It is logical that delays in diagnosis and treatments, especially for patients with cancer symptoms, will likely increase mortality rates as measured in the medium (1 year) and longer-term (5 years).

However, the study, based on the UK NHS procedure of two-week wait referrals, presents an urgent need for policy interventions to mitigate the predicted additional cancer deaths from delays owing to the pandemic. The authors do note the limitations of their research, such as assumptions that blanket re-allocations across the UK, but the findings point to changes that should be considered on a policy-basis.

However, these interventions do not suggest the need to abandon public health measures to control the pandemic, but rather, to balance risks, to provide public health information, and to increase routine diagnostic capacity.

Indeed, it may be argued that pandemic public health measures are a component of intervention. These established public health measures are necessary to the quick restoration and re-direction of limited health resources (the only steps available in the absence of pharmacological treatments or an effective vaccine) to diagnosis and treatment of cancers (as well as other sickness).

The `Lost Colony' of Roanoke Was Never Lost

August 17, 2020 at 3:31 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 71 Comments

"The English colonists who settled the so-called Lost Colony before disappearing from history simply went to live with their native friends -- the Croatoans of Hatteras, according to a new book," the Virginian-Pilot reports.

Said author Scott Dawson, who researched records and dug up artifacts where the colonists lived with the Indians in the 16th century: "They were never lost. It was made up. The mystery is over."

"Teams have found thousands of artifacts 4-6 feet below the surface that show a mix of English and Indian life. Parts of swords and guns are in the same layer of soil as Indian pottery and arrowheads."

No news about news has made me happier in a long time.

 this is epic.

McSally Asks Backers to Fast So They Can Donate

August 22, 2020 at 7:34 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 150 Comments

Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) presented an unusual fundraising pitch in audio obtained by KPHO: She suggested supporters to "fast" for a meal -- then give her the money that they save as a campaign donation

Said McSally: "We're doing our best to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources... if you can give $5, $10. If you can, fast a meal and give what that would be."

Everything will be coming up roses when Mel, on behalf of her husband, gives from the sidewalks of the remuddled garden,  an empathetic presentation of the pandemic's sickness and death, entitled: " I DON'T CARE DO YOU?"

Pence and Mother will dilute out the family a bit and concentrate the bigotry a lot. Trump once said of Pence that he wants to hang all gays.

And, if this dynamic duo should inadvertently fall short in that department, Pompeo can fill in for any misses. And, should he inadequately smirk, the Covington Catholic High School student, who won those law suits, will be there for any needed augmentation.

With a special nod to Trump deplorables, the gun brandishing St. Louis couple (facing felony charges for unlawful use of fire arms in a demonstration) will be there to offer their own set of grievances.

Apparently, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and other stars of the 2016 campaign will be absent this go around. And, Mike Flynn's "lock her up" chant will likely go unsung this year, perhaps to be picked up by a non-felon. If Putin can not come, maybe they can get, as suitable substitute, Konstantin Kilimnik---he, certainly, can speak to Republican campaigns.

The Republican Convention would be nothing without Moscow Mitch, so he will be there by pre-recorded video. The convention will be carried gavel-to-gavel on FOX, for sure. And, on Comedy Central, possibly, (sadly and scarily, but appropriately).

Federal health officials, worried about shaky confidence in a possible coronavirus vaccine, launched a public campaign this week to try to reassure Americans that regulators won't clear any vaccine that isn't vetted for safety and effectiveness.
WaPost

Yet, pressure by Trump had the FDA originally clear Hydroxie and now after one tweet the FDA has changed course and given emergency authorization for convalescent plasma to treat covid-19 patient.

Republicans Will Have No Party Platform

August 23, 2020 at 11:12 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 434 Comments

The Republican Party announced it will forego a platform.

Instead of drafting a document outlining the party's beliefs and agenda, the Republican National Committee simply states that it agrees with everything Donald Trump has done and will do.

link

Seriously.

"Pentagon officials working on Defense Secretary Mark Esper's cost-cutting review of the department have proposed slashing military health care by $2.2 billion, a reduction that some defense officials say could effectively gut the Pentagon's health care system during a nationwide pandemic," Politico reports.

Excuse the Watchmen reference.  Serious topic.  I guess.

Although 12 trillion does seem a little unserious.  I think this will become a bigger issue as the election season progresses.

I can't say I know enough about how it would be administered, or to whom it would be given,  to have much of an opinion about the wisdom of it.   I will say I think it could become more of a distraction than I think is wise in this particular election cycle.

Six questions about slavery reparations, answered

US economist proposes $12 trillion in slavery reparations to eliminate black-white wealth gap

To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to approve an extract from the oleander plant as a dietary supplement to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.

Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.

Almost certainly the new THING.

Horrors so great and terrible as to stagger the human mind? That was H.P. Lovecraft's whole schtick. He stuffed his fiction with various and sundry eldtrich squamous tentacled oozy ancient malevolent beasties, the very sight of which proved so incomprehensible to us poor human schmoes it would instantly reduce us to gibbering wretches.

It's that precise affinity -- slavery as abject, ungraspable, soul-devouring horror -- that writer Matt Ruff's 2016 novel, upon which the HBO series is based, cleverly explored. Creator and showrunner Misha Green (alongside executive producers Peele and J.J. Abrams, among others) doubles down, threading the novel's central plotline through a series of eldritch-monster-of-the-week episodes.

The Biden ticket with Senator Harris as vice presidential candidate may be the strongest ticket to not only defeat the worst president ever, but also, to relegate the Republican Party to the electoral minority it earned, consistent with its minority values and policies.

The Democratic primary contenders provided a deep bench of presidential possibilities. My thinking was that Senator Warren offered to be the FDR for our times. And, Jay Inslee provided expertise in a crucial area of climate change. Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang and Julian Castro offered an intelligent new look at problems and solutions.

 Bloomberg and Steyer offered campaign billions. Bernie created enthusiasm for many, but seemed to have run his course.  Review of the long list of primary contenders reveals those of varied strength, but as with Biden, they were not flawless. Although, some may still pine for the spiritualism of Marianne Williamson.

If one believes, as I do, that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American Democracy, his defeat is of paramount importance. Election of Trump brings not only Trump for four more years, but also, Pence and Mother along with the Republican Party and their thuggish policies and politicians.

Nancy Pelosi will become President.  At least until a result can be reached.

I've seen this on right wing sites like HOT AIR and others.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has ordered pet dogs to be confiscated in the country's capital, saying the pooches represent Western "decadence'' -- but their owners fear Fido is really headed for someone's dinner table.

Kim issued the directive in July to round up the pets, claiming they were part of "a `tainted' trend by bourgeouis ideology,'' a source told the English edition of Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper.

"Ordinary people raise pigs and livestock on their porches, but high-ranking officials and the wealthy own pet dogs, which stoked some resentment'' among the lower classes, the source said.

"Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down.''

Personally, the hottest temperatures I've experienced fairly recently was 117F in Las Vegas, NV in July 2009, and 112F in San Juan Capistrano, CA in Sept. 2012. Both were bad enough. Can't imagine 130F, not that I could likely tell at that point. Out here in the islands, it will break 90F only occasionally, but it's the humidity that'll get to you.

He will turn the mail back on.

Just now

Thomas Lane told investigators he pulled his gun on Floyd after seeing Floyd sitting in a car reaching under a seat or between his seat and the console, and because he did not immediately show his hands when ordered to do so.

"Once [Floyd] kind of stopped fighting us, I think I had said again, `I think we should roll him onto his side,' and I believe [officer Derek] Chauvin said, `We have him, there's an ambulance coming and we got him. We're just going to hold him here,' " Lane told investigators. "And that made sense to me just because I've had experiences with people who are OD'ing or they'll be out one minute and they'll come back and really be aggressive with you."

In related news, prosecutors want one trial for all four officers.

Trying these cases jointly would ensure that the jury understands ... all of the evidence and the complete picture of George Floyd's death," Frank wrote. "And it would allow the community and the nation to absorb the verdicts for the four Defendants at once."

Separate trials would cause delays, could taint potential jurors for later trials and would burden the state, court and witnesses, he wrote.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that Joe Biden's campaign is thinking ahead for what to do in case there is a widespread failure of the electoral system or chaos surrounding the legitimacy of the result in November.

The Biden campaign, just like the Trump campaign, has "set aside millions of dollars and created massive legal teams now deep in contingency planning for what's expected to be a prolonged and potentially contested post-vote period while states tabulate a flood of mail-in ballots, anticipating legal challenges across numerous states," reported Jeremy Herb, Pamela Brown, Kevin Liptak, and Marshall Cohen.

One Biden adviser told CNN the campaign has created "the largest voter protection operation that's ever been run in a presidential cycle," and that "If we've learned one thing from the pandemic, having one contingency plan isn't enough. We have layers and layers and layers of contingency plans. Our programs are built with flexibility in mind to deal with any situation."

The stark reality of that separation would test the bridge-building capacity of any president. Through the 2020s, tension is likely to grow between the diverse communities on display this week and the white constituencies that Trump is trying to mobilize by describing the BLM movement as a "symbol of hate" and by warning "The Suburban Housewives of America" that Biden will "destroy" the suburbs by allowing more low-income housing. If a majority of working-class and Christian white America responds to Trump's openly racist appeals when they represent a little more than 40 percent of the population, as they do today, there's little to suggest they will be less responsive to such arguments as their share falls into the 30s, as it will inexorably within a few years.

I really like it.  So much I'm really thinking of doing a similar one for my house.  With colors more native to my area.

Foreign Affairs: "Since 2007, there has been a remarkably sharp trend away from religion. In virtually every high-income country, religion has continued to decline. At the same time, many poor countries, together with most of the former communist states, have also become less religious. From 2007 to 2019, only five countries became more religious, whereas the vast majority of the countries studied moved in the opposite direction."

"The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world's more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans' mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline."

"Our country has seen difficult times before, but the White House and the Rose Garden have always stood as a symbol of our strength, resilience and continuity."

New York Attorney General Investigating Trump's Business

August 24, 2020 at 1:52 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) "is investigating President Trump's private business for allegedly misleading lenders by inflating the value of its assets," the Washington Post reports.

The New York Times reports the office has asked a judge to order Eric Trump to provide testimony under oath and the Trump Organization to hand over documents about four Trump properties it is investigating.

California's Supreme Court on Monday reversed the death sentence handed down to Scott Peterson for the 2002 deaths of his wife Laci and unborn son.
The high court found that the trial itself was fair and the murder convictions stand.

"In deciding whether to seek a new death sentence, the question for prosecutors now is whether they can prove Mr. Peterson culpable for this crime to even a single juror seated through a fair jury selection process."

John Goold, spokesperson for the Stanislaus County District Attorney's Office, said, "We are reviewing the decision and will discuss with the victim's family."
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on the death penalty in California. The moratorium is only in effect while Newsom is in office.

Manhattan's top prosecutor on Monday agreed to delay enforcement of a subpoena for eight years of President Trump's tax returns.

Cyrus Vance Jr., the Democratic district attorney for Manhattan, had the legal right as of this Friday to enforce a New York grand jury subpoena to obtain a lengthy financial paper trail that includes Trump's corporate and personal tax records.

But Vance has agreed to temporarily shelve the subpoena against Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA. The delay allows for another round of litigation, extending the nearly yearlong court battle over the subpoena in which Trump has lost every bout, including a landmark decision last month at the Supreme Court.

The deal between the Manhattan district attorney's office and Trump's lawyers comes after a federal district judge in New York last week denied Trump's latest bid to invalidate the subpoena.

Miles Taylor and Elizabeth Neumann, former senior DHS officials who served in the Trump administration, have started a group of Republicans "who work or have worked for Trump but want to elect Biden and reform the Republican Party," Politico reports.

"So far, two current senior administration officials have anonymously signed on to the effort and one of them has preliminary plans to reveal their identity closer to the election and expects to get fired as a result..."

"The person also said the group is preparing another `bombshell' to be revealed as soon as Tuesday but didn't get into any more detail when pressed."

NBA players decide to sit out all of Wednesday's playoff games -- after the shooting of Jacob Blake
Published: Aug. 26, 2020 at 5:29 p.m. ET
By Weston Blasi

NBA players have called for an emergency meeting to determine next steps

President Trump is shifting his focus from the U.S. Postal Service in his concerns about potential fraud in mail-in voting, claiming problems with mailed ballots lie with local elections officials who are "going to count them wrong," NBC News reports.

Said Trump: "It's not the post office ... it has nothing to do with the post office."

He added: "The problem is when they dump all these ballots in front of a few people who are counting them, and they're going to count them wrong. The post office is not to blame."