Marc Valdez Weblog

Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Saddle Up

With his loose but widely-predicted call to end the counting of legitimate ballots in Pennsylvania, Trump sent out a clarion call for civil war. You want a fight? You got one.

“It’s Fake News!” Cries The Emperor

“Halloween lasts forever!”

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Annual Visit to the Top of my Roof

The theme this year is ash. The roof is covered in ashes. You can’t burn down multiple forests in all directions without some impact. First rain will be a mess.

In the U.S., There is a Maddening Lack of Uniformity on Voting Rules

Each state goes their own way:

Amber Pflughoeft beamed with pride as she filled out her ballot for the first time last month. A 20-year-old who'd been fighting bone cancer for a decade, she was fascinated with politics, her mother Tiffany Pflughoeft remembered. And after spending the last midterm election in the hospital following a bone marrow transplant, she was determined to vote this year. But just a few days after she mailed in her ballot, Amber's condition took a sudden turn for the worse. She went back to the hospital and died in late September. Now, her ballot will be thrown out under Wisconsin election law.

Journey To Tree Top Sacramento On My Birthday

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

New Oven Installed Oct. 24th

Now I’m cooking with gas. (I was cooking with gas before - I just wanted to use the catchphrase.)

Rachel helped me inaugurate the new stove with an apple pie.

I figured eventually a study would come out that shows counties with no mask requirements suffer a lot more Covid than counties with mask requirements, and now such a study from Tennessee is available:

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine looked at the current COVID outbreak in Tennessee and broke the hospitalization numbers down by the counties patients were coming from and whether those counties had masking mandates. The results are stark. The growth in hospitalizations is greatest in counties without masking requirements. Indeed, the inverse relationship between masking and hospitalization lines up across the spectrum from areas with little masking to those where mandates are widespread.

Gotta Go, Got A Zoom Meeting

(Via Heather Poduska on Facebook - Bravo To Cooper Chiropractic of Wayland, Massachusetts.)

Colder Northern Hemisphere Weather is Pushing People Indoors

Conservatives Think We Are Such Chumps

On The Eve of Liberal Domination

The history of California 1994-2010 is a preview of what will happen in the rest of country. In a little over a week, Joseph Biden will be elected President. He will be the first of a string of Democratic Presidents that will occupy the Oval Office for the rest of the 21st Century. Without the whip hand of power, the Republican Party will completely collapse. I'm glad I have lived long enough to see it happen.

The Hope of Herd Immunity is a Mirage

Manaus, Brazil is the only place on Earth that appears to have reached herd immunity. Since Covid transmission there continues, they can't relax protective measures. The only long-term hope is for an effective vaccine:

“We believe that, theoretically, herd immunity for COVID-19 would be around 60 per cent of a population resistant to the virus, and this is why this research points to herd immunity in Manaus,” says Granato, a professor of infectious diseases at the Federal University of São Paulo, who did not participate in Sabino’s study.

These findings mean that the virus will find less new victims in Manaus. But, Granato warns, “there’s still more than 30 percent of the population to infect there.”