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to yesterday’s 94.61%) (our death rate percentages continue to improve and are finally in single digits since Cuomo repealed on May 10 his order sending CV positive patients to nursing homes and ADL facilities and on a deaths per million population measurement at 547 ranks behind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
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