“Certain little tiny fish”

A Trump believe it or not. Trump tweeted about California. Not, as one might feasibly hope, about cataclysmic fires and emergency funding for victims of the fire. No, he tweeted about, well, nutty stuff:

California is gonna have to ration water. You wanna know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific. Because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish, that aren't doing very well without water."

“Certain little tiny fish”? 

Hmmm, enquiring minds wanna know more….

News blues…

Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnel (left) – aka “Moscow Mitch”  –  appears shocked! shocked! that Americans intuitively grasp The Donald is not the guy we want to lead our democratic republic.  

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Three new lockdown changes for South Africa. In a series of gazettes recently published, the rules around grants, sports and events were updated to clarify existing regulations and allow for the further reopening of some sectors. 

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RVAT: Super-Spreader-In-Chief   (0:28 mins)

The Lincoln Project - fund raisers:

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Donald and Boris  (1:32 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Cars, planes, trains: where do CO2 emissions from transport come from? 

Transport accounts for around one-fifth of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions [24% if we only consider CO2 emissions from energy].
How do these emissions break down? Is it cars, trucks, planes or trains that dominate?
This chart shows  global transport emissions in 2018. (Data sourced from the International Energy Agency - IEA).
Road travel accounts for three-quarters of transport emissions. Most of this comes from passenger vehicles – cars and buses – which contribute 45.1%. The other 29.4% comes from trucks carrying freight.
Since the entire transport sector accounts for 21% of total emissions, and road transport accounts for three-quarters of transport emissions, road transport accounts for 15% of total CO2 emissions.
Aviation – while it often gets the most attention in discussions on action against climate change – accounts for only 11.6% of transport emissions. It emits just under one billion tonnes of CO2 each year – around 2.5% of total global emissions [we look at the role that air travel plays in climate change in more detail in an upcoming article]. International shipping contributes a similar amount, at 10.6%.
Rail travel and freight emits very little – only 1% of transport emissions. Other transport – which is mainly the movement of materials such as water, oil, and gas via pipelines – is responsible for 2.2%.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Two days of sunshine – and an intense painting schedule – gave over to rain late last night. With the exterior of the house almost complete – some clean up remains – we turn to prep the interior.
Photos for marketing come next. After that, we simply wait for buyers to fall into our honey-trap!
My mother met with the realtors and signed necessary documents to proceed with the sale of the property. What a relief!

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Spring has arrived and settled in.
Chard seeds, started in the cold frame then transplanted into the garden, grow fast. As I pass their patch in the garden, I can reach out and snack on the fresh new leaves. Ditto with the flatleaf parsley that grows abundantly, too. (I substitute parsley for lettuce in salads. It’s more nutritious, has a stronger, more pleasing flavor, and grows faster.

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After nightfall, a chorus of frogs serenades spring, from the basso profundo croaking of guttural toads to tender tweets from, well, not sure what kind of frogs but many sopranos, interspersed with tenors. A lovely sound salad.

Superfly

Black flies matter.
During the debate, a fly sat
on Pence’s head for 2 minutes. 

Black flies matter. 

In his recent New York Times column, Frank Bruni admits, “Mike Pence’s Debate Performance Bugged Me Out: He’s numb to pests large and small”:

We need to talk about that fly.
It was a fly, wasn’t it? If not, it was a bug doing an ace interpretation of a fly, and about two-thirds of the way through the debate in Salt Lake City on Wednesday night, it took up residence in Vice President Mike Pence’s hair, a smudge of black against a shock of white, where it lingered for a few minutes before undoubtedly realizing that there was warmer, more demonstrably human real estate to be had.
Off it flew, and on Pence droned. He never exhibited any awareness — not the subtlest glance upward, not the slightest flinch or twitch — that his head had been colonized. I first found this strange and then realized it was everything. Pence’s years of obsequiousness to Donald Trump had beaten all sensitivity and capacity for revulsion out of him.  Read the humorous column.  (By the way, after the debate, Pence’s wife Karen - aka "Mother" -  appeared on stage without a mask, ignoring guidelines both campaigns had agreed to observe.)

Wags called the fly a “national treasure,” an “American hero,” and suggested “even the fly knows he’s trash.”
“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert joked that Pence was “so full of crap, he’s attracting flies.” He added, “All jokes aside, thoughts and prayers to that fly’s family. It’s got to quarantine for two weeks now” (referencing the coronavirus outbreak in the White House). “We’ve gotta get that fly to Walter Reed.” Colbert also noted how long the fly remained on Pence’s head, “Two minutes… meaning that fly has a longer attention span than the president of the United States.”
Trevor Noah tweeted: Pence apologizing to Mother right now for getting to 3rd base with the fly.
Stephen King: that fly knows….
Eric Holder: Who will play the kamikaze fly on SNL?
Ah, humor, the saving grace during these bizarre times.

News blues…

After the Commission on Presidential Debates decided next week’s debate between Trump and Biden would be held remotely, the President of the United States, with sagging poll numbers, said, “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate - that's not what debating is all about, you sit behind a computer and do a debate -- it's ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want."
And, there’s the rub: being cut off. He is the guy to cut off others, not the guy to be cut off….
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien - positive for COVID-19 - called the virtual format a “sad excuse to bail out Joe Biden,” adding that Trump – also positive for COVID-19 – would “do a rally instead.”

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Dr Rick Bright shares an important point of view regarding Trump’s attitude to coronavirus, science… and ponders Trump and his administration’s resistance to common sense and health protocols. 

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South Africa publishes a new interactive dashboard that details all transactions related to PPE procurement. This after tenders currently being investigated worth over five billion rand (US$299 million) were awarded for cloth masks, surgical masks, face shields, medical gowns, aprons, scrubs, overalls, gloves, sanitisers, and other products.
A good example of shutting the barn door after animals have skedaddled?

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With a tweet, Trump nixed what had been an ongoing haggle about the amount of and who would benefit from the coronavirus spending bill – aka the Stimulus Package/Bill. “I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business.”
The day after that tweet, he reinstated the haggling, saying on Fox, “I shut down talks two days ago because they weren’t working out. Now they are starting to work out.”
They’re not “starting to work out.” It’s more likely The Donald noticed the stock market dip and his poll numbers drop even further in response to his tweet. (Colbert’s take on this move – and other Trumpisms - 12:34 mins)
Maybe it’s time someone not truth-averse reviews Trump's Covid med package?

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The Lincoln Project:
Gasping for Air  (0:55 mins)
Regeneron  (0:40 mins)
Don Winslow Films: Trump is patient zero  (1:39 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Success! Our small, very hard working team of three, under the guidance of a detail-oriented painter (a woman), succeeded in squeezing four days work into two days. I’m thrilled with our progress. 

Over the weekend, I will continue, alone, to finish: primp the trim, clean gutters of paint splotches… then clean brushes, put away painting gear, and photograph the results. 

Photographs will go realtors to market the house.
Only unknown?
Will my mother revert to her original agreement to sell the house? Or will she balk again before agreeing again before reverting again?
Enquiring minds wanna know….

Debatable

After watching the recent American political debate, I suggest a bland recipe: plop representatives of two opposing views into one bowl, toss in a bunch of facts, semi-facts, obfuscations (aka lies), modify and reframe dollops of recent historical facts and evidence, add a soupçon of moderation. Mix. Pour. Bake. Walk away from the toxic mix, sit in the warm sun until your troubles drop away, feel the wonder of your life, an important part of all life.
Then, vote!

Worldwide (Map) 
October 8 – 36,069,000 confirmed infections; 1,055,000 deaths
October 1 – 33,881,275 confirmed infections: 1,012,980 deaths 

US (Map)

October 8 – 7,550,000 confirmed infections; 212,000 deaths

October 1 - 7,233,200 confirmed infections; 206,940 deaths

  

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
October 8 – 685,155 confirmed infections; 17,250 deaths
October 1 – 674,340 confirmed infections: 16,735 deaths 

 
This week sees 19 countries having lower rates of Covid infections than the US White House. As of yesterday, October 7, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) memo, “Thirty-four White House staffers and ‘other contacts’ have been infected with the coronavirus in recent days.”  

News blues…

WHO official says 10 percent of the world may have been infected by Covid-19: 

There are more than 35.5 million confirmed Covid-19 cases globally, according to the widely-used Johns Hopkins University dashboard, but World Health Organization and other experts say that is almost certainly an enormous undercount. Over the summer, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said cases in the US had likely been undercounted by at least 90%.
With a global population of about 7.7 billion people, Ryan's estimate would mean about 770 million have been infected - but most have not been diagnosed or counted.

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After departing the National Institutes of Health, where he was working on a program to expand national COVID-19 testing capacity, Dr. Rick Bright wrote a blistering op-ed in the Washington Post: “I couldn’t sit idly and watch people die from Trump’s chaotic, politicized pandemic response, so I resigned,”

 “From the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, the administration’s failure to respond with a coordinated strategy only heightened the danger… Nine months into the pandemic, the United States continues to grapple with failed White House leadership.”
Rick Bright said the administration’s “hostility to the truth” has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths.  

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For the first time ever in its 208-year history, the New England Journal of Medicine issued an editorial about an election:

Lambasting the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic [the editorial, signed by all its editors, calls] on Americans to vote President Donald Trump out of office next month. 
November’s election will have life-or-death consequences for people across the country regardless of party alignment, the journal’s editorial board said.
“Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates,” the journal’s editors wrote. “But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

I repeat, vote!

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The Lincoln Project: Hospital  (0:55 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

The Earth is changing faster than at any point in modern history as a result of human-caused global heating. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After decades of independence living in a different country, far from my mother and family of origin, it is disorienting to live intimately with another person’s chronic ambivalence. I’m caught between settling my dangerously mood-changing mother into a (formerly thoroughly agreed upon) new life while simultaneously expecting willy nilly changes of direction that upend agreed-upon plans.
Do I simply plow ahead with the original plan – sell the house and furnishings – while waiting for her next handwritten list that completely changes the course of events?
Or do I give up and return to my own life?
If the latter, what happens to my essentially alone, 87-year-old mother?
An enquiring mind wants to know…

Who’s nose is this nose?

Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face: Donald Trump – facing an uphill election – abruptly scrapped stimulus talks and punted on economic relief for millions of suffering Americans until after Election Day .
This is another example of The Donald Think: not voting for me? I’ll show you! I’ll take away any tax-based support you’re entitled to receive. See how you suckers and losers like them apples!

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The Lincoln Project:
Hospital  (0:55 mins)
Covita  (1:25 mins)
Adultery  (1:00 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Companies Are Making Major Climate Pledges. Here’s What They Really Mean. Decoding corporate climate change targets ― from net-zero emissions to going carbon negative. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No rain today meant a day packed with painting. Prettying up the exterior of the house has been my goal for more than two weeks and, today, we almost accomplished it. We’ll finish up tomorrow. After that, I’ll take photographs, send them to the realtors, and – voilà – the house will be on the market.
Then, the waiting.
Apparently, after a seller accepts an offer to purchase, it takes another 3 to 4 months to complete the sale. Not sure I can stick around long enough to see this through. (My life in California has been on hold for almost nine months.)
I’m hopeful that someone will make an offer for local real estate agencies are experiencing among their best sales months ever. That is, it’s a great time to buy. Not such a good time to sell.