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Thanks, gocomics.org
We have the biggest of lots of things. Since 2016, mostly useless, smelly, unpaid for, politically and socially backwards.
Category: Uncategorized
I’m getting great ratings…
Thanks, gocomics.org
Test of pandemic drones ends before it starts!
Draganfly X4-P
WESTPORT, CT, USA — The town is ending its participation in a controversial “pandemic drone” program to suss out potential coronavirus patients after an outcry from residents and others who complained that the initiative infringed on people’s privacy rights…
Westport’s police department had teamed up with a Canadian company named Draganfly on the initiative…
Under the program, the department’s drones were outfitted with Draganfly’s specialized sensors and computer vision systems that measured a person’s fever, temperature, heart and respiratory rates from as far as 190 feet in the air, Draganfly claimed. The technology also detected people sneezing and coughing in crowds.
Soon after the announcement of the program, however, people complained that to the police department and First Selectman Jim Marpe that it was intrusive and an invasion of privacy. Though Draganfly said it was not using facial recognition software, nor was it collecting any personal data, residents complained that it was still too much like Big Brother.
And so it goes. I wasn’t surprised that Westport coppers were willing to trial something this innovative. They’ve used drones for several years – starting with projects aimed at finding drowning victims in Long Island Sound. Moved on to multiple uses in the years following.
Westport is Connecticut’s hotspot for COVID-19. It sits in Fairfield County which butts up against the New York State line. It’s a popular commuter home for folks earning incomes with lots of 0’s on the end in New York City.
Trump changes his tone. The rest of us try to keep from dying.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday insisted that he had never underestimated or underappreciated the seriousness of coronavirus. But for two months, he and some members of his administration downplayed the global threat even as world events and government and outside experts made clear that the health and economic impacts of this disease would be dire.
Here are some of those comments.
JAN 22
“We have it totally under control. … It’s going to be just fine.”
— Donald Trump
…
The CDC confirmed the first person-to-person transmission in the United States. CDC Director Robert Redfield says “the immediate risk to the American public is low.”
FEB 24
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock market starting to look very good to me”
— Donald Trump
You get the idea. RTFA. Please. Trump is criminally ignorant. He refuses to examine the science behind a serious fightback to this coronavirus. It doesn’t matter whether he’s ignorant or stupid. He is going to keep on killing Americans with his absurd policies. He is not going to change.
The American Medical Association is the least offensive body I can suggest to you to check in with on a daily basis for what you should be doing. Please listen to someone, anyone, who is a serious scientist, an epidemiologist. And ignore that political quack in the White House.
NM Governor fights for COVID-19 aid for tribal nations
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham raised alarms with President Donald Trump Monday about “incredible spikes” in coronavirus cases in Navajo Nation, warning that the virus could “wipe out” some tribal nations, according to a recording of a call between Trump and the nation’s governors obtained by ABC News.
“I’m very worried, Mr. President,” Governor Lujan Grisham said, as she followed up on a request she made to the Department of Defense last Wednesday for a 248-bed U.S. Army combat support hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Grisham told Trump she had not yet received a response.
“The rate of infection, at least on the New Mexico side — although we’ve got several Arizona residents in our hospitals — we’re seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital rate, a much quicker go-right-to-the-vent rate for this population. And we’re seeing doubling in every day-and-a-half,” she said.
Wow, that’s something,” the president replied.
She added: “And it could wipe out those tribal nations.”
New Mexican tribal nations waited almost a week for an answer to Governor Lujan’s request for aid from the Feds. Trump got back to her this afternoon [Tuesday, 31st], saying, he’d approved a “field hospital” for the Navajo Nation and others in the state.
That was announced by the governor, Tuesday afternoon. No one, yet, has any info if this is supposed to be the Combat Support Hospital in Albuquerque…or something else.
Are you nuts!?
Thanks, go comics.org
Fake President’s Spiritual Adviser is Raking in Buck$ from the Coronavirus Crisis
Last Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warned senators that the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and the massive recession that likely will take place might cause the unemployment rate to balloon to 20 percent. (He later walked back that dire prediction.) The same day, the president’s spiritual adviser, Paula White asked her followers for private donations to bankroll her private church, which she described as a “hospital to the sick”—the metaphysically sick, that is.
Since October, White has served as the special adviser to the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives in the Trump Administration. During a coronavirus-themed “prayer session” that she delivered to her online congregation, she conflated the coronavirus outbreak—a quickly-spreading pandemic which has infected more than 6,000 Americans and by Wednesday had killed 146—with the fundraising needs of the City of Destiny, an Apokpa, Florida, church in which she holds a prominent position.
Though she clarified that donations wouldn’t actually go to help those infected, White used medical imagery to add urgency to her fundraising plea during a pandemic. “Every single day we are a hospital to the sick, not necessarily the physically sick,” she said. “But we are a hospital for those who are soul sick, those who are spiritually sick.” White went on to suggest that contributors offer a $91 donation, citing Psalm 91, or “maybe $9 or whatever God tells you to do.”
A crooked politician palling around with a hustler peddling religion. Not original. Not novel in the GOUSA. Unfortunately.
Fake president fails explaining why he disbanded global health team
One of Donald Trump’s most important missteps in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak happened before anyone had even heard of COVID-19. In fact, the president’s first error came back in 2018.
It was two years ago when Trump ordered the shutdown of the White House National Security Council’s entire global health security unit. NBC News had a good report on this recently, noting that the president’s decision “to downsize the White House national security staff — and eliminate jobs addressing global pandemics — is likely to hamper the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus.”
It was against this backdrop that a reporter asked Trump late last week about whether he was prepared to “rethink having an Office of Pandemic Preparation in the White House.” The president replied:
“I just think this is something, Peter, that you can never really think is going to happen. You know, who — I’ve heard all about, ‘This could be…’ — you know, ‘This could be a big deal,’ from before it happened. You know, this — something like this could happen…. Who would have thought? Look, how long ago is it? Six, seven, eight weeks ago — who would have thought we would even be having the subject? … You never really know when something like this is going to strike and what it’s going to be.”
Which is exactly why reasonable, thoughtful people plan ahead for potential disasters. Especially if that’s part of your job description.
It never ends…Storm Dennis follows Storm Clara
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Storm Dennis, one of the deepest low-pressure centres to have formed in recent years, has brought severe weather to Iceland and many western and central parts of the UK.
Some of the regions now being affected by Dennis were also hit by a preceding storm, Ciara, which brought stronger winds than Dennis but less rain. Nevertheless, rivers were already full and the ground saturated before Dennis’s arrival.
The military has been called in provide assistance in parts of northern England, where rivers have overflowed in recent days.
Click through and check out the photos. The worst waves haven’t hit land [yet?]. They’re up to 100 feet high.
NC town rejects solar panels — fear they “suck energy from the sun”
Members of the public in Woodland, North Carolina, expressed their fear and mistrust at the proposal to allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off Highway 258.
During the Woodland Town Council meeting, one local man, Bobby Mann, said solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not go to Woodland, the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald reported.
Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, said she was concerned the panels would prevent plants in the area from photosynthesizing, stopping them from growing…
She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer.
Yes, there are plenty of folks throughout the whole United States as ignorant, backwards and foolish as the citizens of Woodland, North Carolina. Still, the Solid South remains a leading candidate for out-of-date, out-of-time, out-of-the-running for the advancement of any business or project that’s progressed beyond a 19th Century skillset.
