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Monday, September 16, 2024

Phage therapy was once used to treat bubonic plague. Now with bacteria evolving resistance to more and more antibiotics, phage therapy is drawing a second look from researchers - sometimes with a novel twist. Instead of simply using the phages to kill bacteria directly, the new strategy aims to catch the bacteria in an evolutionary dilemma, one in which they cannot evade phages and antibiotics simultaneously. read more


Sunday, September 15, 2024

It was one of the most shocking and disturbing lines in the modern history of presidential politics: During his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump made a wild assertion about Springfield, a small city in Ohio that has recently seen an influx of migrants. The trouble first began more than two months ago, when Republicans - including Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) - began zeroing in on the town. read more


The accusation that Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city are abducting and eating their neighbors' cats and dogs relies not on one falsehood but on a web of them. When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment, and ask who abducted our consciences. That's especially true for those of us who, like me, claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who told us that on the Day of Judgment, "people will give account for every careless word they speak" (Mt 12:36). read more


Adam Serwer: Republicans have said that Kamala Harris was chosen "because of her ethnic background," that she's a "DEI hire" who "gets more favorable treatment because of her race and gender." But to the extent that the candidates are running on unearned advantages related to personal biography, this better describes Trump and Vance than it does Harris, who worked her way up from local to state to federal office over the course of decades. read more


Saturday, September 14, 2024

Harris's "digital rapid response" operation and all-Gen-Z TikTok team are tapping the trends and rhythms of internet culture to create an online presence that's unique in presidential politics. read more


Comments

The Haitian refugees have jobs. The medical center and schools are not overwhelmed.

The biggest whopper: increasing housing costs? You think these low paid refugees are buying up all the homes?

The first sentence is indeed true, from all reporting not only do the Haitian adults have jobs, their employers say they're the hardest workers.

However, in regards to the other things mentioned, Springfield is having issues. Because new legal immigrants don't come here with any personal resources to speak of, they're very dependent upon our social safety net, including Medicaid. Springfield's existent providers are stressed and overwhelmed by the influx of the immigrants, but this is the fault of both the state and federal government to have not anticipated and reacted to the increased demand for services, including administrative services.

And yes, housing costs have skyrocketed in Springfield. The term housing costs isn't exclusive to home ownership, it simply refers to how much families pay for their domiciles be they leased, rented, or owned. And Springfield lacks sufficient rental units which has cause landlords to use dynamic pricing algorithms which have greatly increased the cost of rental property across the board for everyone and this in turn has caused housing property prices to rise as well.

But that is due to Americans believing in free markets without price controls. Those who own rental property are experiencing windfalls due to the increased demand without any rise in supply to lessen their ability to charge more. Again, it's up to the state and federal government to either fund apartment units or provide incentives for private individuals to build new units. The Haitians are not to blame because our capitalist system is being used to the detriment of those seeking housing in Springfield.

More than 70 percent of hospital-acquired bacterial infections in the United States are resistant to at least one type of antibiotic. And some pathogens, such as Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella - classified by the World Health Organization as some of the biggest threats to human health - are resistant to multiple antibiotics. In 2019, antimicrobial resistance was linked to 4.95 million deaths globally, heightening the call for more effective treatment options.

One of the ways that bacteria can evolve resistance to antibiotics is by using structures in their membranes that are designed to move unwanted molecules out of the cell. By modifying these "efflux pumps" to recognize the antibiotic, bacteria can eliminate the drug before it poisons them.

As it turns out, some phages appear to use these same efflux pumps to invade the bacterial cell. The phage presumably attaches its tail to the outer portion of the pump protein, like a key slipping into a lock, and then injects its genetic material into the cell.

Treating a patient with phages and antibiotics simultaneously could trap bacteria in a no-win situation: If they evolve to modify their efflux pumps so the phage can't bind, the pumps will no longer expel antibiotics, and the bacteria will lose their resistance. But if they retain their antibiotic resistance, the phages will kill them, as Turner and colleagues explained in the 2023 Annual Review of Virology.

As Trump has now sucked all the oxygen out of the endless news cycles, here's a topic completely politically neutral. Obviously I'm no virologist, but antibiotic resistance is something with the potential to touch any of us at any time if we're exposed to a bacterial infection. Based on the article - with its simplified explanation above - the research being done indeed looks promising in addressing the potential ticking timebomb of medicine losing the ability to kill certain bacteria now resistant to our current collection of antibiotics.

To sing praise songs in a church service while trafficking in the bearing of false witness against people who fled for their life, who seek to rebuild a life for their children after crushing poverty and persecution, is more than just cognitive dissonance. It's modeling the devil himself, whom Jesus called "the father of lies" (Jn 8:44). That's especially true when the lies harm another person. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer," the apostle John wrote, "and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 Jn 3:15).

The cruelty to Haitian immigrants - and with it, the implicit incitement of potential violence - is not [a] debatable issue. And Christians do not need to struggle to figure out what Jesus would have us do here. If we see children sheltering at home because they fear violence, we know that's wrong. And when we see that this fear comes from the incitement of hatred against those children because of where their parents came from, surely we can smell the brimstone.

It became Sunday while I was writing this. I truly wonder how many Christian ministers, priests, and preachers will one way or another mention Springfield tomorrow in their sermons and homilies.

I wonder how many prayers will be offered up for the suffering citizens of Springfield having to deal with the invasion of an immigrant hoard. Prayers asking for the Lord to remove the feral interlopers so that the city's 'real' citizens can get back to their lives before they came.

And I equally wonder how many prayers across America will be offered up for the well-being of the immigrant community being falsely accused and targeted for violence? Will they offer up prayers for the immigrant children - now being evacuated from their schools due to repeated bomb threats, and missing school days because of them? Will they pray for protection of the entire city - now under siege by the lies told and repeated by self-proclaimed Christian men, both running to serve in this nation's highest office?

It truly would be interesting to know how this dichotomy of viewpoints actually breaks down. Unfortunately, I have a very strong suspicion we already know which direction the outcome will tip. And it isn't likely to be on the side both Jesus and his teachings are.

Vance began to speak about Springfield in early July, bringing up the immigrants at a Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell.

There, Vance mentioned Springfield as part of a line of questioning that sought to tie immigration to inflated housing costs across the country. He cited a letter that Springfield's city manager had sent to him and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) the day before, attributing a housing crisis in the city to an influx of over 15,000 Haitian immigrants.

Vance ratcheted up his rhetoric the following day at the National Conservatism conference. On stage at that event, Vance let loose a stream of inflammatory statements, accusing "illegals" of having "overwhelmed" the city.

Other Republicans, including Bernie Moreno, who is running for Ohio's other Senate seat, also framed the situation in Springfield as an "an insane demographic change" that was straining resources. But Carl Ruby, an immigrant advocate and senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield, said it was Vance who did the most to drag the town into the spotlight.

"The sad thing is none of this was stirred up until JD Vance started publicizing it," Ruby told TPM. "It was an internal thing that we were handling and handling well." According to Ruby, even after the death of a young boy named Aiden Clark last year in a crash for which a Haitian immigrant was found liable, tensions in the city remained manageable. However, the political attacks set off a summer of increasing misery.

The outpouring of anger that has overwhelmed Clark's father and his city has included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. On Aug. 10, about a dozen members of one such group, Blood Tribe, showed up in Springfield for one of their trademark events, which involve masked marches where participants wave swastika flags. At least two of the marchers who descended on Springfield's downtown carried rifles.

Blood Tribe, which is led by a former Marine and tattoo artist named Christopher "Hammer" Pohlhaus, has staged similar marches around the country. The neo-Nazi group's march in Springfield was led by a top associate of Pohlhaus', Drake Berentz. During the Springfield march, Berentz made remarks where he referenced the child killed in the car crash and suggested the city had been taken over by "degenerate third worlders." Berentz, who uttered racial slurs and suggested Jews were behind the migrant influx, issued a call to action for people who "are tired of having to share space."

"No longer do outsiders have to take your resources," Berentz said. "No longer do you have to suffer the abuse of subhumans."

Ruby, the pastor and immigrant advocate in Springfield, said the neo-Nazi march took the negative attention on the city to the next level. "It changed what was a local conversation pretty quickly into a national conversation," Ruby said.

And all of this is being caused in support of a major party candidate who supposedly wants to be President again to unite Americans as he's pitting neighbor against neighbor in order to win.

#51

No jackleg, it's you who have no connection to reality. I've never implied that she's anything but what she is. If you don't like her policies, that's your prerogative. It you don't like her issue stances or her poise, even dislike her voice, that's your prerogative.

You continually implied that she isn't qualified to be where she is, and again you display a tremendous amount of ignorance of today's political realities. Do you know who the largest and most loyal faction in the Democratic Party is? Black women. The Kamala Harris you're seeing today - with 4 years of invaluable experience in being the VP - is, was and always would be the Democratic frontrunner. Note, I said the Kamala you're seeing today, not the one you saw briefly and superficially in 2019 when she didn't have the unified base of support to run from that she does today - and would have in 2028 should Biden and her been re-elected.

Did you ever stop to think that if all of the other potential Democratic possibles for President thought that they could have beaten her in a convention vote, they could have raised their hands and run against her? Winning elections takes the backing of donors - and no one had donors and influential groups lined up to support them like Kamala did.

Again, this isn't about what you think of her as a politician. This is about her resume and experience - the very things you continue to ignore that she has that no other Democrat does. Any of the popular Democrats could have taken her on, but none of them did.

And frankly, they would have face an even more impossible task than the one she's on the cusp of pulling off against all conventional odds. But be clear, as objectively remarkable her career has been, no one need to bend any knees. If you don't like her, vote for somebody else. Just don't dismiss how she rose to where she is based on her accomplishments and lifelong work to get there.

We're settling for garbage to avoid settling for ----.

Her record is garbage?

Kamala Harris would be among the most qualified presidents in recent U.S. history. Why is she unliked?
.... No matter what anyone thinks of Harris' race or gender, she is clearly qualified to be president. She's experienced and seasoned. You may disagree with her political positions, which is reason enough to reject her as a candidate. But to view her as unqualified for the presidency is to deny reality. And that reality is the one that some Americans with racist and sexist attitudes refuse to accept.
Well we know who you are, don't we?

Before Tuesday's debate, Donald Trump and his supporters insisted that Kamala Harris was a lightweight who was barely able to speak coherently. Trump has called Harris "dumb as a rock," "low-IQ," "unable to put two sentences together," and "unable to put two sentences together without a teleprompter."

Conservatives have fixated on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in recent years as, in their view, a kind of reverse discrimination against white people, white men in particular, that elevates people to jobs they are unqualified to do. Inadvertently, their reactions to Harris, and her subsequent thrashing of Trump, illustrate why diversity outreach is important and necessary in a world where people still face discriminatory assumptions because of their race and gender.

Now, it would be simpler for conservatives who claimed Harris was an imbecile to admit that maybe the current vice president and former senator, attorney general, and district attorney is just smarter than they were giving her credit for. But that would require abandoning the assumptions about Black people and women that drove them to make their initial assessment. They cannot do that, because doing so would illustrate why diversity efforts are necessary in the first place: that plainly competent people are often wrongly assumed to be stupid because they are not white men, and denied opportunities as a result.

Nothing is inherently racist about arguing that a Black person is incompetent; what is racist is assuming that because he or she is Black. Conservatives have taken to referring to DEI as "didn't earn it."

Trump was born a multimillionaire who drove one business after another into the ground, and his reputation as a brilliant businessman is largely due to him playing one on television. His term as president was mired by incompetence and corruption despite being relatively uneventful, and when faced with a real crisis - the coronavirus pandemic - he proceeded to bungle it in a catastrophic fashion that led to needless deaths and economic calamity. Vance has spent very little time in elected office, an office he won mostly on the success of his memoir and a Trump primary endorsement in a red state. He appears to have been selected as the vice-presidential nominee on the basis of his willingness to debase himself on Trump's behalf. Neither of them has a compelling record of public service.

That's the irony - the actual "didn't earn it" candidates are the two white guys running on the Republican ticket.

Really nothing left to say other than why would anyone support a person for President that constantly displays zero observational skills whatsoever? He sees what he wants to see which is far too often completely detached from reality. When a person exhibits that they cannot see clearly what is directly in front of their face, it's no longer a question of whether this blindness will lead to catastrophe, it's when.

For those who don't know, Kamala Harris was actually in the crowd in 2007 when Barack Obama made his entrance speech announcing his 2008 presidential run from Springfield, IL.. She was inside his campaign team and knocked on doors in Iowa before their Caucuses.

In 2003 she was elected district attorney of Alameda County and re-elected in 2007. In 2008, she announced her run for state attorney general in 2010 which she won by .1 point. She was re-elected to that position in 2014 and when Barbara Boxer announced her retirement, she ran to fill that spot as US Senator in 2016 and became the first Indian and 2nd AA woman elected to that position.

In 2019 - as you already know - she announced a presidential run of her own in a crowded field of 25 Democrats from which Joe Biden eventually emerged as the nominee and tabbed Harris to be his running mate and they won. She's served as VPOTUS since 2021.

And that takes us to today, where she was thrust into the 1st seat after Biden's disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in late June, starting her own campaign from scratch on July 21st when Biden publicly stepped aside and 30 minutes later endorsed his loyal VP to become the new nominee - something that officially happened when Democratic delegates remotely elected her as the Party's choice for POTUS.

Kamala has been elected to offices 7 times without a loss. Only those ignorant of her political history would ever have believed the negative narratives the GOP forced into the zeitgeist ignoring the political acumen she undeniably has to have risen as she did. Harris is one of the most experienced candidates for POTUS in history as it regards years of government service. In total, she has 34 years of service, from assistant DA all the way to VPOTUS.

NOTHING she's showing the world today is a surprise to those who knew her and followed her career, which has always been on an upward trajectory. Trump indeed met the very person best equipped to use his own pathological traits and tendencies against him in a way and manner that no other politician has been able to before. And the reason why wasn't just a matter of usual politics. What she achieved was extraordinary based on who she faced and how she utterly dominated him to the point he will not face her on a debate stage again.

After Tuesday night's debate, as former president Donald Trump worked the reporters in the spin room in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris's TikTok team was busy appealing to a different crowd.

In the digital "war room" at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., they hit the button on their pice de rsistance shortly after midnight: A six-second video that mocked Trump's performance by showing his lectern inhabited by a laughably dramatic "Dance Moms" star. "I thought I was ready to be back. I thought I was stronger than this but obviously I'm not," she lamented. "I wanna go home."

Viewed more than 7 million times, the video was produced by a small TikTok team - all 25 and under, some working their first jobs - given unfettered freedom to chase whatever they think will go viral. Over the past eight weeks, Harris's social media team has helped supercharge her campaign, harnessing the rhythms and absurdities of internet culture to create one of the most inventive and irreverent get-out-the-vote strategies in modern politics.

They have trolled Trump inside his own social network, Truth Social. They have made viral memes out of bags of Doritos and camouflage hats. In 2016, a single Hillary Clinton tweet might have required 12 staffers and 10 drafts; today, many of Harris's TikTok videos are conceived, created and posted in about half an hour.

"This campaign empowers young people to speak to young people," said Parker Butler, the 24-year-old director of Harris's digital rapid response content, a team that watches all of Trump's speeches and can blast a clip onto social media at a moment's notice. "And we're here to put in the work."

Very interesting story about Gen-Z targeted political message and GOTV efforts. The article also mention's Trump's social media team and in how it differs from Harris' joyful meme warriors. Moving forward there is no doubt there will always be teams like these whose job is to be wherever younger voters congregate.

Almost as a defensive measure to convince yourself she isn't the weak, poor candidate she was in 2020 who barely got a candidacy off the ground.

Kamala Harris is the same candidate today that she was in 2020 and the same candidate she was in 2016 when she won her US Senate campaign.

I've never been defensive on this entire thread, I've been informed in ways that you aren't. I watched Kamala from 2010 giving a speech as she ran for California Attorney General. Her presence, speaking manner, cadence and command of her facts is exactly like it is today. She radiates confidence, competence and strength. But if you didn't know this and listened to the Republican framing of her as "less than" then what you saw Tuesday night likely was surprising.

Maybe you missed the thread about Karl Rove seeing her in 2010 and getting the national Republican Committee to commit millions of dollars to defeat her in that race because he saw "the female Obama" and he feared she'd one day beat a Republican presidential candidate. Karl knows his politics and he was right. She won that race by a fraction of a percent. Had she lost, it's unlikely she'd be where she is today.

In regards to 2020, again, she didn't fail, nor was she not ready. She simply had no constituency to build from in order to win the nomination. Compared to the other candidates, Kamala was then viewed as center right mainly because she's a former prosecutor and many on the left felt that she was too hard on minorities. Politically, even in California, a prosecutor has to be a person of law and order, often with no space to work in the greys. She had Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker, Castro, Klobuchar and others in that race. She had no lane to win the nomination and knew it. That's why she halted her campaign in 2019, because she understands politics and knew 2020 wasn't her time. It's that simple.

But her early withdrawal ended up smoothing a glidepath to the Vice Presidency, and now she stands on the cusp of winning the ultimate prize.

So no, I'm not defensive about anything. You talk about how you feel about her and mention things unrelated to who she is, was, and has been all of her political life - having never lost an election. What she did Tuesday night was very hard and took a tremendous amount of hard work, study, patience, and most of all stamina. Trump wears people out because he has no off button when he's in steamroller mode. She showed him immediately who the alpha was on the stage when she walked into his space, shook his hand, and enunciated her name phonetically so Trump would have no excuse should he say it during the debate. Trump never uttered her first name one single time during the entire debate.

Yesterday, doing his stump routine, Trump couldn't wait to mispronounce her first name and added "comrade" in front of it. Everything you saw Kamala do on that stage was the result of a lifetime of prosecutorial experience combined with skills honed under earlier debate lights. Harris landed her biggest haymaker when she first hit the stage. Yes, like any person realizing the enormity of the moment, she was nervous at the beginning. But once she hit her groove, her dominance of that stage and debate wasn't arguable.

Lastly, I had no idea of the criminal psychology aspect of her performance until I read the article I quoted from yesterday. I read the information and found it not only credible, but completely in line with what I'd witnessed. Her performance was not one of simple debate politics. She approached Trump like she would a defendant in a courtroom, not only anticipating what he'd say, but telling her audience in advance what he would say. It only happened because of hard work and the innate ability to project both strength, warmth, and fierce determination all at the same time.

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