3 Facts, 3 Numbers, 3 Thoughts 

THE FACTS

* Kamala Harris is not the first person of color to be named VP of the US. From 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover’s number two was Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation and descendant of two Native-American chiefs (one from the Kaw, the other from the Osage). Curtis championed women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to Native-Americans born within US territory. However, he also notoriously sponsored the Curtis Act of 1898, which resulted in the US forcibly breaking up reservations and gaining control of 90 million acres of what had been Native-American land.

* Throughout the 2020 election, Jeff Bezos, the man behind Amazon, was a staunch supporter of mail-in voting. That was then, this is now. Amazon/Bezos has taken legal action to try to squash an attempt to unionize workers in the company’s Alabama warehouse by keeping them from doing the vote by mail. Because of COVID, the National Labor Relations Board had ruled that the vote would take place entirely by mail. To keep that from happening, Amazon filed a motion seeking to delay the election so it could take place in person… with no votes by mail (even from workers on sick leave due to COVID). Per an Amazon spokesperson, “We believe that the best approach to a valid, fair, and successful election is one that is conducted manually, in-person.”

* The WHO is finally telling the truth about the PCR (nasal swab) tests for COVID – considered the “gold standard” in detection of the virus. They are now admitting that they should just be considered a diagnostic “aid.” In a recent notice released “to clarify information previously provided by WHO,” they point to the increased potential for false positives and state that “health providers must [therefore] consider any [PCR] result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.”

 THE NUMBERS 

 * $27.75 trillion – the current US debt, according to data from Statista. Just one year ago, it was at $23.2 trillion. A dramatic jump occurred between the months of March and July, at the height of the pandemic and as the first stimulus checks were going out.

* 400,000 – the number (approximately) of Holocaust survivors still living. Most of the survivors are in Israel and the US.  January 27 – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945 – was designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, 16 years ago this week.

* $376.5 million – the budget of the most expensive movie ever made: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The film earned $1 billion in worldwide box office sales.

THE THOUGHTS 

* “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” – Anne Frank

* “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” – George Bernard Shaw

* “You earn the right to criticize someone only after you have demonstrated the willingness to help someone.” – Michael Masterson