Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
Are El Salvador’s Bitcoin ‘Volcano Bonds’ an End Run Around the IMF?
You shall not pass: Tolkien estate blocks ‘The Lord of the Rings’ JRR Token
PREDICTION: The El Salvador bitcoin bond will be ridiculously oversubscribed pic.twitter.com/2Kj0urm0SN
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 23, 2021
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
In Minnesota, which publishes detailed Covid data, the death rate for fully vaccinated people under 50 during the Delta surge this year was 0.0 per 100,000 — meaning, so few people died that the rate rounds to zero.
Washington State is another place that publishes statistics by age and vaccination status. In its most recent report, Washington did not even include a death rate for fully vaccinated residents under 65. It was too low to be meaningful.
Hospitalization rates are also very low for vaccinated people under 65. In Minnesota during the Delta surge, the average weekly hospitalization rate for vaccinated residents between 18 and 49 was about 1 per 100,000.
Germany Predicts Herd Immunity By End of Winter
Immunity will be reached. The question is whether it’s via vaccination or infection, and we explicitly recommend the path via vaccination.
Delta Variant Offshoot Less Likely to Cause Symptoms
An offshoot of the Covid Delta variant that is on the rise in England appears to be less likely to cause symptoms than the dominant form, researchers have revealed – although experts say the finding requires further scrutiny.
U.S. issues ‘Do Not Travel’ COVID-19 warning for Germany, Denmark
Biden Has Been a Disappointment on the Pandemic
Under the maladministration of Donald Trump, these numbers could be explained away as something aberrant and fleeting: the wages of populism. But Joe Biden has now been president for around half of the duration of the pandemic. He was elected in large part to contain it. His failure to do so is the central fact of his presidency.
It is also a curiously under-discussed one. The US does not have the atmosphere of a country that is still losing thousands to the illness each week.
Politics:
That is the question politicians, newspaper headline writers and much of social media were asking Tuesday, after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, lost his place in his notes for 20 seconds while delivering a speech to business leaders, then imitated the noise of a car engine and, perhaps most bizarre of all, spent an awkwardly long time declaring his love for the popular amusement park Peppa Pig World.
Mike Lindell Blames a Vast GOP Conspiracy for His Supreme Court Failure
Jury finds Unite the Right defendants liable for more than $26 million in damages
Judge Orders Hefty Fines for Frivolous Election Lawsuit
A federal judge has ordered two Colorado lawyers who filed a lawsuit late last year challenging the 2020 election results to pay nearly $187,000 to defray the legal fees of groups they sued, arguing that the hefty penalty was proper to deter others from using frivolous suits to undermine the democratic system.
JCT corrects an error in the calculation of average tax rates for 2022 reported in JCX-47-21.https://t.co/tmaNk5h1DY
— JCT Congress (@jctgov) November 23, 2021
“This is a massive screw up that led to weeks of attacks on the legislation.” — Taegan Goddard
Capitol riot suspect’s court hearing turns to potential criminal charge for Trump
At a hearing on Monday for defendant Garret Miller of Richardson, Texas, (U.S. District Court Judge Carl) Nichols made the first move toward a Trump analogy by asking a prosecutor whether the obstruction statute could have been violated by someone who simply “called Vice President Pence to seek to have him adjudge the certification in a particular way.” The judge also asked the prosecutor to assume the person trying to persuade Pence had the “appropriate mens rea,” or guilty mind, to be responsible for a crime.
Nichols made no specific mention of Trump, who appointed him to the bench, but the then-president was publicly and privately pressuring Pence in the days before the fateful Jan. 6 tally to decline to certify Joe Biden’s victory. Trump also enlisted other allies, including attorney John Eastman, to lean on Pence.
After more than 70 years, 4 Black men wrongly accused of rape have been exonerated
Biden to Tap Strategic Petroleum Reserves
The Biden administration is expected to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in coordination with other nations in the coming days in a bid to tamp down the recent increase in gasoline prices.
Kevin Strickland is free from prison after 43 years, as Missouri judge overturns his conviction
The Campaign to Distract Biden From Asia
Much of the American political establishment, to say nothing of the public at large, has yet to understand how serious and deadly a challenge the Sino-Russian entente poses to American power. China is a much more sophisticated and powerful opponent than the ramshackle Soviet Union ever managed to be—and Russia, while still a shadow of the Soviet Union and now the junior partner in the Eurasian entente, has in Vladimir Putin a daring leader of utter ruthlessness and extraordinary diplomatic talent. No leader in the West is in his league.
China and Russia don’t like or trust each other very much, and should they succeed in marginalizing the U.S., they would quickly fall out. But for now their mutual distrust turns them both against the U.S. as they compete to seize enough spoils from the declining American order to position themselves for the future.
Serendipity:
5 Plant Based Foods You Think Are Planet Friendly But Aren’t
