*a happy story, for a change

(CNN Business) CNN's Anderson Cooper is the proud father of a newborn baby boy.

Wyatt Morgan Cooper was born on Monday weighing 7 pounds 2 ounces.
Cooper, 52, shared photos of Wyatt at the end of Thursday's televised weekly global town hall on the coronavirus pandemic.

"It has been a difficult time in all of our lives, and there are certainly many hard days ahead," Cooper said. "It is, I think, especially important in these times of trouble to try to hold on to moments of joy and moments of happiness. Even as we mourn the loss of loved ones, we are also blessed with new life and new love."

That's how he introduced his own joyful news: "On Monday, I became a father," he said. "I've never actually said that before, out loud, and it still kind of astonishes me. I am a dad. I have a son. And I want you to meet him."

Cooper, who is gay, said in his on-air announcement that "I never thought it would be possible to have a child, and I am so grateful for all those who have paved the way, and for the doctors and nurses and everyone involved in my son's birth."

"Most of all," he said, "I am eternally grateful to a remarkable surrogate who carried Wyatt, watched over him lovingly, tenderly, and gave birth to him."

The news came as a big surprise to CNN viewers, as Cooper had not spoken publicly about his plans to have a baby.
Cooper's father, who died when he was 10 years old, was named Wyatt. Now Cooper is passing the name to a new generation. "I hope I can be as good a dad as he was," he said during the announcement.

His son's middle name, Morgan, is a name from the family tree of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt. She died last year.
"I do wish my mom and dad and my brother, Carter were alive to meet Wyatt," Cooper said, "but I like to believe they can see him. I imagine them all together, arms around each other, smiling and laughing and watching, looking down on us. Happy to know that their love is alive in me and in Wyatt... and that our family continues. New life and new love."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/media/anderson-cooper-father/index.html

I was watching the presser of Governor DeSantis as he rambled on and on about how there was nothing to fear and how wrong the journalists were in predicting how the coronavirus would hit FL - and our local news station (WPLG Local 10) just shut him down. They interrupted him and resumed local news coverage. Love it.

*not my all caps, Newsweek's

A 23-year-old in Italy being treated for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus continues to test positive, despite two months of quarantine and continual swabs.

Bianca Dobroiu arrived at the Sant'Orsola-Malpighi Polyclinic hospital, a public hospital part of the University of Bologna healthcare system, on February 28. She was admitted to the hospital with a fever above 105 degrees and was diagnosed with COVID-19.

"After four days she was fine, but the swabs are still positive," infectious disease specialist Luciano Attard told local media. "As far as we know, no one else in Italy has remained positive for so long. Usually, positivity results do not last for more than four weeks." Dobroiu "had not been subjected to any therapy," Attard said.

Dobroiu was discharged from the hospital on March 6 and returned home where she remained in quarantine under the country's nationwide lockdown.

"After 57 days, here is the new result," Dobroiu, who lives, works, and studies in Bologna, wrote on Facebook. "Well, it's not new because it has never changed. ... Nothing is changing at all and it scares me a little today."

Being asymptomatic, she still tests positive and told local media she was thankful the disease has not progressed. "But doctors have told me that I am still a carrier of the virus and contagious," she said.

As the European nation, one of the block members most devastated by the coronavirus, seeks to lift its lockdown on May 4, authorities are grappling with how to safely resume daily life for the country's 60 million people.

Last week, flower shops and clothing stores for young children reopened in an attempt to slowly restart the economy as it plunges into a deep recession.


https://www.newsweek.com/italian-woman-tests-positive-covid-19-after-60-days-quarantine-swabbing-1500202

(The Guardian) Donald Trump is reported to owe tens of millions of dollars to China, through a real estate debt which falls due in 2022, offering “astonishing leverage” to Beijing.

The debt derives from a 30% share the US president owns in a billion-dollar building on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, which was refinanced in 2012, with $211m of the funding coming from the state-owned Bank of China, Politico reported on Friday.

The Chinese debt complicates Trump’s emerging election strategy of portraying his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as being soft on China. In a briefing on Saturday, Trump said that “China will own the United States” if Biden was elected in November.

snip

“I study Beijing’s influence on America, and this is the most problematic conflict of interest I’ve seen,” Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, wrote on Twitter. “The Bank of China is a state-owned bank, controlled by China’s State Council, the country’s major administrative body, chaired by the Premier Li Keqiang.

“The leverage this presents is astonishing. What if the Bank of China cancels the loan, or requires Trump to pay it back earlier?” Fish asked. “Is this why Trump often praises Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping? Does this cause him to temper his policies or his public remarks? This raises so many questions.”

Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/donald-trump-bank-of-china-debt-report

(CNN) Washington (CNN) Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday he believes President Donald Trump will try to delay November's presidential election.

"Mark my words: I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can't be held," Biden said at a virtual fundraiser, according to a pool report. Biden has maintained the November election should not be postponed and has previously made similar comments.

Trump cannot unilaterally change the date of the election in November, as it has been set into law by federal statute and Congress would have to OK such a move. However, that has not stopped some Democrats from worrying that he will try to do so, and voters had asked the previously large field of Democratic presidential candidates if they had concerns that Trump would try to delay the election or refuse to leave office if he were defeated in November.

snip

The former vice president also accused Trump of "already trying to undermine the election with false claims of voter fraud."
In recent weeks, Trump, who opposes expanding voting-by-mail options, has made false claims about voting-by-mail being "corrupt" and "dangerous," even while states embrace it as a safe alternative during the pandemic.

Biden referenced a report by The Washington Post that the Trump administration was considering leveraging an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which needs to be approved by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to force changes at the US Postal Service. The move could allow the administration to influence how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the Post.

"Imagine threatening not to fund the post office," Biden said. "Now what in God's name is that about? Other than trying to let the word out that he's going to do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote. That's the only way he thinks he can possibly win."
"You can be assured between (Trump) and the Russians there is going to be an attempt to interfere" in the election, Biden said.

read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/politics/joe-biden-trump-delay-presidential-election/index.html

(Atlantic Monthly) BERLIN—Today, we face the global outbreak of a disease that has the potential to catalyze what the historian Eva Schlotheuber terms a “pandemic of the mind.” As misinformation proliferates and lines between fact and fiction are routinely and nonchalantly crossed, world leaders must, now more than ever, illuminate a thoughtful path forward, one reliant on science and evidence-based reasoning. Indeed, many have. One leader goes further still. Trusted by her people to navigate this outbreak’s murky waters, without inciting or succumbing to a pandemic of the mind, one politician is less a commander in chief and more a scientist in chief: Angela Merkel.

snip

A brilliant student, Merkel learned early on “not to put herself in the center of things” lest she expose herself or her family to undue scrutiny, according to Stefan Kornelius, her official biographer and the foreign editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Merkel, who had by then earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry, was working as a research scientist. Soon after, she left her job to join a new political group that had formed in her neighborhood, thus quietly launching her political career. She rose in German politics and, through sheer smarts and a series of well-timed tactical maneuvers, ascended in 2005 to the chancellery, the head of Germany’s federal government. Her trajectory was dramatic and uncommon—for a woman, for an East German, and for a trained scientist with no background in law or civil service.

(Read More) https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/angela-merkel-germany-coronavirus-pandemic/610225/

*While their leader holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry, ours doesn't even believe in science...

(Politico) Mike Bloomberg ended his ill-fated presidential bid on March 4, but his campaign still shelled out nine figures last month anyway, taking his total spending to more than $1 billion in a losing run for the Democratic nomination.

The billionaire’s campaign spent $176 million in March, according to the campaign finance report Bloomberg filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday. That pushed his spending north of $1 billion for a campaign that lasted a bit over four months.

It isn’t unusual for campaigns to spend some money after they end — but the staggering size of Bloomberg’s post-dropout spending illustrates the unusual scale of his campaign, which ultimately saw the media mogul win only one contest: American Samoa. He did net delegates on Super Tuesday as well, but he spent more than $17 million for each delegate acquired.

Bloomberg’s campaign paid out $23.3 million in salary, fringe benefits and payroll taxes and fees in March alone, according to the campaign finance filing. However, the billionaire also left many former staffers furious by cutting them loose last month. Bloomberg’s campaign enticed Democratic operatives across the country with promises of a paying job through the November election, regardless of whether he ultimately won the nomination or not.

(Read More)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/20/bloomberg-1-billion-104-day-campaign-197216

My suggestion to Mike Bloomberg: There are almost 6 million Americans in over 30 states that can't vote in November because paying off their court ordered costs is a direct or indirect requirement for voting. Many of them are financially struggling just to buy food. If you pay off all their legal financial obligations so their voting rights are restored, those 6 million folks just might swing the outcome of a national election and save us from a second term of terror. You are a private citizen now, please do this!

*How irresponsible and selfish for Governor DeSantis to wait so long to allow this!

After refusing for weeks, the state of Florida reversed course Saturday and released the names of 303 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities with cases of the coronavirus.

The list, released under pressure from the news media, included only the facilities’ names. It did not show the number of cases at each facility or whether they involved residents, staff or both.

Included on the list were 39 facilities in Broward County, 54 in Miami-Dade County and 36 in Palm Beach County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the decision to release the names at a news conference in Tallahassee, after pressure from advocates for the elderly and the threat of legal action from media organizations.

The facilities are required to notify residents, staff and residents’ family members of any cases at their facilities, the governor said, and the decision to make the names public ensured that was done.

(List of nursing home/ALFs at link)
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-coronavirus-florida-nursing-home-names-20200418-cn6zgq3hvjeppgnzhozxret5la-story.html

(Associated Press) WASHINGTON - Seeking to avoid the bitter feelings that marred the 2016 Democratic convention, Joe Biden’s campaign is angling to allow Bernie Sanders to keep some of the delegates he would otherwise forfeit by dropping out of the presidential race.

Under a strict application of party rules, Sanders should lose about a third of the delegates he’s won in primaries and caucuses as the process moves ahead and states select the actual people who will attend the Democratic National Convention. The rules say those delegates should be Biden supporters, as he is the only candidate still actively seeking the party’s nomination.

Quiet talks between the two campaigns center on allowing Sanders to keep some of his delegates, essentially a goodwill gesture from a presumptive nominee seeking to court Sanders’ progressive supporters and unite the party. It is not yet settled how many.

“We feel strongly that it is in the best interest of the party to ensure that the Sanders campaign receives statewide delegates to reflect the work that they have done to contribute to the movement that will beat Donald Trump this fall,” said a Biden official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss private negotiations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. “We are in discussion with them now on how to best accomplish that.”

Sanders’ campaign declined to comment on the talks. “Nothing to add from us,” said Sanders spokesman Mike Casca.

In some ways, the delegate count is a moot point. While he has yet to formally win the 1,991 delegates needed to claim the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the party convention, Biden is the Democrat’s presumptive nominee. All of his rivals — including Sanders — have endorsed him after ending their own campaigns.

But with the nomination essentially decided, who has how many delegates takes on a new meaning. In 2016, rowdy Sanders supporters booed some speakers and any mention of nominee Hillary Clinton at the party’s Philadelphia convention. The disruptions were so embarrassing to the party that Sanders pleaded with his supporters not to stage protests on the floor.

By claiming the delegates that ought to belong to him under party rules, Biden could cut down on the number of Sanders’ backers — some of whom have been slow to embrace the former vice president — who could stage a replay of that divide. Instead, he’s decided to try to attract Sanders’ supporters rather than silence them.

For his part, Sanders wants as many delegates as possible to help shape the party’s platform and get Biden and the Democratic Party to embrace his democratic socialist agenda.

(Read More)

https://apnews.com/fcba9e4dcd0732de71587c9b57ac1d53

(CNN) Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, traveled to the Trump golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with their three children for the first night of Passover on April 8, according to The New York Times

In so doing, they ignored federal guidelines. President Donald Trump's much-vaunted coronavirus guidelines recommend against "discretionary travel."

Kushner and Trump also seem to have ignored Washington, DC's Mayor Muriel Bowser's stay-at-home order, which was issued March 30 and ordered residents of DC, which include the couple, to stay at home unless they are performing "essential activities" such as "obtaining medical care" or are performing "essential governmental functions" or "allowable recreational activities" such as "walking, hiking, running, dog-walking..."

It's hard to imagine that a family visit to a New Jersey golf club falls into these categories.

The DC stay-at-home order also says that "willfully" violating it is a misdemeanor subject to a fine not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment for not more than three months, or both.

The hypocrisy of the Kushner and Trump's behavior is breathtaking.

snip

We don't live in a monarchy in the United States and it's long past time for Prince Jared and Princess Ivanka to rejoin the private sector.

(read more) https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/opinions/fire-ivanka-and-jared-passover-travel-bergen/index.html