RSN: Garrison Keillor | Now and Then Some Statues Need Replacing

13 July 20

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Garrison Keillor | Now and Then Some Statues Need Replacing

Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "When I heard that the statue of Stonewall Jackson had been pulled down in Richmond, I wondered why it was in Richmond when Stonewall was from North Carolina and made his career in Nashville, then I remembered that in addition to the country singer, there had been a Confederate general."
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Donald Trump. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

After 44 Years in the News Business, I'm Finally Free to Speak the Truth About Republicans
Grant Segall, The Daily Beast
Segall writes: "Now that my 44 years on daily newspapers have ended, I'm finally free to admit my biases. I'm biased toward the facts. Toward compassion. Toward freedom. All basics of our business. All under attack by today's Republicans."
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A demonstrator holds a sign demanding justice for Andres Guardado in Los Angeles, California, on 8 July. (photo: Christian Monterrosa/EPA)

Police Shot LA Security Guard Andres Guardado in the Back Five Times, Autopsy Shows
Sam Levin, Guardian UK
Levin writes: "The official autopsy report for Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old security guard killed by Los Angeles police last month, revealed that a deputy shot him in the back five times."
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Medical staff from myCovidMD provide free Covid-19 antibody testing in Inglewood, California on June 19, 2020. The unknowns of immune responses to the coronavirus currently outweigh the knowns. (photo: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

My Patient Caught Covid-19 Twice. So Long to Herd Immunity Hopes.
D. Clay Ackerly, Vox
Ackerly writes: "'Wait. I can catch Covid twice?' my 50-year-old patient asked in disbelief. It was the beginning of July, and he had just tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, for a second time - three months after a previous infection."
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Bob Dylan. (photo: Kevin Winter/Getty)

David Simon | A Lonesome Death




David Simon, The New Yorker
Excerpt: In February of 1963, twenty-four-year-old William Zantzinger, armed with a toy carnival cane and wrecked on whiskey, made a spectacle of himself at the Spinsters' Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore.
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Women walk past graffiti reading in Arabic 'Freedom, Peace, Justice' in the Burri district of Khartoum, Sudan. (photo: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

Changes in Criminal Law as Sudan Annuls Apostasy Death Sentence
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Sudan approved wide-ranging amendments to its criminal law including repealing the death penalty for apostasy as well as no longer requiring women to need a permit from male family members to travel with their children."

Changes in criminal law, including outlawing FGM, are being made to achieve equality, Sudan's justice minister says.

According to the 1991 Criminal Law introduced by the overthrown Omar al-Bashir government, the punishment for apostasy - or the abandonment of Islam through actions or words - was stoning to death.

Public flogging will also be ended and the consumption of alcohol by non-Muslims will now be permitted.

In a televised interview on Saturday, Sudanese Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari said the government is currently working to reform other legal provisions to incorporate them in a constitutional declaration.

"We cancelled the Article 126 of the Sudanese Criminal Law and have ensured religious freedom and the equality in citizenship and rule of law," he said.

"All these changes are aiming at achieving equality in front of the laws. We have dropped all the articles that had led to any kind of discrimination. We ensure our people that the legal reformation will continue until we drop all the laws violating the human rights in Sudan."

The minister said his ministry is working to make new personal law that will drop all discriminatory provisions against women and children. He said a commission to study laws and recommend reforms will be set up next week.

Alcohol allowed, FGM banned

The new laws have also permitted the drinking of alcohol for Sudanese Christians and have forbidden lashing as an official punishment. According to the United Nations, about three percent of Sudan's population is non-Muslim.

Alcoholic drinks have been banned since former president Jaafar Nimeiri introduced Islamic law in 1983, throwing bottles of whisky into the Nile in the capital, Khartoum.

The new laws will also ban female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that typically involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia of girls and women, Abdulbari said.

"The mutilation of a woman's genital organs is now considered a crime," the justice ministry said on Friday, adding it is punishable by up to three years in prison.

Nimeiri's introduction of Islamic law was a significant catalyst for a 22-year-long war between Sudan's Muslim north and the mainly Christian south that led in 2011 to South Sudan's secession.

Al-Bashir extended Islamic law after he took power in 1989.

Sudanese Christians live mainly in Khartoum and in the Nuba mountains near the South Sudan border. Some Sudanese also follow traditional African beliefs.

The transition government led by Abdalla Hamdok runs the country in an uneasy coalition with the military, which helped remove al-Bashir after months of mass protests.

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Wolves and black-billed magpies scavenge at a dump where carcasses are stored in Yellowstone National Park. (photo: Michael Nichols/Ronan Donovan/National Parks Service)

25 Years After Returning to Yellowstone, Wolves Have Helped Stabilize the Ecosystem
Christine Peterson, National Geographic
Peterson writes: "Twenty-five years after gray wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, the predators that some feared would wipe out elk have instead proved to be more of a stabilizing force."

New research shows that by reducing populations and thinning out weak and sick animals, wolves have a role in creating resilient elk herds.

wenty-five years after gray wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, the predators that some feared would wipe out elk have instead proved to be more of a stabilizing force. New research shows that by reducing populations and thinning out weak and sick animals, wolves are helping create more resilient elk herds.

For the past 12 years, elk numbers in the park’s largest herd have leveled off between about 6,000 and 8,000, instead of extreme boom-and-bust cycles due to climate fluctuations.

“Elk aren’t starving to death anymore,” says Chris Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

During years with normal amounts of rain and snow, wolves primarily kill older cow elk, since they’re the easiest to hunt. But Wilmers led a recent study that showed during particularly dry years—when grass, shrubs, and wildflowers aren’t as lush—wolves switch to hunting bulls. These burly males already don’t eat much in the fall, focusing instead on making deafening bugles and smashing into each other while fighting over cows. All that effort burns calories, weakening them heading into winter. In dry years, they’re even more diminished.

As adaptable, intelligent predators, wolves have learned to recognize these conditions, and they would rather kill an undernourished 750-pound bull versus a 450-pound cow. So by targeting bulls during years of scarce food, they give the cows a chance to reproduce, thus keeping the population afloat. (Explore the Yellowstone most don’t see.)

But most importantly, the Yellowstone area’s wolves—which now number between 300 and 350—could help elk herds weather the perils of a more volatile climate, according to the study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. For instance, elk herds that maintain consistent numbers, rather than yo-yoing up and down, can better withstand more frequent droughts—one impact of climate change that is already occurring in the region.

“In a future that will be very unpredictable, we want a buffer” against mass die-offs, says Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s senior wildlife biologist, and wolves’ ability to keep elk herds balanced can play that role. Through hunting and management practices, “humans help stabilize elk populations, but they don’t do the same thing as wolves.”

The findings in Yellowstone are also relevant, he adds, as Coloradans vote in November whether to reintroduce wolves to their state, home to about 287,000 elk—the largest number in the U.S.

Finding a balance

For their study, Wilmers, Smith, and colleagues analyzed more than a thousand dead elk in Yellowstone—located in the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—over 20 years. The scientists spent about a month at the beginning and end of each winter tracking three wolf packs, locating every elk kill the wolves made; recording the dead animal’s age and sex; and removing a bone marrow sample, which determined the elk’s physical condition before death. The team then used satellite data to derive how much plant life was available for elk to eat each year, an amount dependent on snowmelt and rainfall.

Synthesizing all of that data revealed that wolves target bulls during years when vegetation is poor, offering a clearer understanding of how shifts in climate can change predators’ behaviors.

This is especially useful for managing and conserving wolves, which are still rebuilding their numbers after over a century of persecution. Before the 1900s, Yellowstone predators such as grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, and mountain lions thrived alongside robust populations of American bison, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep.

But a coordinated campaign by the federal government exterminated almost all those predators, and bison, from the area. The last known Yellowstone wolf pack was killed in 1926, and the canines were also wiped out in most of their historic range in much of the lower 48, hanging on in a few populations around the Great Lakes. (Read more about the history of Yellowstone National Park.)

With the wolves gone, and bears and lions greatly diminished, elk populations skyrocketed. Between 1932 and 1968, the U.S. National Park Service and the state of Montana removed more than 70,000 elk from the Northern Yellowstone herd by killing them or shipping them across the country to areas where they’d been eliminated.

When the park stopped killing elk in 1968, numbers shot up again from about 5,000 to close to 20,000. For the next several decades, elk cycled through population booms and collapses along with climate fluctuations; hard winters left the ground littered with hundreds of the carcasses of elk that had starved to death. Then, between 1995 and 1997, wildlife officials reintroduced 41 wolves to Yellowstone. Grizzly bears and mountain lions, which also prey on elk, increased due to more protections from states and the federal government. The elk population dropped, eventually evening out the spikes and dips.

In the winter of 2010 to 2011, for instance, elk fared relatively well during abnormally deep snow and cold temperatures, compared with the mass deaths seen during similar winters in the 1980s and 1990s, Smith says. (Read about the threatened species bouncing back in Yellowstone.)

“These systems are better evolved or better adapted to that way of life than elk starving to death,” Smith says. “What elk starving to death means is they’re eating themselves out of house and home.”

Lessons for other states

As November’s ballot initiative looms, researchers are using the 25 years of data to predict what might happen if the predators return to Colorado or any other U.S. state within the species’ historic range. Some groups are pushing to reintroduce more Mexican wolves, a gray wolf subspecies, into their former habitats of New Mexico and Arizona.

So far, there are more questions than answers. While the Yellowstone area is vast and sparsely populated, much of Colorado is not—which means where wolves would be reintroduced, how many would be allowed to roam the mountains, and how much humans would tolerate their presence are all potential challenges, says Joanna Lambert, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and scientific advisor for the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, which advocates for wolf reintroduction. (See 12 of our favorite wolf photos.)

State officials would manage the wolves as an “experimental population,” which is different from the packs reintroduced into Yellowstone, which were managed federally as an “endangered species.” This means that wolves that wandered outside Yellowstone Park were largely prohibited from being killed, particularly early in the reintroduction. Colorado would likely not have similar restrictions.

But one takeaway from Yellowstone is clear, Lambert says: Wolves will certainly eat some of Colorado’s abundant elk.

If wolves are reintroduced, she expects the state’s herds will be “leaner, meaner, and healthier.”

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Daily Kos Recommended: Throwing a sandwich ends in death for Black teen restrained until he lost consciousness

Daily Kos Recommended

• Throwing a sandwich ends in death for Black teen restrained until he lost consciousness
• 
  Security surveillance video released Tuesday showed a 16-year-old boy who threw a sandwich at another teen being restrained until he lost consciousness at a Michigan youth facility. That child, Cornelius Fredericks, died May 1, two days after the incident at Lakeside Academy, a facility that houses children in foster care or the juvenile justice system, according to NBC News. Fredericks, a ward of the state, wasn’t involved in the juvenile justice system and was only at the facility because his mother died and his father was deemed unable to take care of him, the news network reported.

  At least three of the staff members shown piling on top of Fredericks were more than 6 feet tall and weighed at least 215 pounds, according to a state special investigation report addressed to Steven Laidacker, executive director of the facility. “Due to the severity of the violations, disciplinary action against your license is recommended,” an investigator stated in the letter.
  Former nurse Heather Newton McLogan and staff members Zachary Raul Solis and Michael Joshua Mosley—who were all fired along with seven other staff members at the facility—were also charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree child abuse in the incident. McLogan is accused of waiting 12 minutes after the child was restrained to call 911, state officials reported. Fredericks’ family also filed a civil lawsuit against the facility on June 22, accusing the facility of negligence.

  "In fact, video from Lakeside Academy even shows a staff member placing his/her weight directly on Cornelius's chest for nearly ten minutes as Cornelius lost consciousness," an attorney stated in the lawsuit. "Cornelius's scream of 'I can't breathe' was not enough to get the staff members to stop the excessive restraint." 

  Neither was the child urinating on himself, the family's attorney Geoffrey Fieger told NBC News. "Certainly this type of behavior is not human,” he said. “It can only be akin to a subhuman-type species that would inflict this behavior on children."

  The facility has had more than 30 investigations since 2016 regarding staff qualifications, discipline, behavior management, resident restraint, and premise maintenance, attorney Tenia Goshay said in the suit. The staff members named in the suit were accused of violating policy in six different incidents involving the "improper use of de-escalation techniques" or "improper restraints," Goshay said in the suit. "The documented history and repeated investigations of Defendants' improper use of restraints on residents should have put the Defendants on notice that change was needed," the attorney said in the suit.

  Sequel Youth and Family Services, which oversees Lakeside Academy, called Fredericks' death "senseless and tragic. The actions taken by the staff members in that video do not adhere to the Sequel and Lakeside Academy policies and procedures," the family services business said.

  However, Anastase Markou, McLogan's lawyer, told NBC News his client thought the child was "faking" his loss of consciousness. "She's been accused of not doing something based on some form of legal duty, which I'm still trying to decide what legal duty she had," Markou told the news network.

  Kiana Garrity, Mosley's attorney, told NBC News Fredericks threatened his peers. "They did not restrain him for throwing food as alleged," Garrity said. "That's a made-up narrative by Lakeside. They're lying through their teeth to cover their policies."

  Donald Sappanos, one of Solis’ attorneys, predicted all three staff members charged would be acquitted because they followed their employee handbook, NBC News reported.
• 
  
• Calls for 'Boycott GOYA' grow after CEO praises Trump
• 
• If you are a member of the Latino community, or if you cook and eat food made with recipes from the Caribbean and Latin America, you are probably familiar with GOYA products. I took a quick look in my kitchen cabinet and found three: a can of gandules (pigeon peas), frijoles negros (black beans), and some adobo—a multi-spice seasoning. 

  CEO GOYA Foods CEO Robert Unanue paid a visit to the White House and lavishly praised Donald Trump on Thursday. His support for a president who puts kids in cages, dismissed and paper toweled Puerto Rico, and describes Latinos as “thugs” and “rapists” sparked a social media backlash with trending hashtags of #BoycottGoya, and #Goyaway.   
  The Unanue family, one of America’s richest, are billionaires; perfect buddies for The Donald. Let’s see how they react to people deciding not to add a pinch of GOYA Adobo to their meals.

  Some Twitter responses:

  I’m going to take Ana Navarro’s advice and donate the GOYA products on my shelf to my local food bank.

  Happy eating—without GOYA.
• 
  
• Those right-wingers who praised Sweden's response to COVID-19 are looking pretty stupid now
  
• Daily Kos and other news outlets have seen big increases in site traffic during the coronavirus crisis—yet the news media industry is collapsing as ad dollars evaporate. Please start a $3 monthly recurring today.
  
• 82 test positive for COVID-19 after attending Missouri Christian summer camp
• 
• Despite reported surges of COVID-19 infections and the threat of contracting the virus still high in the U.S., many businesses are resuming operation under the guise of normalcy. Nationwide, some individuals are ignoring pleas from experts to continue social distancing and are instead resuming everyday activities as if the virus no longer exists.

  As children across the country begin attending summer camps, fear of spreading the COVID-19 virus is being dismissed as all but a hoax. Nevertheless, a summer camp in Missouri shut down last week following a coronavirus outbreak in which more than 40 children and staffers tested positive for the coronavirus, health officials said. Within days after the children returned home to 10 different states, the number increased to 82.
  The summer camp belongs to a network of Christian sports camps in Missouri, known as the Kanakuk Kamps. After announcing its plans to open starting May 30, the camp network issued a statement on its website assuring parents that camps “are focused on taking all reasonable measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our Kamps."

  The camp located in Lampe, Missouri, was one of several of the network’s overnight camps; the chain prides itself on having approximately 20,000 children attend its camps each summer. According to the company’s website, children between the ages of 13-18 can attend the camp for up to four weeks and participate in activities including Bible studies and sports training.  

  While a video on Kanakuk's website said all campers and staff members would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days before attending camp to avoid the spread of the virus, no measures were taken to ensure this requirement was followed outside of a health card issued to parents to fill out.

  News of the outbreak spread on July 2 when health officials confirmed that at least 41 campers and staff tested positive, and by July 6 that number had doubled. Parents were made aware of the outbreak and resulting closure through an email last week, NBC News reported. "As your Kamper returns home," the email read, "we recommend that you consider a 14-day self-quarantine for your child and monitor for symptoms of COVID-19." The email was followed by an announcement on Facebook by the Stone County Health Department confirming the number of positive cases. "The decision to close has resulted in all campers, counselors and staff to return to their homes," the Department said on Facebook. "SCHD will be working closely with Kanakuk Kamps to identify exposed individuals and quarantine those individuals, as necessary."

  Despite the concern that should be associated with infecting such a large group of children and staff from across the country, the camp network has not mentioned the outbreak on any of its social media channels and continues to share pictures of campers participating in activities. In addition, the state has not issued any changes in guidelines to avoid another potential outbreak as businesses resume operation. According to People, Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health, announced that his agency does not plan to shut down other summer camps despite the outbreak. “We think school is incredibly important to kids. We also think camps are important,” Williams said Monday. According to Williams, the Kanakuk Kamps site associated with the outbreak plans to reopen after testing all staff members.

  Kanakuk Kamps is not alone. Other camps across the country have opened and closed following both children and staff contracting COVID-19, the Associated Press reported. Ultimately, it is up to parents to decide whether the risk to send their children to a camp amid a pandemic is worth it or not.

  As cases surge in the U.S. and increasingly affect younger populations, Donald Trump has called for schools to open for in-person learning, in addition to the administration issuing a new rule that foreign nationals attending school in the U.S. are not allowed to take a full online course load if they wish to stay in the country. Since the start of this pandemic, the Trump administration has failed to adequately respond to the virus and dismissed the severity of it. With camps and schools resuming as they were prior to the virus, there’s no stopping further outbreaks and spread.
• Supreme Court rejects Oklahoma's effort to 'nullify promises made in the name of the U.S.' to tribes
  
• AG Barr bribed, threatened, and lied his way to ousting New York's top prosecutor, testimony reveals
  
• Cartoon: Save our statues!
  
• Chip in $1 each to organizations working on the frontlines of Black Lives Matter protests to report the stories, change policies, and provide assistance.
  
• Trump's apparently been too busy hate tweeting to file his annual financial disclosure report
  
• Judge Sullivan isn't done with Flynn just yet, case going to full court of appeals
  
• Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have partnered to destroy Florida, and they're doing a great job
  
• What happens when red states pass blue states in COVID19 cases per capita? We're about to find out.
  
• Sign the petition: Demand Congress put a moratorium on utility shutoffs during the coronavirus pandemic!
  
• 'It sounded like a war': Bystander details hearing Phoenix police shoot, kill her son's friend
  
• Trump can't figure out why coronavirus-ravaged America shouldn't open its schools
  
• 18-year-old Andrés Guardado was shot 5 times in back by police, independent autopsy finds
• 
• An independent autopsy performed at the request of the family of Andrés Guardado has found that the 18-year-old student and part-time security guard was shot in the back five times by a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy last month, NBC News reports. 

  Guardado’s family, already frustrated over the lack of answers regarding his killing by police on June 18, requested the independent autopsy after the department put a “security hold” on the L.A. County coroner’s results. “These findings confirm what we have known all along,” his family said according to LAist, “which is that Andrés was unjustifiably killed by a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy.”
  “Lawyers for the Guardado family have said that officials’ failure to explain exactly what prompted the shooting has made the family's grieving process that much more difficult,” NBC News said, as well as anger around an allegation by police that he was armed. Police claim they found an unmarked gun at the scene that had not been fired, “leading police to believe that Andres didn’t fire it,” the report continued. 

  "We do not believe that he had a gun," family attorney Adam Shea said according to NBC News. "There was a gun at the scene. How and why that gun was there and who it belonged to is a question that needs to be answered." Doubt around the police’s claims are only heightened following a Los Angeles Times report that Miguel Vega, the officer who reportedly killed the 18-year-old, has already faced a number of accusations of misconduct in the past, including “making false statements in an investigation.”

  While Vega initially refused to make a statement to investigators, NBC News reports he’s set to be interviewed in the coming days. Both Vega and Chris Hernandez, the officer who was with him the day he shot and killed Guardado, are still employed by the sheriff’s department but officials wouldn’t say where they’re currently assigned, the report said.

  Raising more alarms about a lack of transparency is the fact that sheriff’s department has yet to turn over evidence requested by the county’s inspector general. “On June 22, 2020, my office requested documents and video recovered in the investigation into the shooting of Andres Guardado. We have received no response,” the County of Los Angeles Office of Inspector General wrote to Sheriff Alex Villanueva this week. “I ask that you provide us the items requested immediately.”

  Recent data has found that Latinos follow Black Americans in the demographic most violently affected by police violence. 

  "It's not an issue that's associated with Latinos in the same way that it's associated with African American men in particular,” Rep. Joaquin Castro said according to NPR, “but it has been a real problem for the Latino community throughout the country, particularly in inner city neighborhoods of folks being profiled, folks being killed over the years.” 

  “Of course the years of systemic racism and voicelessness are not near the same level the Black community has been forced to endure,” AL DÍA News’ Ericka Conant rightfully notes, “but the recent deaths of multiple Latinx individuals at the hands of police have reignited the call to end police brutality against Latinx people as well.”

  Guardado’s family has said they will not rest until their loved one receives justice. "Our son did not deserve to die this way," they said according to NBC News. "Andres was a good boy, he was our son and he had so much life ahead of him."
• 
  
• On second thought, CDC not changing guidelines for reopening schools just to please madman Trump
  
• Sign the petition: Demand Congress hold abusive employers accountable if they cause COVID-19 outbreaks. REJECT COVID-19 corporate immunity!
  
• Republicans didn't think they'd have to defend these three Senate seats. Let's flip 'em all!
  
• Yes, Alaska is a presidential battleground, and a Senate and House one as well
  
• If Democratic fundraising dollars could talk, they'd speak of massive hate for Mitch McConnell
  

ICYMI: Here are the top stories of the week so far:

• Trump accidentally tells the truth about his dumpster fire of a presidency
  
• Cartoon: Trumpersticker
  
• Cartoon: Trump Tower
  

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