QUOTES

USA BANNED from Travel

NEVER IN MY LIFETIME WOULD I BELIEVE THE ALMIGHTY US DOLLAR WOULD BE REJECTED FROM MOST OTHER COUNTRIES!!!!

Shannon Valley Park/Indian Creek Trail

This delightful stream only 5 minutes from our house provided relief from 104 heat index days and allowed for some water fun when our region’s public pools have been closed!!!

Windsor, COLORADO PANDEMIC TRIP 2020

COLORADO FUN HERE!!!!

CLICK

Isgett Family visits!!!

After 4 months, I got my hair done

New hairdo!!!!! Cut & color




4 months of growth



Healing Skin Cancer skas










Fun outing to visit water falls on indian Creek Trail

Dubai & Abu Dabi

Middle East
Rivals Dubai and Abu Dhabi tackle coronavirus in very different ways
By Paul Schemm
July 13 at 5:00 AM CT




Tourists dine at Dubai’s Al Naseem hotel last week. (Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)
DUBAI — This gleaming city with its enormous malls, towering hotels, elaborate water parks and indoor ski slope welcomed tourists back last week.
The rest of the United Arab Emirates, however, remains closed to visitors, a striking illustration of the competing priorities among the seven statelets that make up the country — and especially between the two main rivals, Dubai and the capital, Abu Dhabi.
Inside the skin of this close U.S. ally, a federation of emirates formed in 1971, are two markedly different powerhouses. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown those contrasts into stark relief.
Abu Dhabi, with huge oil reserves and hydrocarbon industries, has been relatively insulated from this global crisis, while Dubai, which depends on international travel, trade, real estate and especially tourism, has been devastated by a disease that makes people stay home.
“Dubai is like the ultimate place for handshakes and hugs and back slaps — Dubai is all-out physical interaction,” said Jim Krane, an expert on the region at Rice University’s Baker Institute and author of “City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism.”
“Dubai just falls apart if you have to shut down travel and social distance and Abu Dhabi is almost unaffected,” he said.
[[The UAE’s ambitions backfire as it finds itself on the front line of U.S.-Iran tensions]]
The pandemic, many Middle East observers predict, will further solidify Abu Dhabi's power in the federation, which was once largely governed by negotiations among the ruling families and often saw Dubai trying to chart its own course. Dubai initially split off from Abu Dhabi in 1833, and the pair fought a border war in 1947 when the British still held sway over what was then known as the Trucial States.


"It's been there since day one — over the past 170 years of our history, it was Dubai versus Abu Dhabi," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a Dubai-based Emirati political scientist.
Dubai has gained worldwide attention with its high-end hotels, wild skyscrapers, global branding and the world's busiest airport for international travel. Its wings, however, were clipped a bit when the global economic crisis of 2008 required a $20 billion bailout authorized by its richer neighbor. Dubai's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which is also the tallest in the world, was named after Abu Dhabi's ruler.


The Dubai skyline over the Sheikh Zayed Road section of the E 11 highway. (Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)
Since then, Dubai has been more careful to follow Abu Dhabi's lead and curtail its lucrative trade relations with countries of which the capital doesn't approve, such as Iran and Qatar.
“Essentially, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have completely different political economies where Abu Dhabi, of course, has the bulk of the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund and it’s well positioned for the medium and long haul,” said Christopher Davidson, an expert on gulf affairs from Britain’s Durham University. “They are like two political economies side by side, but increasingly in the last decade or more, one has been a much stronger partner than the other.”
Dubai’s need to get back to work — tourism contributes 11.5 percent of its economy — meant that it tackled the coronavirus with a greater sense of urgency than its neighbors.
First, it shut down two densely populated neighborhoods in the old part of town before extending a three-week, 24-hour lockdown to the rest of the city in April — a course not followed by any other emirate. Malls, beaches, restaurants and public amusements were also closed down earlier.


An Emirati policeman directs a tourist to get a medical screening upon arrival at Terminal 3 at Dubai airport. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images)
But since the end of May, Dubai has rapidly opened up and lifted strictures ahead of its neighbors in an apparent message that here, at least, the virus has been contained — and tourists can return. Masks are still mandatory in public; bars and nightclubs (but not restaurants) remain closed, and social distancing rules are enforced in public places.


“We have taken very strict precautionary measures across all tourism touch points and around tourist arrivals,” the Dubai tourism authority said in a statement. “Just as with other federal governments, individual emirates are able to take their own precautions and decisions on how to open up.”
The number of new infections in the UAE continues to rise. The total now reaches more than 53,000 cases and 328 deaths. As in other Persian Gulf countries, there have been outbreaks among the large population of migrant workers, who often live in close quarters, and several of these neighborhoods have been targeted in testing and disinfection campaigns.
The government has not revealed where infections are occurring. Dubai announced last week that the last patient had left its 3,000-bed field hospital set up at the World Trade Center in April.
The National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority did not respond to requests for comment on the country’s coronavirus policies.


The last patient at a temporary covid-19 hospital in downtown Dubai is acclaimed by nurses and doctors as he leaves the facility on July 7. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images)
Helal Saeed Almarri, director general of Dubai Tourism, expressed confidence recently that visitors would return.
“We appear in the top one to five destinations people are looking for in most of our source markets,” he said in a video statement issued to media outlets. “We are very sure that tourism in Dubai is going to overcome this very quickly. Around the world people are already looking for their next booking and what we’ve already seen is Dubai remains on top of their list.”
Some of the city’s top hotels said they had received a few reservations by foreigners for July. But with the pandemic still making international travel uncertain, reservation managers said most people were asking about August and September.


While Abu Dhabi has been affected by a sharp drop in global oil prices, it has been partly insulated by a sovereign wealth fund worth nearly $1 trillion. It has essentially sealed itself off from the rest of the country since the beginning of June, requiring until recently a permit to enter. To get into Abu Dhabi now, UAE citizens and residents must present a coronavirus test result less than 48 hours old.
The different emirates have issued competing guidelines on which countries may be visited and whether quarantine would be required upon return.
Abdulla said the differences were to be expected in such a federation, where each part has its own way of doing things according to its priorities, even as they work together for the country’s prosperity.
“Just as there is a competition between New York and California, there is also a bit of healthy competition between Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” he said. “But 80 percent of the time they complement each other beautifully.”
[The once flourishing Iranian community in Dubai faces pressure amid Persian Gulf tensions]
[UAE’s ‘Happiness and Positivity Council’ debuts new high-tech police helmet for coronavirus combat]
[A local’s guide to Dubai]

Paul Schemm is The Washington Post’s overnight foreign editor based in Dubai. He joined the paper in 2016. He previously worked for the Associated Press as North Africa chief correspondent based in Morocco and, before that, in Cairo as part of the Middle East regional bureau. He wrote and edited for The Washington Post from Ethiopia until 2019

SWEDEN: You thought sooo Highly of Yourself

Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale

Its decision to carry on in the face of the pandemic has yielded a surge of deaths without sparing its economy from damage — a red flag as the United States and Britain move to lift lockdowns.

LONDON — Ever since the coronavirus emerged in Europe, Sweden has captured international attention by conducting an unorthodox, open-air experiment. It has allowed the world to examine what happens in a pandemic when a government allows life to carry on largely unhindered.

This is what has happened: Not only have thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden’s economy has fared little better.

“They literally gained nothing,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “It’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.”

The results of Sweden’s experience are relevant well beyond Scandinavian shores. In the United States, where the virus is spreading with alarming speed, many states have — at President Trump’s urging — avoided lockdowns or lifted them prematurely on the assumption that this would foster economic revival, allowing people to return to workplaces, shops and restaurants.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson — previously hospitalized with Covid-19 — reopened pubs and restaurants last weekend in a bid to restore normal economic life.

Implicit in these approaches is the assumption that governments must balance saving lives against the imperative to spare jobs, with the extra health risks of rolling back social distancing potentially justified by a resulting boost to prosperity. But Sweden’s grim result — more death, and nearly equal economic damage — suggests that the supposed choice between lives and paychecks is a false one: A failure to impose social distancing can cost lives and jobs at the same time.

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Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. The government allowed restaurants, gyms, shops, playgrounds and most schools to remain open. By contrast, Denmark and Norway opted for strict quarantines, banning large groups and locking down shops and restaurants.

More than three months later, the coronavirus is blamed for 5,420 deaths in Sweden, according to the World Health Organization. That might not sound especially horrendous compared with the more than 129,000 Americans who have died. But Sweden is a country of only 10 million people. Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more deaths than the United States, 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland and six times more than Denmark.

Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more coronavirus-related deaths than the United States.Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The elevated death toll resulting from Sweden’s approach has been clear for many weeks. What is only now emerging is how Sweden, despite letting its economy run unimpeded, has still suffered business-destroying, prosperity-diminishing damage, and at nearly the same magnitude of its neighbors.

Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent. The unemployment rate jumped to 9 percent in May from 7.1 percent in March. “The overall damage to the economy means the recovery will be protracted, with unemployment remaining elevated,” Oxford Economics concluded in a recent research note.

This is more or less how damage caused by the pandemic has played out in Denmark, where the central bank expects that the economy will shrink 4.1 percent this year, and where joblessness has edged up to 5.6 percent in May from 4.1 percent in March.

In short, Sweden suffered a vastly higher death rate while failing to collect on the expected economic gains.

The coronavirus does not stop at national borders. Despite the government’s decision to allow the domestic economy to roll on, Swedish businesses are stuck with the same conditions that produced recession everywhere else. And Swedish people responded to the fear of the virus by limiting their shopping — not enough to prevent elevated deaths, but enough to produce a decline in business activity.

Here is one takeaway with potentially universal import: It is simplistic to portray government actions such as quarantines as the cause of economic damage. The real culprit is the virus itself. From Asia to Europe to the Americas, the risks of the pandemic have disrupted businesses while prompting people to avoid shopping malls and restaurants, regardless of official policy.

Sweden is exposed to the vagaries of global trade. Once the pandemic was unleashed, it was certain to suffer the economic consequences, said Mr. Kirkegaard, the economist.

The Swedish manufacturing sector shut down when everyone else shut down because of the supply chain situation,” he said. “This was entirely predictable.”

What remained in the government’s sphere of influence was how many people would die.

“There is just no questioning and no willingness from the Swedish government to really change tack, until it’s too late,” Mr. Kirkegaard said. “Which is astonishing, given that it’s been clear for quite some time that the economic gains that they claim to have gotten from this are just nonexistent.”

Norway, on the other hand, was not only quick to impose an aggressive lockdown, but early to relax it as the virus slowed, and as the government ramped up testing. It is now expected to see a more rapid economic turnaround. Norway’s central bank predicts that its mainland economy — excluding the turbulent oil and gas sector — will contract by 3.9 percent this year. That amounts to a marked improvement over the 5.5 percent decline expected in the midst of the lockdown.

Sweden’s laissez faire approach does appear to have minimized the economic damage compared with its neighbors in the first three months of the year, according to an assessment by the International Monetary Fund. But that effect has worn off as the force of the pandemic has swept through the global economy, and as Swedish consumers have voluntarily curbed their shopping anyway.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagengained access to credit data from Danske Bank, one of the largest in Scandinavia. They studied spending patterns from mid-March, when Denmark put the clamps on the economy, to early April. The pandemic prompted Danes to reduce their spending 29 percent in that period, the study concluded. During the same weeks, consumers in Sweden — where freedom reigned — reduced their spending 25 percent.

Strikingly, older people — those over 70 — reduced their spending more in Sweden than in Denmark, perhaps concerned that the business-as-usual circumstances made going out especially risky.

Collectively, Scandinavian consumers are expected to continue spending far more robustly than in the United States, said Thomas Harr, global head of research at Danske Bank, emphasizing those nations’ generous social safety nets, including national health care systems. Americans, by contrast, tend to rely on their jobs for health care, making them more cautious about their health and their spending during the pandemic, knowing that hospitalization can be a gateway to financial calamity.

“It’s very much about the welfare state,” Mr. Harr said of Scandinavian countries. “You’re not as concerned about catching the virus, because you know that, if you do, the state is paying for health care.”

Peter S. Goodman is a London-based European economics correspondent. He was previously a national economic correspondent in New York. He has also worked at The 

2020: ONLY 6 months in!!!!!

(You gotta read.  I didn’t write this, wanted to post it on my birthday as a reminder)

Dear Diary 2020 Edition,

In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped out, but then there was a thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and the UK peaced out of the European Union.

In February, Iowa pooped itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the Speaker of the House took ten years to rip up a speech, but then WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused some really important people in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty, and Americans started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor who just knew the flu like killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18.

In March, poop hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust, but then Italy shut its whole country  down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a dump on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing (I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross.

In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC became the set of The Walking Dead and we learned that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE FREAKING SWIFFER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life… or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs and nobody cared, and we were like man, it’s only April….

In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sports events were cancelled everywhere. But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people forgot about the pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) a giant asteroid narrowly missed Earth.

In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the civil war, and there are a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons..... but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a God given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio signal coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus. Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my flippin’ 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worst ever Ebola outbreak was over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worst ever?

In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?

Thanks to whoever started this for the copy and paste.

I have no idea who wrote this; and damn it, I want to know.

Also, why didn't I know about the whale in the Amazon?

SUMMER ART

July 4th:

GOOGLE PHOTOS HERE