The World Is Looking on in Disbelief, if not Horror, America

 For a bit of what Italy and Europe and the world are seeing as they look on at America.

Europe stunned by American coronavirus response as US approaches five million infections

The United States' failure to contain the spread of coronavirus has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe

"'We Italians always saw America as a model,' said Massimo Franco, columnist with daily Corriere della Sera. 'But with this virus we've discovered a country that is very fragile, with bad infrastructure and a public health system that is non-existent.'"

Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn't have when the first Covid patients started filling intensive care units.

Yet, more than four months into a sustained outbreak, the US is about to hit an astonishing milestone of five million confirmed infections, easily the highest in the world.

Thanks, Mr. President.

Thanks, Republicans.

Possibly the Best, Most Important Article You Could Read Just Now

A friend posted a link to this on FB:

The Pandemic’s Geopolitical Aftershocks 

Are Coming

Western capitals aren’t just worried about the risk of a resurgence in coronavirus cases.

A bit:

With most European countries confident that they are past the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, their attention is turning to the chance of its resurgence once society returns to some semblance of normal. But beyond the epidemiological challenges lies a slowly amassing threat that is not pathological in nature, but economic, political, and military. This is the geopolitical second wave, and its power is already starting to concern Western leaders.

Imagine a scenario: Just as Europe and the United States begin to feel as if they have the coronavirus under control, it takes hold in the developing world. Exhausted, indebted, and desperate for their own economies to get back up to speed, richer countries are too slow to help. Panic ensues. Migrants mass in southern Europe, which is still struggling to pull itself out of a coronavirus-induced depression. Somewhere, a state defaults on debt held largely by Western financial institutions. In the chaos, an autocrat eyes an opportunity for a land grab. A United States already unwilling to take the lead leaves China to step into the void.

This is just one (invented) scenario of a number that are raising concerns in Western capitals and that were laid out to me in conversations with more than half a dozen leading security experts, academics, and government advisers in recent weeks. Of those I spoke with, few doubted that a second wave was coming. The real concern was where it would land.

Highly recommended, folks.

Be well out there. Be safe.

Living In the US vs Elsewhere

A friend's post yesterday said what I've been thinking for some time:

A comment from a friend who moved to Europe a few years ago: 

"it is absolutely incredible. We've been here (several) years now...the life style for my family is spectacular. The kids are happy, my wife is happy, we're experiencing people/culture/travel that we'd never see in the US. My kids are growing up in an environment with such cultural/international awareness that we never experienced as kids.

The longer you live outside the US, the more obvious the divide becomes. Education, healthcare, and environment are top priorities in Europe. Nudity is allowed and you see it on billboards, magazines, etc., but no one cares because it is natural. Violence, on the other hand, isn’t dramatized or publicized and broadcast throughout the media. When people commit crimes, they don’t even publish their full names in the paper (it shows as 'Matt H. was found guilty'). Europe allows nudity and minimizes the broadcasting of violence, while the US takes an opposite stance"

Additionally, they have far fewer guns so far fewer shootings and killings.

And universal health care.

And then there's all that architecture. We tear our "old" buildings down after 50 years.

All that, just for starters.

The Heat Isn't Just the Southwest US

I think the news that it's hitting 120 degrees in Phoenix today and being so hot all over the Southwest US is getting around. That seems clear.

What isn't also clear is the heat on another continent.

Heatwave scorches Europe, 

from London to Siberia

Europe sizzled in a continent-wide heatwave on Wednesday, with London seeing Britain's hottest June day since 1976 as Portugal battled to stamp out deadly forest fires.

More than 1,000 firefighters were still fighting to control the flames that broke out in central Portugal at the weekend, killing 64 people.

Cooler weather was aiding their efforts, but thermometers were still hovering around 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit)—a level matched across oven-like swathes of Europe, including Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and even alpine Switzerland.

Two forest fires have also broken out since Sunday on Croatia's southern Adriatic coast, prompting the authorities to evacuate 800 tourists, though the blazes have now been brought under control.In Italy, forecasters say the current heatwave could turn out to be the most intense in 15 years, with temperatures around eight degrees above the seasonal average—39 C in Milan and up to 30 in the Alps at an altitude of 1,000 metres (3,300 feet).

Britain saw its first five-day stretch of temperatures over 30 degrees in June since 1995—and the thermometer hit 33.9 C in west London, a UK record for the month since 1976.

In Guildford, southwest of the capital, a road surface melted on Tuesday, with motorists likening it to a bar of chocolate left out in the hot sun.

In Russia, Siberia was also suffering a heatwave, with temperatures of up to 37 Celsius in the city of Krasnoyarsk, Channel One television reported.

It's gotten so clear there's global warming, apparently, even the extreme Right Wing website, Breitbart,  posted the same story.

Heatwave scorches Europe, 

from London to Siberia

So, yeah, it looks like 2017 is shaping up to be, again, the new hottest year in recorded history.

Maybe we need those Paris Climate Accords after all.

The Brexit Mess

The sky isn't falling, of course, nor do I think it will but with the UK having their rather significant vote a few days ago, it seems a good deal came out of it, both nationally, for them, as well as for the world. Herewith are a few headlines of examples from the weekend so far.

Britain Rattles Postwar Order and Its Place as Pillar of Stability

Pound takes a beating, markets in tailspin 

after British vote to exit E.U.

After 'Brexit,' 3 Centuries of Unity in Britain 

Are in Danger

Moody's cut UK's credit outlook to 'negative'

It would be bad enough if it only hurt the UK but then there are the damages it did on this side of the pond, of course.

Dow closes down 600 after Brexit surprise; financials post worst day since 2011

And then there are the world markets it hit:

Brexit panic wipes $2 trillion off world markets - 
as it happened

World stocks tumble as Britain votes 

for EU exit

World Markets Roiled by Brexit as Stocks, 

Pound Drop; Gold Soars

And not bad enough it hurt the UK--and its allies--quickly, it also gave its enemies cause for celebration:

Despite Russia's Somber Facade, Glimpses of Joy Over EU Referendum

There were some glimmers of hope, fortunately. On this first one, it seems millions of Brits want a "second shot", a second vote on this whole Brexit idea. They have misgivings about the turnout.

UK voters, 3 million of them, want another bite at the Brexit apple

On this one, lots of UK business leaders and investors think the populace will dismiss the idea outright:

Corporates and investors think voters will shun Brexit despite recent polls

So at this point, I and a lot of us are just hoping some good, somehow, comes of this vote they had. We shall see. It would be nice if they rethought it, had yet another election, and voted it down.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

There is an old insult people used to throw around. It went like this--if you didn't like someone, for whatever reason, they would tell them "May you live in interesting times."

Between Donald Trump running for the Presidency and this Brexit vote, someone must have had it in for humanity about now.

On This Day, 1945

People are forgetting.

Victory in Europe - May 08, 1945 - HISTORY.com

On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine.

Victory in Europe Day - Wikipedia

Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.

V-E Day 1945: The Celebration Heard 'round the World | HistoryNet

May 8, 2015 - V-E Day was observed on May 8, 1945 in Great Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Australia, and on May 9 in the Soviet Union and New Zealand. V-E Day commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces in 1945, ending World War II in Europe.

On Brussels

I am personally sick to death of people who think somehow that blowing up other civilians, strangers advances their cause. It's beyond disgusting.

The bad thing is that they killed and hurt lots of innocents.

The good thing is that they did it with suicide vests.

Entertainment Overnight -- Classical Guitar

I was fortunate enough to go to high school with this classical guitarist. He lived, in fact, only about 2 blocks from our own house. He, Anthony Glise, of St. Joseph, has long since gone on to produce and perform untold numbers of pieces of classical guitar music and write his own, as well. He's traveled and performed here in Kansas City as well as across Europe.

I hope you enjoy.



Link to his Facebook page here:  Anthony Glise

Kristallnacht

May we never forget.

Kristallnacht: A Nationwide Pogrom, 

November 9–10, 1938

The State of the Nation and World

Kim Jong Un and North Korea are threatening South Korea with attack.

China's economy is in freefall.

The Dow dropped nearly 1000 points the last 2 days.

The Mexican peso--in next door Mexico, of course--just hit a record low against the US dollar.

Wealth inequality in America is getting worse by the year with the already-wealthy getting richer and the middle and lower classes getting poorer.

Greece just nearly avoided a total bankruptcy of the nation.

Our infrastructure is falling apart.

Our Highway Fund needs funding from Congress.

All this and a lot more but Donald Trump and his disconnected, childish, really, musings on America and the world put him, somehow, somehow, "most popular" right now, number one in the polls of Republican candidates for president in next year's election.

This is no way to run a country.

These Are the Days, My Friends

It's actually a pretty incredible time to be alive.

Millions more Americans recently came much closer to having full equality here in their own nation.

Greece just got yet one more cash bailout from it's Eurozone members yesterday.

It was announced today, Tuesday, that a nuclear agreement between Iran and 6 other nations to keep them from getting nuclear weapons was reached, taking off economic sanctions.

And there's a flyby of our satellite near Pluto today.

Big times. These are incredible times, indeed.

We take things so for granted.

Quote of the Day -- Us vs. the Rest of the World

On Germany and Their Nasty, Ugly Socialism

There is a fantastic article and interview out just now at Alternet:

Why Germany Has It So Much Better Than the U.S

It's all based on author Thomas Geohegan's new book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?  Renowned fellow author Terrence McNally interviews him.

Just a bit, here, to make point:

December 9, 2014/  The European Union, 27 member nations with a half billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's economy -- nearly as large as the US and China combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US, China or Japan.

European nations spend far less than the United States for universal healthcare rated by the World Health Organization as the best in the world, even as U.S. health care is ranked 37th. Europe leads in confronting global climate change with renewable energy technologies, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process. Europe is twice as energy efficient as the US and their ecological "footprint" (the amount of the earth's capacity that a population consumes) is about half that of the United States for the same standard of living.

Unemployment in the US is widespread and becoming chronic, but when Americans have jobs, we work much longer hours than our peers in Europe. Before the recession, Americans were working 1,804 hours per year versus 1,436 hours for Germans -- the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour weeks per year.

They're better paid, have more money, live better, have more--far more---vacation time,  pay less for education,don't ship jobs overseas, there's less--again, far less--poverty, they have more "green", sustainable energy sources, all while producing more, as a nation.

Great interview. It sounds like a good to great book, possibly an important one. Eye-opening to most Americans. Too many of us, without international travel, don't know what we don't have, of course, nor what, maybe, likely, even, we could, if only for better national priorities. Some things we could maybe have if we had statesmen and stateswomen in our leadership instead of what we have now.
I love this---something the author found:  "...if you don't have much poverty, life is better for everybody. Not just for the poor, but for everybody.

It's what a lot of us have been saying and for a long time. It seems something the Waltons of Walmart and the Koch brothers and their ilk just can't comprehend or accept or agree to.

What's to not want to emulate here, on our part? Heck, on anyone's part?

That is really some ugly Socialism there, isn't it?

I'm sure glad we aren't Socialists and have that ugly stuff here, aren't you?

Why we so desperately need a jobs/infrastructure bill from this Congress

"The global economy is more precarious right now than it's been since 2008. China's growth is slowing precipitously, Europe is on the very of recession or deflation, Japan is barely growing, and the United States cannot maintain sufficient aggregate demand without a larger and more buoyant middle class. Interest rates are rock-bottom. Under these circumstances, you might expect governments to borrow more to stimulate their economies. But Germany in the eurozone, and Republicans in the U.S., are still insisting on austerity." 

--Robert Reich

Instead, there is the desire on the part of one political party, quite frankly, the Republicans, to put their own party and their success ahead of that of the nation, people and economy be damned. 

We all know that. 

Why else would they totally avoid an infrastructure/jobs bill from this or the last Congress when the American people need the jobs? the infrastructure needs the updating and improving and the economy needs the boost? They don't want this president or his political party to gain any "points" or to be perceived as having any success so screw you, America.

Why we need to reign in the wealthy and corporations in America

And to do it, we need, yes, more regulation(s), not less. Not "big government." Not at all. Just sensible, logical, intelligent restraints on greed.

Entertainment overnight--beautiful insanity

The big story in America not being reported

There is a huge story right now in America that is not just being under-reported.  It's very nearly not being reported at all.

And the reason why it's not being reported is because it's not in the interests (read: profits) of the big media companies to report it.

Not even Fox "News."

What's not being reported is the ruling Monday by the Washington, DC Court of Appeals on "net neuttrality." That is, internet neutrality.

First, what it is:

Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on theInternet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.

And the reason this effects you and me is this is about who gets the internet and how much they pay for it, ultimately.  As ever, the wealthy will have theirs.  Everyone else will either pay through the nose for it or get little of it at all, or none, in plenty of cases.

And what happened Monday?  This:

Broadcast nightly news shows completely ignored the day's landmark court ruling striking down federal net neutrality regulations, an omission that deals a huge disservice to the public audience and a boon to the news outlets' parent corporations.

Net neutrality -- the principle that corporate internet providers should provide equal access to content for subscribers -- was dealt a serious blow the morning of January 14 when the D.C. Court of Appeals invalidatedthe Federal Communications Commission's requirement that providers offer equal access to online information, regardless of the source. Prior to the ruling, the FCC prevented internet providers from blocking (or slowing down access to) content in order to benefit their own business interests.

That evening, neither NBC, CBS, nor ABC acknowledged the ruling in their evening news broadcasts.

Here's why that's important -- NBC is owned by Comcast Corporation, which bills itself as the nation's largest high-speed Internet provider. CBS' parent company is CBS Corporation, which also owns multiple sports networks and Showtime, while ABC is part of The Walt Disney Company empire, also the owner of ESPN.

We've known, forever, really, that "them that has, gets," sure.  The rich get richer, the poor get, well, little to nothing and poorer. Unfortunately, humans being how we are, it's one more truth of the human condition. 

But it doesn't have to be that way and this is one place where the government should step in, make it right and make certain the internet is not only available but available, reasonably--if not even free, for pity's sake--for everyone.

And the reason is not just decency or fairness, either, by any means. The reason the internet needs to be available is actually, also for even the benefit and competitiveness of the entire nation.  You want a productive nation? You want a productive, well-educated population?  Well, you don't do it, even now, let alone in the future by making the internet only available to and for those who can afford it. Besides being even inhumane, it's not good national policy and it keeps people from being informed and educated.  

You want to cut off productivity and education in America, then vote against net neutrality and for the corporations.  Want to see a more intelligent answer to all this?  Look no further than "Socialist" Europe:

US Consumers Paying More, Getting Less For Internet Than Europe

The thing that's being ignored in all this is that we need net neutrailty for international competitiveness, not just for lining the pockets of the already-wealthy and the corporations.

That's the "bottome line."  We need it not just for the fairness and decency and humanity of it all, we need it sto stay competitive, nationally and internationally. Merely letting the corporations have their way with us, in this case, as in the case of our health care system, makes us weaker as a nation.

You want to weaken America?

Cut us off from education, information and technology.

That'll do it.

That and killing us with obscenely, even immorally too-high health care.

Link:  Net neutrality - Wikipedia

Missouri in the national--and international--news yesterday

Yes, we were:

Missouri Gov. Calls Off Execution Using Experimental Drug

(Photo: AP)

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon announced Friday that he is calling off a planned execution using the drug Propofol in the wake of threats from the European Union that the 27 country bloc will scrap exports of the drug altogether if it is used for lethal injection, the AP reports.

Nixon is a fervent death penalty supporter who saw 59 men executed during his tenure as attorney general in the state. Missouri been had slated to become the first state to use the drug in an execution October 23, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The governor's announcement comes a day after German drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi confirmed that it halted all shipments of the drug Propofol to a U.S.-based distributor after 20 vials were sent to Missouri for execution of prisoners on death row, Reuters reports. Shipments of the drug to Louisiana-based distributor Morris & Dickson were suspended from November 2012 to March 2013, the company stated.

The EU has banned the death penalty, as well as the export of drugs for use in lethal injections. The company purportedly halted shipments over concerns that the EU would place an all-out ban on exports of Propofol if it is used in executions.

A majority of Propofol is produced in Europe, and the manufacturer says the drug is administered approximately 50 million times a year for surgical procedures in the United States.

Nearly two dozen Missouri death row inmates had filed a lawsuit over concerns that injection with an experimental drug would cause horrific pain and suffering.
______________________________________________________

Once again, our country, the good old US of A is on the wrong side of an issue and the rest of the world has to correct us.

Something the Pope and Catholic Church did so rightly, back in 1839

But that was totally, utterly ignored by the rest of the world:

In 1839, Gregory wrote that:

[W]e have judged that it belonged to Our pastoral solicitude to exert Ourselves to turn away the Faithful from the inhuman slave trade in Negroes and all other men. [...] [D]esiring to remove such a shame from all the Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions. We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices above mentioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter. 

— From In Supremo Apostolatus^[2]

The Roman Catholic Church, in 1839, came out squarely against slavery.

Can you even imagine if the world listened and followed?

Quote of the day--on war, from a warrior

"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.  Our is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."

--General Omar N. Bradley

 Link:  Omar Bradley - Wikipedia

Omar Bradley Biography