NUMB & DUMBER: A shocking new high in OC Covid cases & hospitalizations; thus a shutdown; Wagner contra shutdown: My God, businesses are threatened!

Don Wagner and friend.

Today's OC Covid numbers (I had to reformat my graph)

✅ OC Coronavirus Hospitalizations Skyrocket 

The shutdown comes as 842 people are hospitalized in Orange County and regional ICU unit capacity dips to 13 percent. 

—Voice of OC

     …As of Friday, Southern California’s ICU capacity took a dramatic hit, dipping from roughly 20% of beds available on Friday to just over 13%, triggering the regional shutdown order because the capacity dipped below 15%.... 

     In Orange County, where county supervisors have largely protested the governor’s approach to shutdowns, County Supervisor Don Wagner, in a Saturday morning tweet, called for OC to file a letter of support in a lawsuit against the state to overturn the order. 

     Wagner, a chief critic of state coronavirus mandates and guidelines among the Supervisors, said the shutdown will tank businesses. 

     “On Tuesday, I’m proposing a resolution for local control & looking to file a legal amicus brief opposing the governor’s order. Keep taking safety precautions as we get through this.”  

     Orange County is seeing an unprecedented spike in hospitalizations. The county saw its hospitalizations rise by nearly 100 in one day, which has never before happened in OC during the pandemic….

✅ Trump’s New Citizenship Test Is Full of Conservative Bias—And Dotted With Mistakes 

People seeking U.S. citizenship deserve better. 

—Politico 

[Of course it is. We should be embarrassed.]

✅ What's the point of lab-grown meat when we can simply eat more vegetables? 

The corporate race for cultured protein rests on a view of human beings as greedy and incapable of change 

—Jenny Kleeman/The Guardian 

[Good question!]

✅ Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick for budget chief, runs a think tank backed by corporate and foreign interests

She leads the liberal Center for American Progress

—WashPo 

[She's a Clintonite and Sanders foe, an establishment Dem.]

✅ Just 27 GOP lawmakers acknowledge Biden’s win in Post survey 

Out of 249 Republicans in the House and Senate, 220 would not say who won the election. 

—WashPo 

[They're still afraid of Trump because his cult persists, and it will continue.]

✅ 274,000 Dead, and Trump Obsesses Over Election Conspiracy Theories. Where’s the Outrage? 

A 9/11 a day and…meh? 

—David Corn/Mother Jones

....Even though vaccines appear to be on the horizon, the coming days, weeks, and maybe months are likely to be grim, with ICUs and morgues flooded. Yet no national outcry has occurred. After months of deaths and distancing, has much of the country become inured?....

12-5: A 9/11 a day and…meh?; DACA reinstated; student loan pause

✅ Judge Orders Government to Fully Reinstate DACA Program 

Up to 300,000 additional undocumented immigrants could be allowed to apply for protection from deportation under the court ruling. Up to 300,000 additional undocumented immigrants could be allowed to apply for protection from deportation under the court ruling. 

—NYT 

     A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era program designed to shield young, undocumented immigrants from deportation, dealing what could be a final blow to President Trump’s long-fought effort to end the protections. 

     The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was created by President Barack Obama in 2012. Over the years, it has protected more than 800,000 individuals, known as “dreamers,” who met a series of strict requirements for eligibility. 

     But those protections have been under legal and political siege from Republicans for years, leaving the immigrants who were enrolled in DACA uncertain whether the threat of deportation from the United States could quickly return with a single court order or presidential memorandum…. 

✅ DeVos extends student loan pause through January 

—Politico 

     The Trump administration on Friday granted an extra month of student loan relief to the 41 million Americans who have been benefiting from a freeze on monthly payments and interest that was set to expire at the end of the year. 

     That relief was set to expire on Dec. 31 but will now end on Jan. 31. The last-minute extension averts what could have been a potentially chaotic resumption of payments just weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office…. 

✅ ‘It’s a good idea’: Fauci praises Biden’s 100-day mask plan 

Fauci also confirmed that he accepted Biden’s offer to become the president-elect’s chief medical adviser. 

—Politico 

     Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, on Friday praised President-elect Joe Biden’s proposal for all Americans to wear face masks for the first 100 days of his incoming administration — calling the plan to blunt the surging U.S. coronavirus outbreak a “good idea.” 

     The remarks from Fauci came after Biden announced the proposal in an interview with CNN on Thursday, during which he said he would ask Americans to cover their faces in public for “just 100 days … not forever.” He predicted that widespread adoption of the personal mitigation measure would result in a “significant reduction” in Covid-19 caseloads. 

✅ 274,000 Dead, and Trump Obsesses Over Election Conspiracy Theories. Where’s the Outrage? 

A 9/11 a day and…meh? 

—DAVID CORN/Mother Jones 

     In the late 1990s, conservatives and Republicans were fond of shouting “Where’s the outrage?” in response to Bill Clinton’s sex scandal. They couldn’t believe Clinton was getting away with it, as he preserved his high standing in public opinion polls and escaped removal from office. William Bennett, the right-wing moralist who had been education secretary in the Reagan administration, even wrote a book titled The Death of Outrage, in which he proclaimed this sordid episode cast a dark shadow on the entire nation: “This is moral bankruptcy, and it is damaging our country, its standards, and our self-respect.” 

     All the harrumphing was about an improper Oval Office tryst that did indeed tarnish the highest position in the land. But that fin-de-siècle chest-banging seems rather quaint and silly now, for today there is a lack of outrage over a far more significant matter: the death of more than a quarter-million Americans. On Wednesday, the United States set a new record for COVID-19 deaths: 2,804. This is just 173 shy of the death toll of 9/11—that cataclysmic event that reordered elements of American society. The United States is looking at that level of loss on a daily basis. Yet there is little uproar….