference. Most normal people just want to find someone to love, raise a family, work at a job they don’t hate, be left alone by the government, find some enjoyment on a daily basis, and live according to the cultural norms which have proven to keep a society running peacefully and productively for centuries.

But, there are a very small minority who want to rule over others, accumulate the maximum amount of wealth possible using whatever means necessary, stop at nothing to gain control over all the levers of power in society, treat others as pawns, vassals and sheep in their game of brinkmanship with the other .1%ers, and willingly destroy a culture of shared sacrifice for future generations by inflicting a culture of greed, consumerism, selfishness, hate, and mistrust of others in it’s place.

This is how an invisible government (Deep State) is able to mold the minds of millions through government school indoctrination and incessant propaganda emanating from fake news corporate media mouthpieces for the oligarchy. They have slowly but surely gained control over the financial system through the capture of the Federal Reserve, control the media through capture of the six major news corporations, censor anyone and anything propagating truth through social media that conflicts with the approved oligarch narrative, use the military industrial complex to wage never ending wars of profit, surveille everything you post or say, and funnel billions to the corporate pharmaceutical sickcare complex.

To paraphrase George Carlin, they’re a small club and you’re not in it. But they need you to be willfully ignorant, believing the current fear narrative and distracted by your igadgets, instagram, facebook and twitter accounts, to successfully implement their plan of total control and enrichment at our expense.

It’s enough to make the average, decent, thoughtful, moral person say “what difference does it make” what I do at this point.

• What difference does it make that a Deep State does exist and its sole purpose is to enrich itself through the manipulation and control of the financial, social, military, and cultural levers of society?

• What difference does it make that the FBI, CIA, Congress and DOJ colluded with the outgoing president of the United States and national left-wing media corporations to conduct a coup against the incoming duly elected president of the United States, with no consequences as of yet?

• What difference does it make that Julian Assange rots in a UK prison for the crime of revealing the treachery of the U.S. surveillance state and uncovering the DNC plot to steal the election for Hillary, while Edward Snowden is a fugitive in Russia for illuminating the deceitful un-Constitutional surveillance of every American by the Deep State operatives?

• What difference does it make that an oligopoly of a several left-wing corporate media networks and a few Silicon Valley social media titans pretend to be journalists and proponents of free speech while colluding with one political party to spread misinformation, false narratives, and fake news, while suppressing and censoring factual truths which go against their narrative?

• What difference does it make that the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen/Powell Put is real, giving the green light to Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, hedge funds, billionaire speculators and now unemployed millennial Portnoy patrons day trading on Robinhood with their $600 weekly government handout, to take excessive risk on margin, knowing they will be bailed out again and again.

• What difference does it make that the Federal government and the Federal Reserve created a combined $6 trillion out of thin air since March to supposedly help the average family, which equates to about $46,000 for every household in the country, but the average household received maybe $2,000 to $3,000 depending on their situation? A curious person might wonder where the other $5 trillion went. How about Wall Street banks, hedge funds, connected mega-corporations, and billionaire oligarchs as the recipients.

• What difference does it make that our so-called leaders are actively promoting multi-trillion dollar deficits, driving our national debt towards $30 trillion at a breakneck pace, insuring a financial crisis of epic proportions when the money printing ultimately produces inflation outside the stock market and the Fed gets trapped in their own web of deceit? Our debt saturated society implodes if short-term interest rates exceed 2%.

• What difference does it make that the Federal Reserve used this pandemic as the excuse for bailing out their owners once again, as the gears of this debt-based Ponzi scheme were already seizing up before the pandemic? The Fed didn’t let a good manufactured crisis go to waste, allowing zombie banks, hedge funds and connected corporations to survive, while sentencing hundreds of thousands of small businesses to death.

• What difference does it make that a flu which will not kill 99.97% of Americans, but has killed 80,000 seniors in long-term care facilities because tyrannical Democrat governors purposely put infected patients into the nursing homes, is being used to herd the barely sentient indoctrinated sheep into their pens as a trial run for eliminating all of our freedoms and liberty?

• What difference does it make that a therapy (HCQ + Zinc + Zpack) which has been proven to be safe and highly effective in treating Covid-19, and only costs about $10, has been ridiculed and scorned by the corporate media, Fauci and Gates because they have a vested financial interest in Big Pharma $2,500 treatments and worldwide vaccination profits?

• What difference does it make that scientific “experts” used faulty models to predict millions of deaths from this over-hyped flu, resulting in the greatest self-inflicted economic calamity in history, and have continued to fear monger the American public into never ending sheltering despite the factual evidence proving this China flu is only slightly more lethal than the yearly flu, but less lethal to young people than the normal flu?

• What difference does it make that we pretend 30% of all mortgages aren’t in default, 30% of rent payments are not being made to landlords, students without jobs will ultimately pay their trillions in loans, bankrupt retailers and small business owners will make their rent payments, unemployed homeowners will pay their property taxes to local governments, and this will all work itself out with no negative financial consequences for anyone?

• What difference does it make that the stock market sits at all-time highs, with valuations exceeding the 2000 dot-com bubble, corporate profits crashing, day trading newbie millennials buying bankrupt companies based on the advice of a sports betting self- promoting blowhard, with the savvy grey-haired veterans of the market exiting stage left? Those believing this folly can continue unabated are going to get it good and hard.

• What difference does it make that Democratic mayors and governors have allowed their cities to be looted and burned based upon the false narrative of systematic institutional racism and the death of a drugged up black man at the hands of one bad white cop, as some sort of warped effort to pin these disasters on Trump? BLM and ANTIFA are nothing more than domestic terrorists, funded by Soros and his ilk, in an effort to undermine our society and implement their communist new world order agenda.

• What difference does it make that Democrat governors continue to lockdown their states and not allow students to go to school in the Fall in an effort to keep the economy in a deep recession, so they can defeat Trump in November?

• What difference does it make that Americans are denied their freedom to worship in church and send their children to school because it is too dangerous, but abortion clinics and liquor stores are allowed to operate, and massive protests and riots are encouraged by the same tyrants denying religious freedoms?

• What difference does it make that not only do Democrats not want voter ID, but they now are using this over-hyped flu as an excuse to flood the nation with mail-in ballots in order to fraudulently steal the election in November? With a senile gaffe machine as their candidate, they will need every devious means to achieve victory.

I can openly admit that a curtain-like depression has engulfed me over the last few months. I see no reasonable solution or escape from the predicament our leaders have created. I work in my basement office, participating in a half dozen zoom meetings per day, as I try to help my employer navigate through the land mines placed by our government overlords. There has been very little enjoyment in our existence since this unnecessary national lockdown was executed. That seems to be the point.

They want us at each other’s throats over race, mask wearing, social distancing, and following the orders of tyrannical pea brained sociopath governors and mayors enjoying their roles as dictator. When the supposed conspiracy theorists, like myself, are the ones with unequivocal factual evidence to support our views, and the establishment depends upon false narratives and censorship, you know time is growing short and a violent clash is imminent.

We are in the midst of a Fourth Turning Crisis. Strauss & Howe succinctly captured the coming societal implosion and distrust which would engulf the nation.

“In the pre-Crisis years, fears about the flimsiness of the social contract will have been subliminal but rising. As the Crisis catalyzes, these fears will rush to the surface, jagged and exposed. Distrustful of some things, individuals will feel that their survival requires them to distrust more things. This behavior could cascade into a sudden downward spiral, an implosion of societal trust. If so, this implosion will strike financial markets—and, with that, the economy.

 But as the Crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. Many Americans won’t know where their savings are, who their employer is, what their pension is, or how their government works. The era will have left the financial world arbitraged and tentacled: Debtors won’t know who holds their notes, homeowners who owns their mortgages, and shareholders who runs their equities—and vice versa.”

– Strauss & Howe

I firmly believe the next five months will determine the long-term viability of our nation in its current configuration. A myriad of possibilities are conceivable and almost all of them are bad. I can guarantee there will be no compromises or negotiated treaties. Even if Biden remains the nominee until November, there will be no winner declared on November 4. Accusations of fraud will be hurled by both sides, with the left-wing media doing their utmost to declare Biden/whoever the winner.

I believe this is when both sides take to the streets and minor clashes erupt into nationwide civil chaos. Since the government factions are already at odds, there will be no consistent approach to the chaos, and things will get out of hand rapidly. There are a number of unknown factors which will determine how things develop thereafter. Who will the military obey? How will Russia and China take advantage of our situation? What happens if the stock market crashes before or after the election? Could there be a real coup or assassination against Trump?

I’m under no false belief there is anything I can do to reverse the course which has been set by decisions made and not made by those wielding the reins of power over the last few decades. We will all be buffeted and set adrift in the tumultuous flood waters which will sweep away the last vestiges of a dying empire. We will need to depend upon our own guile, courage and intelligence to survive the approaching storms. Connecting with like minded people who you can depend upon will be essential. Lone wolfs will face a difficult road.

Having built a community through my website has mentally sustained many of us, but the ability to shutdown electronic communities will be easy for those in power. Neighbors and family will likely be your only options when things go south. Future generations will depend on us to make a difference. George Washington warned us about the type of men who would traitorously usurp and destroy the nation. Let’s pray we can defeat these evil men and set our country back on a path of liberty and freedom.

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

– George Washington

*  *  *
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn – PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal.

As the Philippines, Brazil, India and dozens of other countries struggling under the economic strain of COVID-19 outbreaks turn to Russia as their new savior thanks to the Putin-approved (one of his daughters was allegedly “part of the experiment”) vaccine, which, technically, won’t be widely available until January.

But roughly two dozen countries are already queuing up, striking multimillion-dollar deals (much of which, we suspect, will be settled in rubles) and kissing the ring, granting Putin a popularity boost as he seeks to play up his government’s progress in fighting the virus.

To be sure, Russia is still clocking more than 5,000 newly confirmed cases every day, though the rate at which new deaths are being reported has slowed (some have pointed to some kind of an official cover-up). The vaccine and its association with the respected Gamaleya Institute helped bolster Putin’s credibility, and even bolstered the market’s appetite for risk, providing a solid day’s worth of grist for the market’s insatiable appetite for vaccine-related headlines.

Apparently, Putin’s showboating has inflamed President Xi’s thirst for a similar victory to display before the world. Which brings us to a headline from today’s “Global Times”. Patent Affirms Efficacy Of Vaccine Developed By China.

The story, detailing the granting of the first patent for a domestically-developed COVID vaccine in China, claimed Chinese authorities had granted the first patent to one of the many candidates vying for approval in China (and doing so with the benefit of generous government subsidies, not unlike the US with “Project Warp Speed”).

Chinese authorities have granted the first invention patent to a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which experts said demonstrates the vaccine’s originality and creativity, and would enhance the international market’s trust in Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccines amid the US’ groundless accusations of Chinese hackers trying to steal novel coronavirus data on treatments and vaccine development from them.

The vaccine is a recombinant adenovirus vaccine named Ad5-nCoV co-developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics Inc, one of the vaccine candidate’s co-developers, with the other being a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert Chen Wei.

The grant of the patent further confirmed the vaccine’s efficacy and safety, and convincingly demonstrated the ownership of its intellectual property rights (IPR), CanSino said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Sunday.

Xu Xinming, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights, told the Global Times on Sunday that China has a comparatively strict and complete patent examination system, requiring a technology or product to be fundamentally different from existing similar technologies and products all over the world to be granted the patent.

“The grant of the patent demonstrates the vaccine’s originality and creativity,” Xu said, noting that CanSino is also probably applying for a patent with foreign authorities to protect its IPR during international cooperation.

An employee with the CanSino public relations department denied claims to the Global Times on Sunday that the grant of the patent had any relationship with the authorities’ marketing process of the vaccine, noting that the two issues are under the supervision of two different systems.

As we’ve noted before, CanSino’s vaccine is using an adenovirus vector similar to the Russian vaccine, and the Oxford/AstraZeneca candidate. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report was a section entitled ‘Market confidence’ offering some details from the patent application (which, of course, is in mandarin).

Read the excerpt below:

The patent clarified 14 claims for CanSino’s IPR over the vaccine, including its nucleotide sequence, application purpose, preparation forms and methods, according to CanSino’s statement.

According to CanSino, they applied for a patent with the National Intellectual Property Administration on March 18, three days after they launched phase one clinical trials on the candidate and received approval on August 11.

The phase III trial on the vaccine which will be conducted overseas is progressing smoothly, the company noted. 

Results of the phase one and two trials were revealed as of July 20, showing a good safety profile and high levels of humoral and cellular immune responses.

CanSino has signed deals with Mexico to conduct late-stage clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico said last week.

Saudi Arabian health officials also announced on August 9 to cooperate with phase III clinical trials on the vaccine, recruiting around 5,000 participants.

CanSino has also reportedly been in talks with Russia, Brazil and Chile to launch a Phase III trial on Ad5-nCOV.

Cooperation against vaccine nationalism

Amid media hype, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a risk of “vaccine nationalism,” however global cooperation around vaccine R&D to solve the COVID-19 conundrum has not stopped.

All five types of COVID-19 vaccines in China are being developed under international cooperation with a list of countries including the UAE, Brazil, the UK, the US and Germany, media reported.

China and Russia have planned to collaborate on COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, said Chinese top respiratory scientist Zhong Nanshan, a leading figure in the fight against COVID-19, at a recent academic exchange conference on China-Russia cooperation against the coronavirus held in South China’s Guangdong Province.

Signs of cooperation seem to have emerged as early as January, media reported, as the Russian consulate in China’s Guangzhou revealed in a statement on its website that “Russian and Chinese experts have begun developing a vaccine” and Beijing has handed over the genome of the virus to Moscow.

Experts said the move is part of China’s promise to pitch into the global fight against the virus, adding that China and Russia have a clear basis for vaccine cooperation in resource sharing and mass production.

China and Russia can exchange data and techniques around vaccine R&D, given the second dose of Russia’s newly approved world’s first COVID-19 vaccine has almost the same mechanism with that of the China-developed adenovirus vector COVID-19 vaccine, Ad5-nCoV, according to Tao.

China may also be able to help Russia with mass production for its second dose of the vaccine if needed, considering China has relatively ample capacity for mass production, Tao said.

“The genetic sequence of viruses are very crucial in the development of vaccines, and sometimes can be even regarded as an intellectual property right,” Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Sunday. “The sharing and openness of gene sequences reflects China’s willingness and confidence to work with others against the virus.”

Potential cooperation between China and Russia would be a win-win one, and it will also help China develop a vaccine that can be adapted to a wider range of viral strains, said Yang.

US and Chinese medical institutions have been working together on vaccine development since the beginning of the year, a US vaccine scientist told the Xinhua News Agency on January 22.

Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas, said his group is working with the Virology Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

Hotez praised China’s efforts in dealing with the epidemic, saying Chinese scientists have done an amazing job so far figuring out the transmission and working out quickly the isolation and sequencing of the virus, Xinhua reported.

Collaboration between US company Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Beijing Advaccine Biotechnology Co. was approved in July to work jointly on advancement of the INO-4800 vaccine against coronavirus, and late-stage clinical trials have been ongoing, media reported. It is the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine to be tested simultaneously in the US and China.

British multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is working with China’s Xiamen Innovex on a recombinant protein-based coronavirus vaccine candidate to protect people from the novel coronavirus. GSK is eyeing boosting production of the candidate to a billion doses by 2021, according to media report.

Putin has already started his countdown clock, with an expected date of January for widespread availability of the Russian vaccine. We imagine similar announcements from CanSino, which has now apparently cemented its status as the most promising candidate in China.

Authored by Nick Harper via Medium.com,

A lot of fear and misinformation has been spreading throughout social media the past few days about the post office. People seem to think the sky is falling. But they’re missing a lot of important context.

I am here to tell you that yes, you should be concerned about the future of the United States Postal Service (USPS), but the whole sky isn’t falling quite yet.

So, stop panicking! Being concerned and taking specific, practical action is good; panicking on social media is bad.

Let’s check some facts, shall we? I know this is long, but please stay with me.

The U.S. Constitution creates the post office and requires Congress to fund it.

False.

Several people seem to be under the belief that the Constitution mandates the existence or funding of the United States Postal Service. The U.S. Constitution does mention the postal system in a sense, but doesn’t create the post office or require its funding. Article I, section 8, clause 7 of the Constitution gives Congress “the Power […] To establish Post Offices and Post Roads.”

It requires nothing; it merely permits Congress to act, if Congress so chooses. The clause gives Congress the ability to create post offices and the implied authority to create and provide services through the United States Postal Service. And Congress has.

USPS relies on Congress for funding.

False.

USPS is an independent agency that is almost exclusively self-funded since 1971. It may receive some small appropriations for “public service costs” and “revenue forgone.”

Public service costs are “reimbursement to the Postal Service for public service costs incurred by it in providing a maximum degree of effective and regular postal service nationwide, in communities where post offices may not be deemed self-sustaining.” 39 U.S.C. 2401. USPS may request an appropriation for public service costs for up to $460 million annually. However, USPS has not requested or received this reimbursement since 1982.

Revenue forgone is funding providing to subsidize the mailing costs of groups such as the blind and overseas absentee voters. Under the Revenue Forgone Reform Act of 1993, USPS was supposed to receive about $29 million in appropriations every year from 1994 through 2035, but for most years, that funding has not actually been appropriated.

For context, USPS’s revenue for the fiscal year ending in 2019 was $71.1 billion. So these payments would make up less than 7% of USPS revenues even if the agency did receive the payments.

But USPS has asked this year for an emergency appropriation from Congress. Read the next bit on that.

USPS is in financial distress and will be insolvent before the November 2020 election.

True about the distress; insolvency is off by 10 months.

USPS is in a financial bind. The agency has had a net loss for most of the last several years. This is because the demand for shipping letters and flats (large envelopes, newsletters, magazines) has declined steadily for over two decades. Costs for shipping letters and flats, however, have not declined as much. Less revenue with the same costs has resulted in USPS taking financial losses.

COVID-19 has exacerbated these issues even further. Mail volume dropped, while expenses, like for PPE, increased. So much so that USPS sought a $50 billion emergency funding and the authority to borrow another $25 billion from the Treasury. This was contemplated for the CARES Act that addresses so many other COVID-19-induced financial crises. USPS estimated in the spring that they would have an estimated $13 billion budget shortfall (compared to a $9 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2019).

But we now know that USPS will survive at least a little longer. While their income is still not what it needs to be, the increase in online shopping during COVID-19 has helped it stay above water. And the Treasury made a $10 billion loan available.

In its fiscal quarter report filed June 30, 2020, USPS indicated that it has “sufficient liquidity to continue operating through at least August 2021.”

So USPS is in a critical condition, but it does not appear that it will shut down before the November election.

USPS is in distress because it is required to pre-fund retiree pensions and health benefits.

Mostly true, but that’s not the only reason.

This is a pervasive half-truth. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required USPS to pre-fund future retiree health benefits (not pensions though). Previously, like most agencies, it funded these benefits on a pay as you go basis: the benefit is claimed, then they pay the bill. Instead, USPS was supposed to pay $5–6 billion per year from 2007 until 2017 into a retiree health benefit fund (RHBF) that is supposed to cover retiree health benefits for over 50 years. The idea is that pre-funding these benefits ensures that the benefits get paid even if USPS does go into crisis.

The problem is that USPS hasn’t been paying into the fund since 2012, and didn’t even make full payments in every year before that. It was supposed to have completely funded the RHBF by 2017, yet less than 44% is actually funded. It has become clear the current RHBF requirement is not sustainable and is harming USPS’s financial survival.

But despite the dour situation surrounding the RHBF, the payments are not the sole cause of USPS’s net losses. Remember, the payments were less than $6 billion each year, and payments were supposed to stop in 2017. A table from the Task Force on the United States Postal System — a group put together by an executive order of President Trump — can help us uncover the truth.

USPS Revenue and Expenditures table, FY 2010 through FY 2018

The third row of the table demonstrates what USPS’s net income or loss would have been without the RHBF. USPS would have only reported losses in 2010–2012, but would have not lost money through 2018. Payments for RHBF have stopped, but USPS is still accruing new costs of $3–4 billion per year. On the other hand, USPS had a loss of $8.8 billion for fiscal year 2019, and will likely have at least an $11 billion shortfall for fiscal year 2020. These losses are greater than the annual accrual for the RHBF. So without the RBHF, USPS would have still had losses for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2019, and 2020–five of the last ten years.

This means that while a significant portion of the financial trouble can be attributed to the RHBF, USPS is still incurring other losses that would result in a net loss in some fiscal years even if the RHBF mandate did not exist.

Buying stamps or other merchandise from the USPS gift store will save the post office.

Probably false. Sorry.

Don’t get me wrong. Definitely shop at the USPS gift store. There’s some cool stuff in there (like this crop top, which is currently sold out, but maybe your dog needs a postal carrier costume).

But the billions of dollars USPS needs to become financially stable is probably not going to come from profits on USPS merchandise, assuming there’s even enough stock of that merchandise to begin with.

And buying stamps is nice. But unless you’re throwing those stamps away and buying new stamps when you actually need them, you’re not actually increasing USPS’s revenue. You’re just shifting when they receive the money. Rather than pay for a stamp when you need it in the future, you’ve paid for it now. So USPS has more income now, but less later.

I know this one’s a real Debbie Downer, but it’s good to be realistic about what actually will help and what won’t.

The new Postmaster General is a big donor and partisan operative, Louis DeJoy.

True.

Louis DeJoy is a large donor to President Trump and the Republican National Committee. But Trump is not the first president to put a large donor in a key position. It is also worth noting that DeJoy is the first postmaster general in two decades who has not risen through the ranks of USPS in some other capacity before being appointed to the position. To DeJoy’s credit, he does have a long career in logistics and operations, which is the key area of expertise needed for managing the expansive, complex network of our mailing system.

The appointment of DeJoy was entirely Trump’s choice alone without any checks or balances.

False.

The Postmaster General is selected by the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors is appointed by the president with advice and consent of the senate. No more than 5 of the 10 Governors may be from the same party. There are currently multiple vacancies on the board. At the time that DeJoy was appointed, three were Republican and one was Democrat. DeJoy was unanimously selected by that board. DeJoy was appointed in early May, and did not fully transition into his position until June. An additional Democrat and an additional Republican have been appointed since then.

USPS just started having these problems since Dejoy started.

Half-true.

USPS has definitely been experiencing some problems with service lately. And below I get into some specific allegations. But USPS’s service woes cannot be entirely attributed to DeJoy and his policies.

Many communities, for example, experienced significant delays and even some non-deliveries during their primary elections this year, long before DeJoy took his role. Issues have ranged from changing operations to avoid COVID-19 spread, workforce shortage due to COVID-19 quarantines and illness, working out kinks of handling mail voting where it’s new or increased substantially, and managing the influx of packages due to increased online shopping.

There also have been some changes to delivery policies since July that have slowed service. These changes were put into place by DeJoy. However, they generally fall into a few categories:

• Stay on schedule

• No overtime

• No errors

• No duplicate work

Those elements aren’t a recipe for disaster; to the contrary, they’re the main ingredients to staying organized and cost-efficient. And while people are panicking because the document suggests mail will be left to sit, the document is clear:

One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that — temporarily — we may see mail left behind[], which is not typical. We will address root causes of these delay and adjust the very next day. Any mail left behind must be properly reported, and employees should ensure this action is taken with integrity and action.

The key word being temporarily. The context of the document supports that mail is not intended to sit for days. A piece of mail may be left behind on one day merely because it missed the boat, so to speak, but it will be delivered the next day.

DeJoy fired the whole leadership team of USPS in a Friday Night Massacre.

False.

This is in reference to the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired several high level staffers or forced them to resign in an attempt to cover up the Watergate Scandal. DeJoy did make some changes to the leadership of USPS when he became Postmaster General. But leadership changes when there’s a new Postmaster General is not unusual. In fact, the previous Postmaster General, Megan Brennan, made her own leadership changes when she took the position in 2015 and made leadership changes again in January 2019.

“The announcement on Friday set forth a change to organizational structure only,” USPS spokesman David Partenheimer told Motherboard. “The announcement did not include any terminations or layoffs and very specifically stated that the changes did not initiate a reduction in force and there were no immediate impacts to USPS employees.”

Source.

In fact when you compare the organizational charts from before and after the announcement, you can see that most of the changes are actually promotions of existing staff in a slightly different organizational structure. So it would be misleading to liken the situation to a Saturday Night Massacre.

DeJoy is making illegal or unethical investments in competitors of USPS.

To be determined.

DeJoy and his wife own stock in companies that have a stake in the package delivery business. $30 million is in his former company, XPO Logistics, and he recently bought stock options on Amazon.

Former director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, says the situation “doesn’t pass the smell test.” The law prohibits officers of independent agencies like USPS from having financial interests in companies that intersect with their official duties, which has been interpreted to include possession or transactions of stocks. 18 U.S.C. 208.

But Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, told USA TODAY, “The postmaster general is not required to divest of all of his assets in these kinds of investments. However, he needs to steer clear of decisions that would materially benefit the companies he is invested in.”

The Inspector General for the USPS — the watchdog who ensures there’s no waste, fraud, or corruption — is already opening an investigation and will make the final determination.

USPS is (re)moving blue mail collection boxes.

True, but for cost-efficiency reasons, and they almost immediately stopped.

A wild panic spread through social media on Friday, August 14, because people were sharing photographs of piles of blue mail collection boxes being hauled away. USPS admitted that it was removing some mail collection boxes, and transferring some to other locations.

First, some of the images floating around social media are misleading or have false captions. (False information on social media? Shocker!) So don’t believe everything you see on social media; stop sharing unless you can verify.

Second, USPS has already paused removal and transfer of collection boxes until after the election. It realized they were causing a panic, and will delay its actions until a later date when people are less paranoid.

Next, let’s discuss the rationale. People panicked because they assumed this was a tyrannical attempt to prevent mail voting. But there are costs associated with a low-use collect box, and there may come a time when the collection box become too much of a cost burden. It costs money to travel to and check a collection box that sits empty or collects very few envelopes. And collection boxes are moved all the time to adjust to the ebb and flow of mail volume. Given USPS’s financial crisis, it seems reasonable to believe that these changes were to increase efficiency.

However, a local news station in Montana checked on what collection boxes had been removed. Despite the justification that these mail collection boxes were rarely used, the boxes were in high traffic areas: outside a grocery story, next to a University, in downtown Missoula, etc.

In Morristown, New Jersey, there was similar panic. But it turns out that those collection boxes were replaced the next day with new collection boxes that are more secure to prevent “fishing” (dropping a string with an adhesive into the box to pull out the mail already deposited inside of it).

So hopefully DeJoy will have some sort of public statement to explain how he has determined which collection boxes should be moved.

USPS was destroying mail-sorting machines used to sort mail-in ballots.

True, but likely for cost-efficiency reasons.

So, yes, USPS is deactivating mail-sorting machines that sort some types of mail, including mail ballots. Some of these are being relocated, but there does appear to be an outright reduction going on with the remainder being dismantled. But despite the phrasing by Vice that the documentation shows “plans to hobble mail sorting,” the intention does not appear to be to slow the sorting of mail.

Vice does have the good sense to note that the plan to reorganize and rightsize the sorting machines is dated May 15, a month before DeJoy took office and less than a week after the Board of Governors announced his selection. Not only that, but the document shows that earlier deadlines were missed and gives extended deadlines, which implies that this plan had already been around for quite some time.

And other facts back the reasoning of the plan. The type of mail these machines sort are decreasing in volume, including down more than 15% just this year compared to last year.

In other words, DBCSs have less mail to sort than they ever have before and it’s far from clear how much of that mail is ever coming back. So it stands to reason the USPS might not need as many of them.

The necessity and prior existence of this plan is further enforced by the Inspector General’s September 2019 report on processing network optimization. The report describes how USPS has been trying, and failing, to consolidate processing and rightsize infrastructure in order to reduce costs. In fact, the issue has been researched since as early as 2012 by the Government Accountability Office, and the volume of mail has only declined further since then.

This action also aligns with the five-year strategic plan that was published before DeJoy was even selected: “Continuously optimize location of network processing operations and equipment as mail volumes decline and parcel volumes increase.”

Postal workers argue that USPS should keep the machines, but not use them, in the off chance that they’re needed or parts can be used to fix ones that are being used. I see the reasoning in that, so I would like to hear more from DeJoy on this as well.

USPS told election officials that voters’ ballots won’t arrive in time to be counted.

True, but not in the way you think.

This one is mostly a miscommunication issue. USPS has warned 46 states about how it can handle election mail. But the letters are an attempt to preserve the election, rather than undermine it.

When local election officials distribute pre-paid postage envelopes with absentee ballots, they have two options: use First Class Mail or use Marketing Mail. First Class Mail is more expensive but faster (2–5), whereas Marketing Mail is cheaper but slower (3–10 days).

Apparently, USPS has informally treated both types of election mail the same, expediting both whenever possible. So local election officials have been opting for Marketing Mail in order to save on costs. (Side bar: elections are funded at the local level and chronically underfunded.)

But USPS cannot do that anymore, because it’s costly. And therefore, election mail will be treated as its paid category. This means some election officials may be advising voters to return ballots on timelines that wouldn’t actually meet the state law’s deadlines. For example, many election officials are saying to return mail ballots a week ahead of time; but seven days might not be enough time for some Marketing Mail, which could take up to ten.

So, again, the letter from USPS was an attempt to warn election officials and preserve the election, rather undermine it. If DeJoy had wanted to undermine the election, he simply could have chosen not to warn the election officials at all.

These changes are motivated entirely by partisan attempts to shut down mail voting during COVID-19 and rig the election.

I can see why you would think that, but I don’t think so. Trump claims a lot of stupid things, and some of these changes were contemplated long before DeJoy, or even Trump.

This is the part I’ve been building up to.

Let’s start with Trump. People have claimed that Trump wants to slow down mail delivery through DeJoy in order to rig the election. Trump, being who he is, proved them right by admitting it in public. He stated that he didn’t want to give USPS money because it would enable them to deliver mail ballots more efficiently. Trump is a malicious, authoritarian jerk; I’m not denying that. But Trump says a lot of stupid things, like Mexico will pay for walls and COVID-19 will be over in a month. And he technically has no control over DeJoy; only the Board of Governors does.

The $25 billion under negotiation for the post office isn’t actually for mail ballots, but for forgone revenues due to COVID-19. And mail ballots will still get delivered through November. Multiple election experts, including Secretaries of State like Minnesota’s Steve Simon state that they believe USPS will be able to handle the volume of election mail this year, despite the increased amount and COVID-19. As Kevin Kosar argues, “USPS delivers 2.8 billion mail pieces per week. Even if 275 million individuals cast ballots by mail the USPS could handle it.” (Currently, approximately 209 million individuals could theoretically do so, so Kosar is being generous.)

Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer told FactCheck.org in late June that “the current financial condition is not going to impact [USPS’s] ability to deliver election and political mail this year.” And DeJoy made a similar statement to the Board of Governors earlier this month:

[L]et me be clear that with regard to Election Mail, the Postal Service and I are fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process. If public policy makers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, we will do everything we can to deliver Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards. We do ask election officials and voters to be mindful of the time that it takes for us to deliver ballots, whether it is a blank ballot going to a voter or a completed ballot going back to election officials. We have delivery standards that have been in place for many years. These standards have not changed, and despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail.

So mail is not being intentionally slowed. Rather, the USPS now has a Postmaster General who is very serious about making cost-efficiency savings, and is in an environment where it has to do it as soon as possible. It’s a perfect storm. There are changes happening to our postal system because it’s been needed for a long time, and USPS cannot wait any longer to make cost-saving changes without becoming insolvent within a year. USPS has needed reforms, and several have been contemplated. The Government Accountability Office noted in 2017 that no cost savings initiatives had been planned, but were likely necessary to ensure financial sustainability of USPS.

Good, fast, cheap. Choose two.

But without legislative action to save USPS, and with no chance of increasing revenues enough due to COVID-19, DeJoy’s only choice is to cut costs. And DeJoy’s other actions match that his intentions are only to do what he can to save USPS, not anything malicious. For example, in July he issued a statement that USPS would need to better adhere to its operations plans to keep costs low, and he asked Congress for legislative relief. Last week, he restructured the organization to be more efficient, and has made an additional public statement on the need for Congress to “enact reform legislation that addresses our unaffordable payments” to the RHBF. Just yesterday DeJoy issued a temporary price increase on non-retail commercial packages in order to increase revenue.

Maybe this all is a pretext hiding a massive conspiracy that managed to fool the two democratic Governors of USPS. That seems unlikely though. It seems more likely to me that we have a president who shoots off his mouth and a logistics expert in charge of a postal agency in financial crisis.

USPS is an essential public service. It should not have to fund itself or earn a profit. Congress should fund it instead.

This is an opinion, not a fact check, but since you brought it up: Yes and No.

Let’s assume that USPS is an essential public service. This is a relatively safe assumption since Americans think it’s the most important role in our current COVID-19 world. 91% of Democrats and 91% of Republicans favorably view the agency. And USPS is heavily relied upon by business, including Amazon, UPS, and Fed Ex, to carry their package the last mile to residences and rural businesses that aren’t served by other parcel carriers.

Should Congress fund it? I think that’s a double edged sword. I think it’s smart to keep such a crucial, independent agency sufficient with its own funding. I would hate to see USPS slowed or shut down due to severe budget cuts or a government shutdown. On the other hand, one time emergency funding wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Regardless, DeJoy doesn’t have control over that. His job is to balance the budget. Only Congress can decide whether and how to provide USPS any funding.

Long Story Short: What if Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is the good guy?

What’s happening is likely innocent but controversial actions happening at a very bad time. It is possible that some people, like President Trump, have malicious intentions. But so far, DeJoy only appears to only be executing plans that have long been recommended and responding to a budgetary crisis exacerbated by COVID-19.

Because if he doesn’t take action now, it substantially increases the likelihood that our future elections will be compromised and that we stop receiving important mailed items like stimulus checks, tax refunds, medicines, and more.

A lack of communication and understanding by the public, combined with a volatile political atmosphere, has made people panic that there is some kind of authoritarian seizure happening. We should be worried about the financial future of USPS, but not panicking as if there is an imminent crisis.

There are many, many, many things to be worried about right now. Don’t burn yourself out by panicking over this. Keep your fire lit for another fight.

The House Oversight Committee has announced that it will hold a hearing on mail delays on August 24. It has invited Postmaster General DeJoy to testify, as well as the Chair of the Board of Governors. I hope that people’s questions get answered. Additionally, the House plans to take a vote on the Delivering for America Act.

What you can actually do to help

1. Ask your Senator to provide short-term emergency funding, as well as long-term solutions to ensure USPS’s financial stability. A one-time appropriation is not enough. Some examples of how to do this includes some ideas from this opinion article. Many people are supporting H.R.2382, the USPS Fairness Act, which the House has already passed. But as explained above, this Act would not solve all of USPS’s financial woes. Additional financial issues would still need to be addressed, either by continuing cost-efficiency changes or through additional sources of revenues, like Congressional funding. You may also wish to express support for the Delivering for America Act, though that Act will not provide any funding to USPS (emergency or sustaining).

2. Do not let the Senate say “no” to emergency funding for USPS.

3. Also ask your U.S. Representative and Senator, as well as President Trump, to ask the Postmaster General to pause any further efficiency changes until after the November election. Also ask that Postmaster General DeJoy be fully transparent about what changes will happen when and the rationale behind each change. Communication with elected officials, election officials, and the public should be frequent.

4. If you encounter significant postal service interruptions (e.g., more delay than just a day or so), contact your local post office. If they are unresponsive, contact state and federal legislators to let them know you’re worried. State legislators have no power over USPS, but might be good conduits to help you be heard by federal legislators. Also consider contacting your local press.

5. Request your absentee ballot ASAP and return it at least ten days before Election Day, preferably sooner if you can. Learn about mail voting in your state and important dates.

6. If you are willing and able, become a poll worker. Election officials are going through a crisis due to a lack of poll workers. In the past, poll workers often have been older and retired Americans, who now are unable or unwilling to be poll workers due to risks associated with COVID-19.

7. If you’re still worried about your absentee ballot not arriving in time to be counted this fall, you can also drop it off in person. The location varies, but it’s usually with a city or county official. Contact your local elections office to check where to hand deliver it. If you don’t know your local elections office, contact your state elections office for help. However, if many voters return their ballot this way in the last week before the election, there likely will be large numbers of people consolidated and traveling through local election offices, defeating the purpose of using mail voting to avoid the spread of COVID-19. I encourage folks to watch how things develop over the next few weeks to see if their confidence in USPS is restored.

Thank you to Kevin Kosar for his tweets sharing his perspective on the situation and willingness to help point me to sources providing much of the information and context in this post.

It’s that time again. The Democratic National Convention will be almost entirely virtual this year, though the campaign press corps has descended on Milwaukee, along with reams of party functionaries and hangers-on, the city’s businesses aren’t expecting the economic windfall typically associated with big conventions like this.

Overshadowed by the coronavirus, campaign aides have clearly tried to stir up “buzz” by telling the press (off the record, of course) that Biden might make a “surprise” in-person appearance despite committing to deliver his keynote virtually.

As we await the endless parade of canned, boilerplate speeches, it seems like the most exciting thing about the convention – at least, as far as we can tell – will be seeing whether Biden can pull off a repeat of the Harris VP announcement. Unfortunately, Biden won’t be speaking until Thursday.

Tonight’s agenda is capped by Bernie and Michelle Obama who, as we have already been told this evening, will explain that Joe – who forgot how many grandkids he had today – will “beat the pandemic and rescue the economy”…

Watch Live here…

To help spice things up between now and then, journalist and author Matt Taibbi has devised “the Official 2020 Democratic National Convention Drinking Game.”

As Taibbi explains, the only succor from an endless stream of sanctimonious speeches decrying the “existential threat” President Trump poses to the future of the Republic is alcohol. And in keeping with a tradition to which Taibbi contributed during his time as an editor at Rolling Stone, we hope you’re ready to start drinking early.

To be sure, the Democrats will give us plenty of material to work with. Taibbi’s first rule is to drink every time a convention speaker says the word ‘historic’.

Turn on your TV to CNN or MSNBC right now. The odds aren’t bad – I’d put them at 7-2 – that the word “historic” is in the chyron. You will hear this word five thousand times, at minimum, per day of convention coverage. Out of respect for human life, you’ll therefore be asked to drink to “history” or “historic” only when uttered by actual convention speakers. I hope readers understand, without it being included on the list, that any mention of “Malarkey” is an automatic drink.

Without further ado, drink EVERY TIME to:

1. “Post office,” or any variation thereof (i.e. “postal service” or “mailbox”).

2. “Soul of America.”

3. “History” or “Historic.” Drink only when uttered by a convention speaker.

4. “Existential threat.”

5. “This president.”

6. “Let me be clear.” Double shot if what comes after is not clear.

7. “Access,” as in “access to affordable health care” or “access to a good education.” You may drink twice if this comes in conjunction with an argument about “opportunity.”

8. “Systemic,” “systematic,” “structural,” “fundamental,” or “fundamentally.” Double-shot if the words are uttered by someone who has never voted for or supported a systemic reform.

9. Someone speaks positively of a Clinton (h/t to @percandidate).

10. “This is not who we are.”

11. “Above the law.”

12. (Something something) Mitch McConnell, (something something) is a human right.

13. “Trump is (rehearsed witticism).” Also, “golf.”

14. Russia.

15. Birther.

16. (Attempts to speak Spanish)

17. Unity/civility.

18. “Uncharted waters.” Drunk rum if you have it here, and yell “Aargh” like a pirate (h/t to @C00LDad77).

19. “Democracy itself.”

Drink ONCE PER HOUR to:

1. “Racist,” or “Black Lives.”

2. “Lies.”

BONUS RULE: Drink every time someone blames Trump for coronavirus deaths. Make your own group judgment as to whether or not the blame is deserved.

WOKE MAD LIBS EXCEPTION: If an MSNBC commentator or a speaker uses any of the following terms, you may stop drinking for an hour to “reclaim” your sobriety: performative, white-adjacent, Latinx, decolonize, invisibilize, solidarity, interrogate, normalize, privilege (as a verb), dismantle, erase, lived experience, (anything)-splaining, heteronormative, habitus, cultural appropriation, essentialist, or trigger.

Genderfuck or melanated ends the game.  

And for those who prefer the “Bingo” format.

Finally, now that we got the important stuff out of the way, here’s the schedule for tonight, with the first speaker, Amy Klobuchar, slated to kick things off at 9pmET. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will wrap things up as Monday night’s headliner.

• Sen. Amy Klobuchar
• Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto
• Governor Andrew Cuomo
• Governor Gretchen Whitmer
• Representative Jim Clyburn
• Convention Chairman Bennie Thompson
• Representative Gwen Moore
• Senator Doug Jones
• Performance by Maggie Rogers
• Performance by Leon Bridges
• Senator Bernie Sanders
• Former First Lady Michelle Obama

Authored b Ben Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

Several of Stanford University’s graduate programs, which rank among the best in the United States, removed or revised their admissions requirements in response to difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most notably, Stanford’s School of Medicine will not require students to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), the standardized test for medical degree candidates. Stanford Medicine said that applications can be submitted without the MCAT through September 30, 2020 “in fairness to all applicants.”

The school said that with the exception of the MCAT, all other admissions requirements will remain the same.

U.S. News and World Report ranked Stanford Medicine as the fourth-best medical school for research in the United States, falling only behind Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Stanford tied with New York University for the No. 4 spot.

Meanwhile, Stanford’s physics department will not have to submit scores for the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) or the GRE subject test in physics. In 2018, Stanford tied with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the best graduate school for physics in the country.

Sean Hartnoll, director of graduate studies at the physics department, told the Stanford Daily that there were too many obstacles to take the GRE due to COVID-19.

“The faculty felt that, this year in particular, that the additional obstacles that the GRE presents due to COVID…combined with the other reasons for being skeptical about the usefulness of the GRE warranted removing the GRE as a requirement for this year’s applicants, to be revisited later,” Hartnoll said.

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business will accept scores for online versions of standardized exams.

Kirsten Moss, assistant dean and Director of M.B.A. Admissions and Financial Aid at the Graduate School of Business, told applicants that there is “much” out of the applicant’s control.

“We understand that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so much is changing, and so fast,” said Moss. “There is much that may be out of an applicant’s control. Rest assured that we understand this, and will evaluate every applicant’s candidacy with this in mind.”

The Stanford College Republicans said in a statement to Campus Reform that it disagrees with the move.

“The move by Stanford’s medical school to drop the MCAT is a mistake. America needs her future doctors to be the most knowledgeable and well trained in the world. Out of Stanford medical school come many of the doctors and researchers on the front lines of working to combat the China Virus,” the group said, adding that “it’d be a shame if unqualified applicants come to Stanford as a result of this policy and we suffer the consequences in the coming decades.”

National Association of Scholars Communications Coordinator Chance Layton also expressed concern regarding Stanford’s move.

Layton explained that even during the COVID-19 pandemic, there still needs to be a baseline standard for admission.

“All college programs should have some baseline for a standardized assessment of applicants. The GRE and MCAT provide that,” Layton told Campus Reform. “They are expensive, and I am sure test dates have been moved and canceled repeatedly throughout the year due to COVID.”

Layton said he isn’t necessarily concerned that the schools are being too “generous to the extraordinary circumstances some students face,” but rather that they are “scratching to eliminate the use of standardized tests entirely in applications.”

“This will, for one, make admissions even less transparent,” Layton said.

Layton pointed to a particular quote by Hartnoll from the Stanford Daily’s article: “Combined with the other reasons for being skeptical about the usefulness of the GRE warranted removing the GRE as a requirement for this year’s applicants, to be revisited later.”

Layton said that this mentality “would erode the quality of higher education.”

Though other indicators of intellect and potential success exist, “none are as easily quantifiable as standardized test scores.”

“Many schools are likely using this opportunity as an easy workaround for developing what they call a more ‘holistic’ approach to applicants,” Layton continued.

“Don’t believe it for a second. This gives schools free rein to discriminate without barriers between intellectually diverse and successful students, and those they really want on campus.”