Super-slog Saturday

© Meidas Touch

Another day of watching election results... with not-so-bated-breath. At least We the People (with discernment) appear on a trajectory for No More Trump….

News blues…

The US presidential election is taking up so much mental, emotional, and political space that coronavirus has faded into the background for the moment. Let’s review climbing infection rates:

• United States: breaking records day-by-day - 100,000 and more cases of new, confirmed infections - per day! 
• Italy: Much of Italy is now under lockdown, after the Covid-19 death toll for 24 hours hit 445 - a six-month record.
• Spain: The total number of COVID-19 fatalities in Spain shot up on Wednesday by 1,623, according to the Health Ministry, bringing the country’s official death toll to 38,118… and 297 deaths confirmed since Tuesday, which is Spain's highest daily jump in deaths since April.  
• Canada: battling its second wave of coronavirus infections; public health officials in the country’s western region are growing concerned as cases surge to new daily records. Active coronavirus cases in Alberta have quadrupled in the last five weeks. British Columbia, with 5 million residents, notched up more than 400 new cases.
• France: registered a record 60,486 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, following the previous high of 58,046 on Thursday…
• Brazil: reports 18,862 additional confirmed cases of the virus in the past 24 hours, and 279 deaths from Covid-19. The country has now registered 5,631,181 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 162,015,in the world’s most fatal outbreak outside the United States.

***

A coronavirus-centric joke to alleviate anxiety after the dispiriting stats shared above. 

Healthy futures, anyone?

How does fracking work? 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After spotting an unusual accumulation of vegetative debris on my doorstep – I took a closer look: it had a caterpillar-like head that retracted as I watched. I waited for the head to reappear and, when it did not, I photographed the critter.

The photo shows the critter’s rear end at the upper portion; Are those two shiny dots on the lower portion of the photo its caterpillar-like eyes?
Internet research suggests this unique creature is a bagworm, in the caterpillar stage.  Gatherings of bagworms, alas, can wreak havoc on trees. 

***

Mulberry season! 

Mulberries – elongated blackberries or raspberries that grown on trees rather than bushes - seem to have gone out of culinary fashion. Mulberry trees are classified invasive in the United States, but mulberry trees are alive and well in this neighborhood, and in this garden.
Monkeys are in mulberry heaven.
Monkeys are in apricot-and-plum heaven, too, as apricot and plum trees producing new fruit. But the fruit is still hard, green, and only marginally larger than marbles. Monkeys don’t care: they’re plucking the premature fruit and, usual for monkeys, taking one bite then tossing away the rest of the fruit.
This bite-and-toss behavior upends my general acceptance of evolution: how come, given many generations of monkeydom, monkeys have never figured out that leaving fruit (and vegetables) to mature is a better nutritional bet than destroying them in infancy?
Oh, wait! I forgot. Humans descended from monkeys/apes… and we’re an impatient lot, too. Humans, like monkeys, are unsuccessful at anticipating how our current (stupid) behavior affects our future (healthy) future. (Think climate change denial….) 

Freakout Friday…

© Krànitz Roland/
Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards 2020

STILL no president elect! 

STILL an unbelievably close race!

This squirrel expresses my feelings....

News blues…

Democrats Look at Trump Voters and Wonder, ‘What the Hell Is Your Problem?’ 

***

There Was a Loser Last Night. It Was America. Trump’s ugly speech told us exactly where we’re going — and it’s nowhere good.

***

Even if Biden wins, the world will pay the price for the Democrats' failures 

How could the electoral circumstances for the US Democrats have been more favourable? A quarter of a million Americans have died in a pandemic bungled by the incumbent president, and at least 6 million have consequently been driven into poverty. The coronavirus crisis is the devastating climax of a presidency defined by hundreds of scandals, many of which alone, in normal circumstances, could have destroyed the political career of whoever occupied the White House. Despite having the active support of almost the entire US press, Joe Biden’s victory looks to be far narrower than predicted. During the Democratic primaries, Biden’s cheerleaders argued that his socialist challenger Bernie Sanders would repel Florida’s voters, and yet Donald Trump has triumphed in the sunshine state. They argued that his “unelectable” rival would risk the Senate and down-ballot races, yet the Republicans may retain control of the Senate, and Democrats are haemorrhaging seats in the House of Representatives.

The one thing the US really needs to address – unwieldy as it might be – is the 40 to 50 percent of Americans who are so disillusioned with their political, cultural, and social representation that they’d vote for a character like Trump. There is real pain “out there” in the democratic republic of the United States – no jobs or low paying jobs, no livable wage for too many people, no decent affordable medical care, substandard education, racism, sexism, elitism. This cries out for attention. 

Alas, the American political system is broken, fundamental shared values are absent, and, in essence, “politics as usual” continues.
The whole world recognizes this. American leaders, however, do not recognize it and will not address it. 

To the detriment of all sentient beings, these truths will be swept under the rug… the can kicked down the road … lip-service employed …
In 1992, third party presidential candidate Ross Perot predicted “a giant sucking sound” as “production operations and factories packed up in the United States and moved to Mexico.”  
Perot was correct.
That giant sucking sound is now a giant burp coming back up to discomfort us. Will we change track based on overwhelming in-your-face evidence?
Unfortunately, inertia predominates. Inerita: “a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged” or, more formally, “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.”
What kind of “external force” is the big question. 

***

Meantime, the US recorded 102,831 new cases of coronavirus, and saw 1,097 new Covid deaths. This, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
The New York Times reports that 23 states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch. And five states — Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota and Nebraska — all set new single-day case records yesterday. Deaths related to the coronavirus have increased 21 percent across the country in the last two weeks.
The Associated Press report that the surge was most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest.
Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and New Mexico all reported record high hospitalizations this week. Nebraska’s largest hospitals started limiting elective surgeries and looked to bring in nurses from other states to cope with the surge. Hospital officials in Iowa and Missouri warned bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also announced earlier this week that the number of US children contracting COVID-19 has soared to unprecedented levels. There were nearly 200,000 new cases during October.
If the current rate continues, by the middle of next week the US will have recorded over 10 million cases.

***

No updates from The Lincoln Project as it regroups … Humor and satire have been a positive feature of the last four years of pain. Let's hope The Lincoln Project or similar group finds a niche for the next four years. 

Healthy futures, anyone?

Enjoy Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Jacaranda trees, imported from Argentina in the 1880s, have taken to their new home in a big way. They're currently in blossom across the country.

Street view.

Aerial view - Pretoria.
Image credits: Facebook/Munro Boutique Hotel 

Counting chickens Thursday …

During this morning’s brief spell with electricity supplied to the household, I watched the ongoing updates on the presidential race. It was far grimmer than I expected – Trump actually has people voting for him!
WTF?
Who are these people?
Did I – and millions of others – count chickens before they hatched, so sure were we that The Trumpster was out?

***

Let’s pretend we live in a normal time – normal for a pandemic, that is – and do, as I’ve done for months, the end of week numbers for Covid infections and deaths. 

November 5 numbers compared to thirty-plus days ago.
Worldwide (Map) 
November 5 – 48,136,225 confirmed infections; 1,225,915 deaths
October 1 – 33,881,275 confirmed infections: 12,012,980 deaths

US (Map) 
November 5 – 9,487,470 confirmed infections; 237,730 deaths
October 1 – 7,233,199 confirmed infections: 206,940 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
November 5 – 730,500 confirmed infections; 19,585 deaths
October 1 – 674,340 confirmed infections: 16,735 deaths

Could another harder lockdown be in the cards in South Africa?   (6:55 mins)

News blues…

The old world is not coming back. 

Even if Joe Biden wins the election, he can't quell the forces that spurred Trumpism  ….The US can't just say it's back, as if Trump never happened. Foreign envoys in Washington caution that the political dislocation that led to his rise could deliver another nationalist president in four years.

Turbulence ahead…

***

OK, America, so what the hell happens now? 

With the future and democratic reputation of the American republic hanging in the balance, this is not an occasion for bombast. Rather it is time to reach humbly in the darkness, seeking only to summon such measured words as convey the intense dignity of this moment. In short, I think we all feel the hand of history on our pussies.

***

Van Jones puts it well: “there’s a political victory and there’s a moral victory”  (7:04 mins)....

***

Either Trump or Biden Will Win. But Our Deepest Problems Will Remain.

A presidential election naturally concentrates our country’s attention. For a time, everything seems to depend on the answer to one clear and simple question.
But then what? On rare occasions, the country’s fate really does rest on a discrete set of policy choices embodied by competing candidates.
More often, though, our deepest problems aren’t really amenable to resolution by a president. These problems have been adding up to something of a social crisis, evident not only in the breakdown of our political culture but also in the isolation and despair that have driven up suicide and opioid-abuse rates, and in a sense of alienation that leaves whole communities feeling excluded from the American story and in turn angrily rejecting it. Read the article >>

***

The Lincoln Project…
I watched election day episode of LIVE LPTV  – and the main take-aways: Yikes, who knew Trumpism was so entrenched? And: the advice not sweat it – “it’ll take a little while for the vote to be counted”….
But I am sweating it…
Meanwhile, The Lincoln Project ads continue:
Absentee (1:42 mins)
The Proof  (0:55 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

It’s difficult, today, to think of healthy futures for anyone – given the reality of how entrenched is Trumpism in the US – the effects of which are felt worldwide.
My advice? Go out outside. Look at the sky. Think positive thoughts. Imagine a better, more inclusive world and a healthier planet. Then, engage in making it so!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

In an abrupt about face, I’m thankful, now, that the electrical supply to this house, on for a mere ten minutes or so his morning, went off for most of the day. It meant I could not act on my desire obsessively to check election news every five minutes.
During the ten minutes with electricity, however, I discovered, 1) The Donald was doing better than anyone of my political persuasion expected (Biden was still squeaking ahead with electoral college counts) and 2) Trump had already made a victory speech. Trump’s Problem: all votes have not been counted, particularly mail-in and absentee ballots – some 90 million.
A little premature, Donald?
Nevertheless, the tight race is astonishing. The United States is in BIG cultural trouble. It means nothing good for the United States that a man of Donald Trump’s caliber – vainglorious, a liar and a cheat, self-centered, pathologically narcissistic, uninterested in world affairs or the vast majority of people except as a mirror for his grandiosity – could garner the kind of votes that could keep him in the White House another four years.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. (R.E.M: 4:00 mins)

Waiting Wednesday

Short post on this day of waiting and watching…

News blues…

How do South Africans feel about the US elections? 

***

The Lincoln Project goes all out for election day:
One Day  (1:02 mins)
Fauci  (1:50 mins) (And Obama addresses Trump’s threat to fire Dr Fauci  (2:30 mins)
Your Boys  (1:50 mins)
Steph Curry  (0:40 mins)
You will be caught, Michigan  (0:55 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Today, the healthiest future I can imagine today is one without Donald Trump (or Don jr, Ivanka, Jared, Eric or Melania) in the White House… No William Barr in the Justice Department. No Mike Pompeo in government. No Moscow Mitch in the Senate. No Lindsey Graham in the Senate… 

And a functioning government….

Super Tuesday

© Zapiro 

Zapiro, South African's  cartoon treasure, captures my thoughs exactly: Donald Trump defeated at the polls. Here’s hopin’
I awoke to no electrical power – again!
No power = no internet. 

No internet = no blog post for the day.
Sigh.

News blues…

How South Africa is viewing Trump vs. Biden  

***

The Lincoln Project:
American the Beautiful  (0:55 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After waking to find no electricity, my immediate thought was: Eskom’s at fault - again. I blamed the country’s national electricity supplier (power derived from coal), complaining that Eskom no even longer bothers to inform its customers via its EskomSe Push app that power is off, nor about the expected duration of the outage, nor the regions affected. Moreover, Eskom, subjected to corrosive corruption during the Zuma presidency, is billions of rands in debt  …which means, naturally, that tax payers will tapped to fill the gap.
An immediate effect of no electricity is no internet connection - therefore no updated blog posting.
The auto security gate is also affected when electricity is off. This morning, it took several tries for the security gate to close.
Already stressed (what if The Donald is re-elected? Surely it couldn’t happen? Surely the world’s people would rise up en masse and complain?), when I spotted two local residents talking on the street, I said, “One set of neighbors has electricity but our house does not. Do your houses have power?”
One man explained, “Someone stole electrical cable last night,” he gestured to an open box on a pole. “The houses on this section of the street, including ours are affected.”
Stolen cables? Who steals cables from live electrical connections?
South Africans do.
Alas.

***

Today, I take the day off. With daylight savings time started in California, South Africa is now 10 hours ahead of California, I cannot watch the nail-biting election news as US media ekes out hours and hours of election predictions and slow results.
Moreover, I’ve not taken a day off for 222 days – not since the beginning of the pandemic locked down South Africans in March.
I plan to visit the now-abandoned land upon which I grew up and to which I bonded and continue to love.
On the outer west region of The Valley of a Thousand Hills  nurtured me and gave me profound respect for the natural world. Alas, due to encroaching industry, my mother sold the land after living there more than 60 years.
Usually, I visit the area at least once during a stay in South Africa. I’ve not visited this year. 

Today is the day.

Reality impinges

© Zapiro

News blues…

A new study by Stanford University researchers concluded that Trump rallies likely caused 30,000 new coronavirus cases and 700 additional deaths. “The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” they said.
[But] White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters … in September that Trump was always in a better mood after doing rallies in front of his fans. 
…Fifty-eight percent of likely voters nationally disapproved of Trump’s decision to hold large rallies, while only 34 percent approved, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll conducted last week.

***

More evidence that Trump rallies are super spreader events…  (10:44 mins)

***

Last week, Trump planned to pack his Washington hotel to the rafters with supporters hoping to celebrate his re-election. Alas, today’s plan: the president will be a no-show at his own event. Publicly, the reason given is that the “campaign was warned that it was about to break local COVID-19 restrictions about gatherings of more than 50 people.”
Isn’t it more likely, however, the Trump is forced to confront real reality (perhaps for the first time in his life?) and he’s realizing he’s lost the presidency? That does not mean, however, he accepts this reality.
Even 14,000 miles away, I tremble for my adopted country and country-people. The days from November 4 to January 20, 2021 could be a period during which The Donald wreaks his revenge on a nation whose majority voted him out of office.

***

The Kiffness: Do You Believe in Life After Lockdown?  (3:24 mins)
Tell you goodbye  (4:35 mins)
The Lincoln Project: Priceless  (0:25 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Most/least sustainable countries?

The Nordics once again dominated the biannual survey, with Finland and Denmark in third and fourth place respectively, and Switzerland in fifth, falling from the second position in the July 2019 edition, primarily on pension funding fears.
The bottom five countries are all in Africa, due to civil wars or political unrest in Yemen, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.
… Notable absences from the top list among the major industrialized nations are the US and UK. “Both have seen their ESG performance gradually worsen since 2016, when the UK voted for Brexit and the US for Donald Trump, especially in terms of governance,” [as described] in the survey.
“This is a tendency that is strongly linked to the political situations in the two countries, which are characterized by increasing polarization, deeply divided populations, growing dissatisfaction with traditional parties, and increasing populism.”
…The BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – all appear in the bottom half of the rankings. “The ESG performance of the BRICS countries was particularly disappointing, all of which underperformed the universe mean.”
“Most of the worst-ranking ESG performers are located in Africa. This illustrates just how far behind the continent is in terms of sustainability issues. Even the continent’s two economic heavyweights, South Africa and Nigeria, performed poorly.” 

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My love affair with rain is put to the test: perhaps too much rain now? Rain has fallen consistently for the last three days… and is predicted to continue after this morning’s lull. Too much of a good thing?

***

Dizzying decisions. For now, my mother has agreed to delay her proposed move from the Care Center to my nephew’s multi-generational household.
I fully support this new decision – even while I wonder how long she will stick with it.
Things I’m learning? Not to opine. To present compelling evidence of other ways of thinking. To put big decision firmly on her shoulders. To be willing to bow out when I doubt the wisdom of her decisions.

Apocalyptic revelation

On the eve of the US election,

“It’s important to remember that apocalypse means revelation; it’s the moment that reveals something about one individual’s life or about society in general…I think this is really a moment of big revelations, not revelations in terms of visions or prophecies, but revelations in the sense of seeing the truth of things.”

This, from Giovanni Bazzana, a professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School. He goes on to explain: 

Many scholars believe the Bible’s Book of Revelation ― possibly the most culturally influential story of apocalypse for Americans ― was originally written as resistance literature.
Attributed to a man named John living at the end of the first century, the book contains vivid visions of a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. It prophesies a future in which God will judge the nations, punish evildoers, avenge his people, and establish a just new world. The book was the coded yet defiant response of an exiled community to the Roman Empire’s oppression of Jewish people and destruction of Jerusalem, scholars say.
“Very often, these texts are written by people experiencing oppression from some power that is becoming too invasive or strongly persecuting them.”

Bazzana insists that the apocalypse is here, [and that] it’s “always with us.”
Bazzana isn’t talking about monstrous beasts emerging from the sea or horsemen descending from a cosmic stage to wreak havoc on the earth. The trials of 2020 are an apocalypse in the original sense of the Greek word, he claims: a revelation or uncovering.
This year has revealed truths about American society that can’t be ignored or swept under the rug ― whether it’s inequality in health care, racial injustice or the ineptitude of the government.

News blues…

US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours. Daily caseload of 100,233 surpasses tally set in India last month. Study links Trump rallies to 30,000 cases and 700 deaths  

***

Continuing his well-honed tradition for bullying, lying, insulting, and covering-his-ass (“arse” if you will), Donald Trump and his minions, again, go after Dr Fauci:

… a leading member of the government's coronavirus response [who] said the United States needed to make an "abrupt change" in public health practices and behaviors…[that] the country could surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day and predicted rising deaths in the coming weeks.

Nothing earth shattering in that comment, is there? Well, yes, if you’re Trump, in the Trump administration, or a Trumpie. That group (thankfully shrinking by the day) responded as usual.

The White House on Saturday unleashed on Dr. Anthony Fauci … following his comments … that criticized the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, including Dr. Scott Atlas, who the President has relied on for advice on handling the coronavirus.
"It's unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President's Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President (Donald) Trump's actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics," [said] White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere.
Deere took issue with Fauci's comments where the doctor seemingly praises Democratic nominee Joe Biden's campaign. Fauci [said the Biden] campaign "is taking it seriously from a public health perspective." While Trump, Fauci said, is "looking at it from a different perspective." He said that perspective was "the economy and reopening the country," according to the Post. 

The Swamp that ate the swamp? Remember “the swamp” that Trump promised to drain when trolling for votes last election? Don’t you kinda miss it? Back then, the swamp may have been a swamp, but it was the swamp we all knew. Nowadays, the swamp has morphed into something far bigger, far deeper, far swampier. Is Trump’s swamp even drainable?

***

If you’re American, understand you have the power to silence him

***

The Lincoln Project:
Seriously  (1:45 mins)
Cancer  (0:50 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

The great fox spider found the perfect spot to hide out and perpetuate it’s species: a military training ground.

One of Britain’s largest spiders has been discovered on a Ministry of Defence training ground in Surrey having not been seen in the country for 27 years.
The great fox-spider is a night-time hunter, known for its speed and agility, as well as its eight black eyes which give it wraparound vision. The critically endangered spider was assumed extinct in Britain after last being spotted in 1993 on Hankley Common in Surrey. The two-inch-wide (5cm) arachnid had previously also been spotted at two sites in Morden Heath in Dorset. These are the only three areas in Britain, all in the comparatively warmer south, where it has been recorded. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve lived away from South Africa for four decades. I escaped when I was 19 years old, to “travel the world,” and ended up living in Berkeley, California. In the US, I’ve always lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area (this includes my current American life as a houseboat “liveaboard” in the Sacramento Delta).
A fact about California: the state, with a Mediterranean climate, California experiences rainfall in the winter. It’s a cold rain, usually falling from undramatic cold fronts that release undramatic rainfall. It rarely comes from thunderstorms. If dramatic, cold fronts bare so much rain and that land becomes saturated. Then, Californians experience dramatic mudslides.
Eastern and midland KZN South Africa, however, experiences spring and summer rainfall: a warm rain falling during hot and the wet seasons: spring, summer, and autumn/fall. KZN thunderstorms present rolling thunder, streaks of lightning, buckets of rain, and hail stones larger than marbles.
Now that I’m experiencing this sort of rainfall again, here in the land of my birth, I realize how much I’ve missed it.
I LOVE KZN RAIN!
So do frogs. Nighttime is a cacophony of frog calls, call it a lullaby.