‘They Thought I Was Dead’: Haitian President’s Widow Recounts Assassination

Struck by gunfire, Martine Moïse lay bleeding as the assassins who killed her husband ransacked her room. Now, she says, the F.B.I. must find the mastermind behind the attack.

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Unless Haiti has their own FBI, it makes no sense for our ill-performing intelligence services here at home to get wrapped up in another country's major murder mystery.  No good can come from US involvement in such an investigation, even if we had a top-notch FBI and confidence in their investigation skills.  The Haitians are better left alone to solve this one without US involvement further complicating matters.

 

We are not the world's policemen, and we have plenty of crimes yet remaining unsolved at home.  Let's start with the children murdered in our own cities whose killers have not yet been brought to justice?  Their little lives mattered most, and they are the most forgotten, not being presidents but paupers for the most part... 

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* What happened in Haiti is a cultural thing.  America cannot change the violence of that culture, no matter how well intentioned.  Soldiers are not needed to add to the violent mix.  Until a cultural change comes from the people themselves, it is best to keep Haiti isolated as her island neighbors do, and encourage financial and religious charitable donations to help change hearts and minds.

The trouble with all this foreign intervention is what it makes the United States, formerly a strong cultural nation good at absorbing newcomers with sponsors into our system.  E Pluribus Unum.

Now, we import Afghans here, the "helpers" to our troops.  I would not object, if a retired, active or disabled U.S. service member who feels some obligation to an Afghan soldier counterpart sponsored his entry (not his family) and shared his own pension and paycheck benefits with his mate.  A US soldier paycheck can surely support another man, willing to escape after Americans withdrew...

But what is going on now is those who failed at war in Afghanistan, the neo cons, are importing another nation's troubles into our own country.  "They won't be trouble" we are assured.  They were our allies.  Except... give it a generation or two.  Their children will not be as accepted into America society as the wealthy sons and daughters of the legacy white soldiers who had their adventures and then left the country worse off, after the Taliban retook their land after decades of foreign occupation.  Think that makes them more, or less likely to adopt Western ways?

Meanwhile, look around your own big backyards...  Where are the refugees from America's failed past wars?  I bet they are not where you live.  So sure, open the doors to everyone... what harm could come of that?  Come to think of it, maybe the Haitians would feel safer on Chicago's South Side?  Why not let them in, like with the Afghan translators who lives might actually be less endangered, relatively, than the Haitian innocents.  

If it's gonna be a heartstring tug -- and we are not importing the wealthiest Afghanis who can afford to buy their way into America under this latest refugee program -- then maybe America should be voting on who we let in.... Haitian babies with a chance still?  Iraqi schoolgirls who have overcome so much and still want to learn?  Central American workers with the physical skills to rebuild America's infrastructure?  Muslims abroad who helped the US in our failed occupations in the Middle East?

That would surely sell papers and gain viewerships:  let American taxpayers vote on who comes in, and then we buy homes in neighborhood and school districts to house the newcomers across the country, maybe even in a neo-con's backyard, though if it's a Muslim refugee, you might have to get rid of the dogs... Cultural differences and all.  Don't worry, you will get to know and respect other cultures' way...  even here at home.

 

The Delta variant is a ‘serious threat’ as contagious as chickenpox, the C.D.C. finds.

An internal agency document paints a grim picture of the fast-spreading coronavirus variant, saying it appears to cause serious illness and health officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”

1h ago

What the Cape Cod Holidaygoers Can Teach Us

They thought they were fully vaccinated, and came to play.  We are learning that even with vaccinations, transmission and infections occur.  We still don't know if the Delta variant can be transmitted to children or others, even if those infected are asymptomatic themselves.

As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.

The initial findings of the investigation led by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to have huge implications.

Before Provincetown, health officials had been operating under the assumption that it was extraordinarily rare for a vaccinated person to become infected with the virus. And if they did, they probably wouldn't end up passing it on to others, such as children too young to qualify for the vaccine or people who were medically vulnerable.

Vaccines definitely help lessen the symptoms in some, but the tradeoff appears to be the greater transmission rate.  

But that assumption had been based on studies of earlier versions of the virus. Delta was known for its "hyper-transmissibility," or as one former White House adviser put it "COVID on steroids."

"What has changed is the virus," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and Biden's chief medical adviser.

When a vaccinated person gets infected with delta -- called a "breakthrough infection" -- "the level of virus in their nasopharynx is about 1,000 times higher than with the alpha variant," Fauci said in an interview Wednesday with MSNBC

The idea that vaccines halt transmission of the virus was largely behind the CDC's decision in May suggesting vaccinated people could safely go without their masks indoors and in crowds, even if others were unvaccinated.

I think we got overconfident as a country in the power of the vaccines, and the manufacturers are telling us that over time, the vaccines lose some of their effectiveness.  Booster shots for the new vaccines are already being explored.  Let's be smart and remember that limiting exposing others, even if you are asymptomatic and vaccinated yourself, is the safest option for all.  We are not out of the woods yet, and we are learning that the higher transmission rates of the delta variant are not necessarily caused by the unvaccinated, but also by the overconfident vaccinated, like those vacationing at the Cod on the Fourth of July weekend...

#NoBlameNoShameLet'sJustBeatThisThing 

"In recent days I have seen new scientific data from recent outbreak investigations, showing that the delta variant behaves uniquely differently from past strains of the virus that causes COVID 19," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters Tuesday announcing the new recommendations.

"Information on the delta variants from several states and other countries, indicate that in rare occasion some vaccinated people infected with a delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others," she added. "This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendation."

When asked to release the new evidence, the CDC said more details would be released on Friday.

But Walensky hinted that the biggest driver was new unpublished research on a person's "viral load" -- the amount of virus in a person's nasal passages -- being considerably high even after being vaccinated with a U.S.-approved vaccine.

"What we've learned … is that when we examine the rare or breakthrough infections and we look at the amount of virus in those people, it is pretty similar to the amount of virus in unvaccinated people," she said.

It's like with antibiotics, maybe.  The CoVid virus is adjusting to the vaccines and morphing into a new threat that can "beat" the protections we think we have.   By lessening the symptoms of infection in the majority, we maybe have created variants that are not only more contagious but that perhaps post greater risks to those who do become infected by the newer variants.  Scientific study continues, as more and more human subjects present for testing and treatment.  Hold on to your conclusions, friends, it appears the worldwide experiment on how to best combat this supervirus still rages...

Vaccines, isolation when indoors, and masks are tools we can use to fight, but taken alone, it appears none are capable of defeating this evolving virus yet.

---------------

 Further Reading:

Antibody-dependent enhancement and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies

• Wen Shi Lee,
• Adam K. Wheatley,
• Stephen J. Kent &
• Brandon J. DeKosky 

Nature Microbiology volume 5, pages 1185–1191 (2020)

• Metrics details

Abstract

Antibody-based drugs and vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are being expedited through preclinical and clinical development. Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Previous respiratory syncytial virus and dengue virus vaccine studies revealed human clinical safety risks related to ADE, resulting in failed vaccine trials. Here, we describe key ADE mechanisms and discuss mitigation strategies for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies in development. We also outline recently published data to evaluate the risks and opportunities for antibody-based protection against SARS-CoV-2

#Patience, Kenny... You Got This and We Got You! #PrayersUP

Kung Fu Kenny@KennyBednarek

·

8h

My race schedule Please share and spread the word #Tokyo2020

 

Suni Lee!

 Her family and America celebrate the victory.  That first-generation father has some good advice for her daughter, that helped her win gold.

My Body, My Choice... Mississippi Hopes to Overturn Roe

 which would push the abortion issue back to the individual states to decide, much like mask mandates and vaccination passports.  Y'all ready for this?  The Court is being asked to make sense of the logical inconsistencies on what permissions the states have regarding the health and welfare of their own citizens.  Hang on tight:  you know it will be a 5-4 ride with John Roberts shifting his weight...

 Legal scholar Linda Greenhouse in the NYT:

By Linda Greenhouse

Contributing Opinion Writer

...{I}n May, when the court agreed to hear Mississippi’s appeal of a decision that struck down its ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, it was perfectly obvious that if Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act were to be upheld, the two precedents would have to go. That’s because a fetus at 15 weeks is at least two months shy of viability, and both Roe and Casey give women an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus is viable. The 1992 Casey decision authorized states to place an onerous and expensive obstacle course in a woman’s path, but nonetheless, the ultimate decision to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability remained hers to make.

Permitting a state to ban abortion at 15 weeks — or at six, as in Texas, or at just about any old time, as in a new Arkansas law, temporarily blocked last week by a federal district judge, that purports to ban nearly all abortions — is inconsistent with nearly 50 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence.

In the Supreme Court petition Attorney General Fitch filed in June 2020 (that is not a typographical error; it took the justices 11 months simply to decide to hear the case), she was coy about what she was really asking. “To be clear,” she told the court, “the questions presented in this petition do not require the court to overturn Roe or Casey.” She did concede, but only in a footnote, that the case might prompt a more conclusive outcome: “If the court determines that it cannot reconcile Roe and Casey with other precedents or scientific advancements showing a compelling state interest in fetal life far earlier in pregnancy than those cases contemplate, the court should not retain erroneous precedent.”

The tone is completely different in the state’s brief on the merits, filed last week in advance of the argument the court will hold this fall. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” Ms. Fitch asserts. The case for overturning them is “overwhelming.” The two precedents have not only “proven hopelessly unworkable,” but “have damaged the democratic process, poisoned our national discourse, plagued the law — and, in doing so, harmed this court.”

Over 25% of new cases in LA fully vaxxed...

Ruh roh. Now that the CDC is recommending vaccinated patients with mild symptoms be tested for CoVid, you can expect that number to rise nationwide.  (California has expanded their testing more fully than most regions.)

Good news?  That vaccinated people who catch CoVid face less death, hospitalization and severity of illness?  Sure, if that's what the studies are telling us and the Delta variant doesn't wreak worse havoc on the younger unvaccinated children likely to catch the more contagious variant.  

Maybe false vaccination confidence* in the United States -- compared to more cautious countries like Israel, say --  is like speeders who buckle up, or the NFL with greater helmet protections than rugby players and hurlers, say?

I can tell you this:  as an early CoVid "survivor" (Feb. 2020), I would not wish even a mild version of that virus on children, or their parents standing by helplessly, with the accompanying fever and respiratory/heart issues in fighting it off.*  Likely, it was a much stronger virus back then Still, you don't want to hear your kid wheeze (not my symptom), fight fever and listen to a racing heart, much less be a rare child death. 

Keep on eye on the worldwide stats of childhood illness being triggered by the delta variant though, and protect your youngsters accordingly?  We've done all we can to help now, the adult vaccinated and survivors. Lets hope for a most excellent indoor-air season ahead, for all of us, our youngsters in America and vulnerable elders and immuo-compromised alike.  Seems vaccination season has not ended the virus variantsout here in our country after all, perhaps the milder variants in adults are more contagious and transmittable by the vaccinated and non- alike?  Results are not yet in;  worldwide studies are leaking out...  

You hope wise people lead on this:  don't blame and shame, up your protection game?  Especially if you're directly and immediately tasked with taking care of individuals who fall into those three categories above?  Overconfidence kills, and a dose of humility never harmed anyone, just sayin'...

God Bless Us in the coming, closed-in months.  That's when the results and conclusions of our national experiment will be in, and can be best drawn if it's science and not marketing/comm really driving our national media reports. (?) We shall see... many rivers to cross, many months to go until Thanksgiving and the more closed-up holiday seasons.

with the office off the main entrance of my building, on the top floor, where air risees.  They've redone the circulation, with a more open floor security system months into the pandemic though.)

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* "Superpowers, baby! Bring on the travel, social mixing in close quarters, and indoors air! I'm vaccinated, dontchaknow? Bring on the goodtime '20s!"  Lot of non-cautious people in this country good at casting off caution and counting on unproven facts... and willing to blame all others when their preferred facts are proven false in time. 

 ADDED:  What if CoVid survivors and the vaccinated are actually shedding more virus at times, it stays in the body and can be stronger at times still?  When we don't have symptoms now of the mild summer viruses you hear inside places these days (library, grocery, auto repair waiting room, planes and transport surely -- you hear the respiratory symptoms, summer-cold-like symptoms out there if you stay long enough...), could many of us adults be future Typhoid Mary's, potentially exposing children and vulnerables?  Not me surely, I am still not staying indoors long, and watching who I am exposing when I do.  My lifestyle allows that though, whereas I can see how concerned parents will be unlikely to avoid keeping their children unexposed come this autumn, especially the school-aged who are always nature's best transmitters.  Maybe that will help protect the majority of them in the long run though.  Mild symptoms for most. 

Greatest Hmong-American Olympian in History! *

Sunisa Lee, 18, steps up to take the all-around title in women's world gymnastics at the Olympics.  Simone Biles passes the torch to the next generation of winners!  USA wins gold.  Go team... Finally a feel-good story out of US Gymnastics.  Those young women have been victimized, and used to sell publications for far too long.  Lee represents the true amateur spirit at its best.  Her parents don't own a gym, and she's the first from her ethnic community to represent at this level of sport.  Naysayers:  how can you spin this into something negative?  Please don't try.

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* Say it ain't so?  No debate here, like most goat talk... (LeBron v. Michael? Thorpe v. Phelps?  Pointless to debate.)

Horse-Race Coverage...

They Shoot Up all the Horses, Don't They? *

The European Union pulls ahead of the United States in vaccinations.

The figures provided a stark contrast with the early stages of the inoculation campaigns, when the bloc, facing a shortage of doses and delayed deliveries, looked in envy at efforts elsewhere.

Just saying, like with the Simone Biles "she's a GOAT!" coverage, this really doesn't serve the subject matter well. Cover issues honestly, don't advocate or promote.  That hypes the news. (Are we competing against the EU, and I missed it? Horse-race coverage. Tell stories of substance, don't just stats lists.  Human stories are the foundation of the horse-race coverage, always. Haven't the past few election news cycles taught assignment editors this? You can't cover people like horses.)

 

 

Liz Finally Confronts Daddy Warbucks Cheney??

Rep. Liz Cheney@RepLizCheney

We need a Republican Party that can win elections based on ideas and substance, but we cannot be a party that embraces insurrection, and we cannot be a party that embraces the Big Lie.

---------------

The biggest lies in recent Republican history were those told by the neo=con Republican, and their Democratic and media enablers, who lied us into the Middle East wars by pretending America's national security interests were at stake, and that Iraq had nuclear weapons.  #NeverForget  #TheGreatestStoriesEverTold?

Good Luck Selling This One Too, NYT...

 Guest Essay

There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote

Giving the franchise to noncitizens wouldn't just be fair, it would improve America.

13h ago    By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

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Guest Essay

We’re Ben and Jerry. Men of Ice Cream, Men of Principle.

We support the company's decision to end the sale of its ice cream in the occupied Palestinian territories.

By Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield

No that America is no longer warring there, I don't much follow Middle East politics and business:  is this move meant to punish the Pali stone-throwers in the occupied territories, as in, "no ice cream for you!"  or are these two Jewish-American businbetteressmen making a statement in not selling to profit Israel?  They should be able to summarize this non-story better for the folks who won't waste a click figuring out the symbolic ice-cream drama...

 

From the Journolist who Helped Sell Obamacare...

Ezza Klein in the NYT makes his case for domestic vaccination passports. (Not. Gonna, Happen. -- I know America.)   Let's see if he can effectively split the nation again -- sell more Americans against the idea of "My Body, My Choice" --  and sow division in trying to accomplish what he knows is best for everyone.  I bet he can!

 (Google for his non-existent background education in science and medicine/heathcare.  It's not there.  Not credentialed in any profession.  He's a businessman. lest we forget, from the West Coast making his money sowing division in the nation. Do Washington establishment politicians of the old school still listen to this young... leader?  Hm.  His ideas and sources seem non-original.  And he's proven himself quite unfamiliar with the Constitution in the past, and here below too... Younger people, non-NYT consumers, will be a harder sell away from "My Body, My Choice" slogan... women too, once they catch on what is at stak:  their rights again.  Libertarians will out themselves like college lesbians when it turns out that was just a mask they were trying on, when it was easier to defend rights, on paper, in theory, before reality showed causing so many libertarians to recast their beliefs.  

Funny how the civil liberties and ethics people with credentials in the professionw *looking at you, SCOTUS* always seem to win out against the career-and=business-growth types in the end though. Short timers tend to cash in and cash out quickly. Victory is ours, the elders and the educated. To the Ez's go only the spoils, and the lingering destruction left behind in too many quarters... In America.  Betcha he doesn't get his vaccine passport stamped evenly across the nation.)

The Powerlessness of Persuasion

July 29, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

Credit...Alana Paterson for The New York Times

By Ezra Klein

Opinion Columnist

I hate that I believe the sentence I’m about to write. It undermines much of what I spend my life trying to do. But there is nothing more overrated in politics — and perhaps in life — than the power of persuasion.

It is nearly impossible to convince people of what they don’t want to believe. Decades of work in psychology attest to this truth, as does most everything in our politics and most of our everyday experience. Think of your own conversations with your family or your colleagues. How often have you really persuaded someone to abandon a strongly held belief or preference? Persuasion is by no means impossible or unimportant, but on electric topics, it is a marginal phenomenon.

Which brings me to the difficult choice we face on coronavirus vaccinations. The conventional wisdom is that there is some argument, yet unmade and perhaps undiscovered, that will change the minds of the roughly 30 percent of American adults who haven’t gotten at least one dose. There probably isn’t. The unvaccinated often hold their views strongly, and many are making considered, cost-benefit calculations given how they weigh the risks of the virus, and the information sources they trust to inform them of those risks. For all the exhortations to respect their concerns, there is a deep condescension in believing that we’re smart enough to discover or invent some appeal they haven’t yet heard.

If policymakers want to change their minds, they have to change their calculations by raising the costs of remaining unvaccinated, the benefits of getting vaccinated, or both. If they can’t do that, or won’t, the vaccination effort will most likely remain stuck — at least until a variant wreaks sufficient carnage to change the calculus.

You can see the weakness of persuasion in the eerie stability of vaccination preferences. The Kaiser Family Foundation has been surveying Americans about their vaccination intentions since December. At that time, 15 percent said they would “definitely” refuse to get vaccinated, 9 percent said they would get a shot only “if required,” and 39 percent wanted to “wait and see.”

Six months later, Kaiser asked the same question. By then, most of the wait-and-see crowd had seen enough to get vaccinated. The only-if-required crew shrank, but only by a bit: 6 percent of Americans were still waiting on a mandate. But the definitely-notters had barely budged: They numbered 15 percent in December and 14 percent in June.

I don’t want to overstate my case. There was movement between groups. Some people who said they would definitely refuse a vaccine in December had gotten one by June. About a quarter of those who intended to watch and wait decided firmly against getting vaccinated. But the surprise in Kaiser’s data is the consistency of people’s views. In December, 73 percent of American adults said they were eager to get vaccinated or were at least open to the possibility. Today, 69 percent of Americans over the age of 18 have gotten at least one shot. “Most vaccine behaviors match what people planned to do six months ago,” Kaiser concluded.

With Delta supercharging transmission among the unvaccinated, the debate now is how to persuade them to get a shot (or two). I’m sympathetic to most of the ideas people have offered. The F.D.A. should give the vaccines full approval, not just emergency authorization, as the agency’s absurd process has created mass confusion and fed mistrust. We should respect people’s concerns and their intelligence. We should admit that the medical system has failed many of us before, and treated Black Americans with particular callousness. We should be honest that many are making a risk calculation for themselves, rather than indulging a conspiracy theory. We should support leading Republicans who are trying to ease the barriers of partisan identity. If Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to call it “the Trump vaccine” and sell shots as a way of sticking it to the media and the Democrats and Anthony Fauci, I wish her the best.

We should also, of course, do everything we can to make vaccination frictionless. It’s easy to get a shot in a big city, but many people still live far from medical providers and cut off from the internet. Others lack transportation, or have jobs that make it hard to take a day off to recover from the fluish side effects, or have physical or mental impairments that make treatment difficult.

But I suspect all of this will change a depressingly modest number of minds. There are no speeches more powerful than the fear of disease and the grief of loss. That’s evident in the vaccination data now. Delta does appear to be driving a surge in vaccinations. But is this really our strategy? More death will lead to more shots in arms? One of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve read lately came from a Facebook post by Brytney Cobia, a doctor in Alabama. She wrote:

I’ve made a LOT of progress encouraging people to get vaccinated lately!!! Do you want to know how? I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious Covid infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was “just the flu.” But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine.

Phil Valentine, a conservative radio host in Nashville who said he wouldn’t get vaccinated and made parody songs about “the Vaxman,” caught the virus, and his condition quickly turned critical. He’s now in the hospital, on a ventilator. “He regrets not being more vehemently ‘pro-vaccine,’ and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he is back on the air,” his radio station said in a statement.

This is one problem with trusting our rationality: The choice we make now, before we catch the virus, may not be the choice we will wish we had made once we get sick. Then there’s the stubborn fact that individual decisions have collective consequences. It may indeed be the case that a healthy 19-year-old American has little to fear from the coronavirus. But his immunosuppressed grandfather has much to fear from him. Whether it is a more severe imposition on liberty to ask someone to get vaccinated or regularly tested than to ask all immunosuppressed people in the country to effectively shelter in place for the rest of their lives is a collective question that demands a collective answer.

Other countries are offering that answer, and seeing results. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, proposed a law requiring either proof of vaccination or a negative test result for many indoor activities. The mere prospect of a vaccine mandate set off mass protests. It also led to a surge in vaccinations. On July 1, 50.8 percent of the French population had gotten at least one shot — putting France 3.5 points behind America. By Sunday, 59.1 percent of France had been at least partially vaccinated, putting it 2.7 points ahead of us.

A number of American employers are following suit. On Thursday, the Biden administration is expected to announce a directive requiring all civilian federal workers to get vaccinated or face routine testing and restrictions. California and New York will require proof of vaccination or routine negative test results for all state employees. New York City is imposing the same requirement for its public employees. Around 600 college campuses have announced that they’ll require vaccinations for students returning in the fall. There’s no hard count of how many businesses are requiring vaccinations or test results to come back to work, but the anecdotal answer appears to be “a lot.”

There is nothing new about this. We do not solely rely on argumentation to persuade people to wear seatbelts. A majority of states do not leave it to individual debaters to hash out whether you can smoke in indoor workplaces. Polio and measles were murderous, but their near elimination required vaccine mandates, not just public education. When George Washington wanted to protect his soldiers from smallpox, he made vaccinations mandatory. It worked. “No revolutionary regiments were incapacitated by the disease during the southern campaign, and the mandate arguably helped win the yearslong war,” wrote Aaron Carroll.

The objection I find most convincing to any kind of vaccine mandate is that we have not built the infrastructure to make it work. What if someone who received a vaccine has lost her card, or her information was wrongly recorded when she got her shot? If we try to carry this out through smartphones, what if you don’t have a smartphone, or you lose it? If you want to choose frequent testing, how do you get access to those tests, and who pays for it, and how are the results recorded? If you have a problem, who do you call to solve it? How long are the wait times when you call? What if you need an answer quickly?

I covered both the debacle of the HealthCare.gov launch and the now-multidecade failure to transition to electronic medical records. We just watched state unemployment insurance systems nearly collapse under the demands of the pandemic. Perhaps we don’t have the capacity to do this well. But with so many public and private employers mandating vaccination for their workforces, we’ll know soon enough. Either they’ll build models that can scale or they will fail spectacularly enough to settle the question. And either way, this suggests a step the government could take right now: Funding, building and deploying an excellent vaccination passport infrastructure — backed up by ubiquitous rapid-testing options, for those cases when the passport fails — that private and public employers can use to implement their own policies.

Though I’d like to believe otherwise, I don’t think our politics can support a national vaccination mandate. The places that would most benefit from a mandate would be those most opposed to following one, and deepening partisan divisions here would be catastrophic (this is a problem that also afflicts the C.D.C.’s new masking guidance, as my colleague David Leonhardt notes). A high-stakes showdown between, say, the federal government and the State of Florida over a mandate would be a distraction we don’t need. Quickly building the records and testing options for individual employers to take the first steps seems like the right middle ground, at least for now.

Making it more annoying to be unvaccinated won’t persuade everyone to get a shot. But we don’t need everyone. According to Kaiser’s data, 16 percent of American adults are still in the wait-and-see or only-if-required categories. If they all got vaccinated, we’d hit herd immunity in most places. If more of the unvaccinated were routinely getting tested, that would help, too. And if cases then fell, the restrictions could lift.

The Delta strain is fearsome enough, but if we keep permitting the virus to dance across the defenseless, we could soon have a strain that evades vaccines while retaining lethality, or that attacks children with more force. Over and over again throughout this pandemic, the same pattern has played out: We haven’t done enough to suppress the virus when we still could, so we have had to impose far more draconian lockdowns and grieve far more death, once we have lost control. For this reason among many, I urge those who object to vaccination passports as an unprecedented stricture on liberty to widen their tragic imagination.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Pro-Choice

People are ripping on Cole Beasley for not making the popular choice and thinking independently for himself (the horrors!), but... can we be prescient?

Women (and men) who support abortion should understand that when a popular culture overrides the "my body, my choice" principle for society's greater good, something changes across the board. I'm okay with that, the logical consequences.  You?

"I'm not anti or pro vax. I'm pro choice," Beasley said in a statement Wednesday. "The issue at hand is information is being withheld from players in order for a player to be swayed in a direction that he may not be comfortable with.

"When dealing with a player's health and safety, there should be complete transparency regarding information... we have to know we are armed with full knowledge and understanding that those who are in position to help us will always do that based on our individual situation."

 

Pro-Choice for Vaccinations, not Mandates

 While it is not unconstitutional for many private employers and others to require vaccine mandates, it's not a wise course to take.  Why?

Because it undermines the idea, well accepted in America, of "My Body, My Choice."  From the days children are little, some parents will choose to nurse them, and some parents will load them up with pop and donuts to put on the weight.  Their children, their choice.

It continues on into adulthood:  we cannot mandate people eat healthy, or invest in their health.  Their bodies, their choice.

Currently, as a society, we cannot mandate out of existence medical procedures that take the lives of growing young Americans.  Her body/ her choice... society apparently has to accept these procedures, even though we ban things like paid organ transplants.  Some bodies have choices, apparently, via political and judicial pressure, that society simply has to accept...

Guess what?  People who choose for whatever reason not to be vaccinated for CoVid have that choice too.  They're not trying to kill you.  They are trying to save themselves, the best way they know.    The Minnesota Vikings coach who refused injection?  Did you look at him?  Big guy, aging... what if he thinks that it is riskier for him to get a dose of vaccine than to avoid becoming infected?  His body/ his choice?

What about the CoVid long haulers, or even just those exposed who successfully overcame CoVid via natural immunity?  Must they honestly go get vaccinated to have paperwork "proof" that they won't intentionally hurt you?  What if they choose not to get shot up with a CoVid vaccine because their antibodies levels are high, and they CHOOSE not to keep testing their own systems by more CoVid exposure?

Point is, we have to respect other people's personal choices in America, even if they are not choices we might make for ourselves.  (For the record:  I've had CoVid and I am vaccinated.  My choice -- the latter, not the former....)

If you are vaccinated and are fearing infection now with the Delta variant, or fearing that the vaccine shot you received early on is not as effective right now, well you too have choices to make:  a booster vaccine?, wearing a mask again to allegedly protect yourself? (honestly, it works the other way -- those infected wearing masks are the ones doing the protecting...), self isolating until you are more confident to face the risks of going out in public?

Employers have choices too.  Like with the Vikings, who decided their offensive line coach was needed on the job, and had a personal reason for her choice not to take the vaccine.  Will an employer accept a non-vaccinated employee back who can prove they have endured CoVid and have more antibodies than the vaccinated?  I would hope so...

Mandates are bad ideas.  They are also unconstitutional in non-private settings... the US government, thankfully, cannot mandate a medical procedure, particularly one that is still so unknown, 

Americans need to personally evaluate their own risks and not expect anyone else to make their decisions for them.  Americans who still think they can force what they believe on others are sadly mistaken.  Protect yourselves, and allow others the freedom to do the same.  If you choose to be a guinea pig for the mRNA vaccine and are willing to face the potential consequences in time to lower your risk of contracting a more severe case of CoVid, bully for you!

Just understand:  not all Americans share your confidence in the medical establishment or relatively untested technologies yet to be fully examined over time.  Our bodies/ our choices, right?

Burning Down Our House ! *

Maureen Dowd with the hot take accompanying Noah Berger's AP photo: "Mother Nature Called. She's Pissed." 

--------------- 

* Or, "Ain't Just the Roof on Fire Anymore...":  "Polar" Warming Wends Its Way Worldwide

Shameful Olympics Coverage to Start

The media horse-race coverage of Olympics 2020, like politics, does nobody any favors -- neither the players competing nor the society that feeds off of their uplifting performances

Simone Biles starts Olympics with floor exercise that isn’t up to her usual standards.

In her third tumbling pass, her momentum caused her to fly out of bounds and off the competition floor. It was one of her worst floor performances of the year.

Stop calling this young lady a GOAT. That's not mentally fair to her as a young female black athlete to carry the weight of history on her shoulders because of her external characteristics. She's an athlete, no more, no less.

Stop making athletes out to be society's saviors. They're not. They can just twist, and run and swim and leap, faster further and stronger than the rest of us. On their best days, there is glory, more amazing becasue it is so fleeting... The bodies age. The muscles become fat. The times increase and the heights drop. 

They are but humans for one moment showing us what we can do physically as a human race. Celebrate that, when it happens... 

Never expect glory. Never demand nor expect they owe us more than their physical best, that day.  That's the beauty part -- the humanity, the humanness in knowing physically what these men and women are accomplishing and overcoming in putting those thrilling physical performances out there for us to see and share...

It's a joy to watch them compete, it's just fun to watch them run (and swim, and toss, and leap, and ... aspire, all in the physical human bodies they own and control, even in our professional sports management days).

You're not really fully human yet if you don't understand that and can't share in the simple joy of performance today. Never expect glory, but be good to her if she shows. It's short-lived, but it's enough.*

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*Go Team USA. Give us your best, that's all we can ask. For those about to rock, we salute you!

** Coraje, aging comrades who remember the home-grown glories of '84: Carl Lewis, Mary Lou Retton, and who can forget old Joan Benoit bursting through the tunnel of the Coliseum in the inaugural Olympics marathon for women?  Free tv, prime-time, in our own backyard in LA....  

Glory Days of our own to celebrate and recall...

***I think I've almost successfully managed to banish the image of Richard Slaney picking poor Mary Decker up from the track after my then-favorite tripped over the heels of barefoot runner Zola Budd.  I lost respect for a hero in that moment -- it happens -- whom I hoped would earn gold as a distance runner in my sport then.  

That's the Olympics too -- learning. losing, and how you react.  To this day, I wish Mary Decker would have gotten back up on her own two feet and finished her race.  Having her future husband Richard Slaney lift her, crying -- from the track -- broke my 15-year-old heart.  She didn't even finish the race, glory or not.  But see again, that's the flip side of the beauty part, in all it's humanity too...

Let the 2020 Games Begin!

 

Less Advocacy, More Information

In the public push to vaccinate as many people as possible, we've overlooked the value of asking honest questions.  Like how long the vaccine, developed so rapidly under urgent circumstances, might be protective compared to natural immunity / antibodies developed from actively fighting the fever, heart effects and shedding the virus.

Some countries are already implementing booster shots. 

My advice would be for the true scientists and scientific spokespeople to lay off the advocacy and focus solely on science right now.  We're in a summer lull in places, and while the coasts are admitting more and more variants via travel and mingling, the outdoor air and territorial isolation has given most regions of the country a break...

Instead of pushing for more vaccines amongst those who appear to have made their personal choice, (my body = my choice, etc.), let's learn more about the effective protections of those currently vaccinated.  You really won't get much buy in pushing boosters, I don't think, unless you are continually testing and being honest about the results of the age populations, and pre-existing conditions, of those people currently vaccinated who are testing positive for CoVid.

What we learn today might help protect people tomorrow.  It's science, not a crusade. And the world truly has gotten smaller and more interconnected, meaning it's neve too late to start thinking strategically about how best to protect our own populations in a world where viruses will always be threatening to invade our systems, and we all need to learn ourselves the best tools to choose for personal protection.

PS.  Dr. Fauci appears to be a lightning rod.  Sometimes, the messenger understands when he has done all he can as a public relations warrior, and passes the torch to another where the light can travel more quickly to new regions.  When his race is won, Dr. Fauci will be most valuable in a public support position, I think, because the country indeed is all in this together.

I hope we are vaccinating all of the people we process coming into our country at the borders, and test fully at our airports and checkpoints for either CoVid or vaccine passports.  Fool us once, shame on you  Fool us again, shame on us.  Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.  Your health is your wealth, etc.  

I believe in the body-mind connection myself, and think these viruses affect our bodies more than a simple naturally occuring outbreak might.   We need to know more, and we will.  Too many people are asking honest questions now -- you don't have to be a professional to formulate questions about the origins of this worldwide crisis -- for the virus ourbreak origins to be dismissed, ie "What difference does it matter now?!?"

It's not just a political football for Washington to own.  It's a science-based inquiry in a technological time when scientific markers often indeed can trace back truths we once might have considered unknowable, lost in time.  Let the science lead where it might, and the political fallout between China and the United States be confronted today in the research communities.

We have too many honest, smart scientific brains coming up in this country now who will refuse to be made into political players and who have the moral backgrounds to use their scientific skills to help advance the humanity of nations, as well as serving our national security interests here at home.  The future people are morally better than the players on stage today*... This I Believe.

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*Same as it ever was.  Not bragging on the up-and-comers in the youth population of today:  evolution demands that the best and brightest, truly, of our young minds advance civilization.  The elders might want to stall it, but the future has never belonged to them. Nothing particular to the elders in power at this particular time, but Nature favors youth and the lights that burn brightest in the best of them.  Science can't be stopped, just guided in a more just way by the people harnessing Her powers

Our Father, Who art in heaven, 
Hallowed be Thy Name. 
Thy Kingdom come. 
Thy Will be done, 
on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

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Deliver us, oh Lord, from every evil and grant us Peace in our day.  Through your Mercy, keep us Free from sin, and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ... 

(Romans 11:36, NIV: "For through Him, with Him and in Him are all things... To Him be the glory forever! Amen.") = a bone for our Protestant friends! (I say that because I don't think it's God who's into all the public praising and glorifying of Himself, but sometimes overdone publicly by the people who see so much of Him in them...  God knows who He is and how great He art, I bet... imho.  Not that I know God better than you, but my God is confident like that, doesn't need all the public praising, sacrifice and worship for it's own sake.  Don't mistake this for that, please.  Just my place here to count my blessings and share the Good News!)  Peace be with you, too.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, 
Hallowed be Thy Name. 
Thy Kingdom come. 
Thy Will be done, 
on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

 Our Father, Who art in heaven, 
Hallowed be Thy Name. 
Thy Kingdom come. 
Thy Will be done, 
on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

----------

It's really that simple a daily request.  The Protestant Christians tack on extra praises for God, but He doesn't need anything more than for us to ask our needs of Him.

On a Winning Team?

 All the seats are "Good Seats" !

The Pegasus Project

A global investigation

Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide

Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists and others, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners.

Day Games v. Night Games

 Shooting outside 3rd Base Gate leaves Nationals fan injured, along with three others in DC tonight

* I don't want to sound hardened but it surprises me that shootings / guns are seemingly so rare in places like DC and NYC today that fans reacted the way they did, even though the action was all outside the field.  The stadium was eventually cleared and the game postponed.  Let me gently suggest that others will likely die tonight of stress and overexertion because of the call to eventually evacuate the stadium:  more passive pans who were not expecting the excitement.

Like with the Capitol riots, heart attacks and blood pressure stressors due to unanticipated exertion will likely strike at least one or two in that crowd, perhaps more than the number actually shot dead (hopefully holding at zero tonight in DC, and only Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, right?)

Nevermind the 10-1 Finish...

 Astros falling to the Good Guys at home...

More promising for the White Sox' second-half run for a title is Lucas Giolito's complete game stat, the fifth in his career.  If you are showing strong solid pitching performances this time of year, you have a legitimate shot.

That's all anyone can ask for.

--------------------

Sox up their record to 55 - 36 with the clubbing of the Astros. Sunday's series final is a day game on the South Side, starting at 1pm  CST.  Go get another one and take the series now? Mid-season wins mean more than might think, and only realize later.  LaRussa has been here before...

Understands the mentality, I think we're all counting on now... to cultivate that in his young-ish squad

Kenny Bednarek, Olympic Athlete

 Team USA

There Will Be an Answer

 Let It Be...

---

Let there be Peace on Earth

and let It begin with Me...

----

You can keep my things...

They've come to take me home,

On Jewishness

Families that hid their identity, or didn't know via adoptions or arrangements, or converted for advantageous purposes... how long until they feel safe to come out, if ever? On the other side of the coin, you have males who aren't really Jewish converting to claim an identity their fathers perhaps invested in them, but the tribe itself finds suspicious without the conversion to overcome the blood exclusions.

I just wonder, do they know when we know? If you're Jewish, do you have to "come out"? Even if you were raised in a different tradition and have no particular pride one way or the other, advantageous or not?

I know my answer.  It is what it is.  Why deny it, or artificially embrace it if it doesn't feel natural?  But stop hiding if you're not really embracing other religious traditions and think putting them on is like dying your hair dark, studding yourself with nose and eyebrow rings, and purposely trying to present yourself as what you are not.

We are what we are. You don't have to live the traditions, but why deny?

It's Showdown Time in Liberal Dreamland

In America, the Constitution tasks Congress with setting immigration policy, not the president  A judge from the judicial branch ruled this week that President Obama overstepped his authority in "protecting" on paper millions of people who had come here illegally, not following standard immigration rules for families and children.  A collection of states tasked with enforcing immigration law locally brought the lawsuit, and won.

 They argued that Obama didn’t have the authority to create DACA because it circumvented Congress. The states also argued that the program drains their educational and healthcare resources.

Now White liberals will be called out.  Not white people as a while, but the liberal White elites, who preach inclusion, diversity and the sharing of all resources, until.. their own families become involved.  Then...

it's off to thw White schools and White suburbs with them!  No mixed, integrated, working-class, rental and commercial neighborhoods for them to live in.  So many White liberals flock in kind  Honestly.  We see you.  Nttawwt.  Better schools, safer streets, more community where you know the people running around in your child's neighborhood...

DACA will ask White liberals how much they are willing to really Share... to spend their political capital.  On "protecting" non-citizens who did not follow U.S. immigration laws and have exhausted their appeals to be deported?  (Even if they don't remember their homelands where they were born before coming to the United States?)

It's much like the Afghanistan boondoggle in the news of late:  Bail out the decades of failed policy mistakes by doddering on, or cutting the losses, swallowing the pain down hard, and essentially enforcing the laws -- of warfare, immigration, nature.   Resources are limited.  The borders are not secure.  Throwing more and more  public money after poor policies only makes the inevitable end even harder.

 I would ask Afghanistan war defenders what buying more time for American troops was supposed to do?  20 years you had.  You failed.  It was never a winnable or defined invasion to begin with.  Are you hoping to establish a permanent military base in the Middle East, to police the region?  America cannot afford that.  Maybe China?

I would ask White liberals to finally speak up on their True Values:  none of them are really pushing for the Senate to let in all the unauthorized people here currently referred to as non-citizens.  They don't want Washington to change hands, yet again, which would happen if Congress tried to pass an immigration reform bill without first enforcing the borders -- showing that they can use technology effectively to monitor every person coming into our country.

We can't.  We failed.  There is no 1980s immigration reform bill on the horizone.

Now it gets tough:  too many people too few public resources.  Not where you're at, of course, White liberals... In fact, it amuses me, in the interests of equally parcelling out the aid dollars via America counties for "pandemic relief" what some are going to to figure out what to do with the windfall...

Other counties, and school districts, are strapped  I am glad the states sued, who have to pick up the tab for the White elites with big plans but who are not willing to share honestly and seat their own children next to Spanish-speaking newcomers  Not that there's anything wrong with French, but...

Are we all in this together, or not?

Like it or not, the White libs will be forced to show their hands by the Brown voters and colleagues who share their workplace air.  Push the Senate to pass something, or admit that the Law must be followed?

 It's actually a good thing:  the three-branch government in action.  Congress has done nothing for too long, the White elites have talked a good game while their political actions were "covered" by political inaction...

If the deportations begin, either we start building more homes, schools, streets and ways to acculturate the newcomers, or we admit that mistakes were made and protections promised do not always come true. That's reality in America's Adultland where very few White liberals really live today.

 So the American Military trained the Colunbian's for-hire who helped to kill Haiti's president.  God help us if we think what we serve to the rest of the world will never be visited to us upon these shores.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose legislation provides oversight to foreign defense aid used in human rights abuses, said the episode was a grim reminder that U.S. assistance to other countries can take unexpected turns.

“This illustrates that while we want our training of foreign armies to build professionalism and respect for human rights, the training is only as good as the institution itself,” he said.

“The Colombian army, which we have supported for 20 years, has a long history of targeting civilians, violating the laws of war and not being accountable. There has been a cultural problem within that institution.”

Why are we in the business of training foreign armies?   Why does America need to use force and killings to advance our point, aren't we a thinking nation anymore?  Woof woof, cheat beaters, like this is a college game?

It's not.  Learn faster, America.  Your children are counting on you to do the right thing, even if it costs you in the long run...

Not to Tarnish the Good Doctor But...

 For a Christian family man, he was also quite a cheat. Coretta Scott King was the true Christian strength behind the man's work.  He and his father were ministers, sure, but her religious background was much much stronger, and after his early death, she was the continued strength and disnity of the movement.

I think Mrs King would be rolling over in her grave today as the split in her family, and the way Dr. King's legacy on non-violence and non-judgement based on skin color has been dismantled to serve the immediate financial needs of those who don't have the strong Christian strength Mrs. King possessed.

A King@BerniceKing

Many who quote my father now would have hated him then. He was assassinated for working to end war, poverty, and racism, which some erroneously claim he’d ignore today. But he was a Christ-inspired, love-fueled, justice-seeking, globally-minded, nonviolent revolutionary.

As more time pasess, I think, like with Kennedy, the myth of the man will continue to crumble which does not in any way take away from the accomplishments that came to the nation after the assasinations of both men, who became our flawed 60s mythical figures thanks to the women who survived them and preserved the legacy of their work

Yes to showing an ID when voting.

 I think most Bblack Americans today already carry identification cards like drivers' licenses.  Why not ask all people to show id before voting, so that we can verify where they live and who they say they are..  

It's not just asking Bblack people to show id.  It's asking all American citizens who want to vote to do so, like we do with those who want to travel on a plane.  If a person has no ide, why, we can help them!

There is so much time between now and the midterms to help unorganied inefficient precintcts learn ho it is done in other parts of the country.  Open more polling places, have supplies ready, make sure the keys unlock the doors and you have enough workers to staff the polls, and get them opened on time.

Set up a national hotline now -- so that citizens without id can get them.  Hold their hands, and help them, if needed.  Now.  But please, stop pretending that if on Election Day we don't trust everybody walking in without an id to vote, that is is some kind of discriminsation against Bblack people.

Not even the Bblacks are buying that, elites!  It's not Jim Crow, it's just we don't legally permit special preferences for Black people at the polls like we do so many other institutions in society.  You want to vote?  Get an id, and get in line.  Line too long?  Work with your local election officials, and bring in outside volunteers if needed, to show you how it is done efficiently in other parts of the country.

Stop making excuses for the Bblacks.  You're not helping them, elites, even if you are of mixed race, or a light-skinned Bblack yourself.

Give the Haitian Revolutionaries Credit...

 At least they were trying to plan for a successor government .  When American leaders like George Bush, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, assisted by the US Military and other foreign forces, overthrew and helped to kill the leaders of Iraq and Libya, our lack of foresight and planning  a replacement left those allegedly liberated worse off....

Suspects in Haitian President’s Killing Met to Plan a Future Without Him

Haitian officials accuse the suspects of meeting to plot President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination, but participants say the sessions were intended to plan a government once the president stepped down.

As the Haitians taught us, it really doesn't take a taxpayer-financed military to kill, destroy and overthrow.  Any band of organized killers could do that, in and out quickly, and some still undetected too....  The rebuilding though?  The infrastructure part?  Installing a new, just and nation-centered government to serve the people?  America is still failing at that ourselves, here at home.  

Hopefully with the clock ticking on his Democratic majority, President Biden will see that the nation's needs are addressed in the pork barrel giveaways of late.  Can the Dems deliver, or will America fail our own country too the way we failed Iraq and Libya, after cheering their precariously elected leader's demise.

"We Came, We Saw, He Died" *cackle laughter*   ~Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama's secretary of state

Why is this News?

 A.:  It's not.

What Does It Take to Be Like Mike? 1,264 Ticket Stubs

He didn’t have to be there: Andrew Goldberg is trying to collect ticket stubs from each of Michael Jordan’s games.

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Where is the diversity and inclusion in that story?  If you pay lip service to changing journalism and tending to all the uncovered issues of importance, including the underserved populations in the past, where a dearth of news coverage often leads to civic unjustice, then why are we still running stories about some random dude's random collection? This belongs in a hometown weekly.

He ain't like Mike because he bought a bunch of stubs to games he didn't go to.  Who's kidding who here?

"Give It a Way, Give It a Way, Give It a Way Now..."

The Too-Big-To-Fail bailouts and the endless wars that tanked the economy.  The idea that so many prospered while so many others suffered economically during those years.  The relatively brief Clinton economic years sandwiched between the two Bush major recessions.  A lot of people got fiscally hurt in this country on the timing, don't you remember? Blanket across-industry hiring freezes?  Anyone?

The fact that George W. Bush even speaks out today -- and the media cover him still -- shows just how divided and out of touch Americans still are.  Read these comments, if you still think GWB and the neo-cons can eke out a future in Washington.  It's over. Move on. No more letting the military and intelligence dunderheads "lead" us, we don't care who your father is...

What can you do for your country today?  For many, their redemption lies only in the headline, giving away a bit of what they amassed during the years when so many others were forced to sacrifice and fiscally share the pain, for decisions they knew were wrong back then....

I like these comments, but where were these voices when so few of us were speaking out against trying to invade sovereign nations and impose democracy by force back then when it mattered?  I remember that too.  You were beating your chests, waving your purple fingers, and congratulating yourselves on giving Iraqi women the vote.

Now look around to the divisions the Bush and Obama years have left us.  Who's going to tackle introducing clean, efficient and well monitored elections in all counties in our country?

So focused on fixing the alleged sins of others, we destroyed trust here at home, sold out our own citizens, and continue to focus on the deadened celebrity culture that lifts no one.  Read the comments and think?