Dear Commons Community,

Opening Day of the 2020 MLB season is finally here.

After an almost four-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, professional baseball is set to begin tonight with a pair of prime-time games involving four of the league’s most prominent teams. The action begins at 7 p.m. ET when the Washington Nationals—the defending World Series champions—host the New York Yankees, a team that is tied for the best odds to win it all this year. The doubleheader concludes at 10 p.m. ET when the Los Angeles Dodgers—the projected top club in the National League and World Series co-favorite—take on its NL West rival in the San Francisco Giants. Its an exciting Opening Day, one that will be followed by a whirlwind tomorrow that features the other 28 MLB teams taking the field to begin their respective 2020 MLB seasons.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is scheduled to toss out the first pitch tonight at the Washington Nationals/New York Yankees Game. 

Both games will be televised on ESPN. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot doesn’t hold back in putting down someone who calls her names.   After White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called Lightfoot “the derelict mayor of Chicago” in a press briefing, the mayor hit back, tweeting “Hey, Karen. Watch your mouth.”

McEnany called Lightfoot “derelict” following a question about President Trump’s response to the death of Black people at the hands of police.

On the Internet, a “Karen” is a moniker for a stereotypically rude, middle aged White woman — the type who demand to “speak to the manager” or call the police on Black people in innocent situations.

Lightfoot is no stranger to social media. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, she has used videos and memes to encourage residents to follow stay at home orders. Her brusque, no-nonsense approach to the pandemic has spawned the internet sensation of “Lori Lightfoot is watching you.”

“Where’s Lightfoot” memes showing the mayor watching over the city are a popular mainstay in Chicago — on one Instagram page, the mayor pops up at park barricades, people’s homes as they consider going outside, and even in iconic works of art.

Trump should be doing half the job as president as Lightfoot does as mayor.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The first visible comet of the year is flying by Earth this week and it won’t appear again in our solar system for another 6,800 years.

According to NASA, Comet Neowise, a newly discovered three-mile-wide comet that’s visible to the naked eye, has already made its appearance in the early morning sky. But starting this week, it will be visible after sunset. And while you’ll likely be able to see it throughout July, Neowise will be closest to Earth—and therefore at its brightest—tonight (July 22^nd).   Here is some more info courtesy of NASA.

“Neowise, which is named after the space telescope used to discover it, is also the brightest comet to appear in 23 years (the last was Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997). For those of us in the northern hemisphere looking to catch a glimpse, the comet will be easiest to spot from July 14 (today) through 19, about an hour after sunset. That’s when the light is just enough to see it against the night sky without washing it out. Neowise will be in the northwestern part of the sky, a little bit below the Big Dipper. And like most skywatching events, it’s always best to head outside a little early so your eyes can adjust to the darkness.”

Since NASA says this comet takes approximately 6,800 years to complete its journey around the sun, it won’t be visible again in our lifetime.

Look to the sky tonight!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I watched President Trump yesterday as he held his first televised coronavirus briefing since he called them off in late April, just after he commented that we can drink bleach to clean the virus from our system.  He didn’t make any idiotic statements and read from a carefully prepared script.  He acknowledged  that the coronavirus pandemic was growing more severe, that it will probably get worse before it gets better,  and endorsed mask wearing in a shift after weeks of playing down the seriousness of the crisis that has killed more than 140,000 Americans. 

Rather than just “embers” of the virus, as he has repeatedly characterized recent outbreaks afflicting much of the country, Mr. Trump conceded that there were now “big fires” across the South and West. He vowed to press a “relentless” campaign to curb the spread without offering any new specific plans for how to do so.  There are indeed big fires maybe better to characterize them as raging infernos in Florida, Texas and Arizona.  Here is a New York Times take on his briefing.

“The president’s shift had its limits, however, as he again congratulated himself on his handling of the pandemic, admitted no missteps and made a number of specious claims. He included none of his public health experts in the briefing and falsely asserted that he had never resisted wearing a mask. And he contradicted his own press secretary, who had told reporters just hours earlier that the president was sometimes tested for the virus multiple times a day; in fact, he said, he has never been tested more than once in a single day.

But Mr. Trump was notably less dismissive about the pandemic, a reflection of the dawning realization within his team that the virus not only is not going away but has badly damaged his standing with the public heading into the election in November. Approval of his handling of the pandemic has fallen from 51 percent in late March to 38 percent last week in polling by The Washington Post and ABC News.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee who now leads Mr. Trump by double digits, has assailed him in recent days for ignoring a devastating threat to the United States.

On Monday, Mr. Biden said the president had “raised the white flag” in the fight against the virus. On Tuesday, he said the incumbent had failed to help working families hurt by the economic collapse.

“You know, he’s quit on you, and he’s quit on this country,” Mr. Biden said as he released a plan for child and elder care. “But this election is not just about him. It’s about us. It’s about you. It’s about what we’ll do, what a president’s supposed to do.”

Mr. Trump’s briefing was more tightly disciplined than the daily performances in March and April when he would talk for more than an hour, picking fights with governors and reporters and making ill-considered remarks like suggesting bleach as a treatment for the coronavirus. On Tuesday, he read from a prepared script, took fewer questions than in the past and ended the session in 27 minutes, shorter than all but one of the 50 briefings he did in the spring, according to Factba.se, which tracks his public appearances.

Advisers have urged him to be less combative, demonstrate more concern over the latest surge in infections and avoid straying into areas that have been counterproductive. Even so, the president wandered far afield when he offered supportive words to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was charged with luring underage girls into the orbit of the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in August after he was charged with sex trafficking.

“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach,” Mr. Trump said. “But I wish her well.”

I found it curious and suspect that Trump did not invite to the briefing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, or Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. 

Tony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3T0ndM6agE

Dear Commons Community,

Our hearts go out to the citizens of Portland, Oregon, as Trump’s “storm troopers” seek to quell demonstrations by its citizens. Federal agents in combat gear are rounding up protesters without warrants and whisking them away in unmarked cars (see video above) .  This is typical in many dictatorships that we have seen in fascist states and junta-controlled countries.  New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg analyzes the situation in Portland in a piece (see below) entitled, Trump’s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun. 

Read it and weep for our democracy!

Tony

——————————————————————————————–

Trump’s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

July 20, 2020

Federal agents confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Ore., on Monday.

The month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder published the best-selling book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.” It was part of a small flood of titles meant to help Americans find their bearings as the new president laid siege to liberal democracy.

One of Snyder’s lessons was, “Be wary of paramilitaries.” He wrote, “When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.” In 2017, the idea of unidentified agents in camouflage snatching leftists off the streets without warrants might have seemed like a febrile Resistance fantasy. Now it’s happening.

According to a lawsuit filed by Oregon’s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, on Friday, federal agents “have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland, detain protesters, and place them into the officers’ unmarked vehicles” since at least last Tuesday. The protesters are neither arrested nor told why they’re being held.

There’s no way to know the affiliation of all the agents — they’ve been wearing military fatigues with patches that just say “Police” — but The Times reported that some of them are part of a specialized Border Patrol group “that normally is tasked with investigating drug smuggling organizations.”

The Trump administration has announced that it intends to send a similar force to other cities; on Monday, The Chicago Tribune reported on plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago. “I don’t need invitations by the state,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on Fox News Monday, adding, “We’re going to do that whether they like us there or not.”

In Portland, we see what such an occupation looks like. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on 29-year-old Mark Pettibone, who early last Wednesday was grabbed off the street by unidentified men, hustled into an unmarked minivan and taken to a holding cell in the federal courthouse. He was eventually released without learning who had abducted him.

A federal agent shot 26-year-old Donavan La Bella in the head with an impact munition; he was hospitalized and needed reconstructive surgery. In a widely circulated video, a 53-year-old Navy veteran was pepper sprayed and beaten after approaching federal agents to ask them about their oaths to the Constitution, leaving him with two broken bones.

There’s something particularly terrifying in the use of Border Patrol agents against American dissidents. After the attack on protesters near the White House last month, the military pushed back on Trump’s attempts to turn it against the citizenry. Police officers in many cities are willing to brutalize demonstrators, but they’re under local control. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, is under federal authority, has leadership that’s fanatically devoted to Trump and is saturated with far-right politics.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Donald Trump picked C.B.P. to be the ones to go over to Portland and do this,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, told me. “It has been a very problematic agency in terms of respecting human rights and in terms of respecting the law.”

It is true that C.B.P. is not an extragovernmental militia, and so might not fit precisely into Snyder’s “On Tyranny” schema. But when I spoke to Snyder on Monday, he suggested the distinction isn’t that significant. “The state is allowed to use force, but the state is allowed to use force according to rules,” he said. These agents, operating outside their normal roles, are by all appearances behaving lawlessly.

Snyder pointed out that the history of autocracy offers several examples of border agents being used against regime enemies.

“This is a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes, whether it’s Franco’s Spain or whether it’s the Russian Empire,” said Snyder. “The people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.”

Castro worries that since the agents are unidentified, far-right groups could easily masquerade as them to go after their enemies on the left. “It becomes more likely the more that this tactic is used,” he said. “I think it’s unconstitutional and dangerous and heading towards fascism.”

On Friday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted about what’s happening in Portland: “Trump and his storm troopers must be stopped.” She didn’t mention what Congress plans to do to stop them, but the House will soon vote on a homeland security appropriations bill. People outraged about the administration’s police-state tactics should demand, at a minimum, that Congress hold up the department’s funding until those tactics are halted.

Through the Trump years, there’s been a debate about whether the president’s authoritarianism is tempered by his incompetence. Those who think concern about fascism is overblown can cite several instances when the administration has been beaten back after overreaching. But all too often the White House has persevered, deforming American life until what once seemed like worst-case scenarios become the status quo.

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump has been airing an ad showing riots, fires and looting in American cities and cautioning that this is what America will look like if Joe Biden is elected president.  The fact is that the images come from the past year and show exactly what happens with Donald Trump as president.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a new research report yesterday entitled, Policies on Academic Freedom, Dismissal for Cause, Financial Exigency, and Program Discontinuance.  It reviews the prevalence of AAUP-supported policies in faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at four-year institutions that have a tenure system and replicates a study conducted in 2000. It is a timely report given that many colleges are facing serious financial problems and are beginning to retrench faculty and reduce academic programs in their institutions.  Below is the text of the letter sent yesterday by Hans-Joerg Tiede, AAUP Senior Program Officer and Researcher.

Tony

———————————————————————–

The AAUP released today a new research report, Policies on Academic Freedom, Dismissal for Cause, Financial Exigency, and Program Discontinuance, that examines the prevalence of AAUP-supported policies in faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at four-year institutions that have a tenure system. The analysis replicates a study conducted in 2000 and tracks changes that have occurred since that time. It finds that many AAUP-supported procedural standards are widely prevalent, but it also finds reason for concern, especially with respect to policies on financial exigency, which have recently received renewed attention at many institutions of higher education because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Academic Freedom
The report finds that the AAUP language on academic freedom is widely adopted. The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, formulated jointly by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities and endorsed by more than 250 disciplinary societies and educational associations, serves as the primary source for academic freedom language in institutional regulations. Seventy-three percent of four-year institutions with a tenure system base their academic freedom policy directly on the 1940 Statement, and more than half cite the AAUP specifically as the source. Only 3 percent of institutions have no academic freedom statement, and 24 percent of institutions have an academic freedom statement not based on AAUP language.

Financial Exigency
Overall, the study found that 95 percent of four-year institutions with a tenure system have financial exigency policies that allow for the termination of appointments. A central question is if and how the conditions that allow such terminations to occur are defined. The study found that 55 percent of institutions do not define those conditions and simply state that appointments can be terminated for “financial exigency,” “fiscal emergency,” or similar conditions. That percentage has decreased since 2000, when it was 69 percent. The AAUP provides a definition of “financial exigency” in its Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. That definition can be found in 13 percent of handbooks and contracts, up from 8 percent in 2000. Other definitions that often provide less protection than the definition provided by the AAUP can be found at 33 percent of institutions, which represents an increase of 10 percentage points since 2000.

Policies on terminations of appointments because of financial exigency also need to include procedural safeguards, such as requirements that the administration seek another suitable position for affected faculty members and, failing that, that affected faculty members receive timely notice of the termination or severance pay. Other safeguards include the requirement that the faculty, through an appropriate faculty body, such as a senate or union, participate in the decision to declare a financial exigency and identify faculty appointments to terminate. The prevalence of such procedural safeguards has increased since 2000, with specific provisions concerning the role of the faculty increasing the most, from 50 percent to 66 percent. The prevalence of each of these procedural elements at institutions at which the faculty engage in collective bargaining is higher than at institutions without faculty unions.

Read the full report here.

Hans-Joerg Tiede
Senior Program Officer and Researcher

Dear Commons Community,

The anti-maskers sign above appears at the Chicago Bagel Authority.

It says it all!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I watched Chris Wallace’s interview with Donald Trump yesterday and in response to questions regarding the coronavirus pandemic, the President responded that the current rise in cases as “burning embers” and “flames,” and maintained that it was “under control.”  It appears he got this information from a report in mid-April that Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, wrote that  commented  that the coronavirus pandemic would soon slow down.  The New York Times revealed in a report published Saturday that  Birx began describing the government’s response to the pandemic as “putting out the embers,” and the White House task force was convinced that another surge in infections wouldn’t happen until the fall.  As reported by the New York Times.

“Birx believed that the U.S. would see a peak in cases, followed by a slow and lasting decline, just as Italy has seen, the Times reported.

Her optimistic take on models assessing the virus apparently encouraged President Donald Trump to put pressure on states to relax regulations meant to slow the spread of the virus in mid-April, the Times reported.

The paper interviewed more than two dozen administration officials and reviewed emails and documents to uncover how the White House handled its response to the spread of COVID-19.

Birx reportedly began describing the government’s response to the pandemic as “putting out the embers,” and the White House task force was convinced that another surge in infections wouldn’t happen until the fall, senior administration officials told the Times. 

But Birx’s predictions were wrong.

According to the Times’ analysis, Birx’s assumption did not take into account states’ efforts to reopen prematurely.

Texas, which rolled back its restrictions, saw its largest increase in COVID-19 cases in a day in May, a record the state broke again in June.

Arizona reopened some businesses in early May, and the state’s number of average daily cases more than doubled.

By May 19, the U.S. was around 10,000 shy of hitting 100,000 total deaths related to the virus. Just over a week later, the country exceeded that grave milestone.

Despite the surge in cases, Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continue using the phrasing that Birx reportedly used to describe the surges.

In late June, McEnany told reporters at a press briefing that the administration was “aware there are embers that need to be put out,” arguing that the U.S. was “uniquely equipped” to handle the increase in cases over the summer.

In an interview on Sunday, Trump described the current rise in cases as “burning embers” and “flames,” though he maintained that it was “under control.”

Trump also said that the virus and pandemic would just “disappear.”

“I’ll be right eventually,” Trump told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “You know, I said, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ I’ll say it again, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ And I’ll be right.”

Trump made similar false predictions in February, saying that the virus would “miraculously” go away by April and that the virus is “going to disappear … like a miracle.”

The U.S. has so far had 3.7 million cases and 140,000 deaths, the most known cases of COVID-19 in the world, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.”

Birx’s credibility has just taken a big hit!

As a side note, Chris Wallace pushed Trump on a number of issues during the interview but I thought he let the President off the hook a bit on the pandemic.  Trump insisted that the rise in cases was due strictly to the fact that the United States does more testing than any other country.  How does the President explain that with 140,000 coronavirus deaths, our country has twenty percent of the deaths globally while only having five percent of the world population.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column  this morning compares the two styles of Anthony Fauci and Donald Trump.  She labels Fauci as a champion of truth and facts and Trump as the master of deceit and denial.  Here is an excerpt.

“You want to see a real can’t-look-away train wreck of a relationship? Look to the nation’s capital, where a messy falling out is chronicled everywhere from the tabloids to a glossy fashion magazine…

The saga has enough betrayal, backstabbing, recrimination, indignation and ostracization to impress Edith Wharton.

The press breathlessly covers how much time has passed since the pair last spoke, whether they’re headed for splitsville, and if they can ever agree on what’s best for the children.

It was always bound to be tempestuous because they are the ultimate odd couple, the doctor and the president.

One is a champion of truth and facts. The other is a master of deceit and denial. One is highly disciplined, working 18-hour days. The other can’t be bothered to do his homework and golfs instead. One is driven by science and the public good. The other is a public menace, driven by greed and ego. One is a Washington institution. The other was sent here to destroy Washington institutions. One is incorruptible. The other corrupts. One is apolitical. The other politicizes everything he touches — toilets, windows, beans and, most fatally, masks.

After a fractious week, when the former reality-show star in the White House retweeted a former game-show host saying that we shouldn’t trust doctors about Covid-19, Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci are gritting their teeth.

What’s so scary is that the bumpy course of their relationship has life-or-death consequences for Americans.

Who could even dream up a scenario where a president and a White House drop oppo research on the esteemed scientist charged with keeping us safe in a worsening pandemic?

The administration acted like Peter Navarro, Trump’s wacko-bird trade adviser, had gone rogue when he assailed Dr. Fauci for being Dr. Wrong, in a USA Today op-ed. But does anyone believe that? And if he did, would he still have his job?

No doubt it was a case of Trump murmuring: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome infectious disease specialist?

Republicans on Capitol Hill privately confessed they were baffled by the whole thing, saying they couldn’t understand why Trump would undermine Fauci, especially now with the virus resurgent. They think it’s not only hurting Trump’s re-election chances, but theirs, too.

As though it couldn’t get more absurd, Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Friday that she thinks it would help Trump’s poll numbers for him to start giving public briefings on the virus again — even though that exercise went off the rails when the president began suggesting people inject themselves with bleach.

“How did we get to a situation in our country where the public health official most known for honesty and hard work is most vilified for it?” marvels Michael Specter, a science writer for The New Yorker who began covering Fauci during the AIDs crisis. “And as Team Trump trashes him, the numbers keep horrifyingly proving him right.”

When Dr. Fauci began treating AIDs patients, nearly every one of them died. “It was the darkest time of my life,” he told Specter.

Then, as Specter writes, he started listening to activists and made a rare admission: His approach wasn’t working. He threw his caution to the winds and became a public-health activist. Through rigorous research and commitment to clinical studies, the death rate from AIDs has plummeted over the years.

Now Fauci struggles to drive the data bus as the White House throws nails under his tires. It seems emblematic of a deeper, existential problem: America has lost its can-do spirit. We were always Bugs Bunny, faster, smarter, more wily than everybody else. Now we’re Slugs Bunny.

Can our country be any more pathetic than this: The Georgia governor suing the Atlanta mayor and City Council to block their mandate for city residents to wear masks?

Trump promised the A team, but he has surrounded himself with losers and kiss-ups and second-raters. Just your basic Ayn Rand nightmare.

Certainly, Dr. Fauci has had to adjust some of his early positions as he learned about this confounding virus. (“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes wisely observed.)

“Medicine is not an exact art,” Jerome Groopman, the best-selling author and professor at Harvard Medical School, put it. “There’s lots of uncertainty, always evolving information, much room for doubt. The most dangerous people are the ones who speak with total authority and no room for error.”

Sound like someone you know?

“Medical schools,” Dr. Groopman continued, “have curricula now to teach students the imperative of admitting when something went wrong, taking responsibility, and committing to righting it.”

Some are saying the 79-year-old Dr. Fauci should say to hell with it and quit. But we need his voice of reason in this nuthouse of a White House.

Despite Dr. Fauci’s best efforts to stay apolitical, he has been sucked into the demented political kaleidoscope through which we view everything now.”

The demented political kaleidoscope that Donald Trump built!

Tony