Ridley' Believe It Or Not August 25, 2020
CV World Cases: The CV pandemic across
the planet continues with 182,413 new cases (a .77%
increase compared to a .76% increase yesterday) to bring the
total over 23 million to 23,871,514 cases, 6,642,971
of which are active, 17,228,543 of which have been
closed with 16,410,283 recoveries (95.25% compared to yesterday’s
95.20%) and 818,260 deaths (4.75% compared to yesterday’s 4.80%) to
continue the trend of increased recovery percentages and decreased mortality
percentages.
CV USA Cases: New cases of 27,507 with
total cases nearing 6 million at 5,890,706 (a .47% increase compared to
yesterday’s 2.11% increase) with 2,517,660 active cases of which 16,477,
on a downward trend with slight blips from over 19,000 in the last 3 weeks
(16,719 yesterday), are in serious or critical condition as trend continues to
go down, and 3,400,553 closures, 181,226 of which have been deaths (5.33%
compared to yesterday’s 5.39%) and 3,219,327 of which have been
recoveries (94.67% compared to yesterday’s 94.61%) (our death rate percentages
continue to improve and are finally in single digits since Cuomo repealed
on May 10 his order sending CV positive patients to nursing homes and ADL
facilities and on a deaths per million population measurement at 547 ranks
behind Belgium (862), Peru (842, Spain (617), UK (610), Italy (586), Sweden
(575), and Chile (570) and only slightly worse than Brazil (543) and Mexico (471).
We have now conducted 77,923,405 tests
(more than 1,058,000 more tests than those done yesterday).
Non CV Case News: Kenosha even with 125 National Guard
troops deployed was hit with another night of rioting, looting and burning down
businesses that provide employment to some of the city’s residents (what
happened to Jacob Blake if the video is a complete and accurate depiction of
what led to his shooting is an absolute intolerable outrage but riots and
business destruction is about as counterproductive as can be to advance the
cause of social justice); in what has to be a major miracle Blake is still
alive and in stable condidtion after surgery; quite a contrast to the DNC as
the first night of the RNC was uplifting and touting the accomplishments of the
Trump Administration and affirmation that he is not nor are his supporters
racists (Herschel Walker’s speech and the speech of the father of Meadow
Pollack shot to death in Parkland were stunning and Nikki Haley on Biden said
it best –“He’s a nice guy and that is the problem” (shades of Leo Durocher’s
astute comment); California in its
headlong rush to sustainable green energy may have hit the wall of energy
shortages with the heat wave hitting the state with the threat of more rolling
blackouts (watch for Gavin Newsom to start heaping the blame on for profit
electrical utilities); Biden is rightfully spooking the country even more than
his plans to raise taxes in threatening to shut the country down to deal with
the virus; Laura has been upgraded to a CAT3 as it heads toward the Texas and
Louisiana coastlines.
Chicago/Baltimore Gun Violence:
In Chicago as of August 24, 2020, the number of shootings increased by 23
poorly aimed shootings to 2,700 of whom none have died to keep the total at 450 (total
travesty of BLM when blacks are shot and killed by blacks in droves and only
sounds of silence and complete absence of any protests in front of City Hall
demanding action to curb the killings and shootings); Baltimore with a fraction
of Chicago’s population and hoping against all hopes that 2020 will not be a
record in terms of deaths but now seems to be shooting less and killing less
and is now 236 behind Chicago at 214 murders (when will Chicago and Baltimore
get serious about this carnage or is this the case of true racism as a Blue run
city turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to the slaughter of people of color by
people of color and when will the left focus on the problem of color on color
shootings in Blue run cities which have been way more deadly and way
more numerous than shootings by police
or by random mass shootings which occur with significantly less frequency?).
As always, I hope you enjoy today’s
holidays and observances, factoids of interest for this day in
history, a musical link to “Moon Love” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra,
the fact that you would do not let pertinacity prevent you from reaching
agreements, and a quote by Benjamin Wallace-Wells on the Cajun Navy and
Hurricane Harvey, secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any
memorable events like Father’s Day, college graduations, birthdays, weddings,
or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a
unique customized poem at a great price tailored to the event and the
recipient. You need only contact me for details.
1. National
Secondhand Clothing Day—celebrating a great way to turn items of
clothing you no longer can or want to wear by turning them into tax deductions
and helping those buy clothing at reduced prices with proceeds going to charitable
endeavors.
2. National
Park Service Founders Day—commemorating the founding of the National Park
Service on this day in 1916 and the dedicated park rangers that oversee our 88
million acres of national parks.
3. 1939
Number One Song— the number 1 song in 1939 on a run of 4
weeks was “Moon Love” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. Here is a
recording of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPlit3K7rQ This talented
band leader and number 1 recording artist from 1939-42 until he volunteered to
entertain troops for the U.S. Army garnered 16 number 1 records and 68 top ten
hits compared to 38 top ten for Elvis Presley and 33 for the Beatles for their entire
respective careers. Sadly, the music stopped for Glenn on December 15, 1944,
the Eve of the commencement of the Battle of the Bulge, while on a flight that
crashed while over the English Channel en route to Paris to make arrangements
to move his band to France to be closer to the troops.
4. Word
of the Day—today’s word of the day is “pertinacity” which
means unyieldingly holding on to a position which in the political world we
live results in gridlock.
5. Punk Rock Ground Zero—celebrating the birth on this day in 1950 of
noted singer and songwriter Willie DeVille who formed the band Mink DeVille and
performed at CBGB, a NYC night club that was the birthplace of punk rock in the
mid 70’s as one of the house bands from 1975-1977. Willie had a long career of
35 years fortunately enhanced when he gave up a 2 decades old heroin habit in
2000 but not soon enough to have avoided being infected with HCV for which he
was diagnosed in Febraury, 2009 which led while being treated to the discovery
of pancreatic cancer in May of that year which killed him shortly thereafter on
August 6, 2009 at age 58.
On this day in:
a. 1939 the U.K. and
Poland signed an agreement that promised military intervention by the U.K. if
Poland were invaded by a foreign power an agreement which proved to be useless
to the Poles and dragged the U.K. into WWII.
b. 1950 President
Truman signed an executive order requiring the Secretary of the Army to seize
railroads threatened by a strike on 4:00 p.m. on August 27, 1950 to insure non disrupted
movement of military supplies for the Korean War that had just erupted.
c.
1967 George Lincoln Rockwell the head of the American Nazi Party after exiting
from a laundromat yards from his house was assassinated by a former member of
the party that he had expelled for wanting to pass out Marxist literature.
d.
1997 Egon Krenz the last Prime Minister of East Germany was convicted for his
shoot to kill orders against East Germans trying to escape from East Berlin an
was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison from which he was released after almost 4
years.
e. 2017 Hurricane Harvey, a CAT4 made landfall in
Texas as one of the most destructive hurricanes to hit the U.S., killing 106 people,
causing massive flooding and over $125 billion in damages and because of the
extent of the damage, Harvey had the dubious distinction of having its name retired
from the list of names for future hurricanes.
Sour Grape reflections on the heroic work of the
Cajun Navy during Hurricane Harvey: “There is a cyclic pattern to the erosion
of faith in government, in which politics saps the state’s capacity to protect
people, and so people put their trust in other institutions (churches;
self-organizing volunteer navies), and are more inclined to support
anti-government politics,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells, staff writer for the New
Yorker who grudgingly admitted the Cajun Navy were heroes but bemoaned
Texas’s independent culture that resulted in “insufficiency of Houston’s city
planning” and “willful ignorance of climate change” that gave rise to the need
for private citizens like the Cajun Navy—failed message of do not rely upon yourself
when you should rely on the government to take care of you.
Please
enjoy the poems on events of interest on my
twitter account below (if you like them,
retweet and follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and
entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for
Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day in History, poems to
inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items
of importance or go to Ridley's Believe It
Or Not for just This Day in History.
© August 25,
2020 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
Alaskanpoet for Hire, Poems to Admire
Poet Extraordinaire, Beyond Compare
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