Stephan: You just can't make this stuff up. If I wrote it in a novel, it would be considered unbelievable.
Senate Majority leader and principal Trump goblin Mitch McConnell Credit: Win McNamee/Getty
Senate Republicans rejected an extension of a program that expanded food aid to families affected by the coronavirus pandemic in their relief proposal but included a provision which would double the “three-martini lunch” deduction for business meals.
The Census Bureau reported that about 26 million adults and between 8 to 15 million children live in households that did not have enough food last month. Images around the country, from Arizona and Texas to New York and Massachusetts, show mile-long lines at food banks amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
But the Republican Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools Act (HEALS Act), which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., unveiled on Monday, did not include either an expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, or an extension of the Pandemic EBT program, which provides aid to families with children who recently lost access to free meals at schools, The Washington Post reports. It does, however, include a tax break on business lunches.
Stephan: Hard to get more racist than this move by Trump, unless he announced it wearing a KKK gown.
Trump arrives to speak during a news conference at the White House July 28, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Credit: : Alex Wong/Getty
In a pair of tweets one advocacy group denounced as “racist, classist garbage,” President Donald Trump on Wednesday boasted that he is working to prevent construction of low-income housing in the suburbs by repealing an Obama-era rule aimed at combating persistent racial segregation in those communities.
“I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low-income housing built in your neighborhood,” Trump tweeted. “Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!”
“Words can’t quite capture how outrageous and racist this is. Trump and Ben Carson have worked hand in glove to obstruct and destroy decades of work to promote fair housing in our country.” —Kristen Clarke, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Trump was referring to the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, an addition to the 1968 […]
Stephan: Here is a charming story sent to me by a physician friend. Such an intelligent project.
Detection dog
A few months ago we wrote about a research project in the UK where scientists were exploring how dogs could be trained to sniff out signs of the novel coronavirus. A similar venture has now been undertaken by researchers at the University of Hanover, Germany, where a team found that with little training, sniffer dogs were capable of detecting the virus with a high degree of accuracy.
Scientists have previously tapped into the incredible nose sensitivity of dogs for a number of purposes, including detecting cancer, malaria, and explosive devices. By exposing the animals to samples in a room and teaching them to distinguish between those that are infected and those that aren’t, the hope is that dogs can become a powerful screening tool in public spaces to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
To investigate these possibilities, the German researchers recruited eight specialized sniffer dogs, which have been trained over the course of one week to distinguish between some 1,012 samples infected with the novel […]
Stephan: Trump and his minions keep telling us that the U.S. has one of the lowest Covid-19 death rates in the world. Just another lie. Here are some facts.
The Canadian and European Union flags. Americans are dying of COVID-19 at a rate over 17 times higher than that in the EU and Canada.
More than six months into the U.S. outbreak of the coronavirus, Americans are dying of COVID-19 at a rate over 17 times higher than that in the European Union and Canada, when adjusted for population.
In the U.S., with a population of about 328 million, an average of about three people per million are dying each day, according to data compiled by Our World in Data. That’s about 17 times higher than in the European Union, which has a population of about 446 million and less than one (0.18) daily death per million, on average. In Canada, home to about just under 38 million people, less than one (0.16) person per million is dying daily, on average.
The U.S. has a seven-day average of just over 1,000 deaths per day, according to a New York Times tracker. The seven-day average in Canada is about six COVID-19 deaths per day. Meanwhile, the European Center for Disease Prevention and […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: I think Paul Krugman has absolutely focused on the real pandemic, the real crisis in America. The Founders would be appalled
An antimask protester in Columbus, Ohio, on July 18. Credit: Jeff Dean/Agence France-Presse/Getty
America’s response to the coronavirus has been a lose-lose proposition.
The Trump administration and governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis insisted that there was no trade-off between economic growth and controlling the disease, and they were right — but not in the way they expected.
Premature reopening led to a surge in infections: Adjusted for population, Americans are currently dying from Covid-19 at around 15 times the rate in the European Union or Canada. Yet the “rocket ship” recovery Donald Trump promised has crashed and burned: Job growth appears to have stalled or reversed, especially in states that were most aggressive about lifting social distancing mandates, and early indications are that the U.S. economy is lagging behind the economies of major European nations.
So we’re failing dismally on both the epidemiological and the economic fronts. But why?
On the face of it, the answer is that Trump and allies were so eager to see big jobs numbers […]
