James.galbraith

Without further disaster relief, there will a significant housing and financial issue.

From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 87.6 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of July 13

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 87.6 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by July 13 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.

This is a 2.5-percentage point decrease from the share who paid rent through July 13, 2019 and compares to 89.0 percent that had paid by June 13, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.

“The government support, including unemployment benefits, that has proven so important to so many apartment residents expires at the end of the month,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President. “Lawmakers need to continue to protect the individuals and families that call an apartment home. If action isn’t taken now we risk making the nation’s housing affordability challenges far worse, rolling back the initial economic recovery and putting tens of millions at risk of greater health and financial distress.”
emphasis added

CR Note: It appears fewer people are paying their rent compared to last year (down 2.5 percentage points from a year ago).   In the previous surveys, over the last few months, people were paying their rents at about the same pace as last year.   The disaster relief has been key to helping people pay their bills, especially the extra unemployment benefits and the PPP.

More than one million people have given up smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, a survey for charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) suggests. From a report: Of those who had quit in the previous four months, 41% said it was in direct response to coronavirus. Separately, University College London (UCL) found more people quit smoking in the year to June 2020 than in any year since its survey began in 2007. Government advice says smokers may be at risk of more severe Covid symptoms. Between 15 April and 20 June, a representative sample of 10,000 people, enrolled by pollster YouGov on behalf of Ash, were asked about their smoking habits. The results were used to estimate the total number of people giving up smoking in the UK. Just under half of people who had quit in the past four months said the pandemic had played a role in their decision. That may have been down to a range of factors including health concerns, access to tobacco while isolating or no longer smoking socially. A team at University College London has been asking 1,000 people a month in England about their smoking habits since 2007 as part of the Smoking Toolkit Study.

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Activists participate in a rally at the Reflecting Pool of the US Capitol April 10, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany listed off three key LGBTQ policies, but a closer look tells a different story.

During a Monday press briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked whether the administration would consider lifting the transgender military ban that President Donald Trump first tweeted about three years ago this month.

But instead of answering the question directly, McEnany deferred, saying the administration is “proud” of its LGBTQ record and listed off several White House initiatives for gay rights, namely a pledge to decriminalize homosexuality globally, a change to the ban on gay men donating blood, and a pledge to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030.

None of those policies have anything to do with the transgender military ban, and only one of them, ending the AIDS epidemic, is related to trans people.

One of the few policy wins transgender people have secured in the past three years came thanks not to the White House, but to the Supreme Court. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Court ruled that employment discrimination against LGBTQ people is sex discrimination.

“It will be extremely helpful to our legal challenge for the trans military ban because it unequivocally supports and validates the main claim that we are making in those cases, which is that the ban discriminate based on sex,” Shannon Minter, an attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (which brought a suit against the ban), told Vox. “I’m not sure people fully appreciate the scope of the victory in Bostock; it goes far beyond Title VII.”

More than 110 Democratic lawmakers wrote to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General Bill Barr last Wednesday asking them to lift the trans military ban, citing that decision. “This policy is an attack on transgender service members who are risking their lives to serve our country and it should be reversed immediately,” the letter stated.

And despite what McEnany said about the administration’s record, it has rolled back numerous trans-specific and LGBTQ-related policies since taking office in January 2017 — on issues ranging from how to treat trans students to rolling back LGBTQ health care protections. And even those McEnany touted by name are being actively undermined by other administration actions.

“Trump has continuously sought to undermine LGBTQ rights and to suggest otherwise is simply wrong,” Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told Vox in a statement.

Trump’s “pro-LGBTQ” polices aren’t what they seem

In his 2019 State of the Union speech, Trump announced a new initiative to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the US by 2030. Like many of the pro-LGBTQ policies McEnany cited, it sounds impressive when taken on its own — but to those actually doing the work on these issues, Trump’s promises ring hollow.

Though details were vague early on, some HIV activists raised eyebrows at the late target date of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which matched that of the United Nations for ending the epidemic worldwide — including in the hardest-hit regions like sub-Saharan Africa. US activists thought it could be achieved here much earlier.

“In 2018, in anticipation of a federal initiative coming out, we put together a community-led road map to talk about what it would take to end HIV as an epidemic, [and] we’ve been talking for a long time from the angle of ending it by 2025, as opposed to 2030,” Jeremiah Johnson, HIV project manager at Treatment Action Group in New York City, told Vox.

Johnson drew a comparison between the administration’s effort and that of Australia, which has massively scaled up access to PrEP, a drug that prevents transmission of HIV, for vulnerable populations — a key step to reaching any eradication goal. “We could start to see dramatic reductions and new infections right now, but we lack a national plan for scale-up of prep and comprehensive HIV prevention,” he said. “While this initiative talks generally about certain pillars and a target, we don’t have a pathway on how to get to massive scale-up. So the concern for our coalition has also that this is going to be rhetoric without substance.”

McEnany also named the pledge to fight the criminalization of homosexuality by foreign countries — something that no previous Republican administration had committed to. Implementation of that pledge, however, has been spotty at best, advocates say.

“Under the Obama administration, the US was really playing a leadership role, not on one particular human right of LGBTQ people, but on the concept that LGBT people are entitled to the same human rights as everyone else,” said Ryan Thoreson, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “I’m worried that under the Trump administration, we’ve seen more of a narrow commitment to serve. A real retreat from the broad panoply of LGBT human rights, both at home and abroad.”

Thoreson noted that the Trump administration has used the initiative to crack down on countries it considers enemies, like Iran, while overlooking that same commitment as it cozies up to homophobic regimes in places like Poland, Hungary, and Brazil. “They haven’t really used their power in a visible, obvious way to really urge allies to do better on LGBT rights,” said Thoreson.

The administration has attacked queer and trans rights nearly from day one

Almost immediately after Trump took office in 2017, the administration rolled back an Obama-era memo directing schools to protect trans students from discrimination. Then that July, Trump announced he would order the military to ban trans people from serving. The administration went after trans prisoners as well in May 2018, deciding that in most cases, trans people should be housed according to their assigned sex at birth.

Just two weeks ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a rule allowing homeless shelters to house trans people according to their birth-assigned sex.

Perhaps most critical was the administration’s attack on LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act, finalized in a new rule on June 12. That rule, said Johnson, threatens the administration’s HIV eradication goal.

“It’s impossible to delink [HIV prevention] from a commitment to human rights and uplifting the most marginalized communities in your society,” he said. “You cannot attack on all levels the life, liberty, property, and happiness of a community, and anticipate that you can actually address health care disparities in that community. Nor can you say that you are actually upholding your democratic American responsibility.”

When someone is uninsured or is afraid of being discriminated against by doctors, they are less likely to get the care they need, and that care is crucial to preventing the spread of HIV. Trans people, especially trans women, are especially at risk of contracting the virus. If doctors and insurance companies are able to deny care to trans women, HIV prevention efforts suffer.

It’s clear that despite McEnany’s declarations otherwise, policy, not rhetoric, tells the story of the Trump administration’s support for LGBTQ rights.

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Hospitals have been ordered to send their data on COVID-19 infections to the White House instead of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in an alarming move that reeks of a cover-up.

The NYT reports: “The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic. … News of the change came as a shock at the C.D.C., according to two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.”

The post Hospitals Ordered to Send COVID-19 Data to White House and Not CDC, Sparking Fears of Cover-Up appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump gave the first interview about her new tell-all book to ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

“This is not what he signed up for, if he even knows what he signed up for,” said Mary to Stephanopoulos. Asked what she’d say to him if she were in the Oval Office today, Mary replied, “resign.”

EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos: "If you're in the Oval Office today, what would you tell [Pres. Trump]?"

Mary Trump: “Resign.”

Watch more from the interview on @GMA tomorrow: https://t.co/iYAFbQKZm0 pic.twitter.com/AaBcTwcqhz

— ABC News (@ABC) July 15, 2020

Mary Trump told Stephanopoulos, “He is utterly incapable of leading this country, and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so. Based on what I have seen my entire adult life.”

Mary talked about watching Trump throughout her life: “I saw firsthand what focusing on the wrong things, elevating the wrong people can do — the collateral damage that can be created by allowing somebody to live their lives without accountability. And it is striking to see that continuing now on a much grander scale.”

The post Mary Trump Calls on President to ‘Resign’ in First Interview About New Book: ‘He is Utterly Incapable of Leading This Country’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

CDC Director Robert Redfield said the coronavirus curve could be flattened in the U.S. if everyone wore a mask for two months.

Said Redfield, in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner “The time is now. I think if we could get everybody to wear a mask right now I think in four, six, eight weeks we could bring this epidemic under control. I think we’re being very clear now. Now’s the time to wear a mask.”

The CDC published a new study on Tuesday after examining the case of two hairstylists in Missouri (Towleroad reported on it here) who exposed dozens of clients to coronavirus, none of whom got infected.

The study’s results led to the new recommendations, which are also endorsed by the World Health Organization: “With the potential for presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission, widespread adoption of policies requiring face coverings in public settings should be considered to reduce the impact and magnitude of additional waves of COVID-19.”

The L.A. Times also published an article on Tuesday backing up the CDC’s thinking: “There’s a common refrain that masks don’t protect you; they protect other people from your own germs, which is especially important to keep unknowingly infected people from spreading the coronavirus.  But now, there’s mounting evidence that masks also protect you.”

The thinking is that masking prevents you from taking in a larger amount of particles than you would without it: “Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or far more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death.”

The post CDC Director Robert Redfield: COVID-19 Would Be Under Control in Two Months if Everyone Wore Masks — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Donald Trump’s ability, along with the rest of his Republican Party, to scare the traditionally more conservative senior demographic in our country to vote against their best interests has been waning. This has happened in no small part due to his abject incompetence and the increasingly apocalyptic world conditions that have been created by the Republican-led government. One of the greatest issues facing conservatives is that the COVID-19 pandemic, our response, and our continuing failures, are fundamentally baked into the Republican Party’s ideology. 

This means that even after the Trump administration failed to prevent the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus to U.S. shores, and even after the Trump administration failed to retain and provide the much needed, and essential, stockpiles of protective equipment and medical supplies, and even after the Trump administration failed to responsibly inform the public on how best to combat this virus, conservatives continue to get everything wrong. Politico reports on one such policy move, where the Trump administration, using the disaster-level domestic problem of COVID-19, waived federal rules that required nurse’s aides to receive at least 75 hours of training before being hired to help in places like nursing homes. Instead, one need only complete an eight-hour online “training program,” to get the new, and poorly salaried position of “temporary nurse aide.”

Critics of this move point out that not only is this something that nursing home industry lobbyists wanted for the purpose of union busting and higher profit margins, with almost half of COVID-19 related deaths in the U.S. connected to nursing home staff and residents, the results have not been good for anyone. Jesse Martin, vice president of the SEIU in Connecticut, told Politico that the excuse of needing more nursing home staff is meaningless if training is lacking. “You have PPE, you have infection control procedures. Putting someone brand new into the care setting with Covid is a recipe for disaster."

Politico explains that on top of it all, the eight-hour training and test program is a joke, easily gamed by looking online for answers. According to the news outlet it took one of their reporters “less than 40 minutes,” to receive their temporary nurse’s certificate. States accepting this current 8-hour training program include Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia. And according to the American Health Care Association (AHCA)—that provides the training—Alabama, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia accept the training but “Additional training or other actions may be required.” Politico reports that the “additional” requirements in many of those states do not mean much in the way of training.

A spokesperson for the AHCA tried to hide behind the very dangerous work that many people, including those taking low pay to work as ”temporary nurses” at these facilities, saying that “We owe a debt of gratitude to any individual from any occupation who is willing to step forward and put their own lives on the line to contribute to making a difference in the lives of residents.” But the fact of the matter is that the nursing home industry has relied on underpaying staffs for decades and this has meant staff working multiple jobs “to make ends meet, which exposes them to a wider range of potential infections.”

However, after all of this is said and done, whether or not these widespread waivers to the nursing home industry are helpful or not, the problem our country is facing is systemic. There are not enough trained staff to properly care for the most vulnerable members of our community. This is an issue that existed before COVID-19, has become exacerbated by the pandemic, and will remain well after the worst of the virus has passed. Using nursing homes as hospitals is a symptom of our country’s weak infrastructure, and creating waivers to make it easer to hide deaths is what monsters do. 

Instead of conceding under the guise of a very real emergency, the Trump administration and other conservatives have leaned into its misanthropic brand and seems to believe that the quicker they can kill or incapacitate the oldest members of our country, the better off their chances will be in November.

America's conservatives want to kill off your post office. This is not exactly new news, but under Donald Trump's feckless and bumbling rule, they are coming closer than ever to doing it. Trump's new postmaster general, campaign donor rich-guy Louis DeJoy, is wasting no time making changes in the name of "efficiency." Coincidentally, efficiency means making service worse.

DeJoy's changes reach down into the day-to-day of how the U.S. Postal Service actually delivers mail, reports The Washington Post. DeJoy's new rules bar overtime, period, even if offices are short-staffed (due, say, to a pandemic). He also instructs that mail should henceforth be left in distribution centers for the next day if those centers "run late," rather than delaying letter carriers from leaving at their appointed times to conduct their routes. It sounds harmless enough, but extended nationwide, that small change has big implications for service.

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Some watchdog groups and elected officials, in fact, are pretty certain that the moves are indeed designed to sabotage Postal Service competitiveness and survival.

Most obviously, DeJoy’s biggest change means that during busier-than-normal times—or even just odd times—packages may start arriving a day late. While this may make the service more "efficient" in its scheduling, it also makes the Postal Service slightly less competitive against the package delivery services that compete with it—especially coupled with a potential rate hike in the coming year. It may be a small change, but making the Postal Service slightly less reliable and significantly more expensive than it was before will assuredly cause some number of customers to switch from it to private competitors. (The federal service is already at a disadvantage because it is required to deliver nationwide while its private competitors can and do simply ignore unprofitable, sparsely populated areas.)

A bigger current problem, however, is DeJoy's instruction to make this change at this precise moment in time. Despite the Trump administration getting bored with it and moving on to other things, we remain in the midst of a pandemic. Public gatherings are extremely dangerous during a pandemic, meaning that literally every place in America not governed by nihilistic imbeciles is encouraging voters to vote by mail. Those registration forms, sample ballots, and ballots will be going out, en masse, to post offices. Which, if they get too busy, are now instructed to just let each them sit for a day.

It's not that the move is explicitly designed to inconvenience state efforts to hold by-mail elections, of course. The new postmaster general would never be so petty. But it does seem a serendipitous coincidence.

Speaking of not being petty, the new chief also keeps every letter carrier in America from parking more than four times during their routes to walk between houses, because the practice is being "abused" and "taken advantage of" by mail carriers who ... um ... walk too much? Nope, no pettiness here. Just streamlined, ruthless, gas-guzzling efficiency. (By the end of a second term of a Trump administration, we can expect all post office trucks to "roll coal" for our freedoms.)

So no overtime (during a pandemic), no delaying routes to collect all of the day's mail before heading out, no route repeats to deliver late-arriving packages, and no walking to places you could drive to. The Trump-run post office will be taking the nation's most popular government service and making it worse and less reliable (during a freaking pandemic) in the name of an "efficiency" that the service did not adopt before because past leadership did not think the upsides outweighed the downsides.

Oh, boy.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose patience for abuse from Donald Trump apparently has no limit, called for the Republican Party to bow down to the president following his defeat in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary in Alabama to Tommy Tuberville.

Said Sessions: “Let me say this about the president and our relationship. I leave with no regrets. I was honored to serve the people of Alabama in the Senate and I was extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments we had as attorney general… I followed the law, I did the right thing, and I saved the president’s bacon in the process. I took the road less traveled, didn’t try to excuse myself or get in a fight or undermine the leader of our country and the great work he has to do. …. I think it’s time for this Republican Party to listen to the Donald Trump agenda.”

Meanwhile, Trump celebrated Sessions’ defeat.

Wow, just called! @TTuberville – Tommy Tuberville WON big against Jeff Sessions. Will be a GREAT Senator for the incredible people of Alabama. @DougJones is a terrible Senator who is just a Super Liberal puppet for Schumer & Pelosi. Represents Alabama poorly. On to November 3rd.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2020

A GREAT WIN! https://t.co/hw0t6KbI0M

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2020

But Trump did not dig into Sessions with the kind of attacks he launched during the primary, as the NYT noted back in November: “Mr. Trump relentlessly attacked Mr. Sessions both in public and in private, calling him ‘scared stiff’ and his leadership ‘a total joke,’ among other insults, ultimately forcing him to resign. By choosing to run for office now, Mr. Sessions risks reigniting attacks from his former boss, who could undermine his standing among the Republican voters he needs to win next year’s crowded primary election on March 3. Mr. Trump, for his part, continues to blame Mr. Sessions for the two-year Russia probe, and last weekend he repeatedly denounced Mr. Sessions, saying he was a ‘jerk’ and making it clear Mr. Sessions would not have his support, according to a person briefed on the discussions.”

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The Trump administration is now ordering hospitals to send coronavirus patient data to a database in Washington, DC as part of a new initiative that may bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a report from The New York Times published on Tuesday. The Verge reports: As outlined in a document (PDF) posted to the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), hospitals are being ordered to send data directly to the administration, effective tomorrow, a move that has alarmed some within the CDC, according to The Times. The database that will collect and store the information is referred to in the document as HHS Protect, which was built in part by data mining and predictive analytics firm Palantir. The Silicon Valley company is known most for its controversial contract work with the US military and other clandestine government agencies as well as for being co-founded and initially funded by Trump ally Peter Thiel. "A unique link will be sent to the hospital points of contact. This will direct the [point of care] to a hospital-specific secure form that can then be used to enter the necessary information. After completing the fields, click submit and confirm that the form has been successfully captured," reads the HHS instructions. "A confirmation email will be sent to you from the HHS Protect System. This method replaces the emailing of individual spreadsheets previously requested." While the White House's official reasoning is that this plan will help make data collection on the spread of COVID-19 more centralized and efficient, some current and former public health officials fear the bypassing of the CDC may be an effort to politicize the findings and cut experts out of the loop with regard to federal messaging and guidelines, The Times reports.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Happy Maine primary day! It means we're that much closer to finally retiring Sen. Susan Collins, because after today we'll have an official Democratic challenger. One who is going to have more than $4 million waiting in escrow for her from crowdfunding campaigns conducted by grassroots groups. On top of that is over a quarter of a million raised by us, the Daily Kos community. Good job, you!

In honor of this day, let's revisit one of Collins' lesser-known hits, the "No, I have not. […] Never. No, no," lie she told Maine's People Alliance co-director Amy Halsted about having received campaign donations from the Sackler family, of getting America hooked on OxyContin fame. Senate Majority PAC also thought it was a good day to revisit that:

And no, she isn’t going to return any of those donations, even though Maine is among the top 10 states for opioid overdoses. She’s not doing Maine any favors anymore.

Your $1 contribution to Collins' eventual opponent will be delivered later this week!

Here's Joe Biden, then just plain old former vice president and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in January 2020, when asked: "[among] abolishing the Electoral College, expanding the size of the Supreme Court, setting term limits for justices, abolishing the legislative filibuster. Which, if any of these, do you support?" He said unequivocally and simply: "None." Pushed on the filibuster, he said: "Because there’s a lot of things people agree on, though you don't—there's two things. One is that there are a number of areas where you can reach consensus that relate to things like cancer and health care and a whole range of things. I think we can reach consensus on that and get it passed without changing the filibuster rule."

Biden has clearly been spending time with some current Democratic senators, including those he's been thinking about appointing as his own vice president—particularly Sen. Elizabeth Warren. On Tuesday, Biden suggested to reporters that his stance has softened. Considerably. "It's going to depend on how obstreperous they [Republicans] become," he said when asked about it this time. He did say he still thinks he can find common ground with Republicans, "[b]ut I think you're going to just have to take a look at it," he added.

The confluence of events—the coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, everything Trump has done lately—has gotten Biden thinking, obviously. "I do think we've reached a point, a real inflection in American history," he told reporters. "And I don't believe it's unlike what Roosevelt was met with. […] I think we have an opportunity to make some really systemic change." He's clearly been talking to Warren.

That he's looking at a serious transformation—big systemic change—was clear from his speech Tuesday on climate change. As Mark Sumner wrote, the speech "showed that he has fully absorbed the need for a dramatic change that would reshape both America’s energy policy and the economy. In a 20-minute address that also took time to punch Donald Trump for his failures to listen to experts in dealing with COVID-19," Sumner continued, "Biden presented the outlines of a policy that's genuinely bold, and a view of how the economy and environment are related that was aimed squarely at ending the false dichotomy between good jobs and a clean future."

This is absolutely the big thinking—Roosevelt, New Deal kind of thinking—that is required to recover from what Trump has wrought. "We won't just tinker around the edges," Biden said. "We're going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history."

That will almost certainly mean no more filibuster, because it would take a miracle for Democrats to win 13 Senate seats this November and a minor miracle for Sen. Mitch McConnell to be dislodged from his seat. As long McConnell is in the Senate and has the filibuster as a tool, we will never be able to have nice things again—none of the visions Joe Biden is clearly now having for the nation's future. It seems as though Biden is working his way to that realization, and it also seems like Warren has helped him get there.

COVID-19 has constipated the economy and prompted the U.S. Mint to cut back on coin production to keep its workers safe. As NPR's Greg Rosalsky writes, this could be a rallying cry for a long-running movement that has lost steam in recent years: Kill the penny! "With the closure of the economy, the flow of coins through the economy has ... kind of stopped," explained Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last month. Is now the time to kill the penny? From the report: Last year, almost 60% (PDF) of the coins that the U.S. Mint churned out were pennies. 60 percent. It made more than 7 billion (PDF) pennies. Seven billion. That's a lot of manpower that could be used toward making coins we actually need. The penny is basically worthless. Actually, it's worse than worthless. It costs the U.S. government about 2 cents (PDF) to produce every penny. Pennies aren't even worth our time. Wake Forest University economist Robert Whaples has calculated that the typical American worker earns a penny every two seconds. It takes most of us more than two seconds to fumble around with change or pick a penny off the ground, which explains why there are so many pennies on the ground. Money is supposed to be the medium of exchange, not dead weight. For most of U.S. history, we never had a coin as worthless as the penny is now. Back in 1857, we killed the half-cent coin -- which, when adjusted for inflation, was as valuable then as about 14 cents is today. And we did just fine. [...] The U.S. Mint lost over $72 million (PDF) making pennies last year. But there doesn't seem to be much urgency about this because in the grand scheme of the federal budget, it's just pennies. We reached out to the U.S. Mint to discuss the coin shortage, and its representative Michael White told us that after retooling to keep its employees safe during the early part of the pandemic, the U.S. Mint has been operating at full capacity since mid-June. But depressed retail activity and reduced deposits by coin processors -- like, you know, those machines at the supermarket that exchange your coins for bills -- have hampered coin circulation. Since the U.S. Mint went into overdrive to end the coin shortage, White says, about 40% of the coins that it has produced have been pennies.

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Donald J. Trump is a racist. The “J” in his name stands for “RACIST.” You can look that up. CBS News is promoting a rare new interview that the Donald gave to a non-ultra right-wing propaganda outlet this week. Speaking with reporter Catherine Herridge, the interview seems to have ranged from Trump’s unhealthy opinions and thoughts on school reopening virtually (he thinks it’s a bad idea not to throw kids into a vat of virus) to race relations in our country.

Herridge asked Trump about the unjust treatment and murder of George Floyd, which Trump has called “terrible.” When she asked Trump, “why are African Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” Trump’s response was not simply telling, it was piteously predictable. “So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question.” But Trump wasn’t done digging that stupid racist’s hole, because this wouldn’t be a Donald Trump interview if he didn’t add some kind of complete lie to his ignorant response.

Trump went on to explain: “So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people!” This may come as news to you because … it isn’t a real thing. It’s as factually accurate as saying Donald Trump is not the embodiment of corrupt narcissistic mediocrity. As many point out, while there are a lot more white folks than Black people, Black men are three and a half times more likely to be killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts. But. Let’s pretend that Donald Trump is right. Let us pretend that there is in fact no real racism, and our country’s long history of racism, specifically against Black people, ended with Barack Obama’s election to office as a secret Muslim communist revolutionary...Trump’s opinion of law enforcement is that killing American citizens willy-nilly isn’t a problem. In fact, bringing it up—specifically bringing it up in regards to racial injustice—is a ”terrible question.”

Later in the interview Trump said he was “comfortable” with the Confederate flag being waved at his rallies because "you know, it depends on what your definition is. But I am comfortable with freedom of speech. It's very simple." Of course, the peaceful protesters that were tear-gassed away from a Washington, D.C. church Trump wanted to have a lame photo op in front of might contradict Trump’s magnanimous faux-attitude towards “freedom of speech.”

Because I’m not one who tends to care about taking the high road, I would also like to point out that Donald Trump looks sweaty and weird and shitty in this interview. Just saying, the inside and the outside are really syncing up more than ever.

The U.S. farming industry may never be the same in the wake of Donald Trump's skyrocketing taxpayer-funded payments to the sector, warn policy experts and watchdog groups, according to Politico.

Trump has been shoveling cash to farmers in order to try to offset the massive hit they've taken from his ongoing trade disputes and tariff wars with China and other countries. And Trump’s cataclysmic handling of the coronavirus has only heightened farmers’ pain. But as subsidies ballooned from $11.5 billion in 2017 to $32 billion this year, experts fear weaning farmers off the government-subsidized cash cow could prove next to impossible.

Worse yet, the payments have flooded out with almost zero oversight from Congress. Instead, the Agriculture Department has just been left to its own devices in terms of deciding where to direct the taxpayer aid. Naturally, Trump has capitalized on the glut to endear himself to farmers—voters he can't afford to alienate in the heartland. In a January tweet, Trump said he hoped the "massive" subsidies would be "the thing [farmers] will most remember" about him helping them "get through tough times." Trump failed to mention that he was also personally responsible for helping to create said "tough times." 

“It’s a big problem for agriculture because it’s not sustainable,” Anne Schechinger, senior economics analyst at the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group, told Politico. “It’s really difficult once you’re giving farmers this much money to then take away those [payments].”

The money was never actually appropriated by Congress and has instead been administered through the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation, which can borrow money directly from the U.S. Treasury to help farmers.

“It’s just, ‘Here’s your check," says Neil Hamilton, emeritus professor and former director of Drake University’s Agricultural Law Center. "It’s your and my tax money. It’s not a crazy idea to ask what the public’s getting from this, or could the public expect more for it.”

Not crazy except in the Trump swamp, where taxpayer money is no object in pursuit of bribing farmers' for their votes.

Early on in the presidential primary, Joe Biden seemed to be solidly middle-of-the-road on almost every issue. That was certainly true of the environment. In a race where Gov. Jay Inslee had made climate change his central issue, and where Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were both pushing comprehensive environmental plans related to the Green New Deal, Biden’s early positions seemed somewhat reserved.

But the speech that Joe Biden delivered on Tuesday showed that he has fully absorbed the need for a dramatic change that would reshape both America’s energy policy and the economy. In a 20-minute address that also took time to punch Donald Trump for his failures to listen to experts in dealing with COVID-19, Biden presented the outlines of a policy that’s genuinely bold, and a view of how the economy and environment are related that was aimed squarely at ending the false dichotomy between good jobs and a clean future.

Those watching only to hear the magic number might have been disappointed that Biden’s plan only promised to put the U.S. on a road to fully renewable energy by 2050. However, Biden laid out a lot of landmarks along that road, declaring that the U.S. would not just rejoin the Paris Agreement, but be a leader in the next round of talks. In the language that he used, Biden touched on familiar themes from the Green New Deal and made it clear that he was done with tentative approaches. In the midst of one crisis, Biden was still willing to present climate change as a truly existential crisis that must be forcefully addressed.

Biden focused on not just replacing Donald Trump’s executive orders with his own, but on building a plan into law, and into the fabric of the country, so that it would create “irreversible” progress. Best of all, Biden did an excellent job of making his speech about the opportunities it will create to move people from dying industries into the jobs of the future.

Amazingly, Biden’s speech was carried live on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox. 

He has laid waste to our country, and he's not done yet. We should never stop being angry at him.

[Online-only and hybrid students' visa status safe (at least for now)]

The federal government's July 6 Directive announcing a change to student visa rules, which imperiled the status of online-only and hybrid international students, is being rescinded after much protest and multiple lawsuits by universities and states. The news was announced a few minutes ago at a hearing for the lawsuit by Harvard and MIT, which had been followed by lawsuits initiated by California and seventeen other states. This moots the TRO motion by Harvard/MIT and should conclude these various proceedings.

I do not have any further information at this time as to what led to the government's decision, so we are left to speculate about whether public pressure and/or the likelihood of another judicial defeat for the Trump Administration motivated it. In any case, it was the right call and hopefully puts the issue to rest for some time–ideally until COVID-19 is no longer a danger to public health.

AMD finally brings a workstation-class -- in other words, security-conscious -- processor to challenge the Intel Xeon on the desktop with its Ryzen Threadripper Pro. With up to 64 cores, the pro version of AMD's multicore powerhouse Threadripper processors incorporates essentials like support for massive amounts of memory and board-level security, critical for uses which move a ton of sensitive data, ranging from aerospace visualization to Hollywood video editing and CGI rendering. The CPU debuts in Lenovo's ThinkStation P620; Lenovo has a limited exclusive on the processor. From a report: The CPU comes in four variants: 3945WX (12 cores, with the fastest single-core speeds), 3955WX (16 cores), 3975WX (32 cores) and 3995WX (64 cores). At the moment, to achieve core counts that high with the Intel Xeon, you have to use multiple CPUs. They all come with some of the perks of AMD's architecture, including support for PCI Gen4 -- in this case, up to 128 lanes. And the Pro versions add support for more types of memory, notably RDIMM and LRDIMM, over the high-end consumer-focused Threadripper, plus 8 memory channels vs. 4, which lets it support up to 2TB of memory. On the downside, while AMD supports faster internal transfers than Intel via PCI 4, it doesn't offer any high-speed external data transfer capabilities a la Thunderbolt 3. And in fact, the ThinkStation P620's fastest connections are USB 3.2 Gen 2 and 10Gb Ethernet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Grant Imahara, an electrical engineer and roboticist who hosted the popular science show MythBusters and Netflix's White Rabbit Project, has died suddenly following a brain aneurysm. He was 49. From The Hollywood Reporter: An electrical engineer and roboticist by training, he joined Discovery's MythBusters in its third season, replacing Scottie Chapman and was with the show until 2014 when he left with with co-hosts Kari Byron and Tory Belleci. The trio would reunite in 2016 for Netflix's White Rabbit Project which lasted for one season. On MythBusters, Imahara used his technical expertise to design and build robots for the show and also operated the computers and electronics needed to test myths. Born in Los Angeles, Imahara studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California (though he briefly had doubts and wanted to become a screenwriter) before combining the two passions and landing a post-graduation gig at Lucasfilm-associated THX labs. In his nine years at Lucasfilm, he worked for the company's THX and Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) divisions. In his years at ILM he became chief model maker specializing in animatronics and worked on George Lucas' Star Wars prequels, as well as The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Galaxy Quest, XXX: State of the Union, Van Helsing, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. [...] Imahara also starred in several episodes of the fan-made web series Star Trek Continues. He played Hikaru Sulu, a lieutenant, helmsman and third officer on the USS Enterprise, in the show that was an unofficial continuation of Star Trek: The Original Series. "We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant. He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family," a representative for Discovery said in a statement on Monday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We can't switch it back on like a light; we're now facing profound, long-term problems

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Kids fantasize about food. Young people fantasize about sex. Adults fantasize about time.

Today's News:

Five officers are seen wrestling a black man to the ground in a video filmed on Jenkinson’s Boardwalk at Point Pleasant Beach in New Jersey on Sunday. The witness who filmed the incident said the police surrounded him and pinned him to the ground because he had an open beer.

Wrote the woman, who identifies herself as Nia, on Instagram: “During times like these it’s so important that we all look out for each other and help one another identify SAFE and UNSAFE spaces for us. Yesterday my family & I tried to go to Point Pleasant Beach & were met with so much hostility & resistance. First, upon our arrival we were told we wouldn’t be allowed on the beach without wristbands, but that wristbands were done being sold for the day, so we’d have to just leave. We drove over an hour to get there so naturally, I walked on the beach anyway. Immediately a frantic Karen was sent after me, screaming at me that I needed to get off the sand, saying she was calling security and begins describing me into her walkie talkie.”

“Instead of escalating it, I just walked off the beach,” Nia continued. “We decided we would grab food and then head to a different beach. While waiting for our food we watched 5 cops surround one man and talk to him for what seemed like an extended period of time. They stopped him for publicly drinking. One had a ticket book out & I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just write him a ticket and send him on his way. After about 15 minutes of him being surrounded, he finally tells them he’s just trying to get home, and they begin to use excessive force and now say he’s resisting arrest. Without actually having a reason to arrest him, when all they really had to do was issue him a ticket.”

“THEN we head to our car just attempting to get OUT of there, and two more cops stop us literally 10 feet from our vehicle. One of us was holding a beer (the same reason the man got stopped earlier), so they ask for his ID and name and try to run his information. When nothing comes up for him, they call at least 6 more backup cops, though we’re literally feet from our car and all we want to do is leave peacefully. I can’t help but think the way our situation could have been identical to what happened to the man before us, seeing as how we were stopped for the same reason. The amount of police presence on that beach was INSANE, in the hour we were there I saw at least 25 cops, all strapped, all looking for something to make their day more interesting. #BOYCOTTPOINTPLEASANT as it is not safe for us there.”

View this post on Instagram

Good morning y’all. During times like these it’s so important that we all look out for each other and help one another identify SAFE and UNSAFE spaces for us. Yesterday my family & I tried to go to Point Pleasant Beach & were met with so much hostility & resistance. First, upon our arrival we were told we wouldn’t be allowed on the beach without wristbands, but that wristbands were done being sold for the day, so we’d have to just leave. We drove over an hour to get there so naturally, I walked on the beach anyway. Immediately a frantic Karen was sent after me, screaming at me that I needed to get off the sand, saying she was calling security and begins describing me into her walkie talkie. Instead of escalating it, I just walked off the beach. We decided we would grab food and then head to a different beach. While waiting for our food we watched 5 cops surround one man and talk to him for what seemed like an extended period of time. They stopped him for publicly drinking. One had a ticket book out & I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just write him a ticket and send him on his way. After about 15 minutes of him being surrounded, he finally tells them he’s just trying to get home, and they begin to use excessive force and now say he’s resisting arrest. Without actually having a reason to arrest him, when all they really had to do was issue him a ticket. THEN we head to our car just attempting to get OUT of there, and two more cops stop us literally 10 feet from our vehicle. One of us was holding a beer (the same reason the man got stopped earlier), so they ask for his ID and name and try to run his information. When nothing comes up for him, they call at least 6 more backup cops, though we’re literally feet from our car and all we want to do is leave peacefully. I can’t help but think the way our situation could have been identical to what happened to the man before us, seeing as how we were stopped for the same reason. The amount of police presence on that beach was INSANE, in the hour we were there I saw at least 25 cops, all strapped, all looking for something to make their day more interesting. #BOYCOTTPOINTPLEASANT as it is not safe for us there.

A post shared by Nia (@niaupenda) on Jul 13, 2020 at 6:40am PDT

This is her personal explanation of what occurred. Please repost and share this post!! This cannot keep going on! #BOYCOTTPOINTPLEASANT pic.twitter.com/GcIPckR5qD

— Justice Jená (@IamJusticeJena) July 13, 2020

The post Five Officers Wrestle Black Man to the Ground at NJ Beach, Allegedly Over Open Beer: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Trump appears incapable of showing basic humanity. Biden's ads show another way.

A brutal new ad from the activist filmmaking group Meidas Touch uses Donald Trump Jr’s attack on Joe Biden and his family to expose the Trump family’s “hypocrisy, stupidity, and nepostism.”

You may recall Meidas Touch’s ads that savaged Ivanka Trump’s commencement speech, and Republican cowardice of Trump.

NEW VIDEO

Enough hypocrisy, stupidity, and nepotism.

We need 5,000 retweets in the first thirty minutes on this.#ByeDonJr pic.twitter.com/Z3gRxKqK2g

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) July 14, 2020

Said Meidas Touch in a statement: “The Trump children, propped up in this regime by the bizarre and shameless nepotism seen in banana republic dictatorships, represents the blend of incompetence, entitlement and cringeworthy hypocrisy that has propelled America into disaster we are now in under Trump.”

The post Brutal New Clip Uses Donald Jr’s Attack on Joe Biden to Expose Trump Family’s Hypocrisy and Nepotism: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.