I really think she is sharp.


The California representative and former state Assembly speaker has emerged as a leading challenger to be Joe Biden’s running mate.

Kathleen Ronayne

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s leaders were deadlocked and on the verge of financial catastrophe in 2008. Five negotiators, including Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, couldn’t agree on a budget that would guide the nation’s most populous state through the Great Recession.

Enter Karen Bass, who became Assembly speaker that May, the first Black woman to hold the role. She shifted the tone of the talks, helping the group find common ground.

“When Karen came into the Big 5, everything changed,” said Mike Villines, then the Republican Assembly leader. “We started to make little progress on little things, and it led to bigger progress.”

A dozen years later, the bridge-building, unassuming style that colleagues say made Bass an effective leader in Sacramento is among the reasons the current California congresswoman has emerged as a leading contender to become Joe Biden’s running mate. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee appeared with Bass for the first time at a fundraiser on Thursday. He plans to make a pick next week.

More: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-rep-karen-bass-became-a-leading-vp-contender_n_5f2471ffc5b656e9b09b681c

over having to wear masks. The company I work for has a main office in a very red area so pretty much all the people who work there are Republicans but there is a mix of somewhat logical ones and extreme fundy Christian ones who don't believe in masks. I have just heard reports as the owner who is a more moderate Republican has made it mandatory for everyone to wear a mask but a few self centered whack jobs don't want to and it sounds like it turned into a big yelling match. LOL I have just heard about it from co-workers who where there.

Editing to say the owner and the two main managers don't like Trump and have told me they will be voting for Biden which is very encouraging. This may be the first time they have ever voted Dem in their entire lives.

A group of Republicans is urging Christians and Republicans to not re-elect Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

According to the Pew Research Center survey in July, White evangelical approval of Trump has slipped, but 8 in 10 say they would still vote for him.


The recent release ad, entitled “Trump is Using Us,” features six Republican voters who talk about how Trump uses and manipulates Christians.

In the minute-long video posted on the Republican Voters Against Trump YouTube channel, the group explains that the president doesn’t reflect Christianity or values based on his words and actions.

One major highlight of the video was the comments Trump made following a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. At the time, he said there were “very fine people on both sides” when talking about protesters and rally-goers.

They also brought up Trump retweeting a man shouting “white power!” on his Twitter page.

More: https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/news/2020/07/trump-is-using-us-christian-republican-group-warns-people-not-to-vote-for-trump-in-2020-election?PageSpeed=noscript&fbclid=IwAR1XV9FMVyfCnpG2QruKssxc44saWYLijEOn66KwaI3fFeCSmpM5VDmV5Kc

He makes some interesting points, especially the one about American kids not being nearly as healthy as kids in other countries. Many are high risk with their health.

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1288236046187143169

30 second mark

Henry Olsen 2020-04-24 Originally in the Washington Post

Former vice president Joe Biden’s unfounded accusation Thursday that President Trump wants to delay November’s election was not only clearly over the line but also unmasks how low the supposedly moderate Biden will go to win.

Biden said in an online fundraiser, “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow.” As the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden surely knows that Trump cannot and will not delay the election. The election date is set in law; Trump cannot change it without Congress’s consent. The election itself is run by the states, not the federal government, so there’s no bureaucracy Trump could corral to implement any order delaying the vote. Such an order would surely be challenged in court, and it’s inconceivable that the Supreme Court would uphold such a blatantly unconstitutional act.

Nonetheless, Biden chose to taint the president essentially with a charge of treason. One would hope that this baseless statement could be excused as just another one of Biden’s increasingly frequent verbal hiccups. But Biden said other things Thursday night that show he believes Trump is a disloyal wannabe dictator.

More: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspolitics/opinions-joe-biden-accused-trump-of-trying-to-delay-the-election-he-should-know-better/ar-BB139y8f

Newsweek recently published an opinion piece by Professor Harvey Risch. Here is a response to that article:


Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19: Evidence can’t seem to kill it
Despite the accumulating negative evidence showing that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work against COVID-19, activists continue to promote it as a way out of the pandemic. This week, the AAPS and a Yale epidemiologist joined the fray with embarrassingly bad arguments.

David Gorski on July 27, 2020

I find it odd at this juncture in late July that I’ve been writing about a certain drug that was touted as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19 as far back as March. I am referring, of course, to hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that also has immunomodulatory effects that make it also useful to treat various autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus. It’s a drug that, despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy and the continued publication of negative studies testing its efficacy against the disease, just won’t die. Truly, hydroxychloroquine is the Jason Voorhees of drugs, at least with respect to COVID-19. After each new study showing it to be ineffective, it always seems to rise, just as Jason always comes back for another round of killing after seemingly having died at the end of the previous movie.

The hypothesis that antimalarial drugs might be effective treatments for COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China during the early phase of the pandemic in January. There, Chinese researchers reported that none of their 80 patients with lupus erythematosus who were taking hydroxychloroquine went on to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. As a result of that and old evidence of antiviral activity for the drugs, they became interested in using these antimalarial drugs to treat COVID-19. (Never mind that immunosuppressed patients are exactly the patients most likely to assiduously follow the recommendations of public health authorities during a pandemic.) A number of clinical trials were registered, and, based on anecdotal reports and small clinical trials (nearly all of which are as yet unpublished), in February the Chinese government published an expert consensus recommending CQ or HCQ for patients with COVID-19. Soon after, a number of nations followed suit. From there, a French “brave maverick scientist” named Didier Raoult latched onto the drug as the “answer” to the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing risibly bad studies claiming to show its efficacy. Tech bros such as Elon Musk discovered the claims about hydroxychloroquine and Raoult’s bad science, leading to Donald Trump Tweeting favorably about his study and, ultimately, to the FDA issuing an emergency use authorization for the drug to treat COVID-19.

Since then, there has been a drip-drip-drip of negative studies of hydroxychloroquine, some studies observational, but, increasingly, many being randomized clinical trials, such as the publication of a randomized controlled clinical trial of the drug as post-exposure prophylaxis that was entirely negative. This was followed by two more, first, a Spanish post-exposure prophylaxis trial that was also negative. Then there was the Recovery Trial from the UK, which failed to find a benefit from hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients treated with the drug, leading to the revocation of the FDA’s original ill-advised EUA.

More: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-evidence-cant-seem-to-kill-it/