IS THIS OUR NEW DEMOCRACY?

The number of new COVID-19 cases is now increasing in the U.S.:

With all those vaccinated, why is this happening?  For one, only 48% of Americans were fully vaccinated as of yesterday.  Further:

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 1.1%.

Furthermore:

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

The July 4th weekend is being blamed for this upsurge.  Just about every COVID-19 death today is thus preventable.  JUST GET VACCINATED!!!  NOW!!!  And it's free.  Go to just about any pharmacy, like CVS or Walgreens.  Save your life during your lunch period, or on the way home.  It's only your own life at stake, and mostly too those of your co-workers, family and friends.  No vaccination?  Good luck trying to travel or attend indoor sports events or see Springsteen on Broadway.

To summarize:

• If your state voted for Donald Trump you are most at risk.  The three worst states are #51 Alabama at 33%, #50 Mississippi 33% and #49 Arkansas 35%.  
• We usually lead in something like this, but Hawaii is only in 17th place at 53%.  It's not the fear of injections.  Apparently a goodly number just don't trust the safety of these still experimental vaccines.  

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  We do have stringent regulations governing new drugs, but you would think after more than six months of safe vaccinations the FDA would by now have taken off the Emergency Use Authorization tag which continues to scare people.  

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  Plus, they really don't need to regularly frighten the public by doing things like today reporting that of the 12.8 million receiving the Johnson&Johnson vaccine, ONLY 0.00074% suffered from something called the Guillain-Barre Syndrome, where no one really dies.  One message like this kills citizens who might have otherwise gotten vaccinated.

Is this just another example of how democracy works?  Republicans, led by Trump, and driven by their assessment that fraud was the reason he lost, are now changing state laws to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote. That was the fraud?  No, if anything, it was Trump, his administration and supporters responsible of attempting to subvert the system. 

Republicans rule over 55% of state legislatures, while there are Republican governors in 27 of the 50 states.  Those states where they control both are in tiny and large ways involved in adjusting voting laws.

• President Joe Biden today in Philadelphia labelled limiting ballot access "authoritarian and anti-American."  But only Democrats will agree to this point of view.  Useless, but necessary.

• 
  A sufficient number of Texas Democratic legislators flew to DC yesterday to:
• Prevent the Republicans from reaching a quorum (and being out of state, cannot be forcibly returned home).
• Lobby Congress, where they only need to convince three Democrats in the Senate.
• In the meanwhile, 17 Republican-controlled states have already enacted laws limiting ballot access.
• Texas could become #18.
• Also too, the mostly Republican-appointed Supreme Court has made clear that states have the right to restrict voting access.

In May I reported on The Decline of Democracy.  

• According to Freedom House, democracy in the world has declined for 15 straight years, and this drop is accelerating.
• You would think the USA is the shining light in the world for democracy.  Nope:
• New Zealand has a 99 score and is #1.
• Looking down the list:
• Czech Republic is at 91
• Argentina  84
• Mongolia  84
• USA  83
• Romania  83.
• Further down the list you find:
• Russia  20
• China  9
• Saudi Arabia  7
• South Korea  3
• Syria  1

So what Donald Trump did for democracy in the U.S. is continuing to get worse.  But what is democracy?  From Merriam-Webster:

Definition of democracy

1a: government by the peopleespecially  : rule of the majority

b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

What is happening to our country today is not leading to a New Democracy.  Clearly, too many Republican states are attempting to destroy democracy.

Changing subjects to something more topical, Pete Alonso of the New York Mets retained his Home Run Derby championship by defeating Trey Mancini of the Baltimore Orioles.  Mancini missed last season with colon cancer.  Longest homer went 520 feet by Juan Soto of the Washington Nations, who also beat Shohei Ohtani.  However, for the first time ever, today at 7:30 PM EDT on your Fox channel, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game will feature Ohtani as the American League starting pitcher and lead-off hitter.  No one in the history of the game made the team in both positions.

The important question of the day is, who is 27-year old Shohei Ohtani dating?  While in 2018 a photo linked him to Kamalani Dung of Hawaii, she clarified that she was just an Ohtani fan.

For the record, in case there is something brewing, Kamalani is 5'7" tall and 24 years old.  She is currently a professional softball player on the Puerto Rican national softball team.

What has been regularly shared as the greatest play in baseball occurred at a Cubs-Dodgers game on 25 April 1976.  Rick Monday did something for democracy that might never again be matched:

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