Tracker

It's Mary, and Liz is anti-gay.

This is a very volatile situation and will be for awhile.

And yet one their most popular female senators is openly lesbian. Moreover, in the past few years, several GOP federal politicians have been caught in soliciting gay sexual encounters, and that doesn't count the fundamentalist "ministers" who were also exposed.

Baby food allegedly riddled with poisonous metals—and the Trump administration did nothing about it Anew report reveals that the baby foods sold by a number of major manufacturers may be contaminated with poisonous heavy metals — and President Donald Trump's administration, despite knowing about it, did nothing. The House Oversight Committee released a report on Thursday based on a congressional investigation into the potential presence of toxic heavy metals — including lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury — in baby foods. Four baby food manufacturers provided Congress with information about the amount of toxic heavy metals in their foods based on their own internal testing, including Beech-Nut Nutrition Company, Gerber, Hain Celestial Group, Inc. and Nurture Inc. Between those four companies, Congress found that the companies allow dangerously high levels of toxic heavy metals in their foods and that the foods sold by the companies frequently exceed even those standards. "The Food and Drug Administration has set the maximum allowable levels in bottled water at 10 ppb [parts per billion] inorganic arsenic, 5 ppb lead, and 5 ppb cadmium, and the Environmental Protection Agency has capped the allowable level of mercury in drinking water at 2 ppb," the report explains. "The test results of baby foods and their ingredients eclipse those levels: including results up to 91 times the arsenic level, up to 177 times the lead level, up to 69 times the cadmium level, and up to 5 times the mercury level." Three other major baby food manufacturers — Campbell, Walmart and Sprout Organic Foods — did not cooperate with the congressional investigators, leaving them "greatly concerned" about the possible toxic heavy metal contamination in their foods. Then again, as the chair of the subcommittee which conducted the investigation told Salon, the government has previously not forced these companies to be accountable for what they put in their baby food. Baby food allegedly riddled with poisonous metals—and the Trump administration did nothing about it | Salon.com

Forty Percent of America’s Coronavirus Deaths Were Avoidable: Lancet Study Reuters Around 40 percent of the Americans who have been killed by COVID-19 might have lived if better political decisions had been made before and during the pandemic, according to a new Lancet study. The paper, titled Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era, rips into former President Donald Trump, saying he “brought misfortune to the USA and the planet.” It describes Trump’s response to COVID as “inept and insufficient,” though it says the roots of the nation’s public-health problems go much deeper. Mary Bassett, a Lancet commission member and director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, told The Guardian: “The U.S. has fared so badly with this pandemic, but the bungling can’t be attributed only to Mr. Trump, it also has to do with these societal failures.” The paper estimates that, had America’s virus death toll matched up with the rates in other high-income G-7 countries, some 40 percent of deaths could have been avoided. Almost 470,000 Americans have died so far.

Bad News For Alberta? People with dementia are twice as likely to contract COVID-19, according to new study Recently, scientists have discovered peculiar connections between neurological conditions and COVID-19 risk. We know that there is a heightened risk of dying of COVID-19 complications for those with schizophrenia. Now, this week comes a new study which finds that people with dementia are twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as those without the deadly cognitive disease. The study, which was mainly written by researchers from Case Western University and published on Tuesday in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, analyzed electronic health record data for nearly 62 million Americans adults. People with dementia are twice as likely to contract COVID-19, according to new study | Salon.com

Encouraging, but will hold my breath for the next two weeks to see if the variants show up in numbers.

That should cover the cost of a Stanford Binet test and therapy, but there is no fix for stoopid.

Hayley Miller REPORTER/ 2 hours ago Capitol security footage never before seen by the public will be shown during the prosecution's presentation this week, senior aides on the impeachment managers' team told reporters on a call this morning. The footage will provide new insight into the "extreme violence that everyone suffered" and "the threat that it could have led to further violence and death to many,"

If I were Trump's lawyer, I would want my retainer up front, and a big one, too. The yahoos who presented arguments at the impeachment mistook volume for cogent arguments. Won't affect the outcome, though but I would love to be wrong about that.

Report reveals how Trump's team conspired to protect his interests as COVID-19 ransacked the US Former President Donald Trump's administration is under fire for hindering the government's pandemic response and rolling back Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coronavirus mitigation guidelines in an effort to protect his interests. According to CNBC News, the latest reports stem from documentation compiled during the House Oversight investigation launched back in September 2020. Based on the documents, the Trump administration is said to have intentionally suppressed COVID-19 testing by rolling back the CDC guidelines. To justify the scaling back of COVID testing, former Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) scientific advisor Paul Alexander argued there was little significance in testing asymptomatic individuals, according to emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Report reveals how Trump's team conspired to protect his interests as COVID-19 ransacked the US - Alternet.org Here is link to the powerful video presented to the US Senate: Watch: House impeachment managers' damning video links Trump's 'Stop the Steal' speech to the Capitol siege - Alternet.org

‘Can’t afford to lose’: Drudge Report takes on Trump The Drudge Report, a staple of conservative power brokers and right wing political leaders for decades, slowly turned anti-Trump starting late last year, stunning GOP stalwarts. Following The New York Times' bombshell about the president paying just $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no taxes for 15 out of 20 years, the Drudge Report on Monday just destroyed Trump. The Drudge Report is essentially a link aggregator, rewriting headlines and combining links to create a very clear picture of what they want readers to see. Here's how it looks right now: "LOST MORE MONEY THAN MADE?" reads one headline from the top of Drudge, about the Times' exposé. "FINANCED EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE WITH USE OF BUSINESS

With handing the Jet audiocast over to CJOB, it sure looks like this was planned for some time.

Watching the CNN coverage of the Trump impeachment trial and the supercut being shown in the Senate is devastatingly ugly.

I hope that witnesses are called to publicly testify under oath as to the full extent of Trump's culpability and insane arrogance and constitutional experts are called to testify as to the complete fallacy of the Trump defenders' defences of his actions. Then, if the GOP senator apologists want to acquit him in the face of all that evidence, they will stand exposed as the frauds and conspirators they are.

Insiders at the GOP report that there is a need to defend Trump because if they do not, no future GOP president would dare to do what Trump has done to favour Republicans, their donors and supporters with illegal acts. An impeachment and conviction would end the erosion of legal process and responsibility that began with Nixon and continued with Reagan and Bush 2. Ignoring of all the illegal stuff that Bush 2 and his cronies has led directly to the Trump abuses of power and confirm that the president of the US is above the law and not hampered by it.

Republicans defend Trump ahead of impeachment trial by blaming Nancy Pelosi for Capitol riot GOP shifts blame to Democrats for Capitol riot, call impeachment a “diversionary operation” As Donald Trump's second impeachment trial looms near, bringing the former president's incitement of insurrection into greater focus once again, members of the GOP are –– in another ambitious act of baseless conspiracy –– deflecting blame onto their Democratic counterparts for the riot and framing impeachment as a "diversionary operation" meant to distract from Democratic culpability. The idea that Democrats, who were chiefly targeted by rioters themselves, are responsible for the riot, is not entirely novel. Shortly after the Jan. 6 riot, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, tried to put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, under scrutiny, asking in an interview with Fox News, "Where was Nancy Pelosi? It's her job to provide Capitol security." A month later, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI, are now taking Graham's cue, leading the charge to position their Democratic colleagues as enablers of the insurrection. Republicans defend Trump ahead of impeachment trial by blaming Nancy Pelosi for Capitol riot | Salon.com

WHO Says It’s Found No Evidence That the Coronavirus Came From Wuhan Lab Reuters/ World Health Organization investigators working in China say they’ve found absolutely no evidence to support the theory that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan laboratory—and they think it’s such an outlandish theory that they’re going to bring an end to their research into it. Peter Ben Embarek, an animal-diseases expert, announced the decision during a press conference following a long-awaited visit by WHO experts to the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified. Embarek said it’s “extremely unlikely” that the virus came from a lab, and that the most likely cause of the initial outbreak was the virus jumping from an undetermined “intermediary host species” to humans. The lab-origin theory was fueled by the U.S. State Department under President Donald Trump, which claimed last month that it had obtained intelligence that researchers at the lab became sick with COVID-19-like symptoms in autumn 2019.

I was in BestBuy on the weekend and saw those multi-function remotes on sale. I picked one up and thought to myself, "This changes everything!" "

And it will make little to no difference in Alberta politics.

There is a downside to the Democrats steamrolling the GOP. The GOP and their adherents have been wringing their hands and crying that they have been victimized for decades, even during the Trump ascendancy. They now can amplify their jeremiads and this will likely provoke their rabid followers to even more violence.

New Variants Raise Worry About COVID-19 Virus Reinfections. Scientists discovered a new version of the virus in South Africa that’s more contagious and less susceptible to certain treatments. Evidence is mounting that having COVID-19 may not protect against getting infected again with some of the new variants. People also can get second infections with earlier versions of the coronavirus if they mounted a weak defense the first time, new research suggests. How long immunity lasts from natural infection is one of the big questions in the pandemic. Scientists still think reinfections are fairly rare and usually less serious than initial ones, but recent developments around the world have raised concerns. In South Africa, a vaccine study found new infections with a variant in 2% of people who previously had an earlier version of the virus. In Brazil, several similar cases were documented with a new variant there. Researchers are exploring whether reinfections help explain a recent surge in the city of Manaus, where three-fourths of residents were thought to have been previously infected. In the United States, a study found that 10% of Marine recruits who had evidence of prior infection and repeatedly tested negative before starting basic training were later infected again. That work was done before the new variants began to spread, said one study leader, Dr. Stuart Sealfon of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “Previous infection does not give you a free pass,” he said. “A substantial risk of reinfection remains.” New Variants Raise Worry About COVID-19 Virus Reinfections | HuffPost

At first glance, I wanted to agree with you, but the situation in Vancouver is not good,