Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The Democratic National Convention begins today and runs until Thursday.  Here's the schedule of meetings, events and speakers. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former First Lady Michelle Obama close out the first evening.

The Biden-Harris ticket goes into the convention with several trusted polls showing significant leads (NBC News/WSJ +9; Marist +11).  Now a new Washington Post/ABC News poll confirms:

Democrats kick off their convention on Monday in a mood of cautious optimism, with Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), leading Trump and Vice President Pence by 53 percent to 41 percent among registered voters. The findings are identical among a larger sample of all voting-age adults.

Biden’s current national margin over Trump among voters is slightly smaller than the 15-point margin in a poll taken last month and slightly larger than a survey in May when he led by 10 points. In late March, as the pandemic was taking hold in the United States, Biden and Trump were separated by just two points, with the former vice president holding a statistically insignificant advantage.

Today, Biden and Harris lead by 54 percent to 43 percent among those who say they are absolutely certain to vote and who also report voting in 2016. A month ago, Biden’s lead of 15 points overall had narrowed to seven points among similarly committed 2016 voters. Biden now also leads by low double-digits among those who say they are following the election most closely.

Obviously, state polling is more significant due to our anti- democratic Electoral College;  Biden-Harris is ahead in all 6 swing states by varying margins.  (The usual caveats and pleadings are operative -- organize, volunteer, donate, network, cajole, vote early if you can.)

Responding the the Trump/ Republican attack on the Postal Service, Speaker Pelosi is calling the House back from vacation next week:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders will bring the House back in session this week to deal with recent concerns about the U.S. Postal Service, she announced Sunday evening.

The House is expected to return on Saturday, Aug. 22, according to a senior Democratic aide.

"That is why I am calling upon the House to return to session later this week to vote on Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman [Carolyn] Maloney’s 'Delivering for America Act,' which prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020," Pelosi said in a letter to fellow House Democrats. "House Democratic Leader [Steny] Hoyer will soon be announcing the legislative schedule for the coming week."

Chances of anything being brought to a vote in the Senate: zero.  But it offers Democrats a chance to further highlight the sabotage just before the Republican National Convention starts.

The next time you hear COVID Donnie or one of his lickspittles patting themselves on the back for the "wonderful job" they've done tamping down the coronavirus pandemic, remember this:

Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.

As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.  [snip]

Counting deaths takes time and many [=cough= red =cough=] states are weeks or months behind in reporting. The estimates from the C.D.C. are adjusted based on how mortality data has lagged in previous years. Even with this adjustment, it’s possible there could be an underestimate of the complete death toll if increased mortality is causing states to lag more than they have in the past or if states have changed their reporting systems. 

170,000 or whatever the true number, they were lives lost unnecessarily due to the self- interested, bungling response by COVID Donnie.

Will Wright describes the devastation in Iowa from last Monday's derecho, the full effects now being reported:

As the winds howled outside, gusting at over 100 miles per hour, families hid in their basements and wondered what would await them when they emerged.

Many across the Corn Belt of central Iowa were stunned by what they saw: millions of acres of corn and soybean fields left toppled, tangled and torn apart; roofs torn off grain bins; buildings leveled — another daunting setback in a farming community that has had too many of them.

The damage this time was from a derecho, a line of intense and fast-moving windstorms marauding across the prairie. But it adds more pain to a series of economic challenges compounded this year by the effects of the coronavirus.

State officials estimate that as many as 14 million acres of farmland — more than a third of the state’s total farmland — were damaged, an increase from an earlier estimate of 10 million acres. Hundreds of millions of bushels of commercial storage grain bins and tens of millions of bushels of on-farm storage grain bins were likely lost to the storm.

The hardest-hit counties, a band of 36 across Iowa, included 3.6 million acres of corn and 2.5 million acres of soybeans.

As always, please check out Infidel 753's link round-up for a truly remarkable set of links to posts around the Internet.  He puts in the effort so you can benefit!