Friday - Hurricane Bill, Bill Barr, & a Texas Bill. Yikes!

US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 304 Million Shots


Half of eligible people fully vaccinated


CALIFORNIA 


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What's Your Deal?

While the group didn't publicly reveal specifics of the agreement, several sources tell CNN they crafted a package that includes:

$1.2 trillion of spending over eight years

$974 billion spent over the first five years

The plan calls for $579 billion dollars of new spending.

The spending will be focused on core, physical infrastructure.

The plan will be paid for without tax hikes.

Many of the specific details still need to be ironed out.




Is There Really a Deal?

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said talks are "in the middle stages" but that there wouldn't be a deal Thursday. Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said there was no agreement but "we might" get there
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Nearman is Out, Man

State Rep. Mike Nearman became the first person ever expelled from the Oregon Legislature on Thursday, following revelations he helped plan an armed incursion in the state Capitol late last year.

The Oregon state representative who faced backlash after a video surfaced of him appearing to tell protesters how to get access to the closed state Capitol has been expelled from the Oregon House of Representatives.

Rep. Mike Nearman, a Republican, was expelled from the legislative body on Thursday night with a bipartisan vote of 59-1 on House Resolution 3, a press release from House Speaker Tina Kotek said. Nearman was the only no vote.

According to the resolution, Nearman "engaged in disorderly behavior" during a special session held on December 21. It also outlines findings from an independent investigator who found that Nearman "intentionally aided demonstrators in breaching Capitol security and gaining unauthorized access to the Capitol, leading to injury and property destruction."
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Who is Going to Take a Storm Named "Bill" Seriously?

If this storm happens to get a name, it will be called Bill. We already had Ana, which formed near Bermuda on May 22.
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Why Would the Senate Vote on Bills That Won't Pass?

Senate Democrats — many of whom support a change to the filibuster — are building the case for getting rid of the rule, in an effort to change the minds of their colleagues who want to keep it.

A vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act this week marked the latest development in this process, which will soon include votes on a series of other Democratic priorities that will likely fail. These votes are intended to demonstrate Democrats’ commitment to issues like voting rights protections and gun control, while underscoring how willing Republicans are to obstruct these policies.

As bill after bill gets blocked by Republican filibusters, Democrats who want to eliminate the rule hope to bolster their argument for a change they could make unilaterally, given the party’s narrow majority in the Senate.

It Also Puts QOPer's on the Record as Voting Against Popular Stuff
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Could the Loser Lead to More Losing?

Nowhere was that more evident than at last weekend's state GOP convention in North Carolina, where Trump delivered his first political speech in months. Shortly after a straw poll showing attendees favored former Rep. Mark Walker to run for the state's open Senate seat, Trump hopped up on stage and endorsed hard-right Rep. Ted Budd in the race.

“A lot of you don’t know him well,” Trump said as he called Budd up to the stage. “He will fight like hell. He will fight like nobody fights.”

The surprise announcement left Walker and another top Republican contender, former Gov. Pat McCrory, scrambling to shrug off Trump's endorsement as inconsequential. It's also caused a round of finger pointing in the state party, with McCrory blaming former North Carolina Congressman and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows for lining up the endorsement. But worse yet, Trump's meddling in state matters could saddle the GOP with hard-right candidate who's a far weaker general election candidate than either Walker or McCrory.

“We can’t let this guy pick our candidates if we want to be in the Senate majority,” one senior Republican strategist told the National Journal.
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Keystone Bites the Dust



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"How Did This Get Into the Bill I Wrote?"




This Bill is Scarier than Hurricane Bill
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There Are Still People Dying of COVID

In turn, younger populations began to make up higher shares of Covid-19 deaths compared with their shares at the peak of the pandemic — a trend that continued when vaccine eligibility opened up to all adults. While the number of deaths dropped in all age groups, about half of Covid-19 deaths are now of people aged 50 to 74, compared with only a third in December.

The remaining deaths are mainly driven by those who have yet to be vaccinated, Dr. Kuppalli said, describing two main groups within this population: those who choose to not get vaccinated because of misinformation and politicization around the vaccine, and those who remain unvaccinated because of other factors, including access.
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A Model of the 2022 Election

The raw number of seats both parties are defending: In Abramowitz's model, he sets that at 222 Democratic House seats (out of 435) and 14 Senate seats (out of 34 up in 2022).

Depending then on which side has the edge in the generic ballot, Abramowitz's model spits out a variety of outcomes.

The rosiest for Democrats (a 10-point lead in the generic ballot in the fall of 2022) would result in a gain of two seats for House Democrats and a three-seat pickup for Senate Democrats.

The worst scenario (a 10-point edge for Republicans in the generic ballot) would, according to the Abramowitz model, result in a 32-seat loss by Democrats in the House and a 1-seat loss in the Senate.

(Worth noting: A Quinnipiac University national poll in May gave Democrats a 9-point advantage in the generic ballot.)

"Despite their extremely narrow majorities, the forecasts ... show that Democrats have a reasonable chance of keeping control of both chambers in the midterm elections if they maintain at least a narrow lead on the generic ballot," concludes Abramowitz.
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Would You Like a Little Aluminum in Your Battery?

News stories have been hitting sites for a few weeks now that a new battery tech is about to hit the markets for small-scale consumer testing (later this year or early next year) that could be a game-changer in many ways in our battery tech, including for electric vehicles.

The batteries, which are aluminum-ion batteries, incorporate a graphene structure into the battery structure. I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and out of the science, but here are the claims for it — and Graphene Manufacturing Group out of Brisbane is ready to hit the market (on a small scale test market) with its first batteries perhaps as soon as later this year.

-- 3x the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. The flip side of this is they are also about 3x heavier, so while you can pack more energy in a smaller package, the weight is going to remain about the same.

-- Charging is 20-60x faster than lithium batteries. A “coin” battery, for example, can be fully charged in less than 10 seconds, while a cell phone battery could be fully charged in less than five minutes. An electric vehicle could easily be topped off in minutes as well, making “refueling” stops not so different to stopping for gas now. Worst case, maybe you catch lunch or dinner while your vehicle recharges.

-- No overheating issues. GMG’s managing director notes that lithium-ion batteries are prone to overheating when charging or discharging at rapid rates and EV’s require cooling systems to deal with that. So far, these aluminum-ion batteries have shown no sign of such thermal issues, which in turn means space and weight saved on cooling systems that can instead be used for — more batteries and thus, more range!

-- The coin batteries have been cycled 2,000 recharge cycles with no loss in performance. If this holds true for larger batteries, another huge leap. Lithium batteries begin to lose performance after a few hundred charge cycles, losing about 20% of their capacity after 1,000 cycles. If these new batteries are experiencing no appreciable performance loss after 2,000 cycles, suddenly we have batteries that could last for many years.

-- Aluminum is abundant and the materials in these batteries are recyclable.

Ok, so what are the downsides?  Although early models are slated to hit the test consumer market soon, time will tell how viable they actually are in the real world.

-- Cost. These are likely to be more expensive than current lithium batteries, though it’s unclear exactly where the price is going to land. As with many new technologies, if these batteries pan out I expect prices will fall as production kinks are worked out and the tech becomes more widespread. Even with higher cost, the advantages would seem to be worth a bit of a price bite. Also, lithium prices have been rising, while of course aluminum is an abundant, and comparatively cheap, material.

-- That super-fast charging can be a double-edge sword. For charging a cell phone or a laptop, probably not a big deal, but an EV is a different matter. Super fast charging of a lot of EV’s is likely to require a more robust energy infrastructure able to handle sudden spikes in charging. Think about hundreds of EV’s being charged at roughly the same time as people head to or from work or are running errands over lunch. Dealing with that is going to require some planning.
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And This Are Just Some of His Vile (Criminal?) Acts





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The FDA Leaves Us on the Hook Paying for This

In approving the first new Alzheimer's drug in nearly 20 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking its biggest risk yet with a strategy that allows new therapies onto the market without strong evidence that they work, regulatory and scientific experts say.

The Biogen Inc drug, Aduhelm, was authorized based on evidence that it can reduce brain plaques, a likely contributor to Alzheimer's, rather than proof that it slows progression of the lethal mind-wasting disease.

The FDA has granted so-called "accelerated approval" in more than 250 instances since 1992, mainly for rare diseases or small patient populations that have had no effective treatments available to them. In these cases, the agency requires that drugmakers conduct additional clinical trials to prove their therapy works, or face withdrawal from the market.

Aduhelm, however, is in a different league in terms of the number of potential patients and cost to the healthcare system.

In addition, the FDA approval ignored the recommendation of its outside advisors, who said Biogen did not provide enough evidence of clinical benefit. Three of the advisory panel's members have resigned in protest since the FDA decision was announced on Monday.

Biogen has said that some 1.5 million Americans with early-stage Alzheimer's will be eligible for the drug, priced at an average of $56,000 per year, with the federal Medicare insurance program for seniors likely on the hook for most of the cost.

The FDA approval allows Biogen to sell its product over several years - with forecasts for potential annual sales reaching as high $10 billion to $50 billion - until the company completes a required follow-up study.

"No amount of unmet need can take the place of sufficient evidence," said Johns Hopkins public health professor Dr. Caleb Alexander, a member of the FDA advisory panel.
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And Oklahoma Will Pay For It

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott said Thursday that his state would build a wall along the border with Mexico and blamed President Joe Biden’s policies for a humanitarian crisis at the southern border.
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How Many of Those 130 Million Would Have Been Hospitalized Without the Vaccine?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an "emergency meeting" of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

So far, the CDC has identified 226 reports that might meet the agency's "working case definition" of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots, the agency disclosed Thursday. The vast majority have recovered, but 41 had ongoing symptoms, 15 are still hospitalized, and 3 are in the intensive care unit.

The reports represent just a tiny fraction of the nearly 130 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna's doses.

"It's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison because, again, these are preliminary reports. Not all these will turn out to be true myocarditis or pericarditis reports," cautioned Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC vaccine safety official.
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The Elephants Go Marching One By One, Hurrah!  Hurrah!

A herd of elephants traipsing through southwest China has captured the imagination of millions.

Monitored by hundreds of police officers assisted by drones, the massive animals reached Kunming in southern Yunnan province earlier this week after traveling some 300 miles from their native nature reserve, state-owned media reported.

Adam Chang was hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the elephants, which on average stand 11 feet tall and weigh 11,000 lbs.

He said what he saw was amazing.

“I saw them picking apart the corn with their trunks,” he told NBC News over the messaging and social media app WeChat.

“They are just so much more lively than those I saw in the zoo. It almost felt as if they had a holy aura around them,” he said.
While news of their migration has spread across China and gone viral online, with many expressing wonder and fascination, experts warned that this rare journey could indicate the inevitable and damaging consequences of human encroachment on the elephants’ natural habitat.

Here's Video of the Elephants in China


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Good News for HBCU's

A record number of applications are pouring into historically Black colleges and universities as interest in the institutions rises.

According to the National Student Clearinghouse, colleges across the nation saw a 3% dip in enrollment this spring. Some HBCUs, however, are bucking that trend. While enrollment figures were not readily available for many schools, application numbers are up.

The growing popularity of HBCUs is showcased both inside and outside the classroom, on basketball courts and football fields. It is also shown in the growing investments and creation of scholarships, such as the recent $4.4 million contribution from the owner of the Baltimore Ravens, as Blavity previously reported.

At Bowie State University in Maryland, applications have increased by 70%, President Aminta Breaux told ABC News.

In recent years, many high-profile students, from top-ranked recruits to the children of celebrities, have chosen HBCUs as their top schools. Last year, five-star basketball recruit Makur Maker chose Howard University over offers from UCLA, the University of Kentucky and the University of Memphis.
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