Post by mhbruin on Feb 10, 2022 10:14:35 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 545 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Feb 9f)
January had NO rain or snow. February looks the same.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Previous Guy Should Have Hired This Guy to Protect White House Documents
A Russian art gallery guard has been accused of doodling on a Soviet-era painting he was responsible for guarding on his first day in the job.
During a visit to the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg in December, two visitors spotted eyes drawn in ballpoint pen on Anna Leporskaya's work Three Figures.
The avant-garde painting features three abstract, and usually eyeless, figures.
The security guard has since been fired and the police have opened a criminal investigation.
In a statement the Yeltsin Center's executive director Alexander Drozdov said the security guard was employed by a private security organisation.
It was also the security guard's first day in the job, exhibition curator Anna Reshetkina told Russian website ura.ru.
The QOP Thinks It's OK to Abuse Women, As Long As You Didn't Marry Them
The Senate has a tentative deal to renew the Violence Against Women Act, and we should all be horrified at what it took to get there. Thanks to the National Rifle Association, the “boyfriend loophole” will remain open, and people who commit domestic violence or stalking can keep their guns as long as they weren’t married to the partner they abused or stalked.
Under current law, married people convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence can be banned from owning or purchasing a firearm. Democrats thought that should also apply to unmarried people—the crime is the same, even if there’s no marriage certificate. But a Violence Against Women Act that closed the boyfriend loophole was not going to get 10 Republican votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Does She Serve Her Guests Gestapo?
“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC Gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress . . .”
Navarro Spills the Beans on TV, But He Won't Talk to the Committee. (You Don't Need Beans to Make Gazpacho)
Kids Are Crying All the Way to the (Food) Bank
North Carolina Republicans are very concerned about free school lunches. In a debate on whether to continue providing free school lunches to all the kids in the state ranked eighth for child hunger, Republicans worried that doing so would be bad for families … and suggested it was unnecessary, anyway.
“I think the job of this general assembly is to force you to go back to the basics we had before and put your personal agenda aside,” state Rep. Mark Brody told Dr. Lynn Harvey, the state school nutrition chief, as she argued for the expanded school lunch program to be continued. (Her “personal agenda” here being kids not going hungry.) Brody wasn’t done.
“I go visit my food banks in there, and there's a lots of food going on. Nobody's being denied anything,” Brody said. “The idea that kids don't have access to good food—parents just need to buy it and feed it. My mother did that to me.”
This is a deeply confused man, hopscotching from food banks to “parents just need to buy it.” He’s also deeply wrong, since, again, North Carolina is ranked eighth for child hunger in the U.S. Obviously someone is being denied something, and kids don’t have access to good food.
But What About Her E-Mails?
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot, finding few records of calls by President Donald J. Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them.
Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any official records were tampered with or deleted, and it is well known that Mr. Trump used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, routinely to talk with aides, congressional allies and outside confidants.
But the sparse call records are the latest major obstacle to the panel’s central mission: recreating what Mr. Trump was doing behind closed doors during crucial moments of the assault on Congress by a mob of his supporters.
It Must Have Been One of His Royal Wipers
Former President Donald Trump denied Thursday that he had flushed documents down a toilet when he served in the White House.
"Another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book," Trump said in a statement.
The detail, which comes from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book, “Confidence Man,” was reported by Axios.
They've Got Their Trucks. They Don't Want Others to Get Them.
A blockade of the bridge between Canada and Detroit by protesters demanding an end to Canada's COVID-19 restrictions forced the shutdown Wednesday of a Ford plant, sparking broader implications for the North American auto industry.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, stood firm against an easing of Canada's COVID-19 restrictions in the face of mounting pressure during recent weeks by protests against the restrictions and against Trudeau himself.
The protest by people mostly in pickup trucks entered its third day at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Traffic was prevented from entering Canada, while U.S.-bound traffic was still moving.
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Today's Worst Corporation in the World
Elon Musk has repeatedly bragged (or, perhaps, complained) that he'll pay more in federal taxes for 2021 than anyone has ever paid — about $11 billion. But Tesla apparently won't pay a cent.
Tesla may not plan to pay federal taxes any time in the foreseeable future -- even though the company just reported by far its most profitable year ever. In 2021, Tesla recorded net income of $5.5 billion, and adjusted income of $7.6 billion.
But buried in a footnote of its recent annual financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla reports that its US operations lost $130 million last year on a pre-tax basis. It claims that all of its pre-tax profits — more than $6 billion worth — came from overseas operations, even though 45% of its revenue came from US sales.
Although Tesla indicates its foreign tax bill came to $839 million, its state tax bill was only $9 million. And its federal tax bill was zero.
"That defies common sense, but it does not defy the US tax code," said Martin Sullivan, chief economist for Tax Analysts, a nonprofit tax publisher, and an expert on US corporate tax practices.
Another Day, Another Tesla Recall
Tesla is recalling nearly 579,000 vehicles in the U.S. because a "Boombox" function can play sounds over an external speaker and obscure audible warnings for pedestrians.
The recall is the fourth made public in the last two weeks as U.S. safety regulators increase scrutiny of the nation's largest electric vehicle maker. In two of the recalls, Tesla made decisions that violate federal motor vehicle safety standards, while the others are software errors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says on its website Thursday that the cars and SUVs have what Tesla calls a "Boombox" function that allows drivers to play sounds while the vehicles are moving. This violates federal safety standards that require pedestrian warning noises for electric cars, which make little noise when traveling, the agency says.
Nursed to Death
Teresa Sperry beamed with pride in September when she told her father about the job she’d been assigned by her fifth-grade teacher.
Days earlier, the teacher had made Teresa the “class nurse,” putting the Virginia girl in charge of walking sick classmates to the nurse’s office, waiting for them to be treated and, at times, returning to the classroom to retrieve their backpacks if Hillpoint Elementary School officials sent them home, her father, Jeff Sperry, told The Washington Post.
“I asked her, ‘So is this your job?’ ” Sperry recounted. “And she gave me several examples of people that day she took to the nurse’s office.”
Sperry, who was driving Teresa and her brothers home from school, was infuriated. The school never asked for her parents’ consent, he said, and he feared for his unvaccinated daughter’s health as the delta variant spread across the country in the coronavirus pandemic’s second year.
Those worries mounted when, days later, Teresa returned home from school with a headache and a day later, hit a 102-degree fever. Within a week, she was dead.
On Sept. 27, Teresa became one of the first children in Virginia to die of covid-19. Her death certificate states that she died of cardiac arrest caused by coronavirus complications.
“My daughter was 10, and the vaccine wasn’t out” yet for children, Sperry, 41, told The Post. “Of all the people in the world who could have done that job, she was unprotected.”
Teresa contracted the virus weeks before federal public health authorities approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 — but her parents say she would have received it as soon as possible.
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Another Day, Another Investigation of Previous Guy
The US government agency that manages the preservation of presidential records has asked the justice department to investigate Donald Trump for his handling of official papers.
US presidents are required by law to transfer all of their letters, work documents and emails to the National Archives.
But officials say the former president illegally ripped up many documents.
Some of them had to be taped back together, the Archives said.
It has also emerged that 15 boxes of papers that Mr Trump should have turned over when he left the White House were instead taken to his home in Florida.
And Another
House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) on Wednesday made good on her promise to investigate ex-President Donald Trump’s handling of White House documents after it was revealed that he’d taken at least 15 boxes of them to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Maloney sent an information request to National Archivist David Ferriero so that her committee could “examine the extent and impact” of Trump potentially violating the Presidential Records Act by failing to hand over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to the Democrat’s letter that was obtained by the Washington Post.
Maloney asked Ferriero for an inventory of all the documents that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, plus information on whatever records Trump improperly tried to destroy amid reports of the ex-president ripping up documents.
Additionally, the Democrat wanted to know if NARA was examining the documents to find out if they included any classified material, and whether Ferriero had flagged the issue to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Maloney highlighted the potentially illegality of Trump’s actions, pointing to the prosecution of former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty to taking classified documents from NARA in 2005.
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Wordle May Have Saved Her From This 5-Letter Word: "Death"
A Chicago grandmother was rescued from a 17-hour hostage ordeal after police were alerted for the unlikeliest of reasons: a missing solution to the day's Wordle challenge.
Denyse Holt, 80, was alone at home in Illinois on 5 February when a naked and mentally ill suspect entered her home.
Her daughter in faraway Seattle noticed something was amiss when Ms Holt failed to send her daily Wordle.
The suspect now faces several felony charges.
According to Ms Holt, she was asleep in bed in Chicago's Lincolnwood area when 32-year-old James H. Davis III entered her home and pointed a pair of scissors at her. He was naked and bleeding after being cut by window shards while entering the house.
"Saved" is a Five-Letter Word
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Stop the Presses! Congress Gets Something Done!
The Senate passed one of the largest workplace reforms in decades, freeing victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault to seek justice in court when they had previously been bound to a closed, often-secretive legal proceeding commonly used in these types of cases by employers.
The bipartisan legislation was approved by voice vote. It now heads to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature, and the White House has expressed full support for the measure.
Earlier this week, the bill was approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives, by 335-97.
The legislation ends the use of forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment and assault claims. According to lawmakers, more than 60 million Americans are subjected to these provisions in employment contracts.
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It's Not Just A Bad Moon Rising
Mortgage rates increased again, rising to a level not seen since before the pandemic.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.69% in the week ending February 10, up from 3.55% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. It's the highest since January 2020.
"The normalization of the economy continues as mortgage rates jumped to the highest level since the emergence of the pandemic," said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac's chief economist. "Rate increases are expected to continue due to a strong labor market and high inflation, which likely will have an adverse impact on homebuyer demand."
After starting off the year with several big jumps, rates flattened for the past three weeks.
This week's rate increase follows a surge in the 10-year Treasury which passed 1.9% this week, the highest point since November 2019, said George Ratiu, Realtor.com's manager of economic research.
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It's Not Just Mr Mojo Risin'
The prices Americans pay for a basket of goods and services continued to climb rapidly last month, according to new government data.
The consumer price index -- a key measure of inflation -- surged 7.5% over the last 12 months, the Labor Department said Thursday. This marks the largest 12-month increase since February 1982. The index surged 0.6% in January alone.
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A Note to Pregnant Women Who Are Afraid to Get Vaccinated: Get the Jab!!
Research published Thursday paints a startling picture of the destructive toll Covid-19 can take on pregnant women and their growing fetuses.
The virus can attack and destroy the placenta, a vascular organ that serves as a fetus’s lifeline, leading to asphyxiation and stillbirth, according to the study in the journal Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
“We have never seen this level of destruction from an infectious illness before. It rendered the placenta unfit to carry out its duties,” said Dr. David Schwartz, a perinatal pathologist in private practice in Atlanta, who led the study. “These fetuses and newborns died from asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen.”
“It’s almost the exact opposite of what we see in other infectious diseases like zika, rubella or syphilis,” he said. “It’s not the fetus that is being attacked and destroyed by the virus. It’s the placenta.”
In the study, Schwartz and his team examined 68 perinatal deaths in 12 countries. All 68 babies were either stillborn or died within seven days of being born. All had mothers who were unvaccinated and had been infected with the coronavirus while pregnant. Their study included examinations of all 68 placentas as well as 30 autopsies.
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Arizonans Want to Be Able to Vote and Have Their Votes Counted. It Must Be a Socialist Plot
Petitions will come back from the printer on Friday for Arizona’s sweeping Voting Rights Initiative which will protect the votes of all the people of the state and turn the Grand Canyon State much bluer.
The word “sweeping” is used in most of the stories because the Initiative preserves and restores mail balloting in Arizona, allows for automatic and election-day registration and protects the state’s electoral votes from theft by a losing candidate.
It also cracks down on lobbyists, reduces campaign contribution limits, extends in-person early voting and even takes back a few things that the radical rightists on the U.S. Supreme Court and Arizona’s own attorney general have taken away.
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CDC doesn't do a good job of reporting around holidays.
Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People 2 or More Doses | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Feb 10 | 580,896 | 251,655,172 | 213,430,434 | ||
| Feb 9 | 591,786 | 251,467,303 | 213,246,140 | 215,418 | 2,313 |
| Feb 8 | 602,606 | 251,312,470 | 213,061,117 | 230,602 | 2,303 |
| Feb 7 | 611,742 | 251,176,199 | 212,920,278 | 247,319 | 2,404 |
| Feb 6 | 627,161 | 251,070,439 | 212,806,521 | 291,471 | 2,294 |
| Feb 5 | 655,591 | 250,915,858 | 212,657,682 | 298,890 | 2,331 |
| Feb 4 | 680,135 | 250,731,754 | 212,481,465 | 313,117 | 2,404 |
| Feb 3 | 719,986 | 250,593,665 | 212,336,183 | 343,563 | 2,371 |
| Feb 2 | 494,092 | 250,378,993 | 212,130,684 | 378,015 | 2,403 |
| Feb 1 | 510,477 | 250,184,240 | 211,954,555 | 415,552 | 2,369 |
| Jan 31 | 575,732 | 250,029,773 | 211,818,885 | 446,355 | 2,287 |
| Jan 30 | 603,030 | 249,892,470 | 211,695,131 | 497,296 | 2,234 |
| Jan 29 | 595,871 | 249,695,301 | 211,533,229 | 522,626 | 2,261 |
| Jan 28 | 626,946 | 249,473,925 | 211,343,818 | 543,016 | 2,265 |
| Jan 27 | 643,725 | 249,267,851 (I don't know why) | 211,162,083 | 577,748 | 2,300 |
| Jan 26 | 962,958 | 251,518,114 | 210,850,212 | 596,859 | 2,288 |
| Jan 25 | 1,011,603 | 251,289,667 | 210,682,471 | 627,294 | 2,246 |
| Jan 24 | 1,201,186 | 250,964,433 | 210,459,963 | 692,359 | 2,166 |
| Jan 23 | 1,101,405 | 250,763,600 | 210,358,008 | 663,908 | 1,936 |
| Jan 22 | 1,002,322 | 250,568,431 | 210,229,586 | 686,715 | 1,939 |
| Jan 21 | 1,035,111 | 250,262,153 | 210,021,766 | 716,829 | 1,974 |
| Jan 20 | 1,094,988 | 250,028,635 | 209,842,610 | 726,870 | 1,843 |
| Jan 19 | 1,135,453 | 249,702,939 | 209,509,297 | 744,615 | 1,749 |
| Jan 18 | 1,158,537 | 249,393,487 | 209,312,770 | 755,095 | 1,669 |
| Jan 17 | No Data | 736,350 | 1,746 | ||
| Jan 16 | No Data | 771,131 | 1,851 | ||
| Jan 15 | 1,268,202 | 248,707,432 | 208,995,438 | 788,628 | 1,858 |
| Jan 14 | 1,286,773 | 248,338,448 | 208,791,862 | 798,335 | 1,784 |
| Jan 13 | 1,291,013 | 247,987,225 | 208,564,894 | 794,587 | 1,730 |
| Jan 12 | 1,234,672 | 247,695,845 | 208,182,657 | 782,765 | 1,729 |
| Jan 11 | 1,213,113 | 247,321,023 | 207,954,605 | 761,535 | 1,656 |
| Jan 10 | 1,307,445 | 247,051,363 | 207,796,335 | 750,996 | 1,633 |
| Jan 9 | 1,331,635 | 246,812,939 | 207,662,071 | 674,406 | 1,552 |
| Jan 8 | 1,286,783 | 246,447,823 | 207,452,448 | 680,330 | 1,544 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 75.8% | 64.3% | 42.6% |
| % of Population 5+ | 80.6% | 68.3% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 85.5% | 72.9% | 44.0% |
| % of Population 18+ | 87.4% | 74.5% | 45.8% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.5% | 65.3% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Feb 9f)
January had NO rain or snow. February looks the same.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | 4 Weeks ago | 5 Weeks ago | 6 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 105% (59% of average for full season) | 113% | 124% | 134% | 149% | 158% | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 92% (51%) | 99% | 110% | 121% | 138% | 156% | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 84% (46%) | 91% | 101% | 112% | 127% | 145% | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 80% (58%) | 89% | 117% | 128% | 135% | 134% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 80% (57%) | 89% | 114% | 129% | 148% | 148% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 81% (57%) | 92% | 121% | 135% | 160% | 158% |
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Previous Guy Should Have Hired This Guy to Protect White House Documents
A Russian art gallery guard has been accused of doodling on a Soviet-era painting he was responsible for guarding on his first day in the job.
During a visit to the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg in December, two visitors spotted eyes drawn in ballpoint pen on Anna Leporskaya's work Three Figures.
The avant-garde painting features three abstract, and usually eyeless, figures.
The security guard has since been fired and the police have opened a criminal investigation.
In a statement the Yeltsin Center's executive director Alexander Drozdov said the security guard was employed by a private security organisation.
It was also the security guard's first day in the job, exhibition curator Anna Reshetkina told Russian website ura.ru.
The QOP Thinks It's OK to Abuse Women, As Long As You Didn't Marry Them
The Senate has a tentative deal to renew the Violence Against Women Act, and we should all be horrified at what it took to get there. Thanks to the National Rifle Association, the “boyfriend loophole” will remain open, and people who commit domestic violence or stalking can keep their guns as long as they weren’t married to the partner they abused or stalked.
Under current law, married people convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence can be banned from owning or purchasing a firearm. Democrats thought that should also apply to unmarried people—the crime is the same, even if there’s no marriage certificate. But a Violence Against Women Act that closed the boyfriend loophole was not going to get 10 Republican votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Does She Serve Her Guests Gestapo?
“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC Gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress . . .”
Navarro Spills the Beans on TV, But He Won't Talk to the Committee. (You Don't Need Beans to Make Gazpacho)
Kids Are Crying All the Way to the (Food) Bank
North Carolina Republicans are very concerned about free school lunches. In a debate on whether to continue providing free school lunches to all the kids in the state ranked eighth for child hunger, Republicans worried that doing so would be bad for families … and suggested it was unnecessary, anyway.
“I think the job of this general assembly is to force you to go back to the basics we had before and put your personal agenda aside,” state Rep. Mark Brody told Dr. Lynn Harvey, the state school nutrition chief, as she argued for the expanded school lunch program to be continued. (Her “personal agenda” here being kids not going hungry.) Brody wasn’t done.
“I go visit my food banks in there, and there's a lots of food going on. Nobody's being denied anything,” Brody said. “The idea that kids don't have access to good food—parents just need to buy it and feed it. My mother did that to me.”
This is a deeply confused man, hopscotching from food banks to “parents just need to buy it.” He’s also deeply wrong, since, again, North Carolina is ranked eighth for child hunger in the U.S. Obviously someone is being denied something, and kids don’t have access to good food.
But What About Her E-Mails?
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot, finding few records of calls by President Donald J. Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them.
Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any official records were tampered with or deleted, and it is well known that Mr. Trump used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, routinely to talk with aides, congressional allies and outside confidants.
But the sparse call records are the latest major obstacle to the panel’s central mission: recreating what Mr. Trump was doing behind closed doors during crucial moments of the assault on Congress by a mob of his supporters.
It Must Have Been One of His Royal Wipers
Former President Donald Trump denied Thursday that he had flushed documents down a toilet when he served in the White House.
"Another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book," Trump said in a statement.
The detail, which comes from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book, “Confidence Man,” was reported by Axios.
They've Got Their Trucks. They Don't Want Others to Get Them.
A blockade of the bridge between Canada and Detroit by protesters demanding an end to Canada's COVID-19 restrictions forced the shutdown Wednesday of a Ford plant, sparking broader implications for the North American auto industry.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, stood firm against an easing of Canada's COVID-19 restrictions in the face of mounting pressure during recent weeks by protests against the restrictions and against Trudeau himself.
The protest by people mostly in pickup trucks entered its third day at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Traffic was prevented from entering Canada, while U.S.-bound traffic was still moving.
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Today's Worst Corporation in the World
Elon Musk has repeatedly bragged (or, perhaps, complained) that he'll pay more in federal taxes for 2021 than anyone has ever paid — about $11 billion. But Tesla apparently won't pay a cent.
Tesla may not plan to pay federal taxes any time in the foreseeable future -- even though the company just reported by far its most profitable year ever. In 2021, Tesla recorded net income of $5.5 billion, and adjusted income of $7.6 billion.
But buried in a footnote of its recent annual financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla reports that its US operations lost $130 million last year on a pre-tax basis. It claims that all of its pre-tax profits — more than $6 billion worth — came from overseas operations, even though 45% of its revenue came from US sales.
Although Tesla indicates its foreign tax bill came to $839 million, its state tax bill was only $9 million. And its federal tax bill was zero.
"That defies common sense, but it does not defy the US tax code," said Martin Sullivan, chief economist for Tax Analysts, a nonprofit tax publisher, and an expert on US corporate tax practices.
Another Day, Another Tesla Recall
Tesla is recalling nearly 579,000 vehicles in the U.S. because a "Boombox" function can play sounds over an external speaker and obscure audible warnings for pedestrians.
The recall is the fourth made public in the last two weeks as U.S. safety regulators increase scrutiny of the nation's largest electric vehicle maker. In two of the recalls, Tesla made decisions that violate federal motor vehicle safety standards, while the others are software errors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says on its website Thursday that the cars and SUVs have what Tesla calls a "Boombox" function that allows drivers to play sounds while the vehicles are moving. This violates federal safety standards that require pedestrian warning noises for electric cars, which make little noise when traveling, the agency says.
Nursed to Death
Teresa Sperry beamed with pride in September when she told her father about the job she’d been assigned by her fifth-grade teacher.
Days earlier, the teacher had made Teresa the “class nurse,” putting the Virginia girl in charge of walking sick classmates to the nurse’s office, waiting for them to be treated and, at times, returning to the classroom to retrieve their backpacks if Hillpoint Elementary School officials sent them home, her father, Jeff Sperry, told The Washington Post.
“I asked her, ‘So is this your job?’ ” Sperry recounted. “And she gave me several examples of people that day she took to the nurse’s office.”
Sperry, who was driving Teresa and her brothers home from school, was infuriated. The school never asked for her parents’ consent, he said, and he feared for his unvaccinated daughter’s health as the delta variant spread across the country in the coronavirus pandemic’s second year.
Those worries mounted when, days later, Teresa returned home from school with a headache and a day later, hit a 102-degree fever. Within a week, she was dead.
On Sept. 27, Teresa became one of the first children in Virginia to die of covid-19. Her death certificate states that she died of cardiac arrest caused by coronavirus complications.
“My daughter was 10, and the vaccine wasn’t out” yet for children, Sperry, 41, told The Post. “Of all the people in the world who could have done that job, she was unprotected.”
Teresa contracted the virus weeks before federal public health authorities approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 — but her parents say she would have received it as soon as possible.
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Another Day, Another Investigation of Previous Guy
The US government agency that manages the preservation of presidential records has asked the justice department to investigate Donald Trump for his handling of official papers.
US presidents are required by law to transfer all of their letters, work documents and emails to the National Archives.
But officials say the former president illegally ripped up many documents.
Some of them had to be taped back together, the Archives said.
It has also emerged that 15 boxes of papers that Mr Trump should have turned over when he left the White House were instead taken to his home in Florida.
And Another
House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) on Wednesday made good on her promise to investigate ex-President Donald Trump’s handling of White House documents after it was revealed that he’d taken at least 15 boxes of them to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Maloney sent an information request to National Archivist David Ferriero so that her committee could “examine the extent and impact” of Trump potentially violating the Presidential Records Act by failing to hand over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to the Democrat’s letter that was obtained by the Washington Post.
Maloney asked Ferriero for an inventory of all the documents that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, plus information on whatever records Trump improperly tried to destroy amid reports of the ex-president ripping up documents.
Additionally, the Democrat wanted to know if NARA was examining the documents to find out if they included any classified material, and whether Ferriero had flagged the issue to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Maloney highlighted the potentially illegality of Trump’s actions, pointing to the prosecution of former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty to taking classified documents from NARA in 2005.
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Wordle May Have Saved Her From This 5-Letter Word: "Death"
A Chicago grandmother was rescued from a 17-hour hostage ordeal after police were alerted for the unlikeliest of reasons: a missing solution to the day's Wordle challenge.
Denyse Holt, 80, was alone at home in Illinois on 5 February when a naked and mentally ill suspect entered her home.
Her daughter in faraway Seattle noticed something was amiss when Ms Holt failed to send her daily Wordle.
The suspect now faces several felony charges.
According to Ms Holt, she was asleep in bed in Chicago's Lincolnwood area when 32-year-old James H. Davis III entered her home and pointed a pair of scissors at her. He was naked and bleeding after being cut by window shards while entering the house.
"Saved" is a Five-Letter Word
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Stop the Presses! Congress Gets Something Done!
The Senate passed one of the largest workplace reforms in decades, freeing victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault to seek justice in court when they had previously been bound to a closed, often-secretive legal proceeding commonly used in these types of cases by employers.
The bipartisan legislation was approved by voice vote. It now heads to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature, and the White House has expressed full support for the measure.
Earlier this week, the bill was approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives, by 335-97.
The legislation ends the use of forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment and assault claims. According to lawmakers, more than 60 million Americans are subjected to these provisions in employment contracts.
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It's Not Just A Bad Moon Rising
Mortgage rates increased again, rising to a level not seen since before the pandemic.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.69% in the week ending February 10, up from 3.55% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. It's the highest since January 2020.
"The normalization of the economy continues as mortgage rates jumped to the highest level since the emergence of the pandemic," said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac's chief economist. "Rate increases are expected to continue due to a strong labor market and high inflation, which likely will have an adverse impact on homebuyer demand."
After starting off the year with several big jumps, rates flattened for the past three weeks.
This week's rate increase follows a surge in the 10-year Treasury which passed 1.9% this week, the highest point since November 2019, said George Ratiu, Realtor.com's manager of economic research.
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It's Not Just Mr Mojo Risin'
The prices Americans pay for a basket of goods and services continued to climb rapidly last month, according to new government data.
The consumer price index -- a key measure of inflation -- surged 7.5% over the last 12 months, the Labor Department said Thursday. This marks the largest 12-month increase since February 1982. The index surged 0.6% in January alone.
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A Note to Pregnant Women Who Are Afraid to Get Vaccinated: Get the Jab!!
Research published Thursday paints a startling picture of the destructive toll Covid-19 can take on pregnant women and their growing fetuses.
The virus can attack and destroy the placenta, a vascular organ that serves as a fetus’s lifeline, leading to asphyxiation and stillbirth, according to the study in the journal Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
“We have never seen this level of destruction from an infectious illness before. It rendered the placenta unfit to carry out its duties,” said Dr. David Schwartz, a perinatal pathologist in private practice in Atlanta, who led the study. “These fetuses and newborns died from asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen.”
“It’s almost the exact opposite of what we see in other infectious diseases like zika, rubella or syphilis,” he said. “It’s not the fetus that is being attacked and destroyed by the virus. It’s the placenta.”
In the study, Schwartz and his team examined 68 perinatal deaths in 12 countries. All 68 babies were either stillborn or died within seven days of being born. All had mothers who were unvaccinated and had been infected with the coronavirus while pregnant. Their study included examinations of all 68 placentas as well as 30 autopsies.
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Arizonans Want to Be Able to Vote and Have Their Votes Counted. It Must Be a Socialist Plot
Petitions will come back from the printer on Friday for Arizona’s sweeping Voting Rights Initiative which will protect the votes of all the people of the state and turn the Grand Canyon State much bluer.
The word “sweeping” is used in most of the stories because the Initiative preserves and restores mail balloting in Arizona, allows for automatic and election-day registration and protects the state’s electoral votes from theft by a losing candidate.
It also cracks down on lobbyists, reduces campaign contribution limits, extends in-person early voting and even takes back a few things that the radical rightists on the U.S. Supreme Court and Arizona’s own attorney general have taken away.
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