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Cillizza points to two demographics that the Republicans missed in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections. The Hispanic vote comprises 10% of the electorate. Obama won this demographic with 69% compared to 29% for Romney. Romney's extreme positions, to the right of Governor Rick Perry of Texas got him through the Republican primaries but left him exposed in the national elections as he defended his statements of support for "self-deportation." In this respect Reagan, Bush, Perry adopted moderate positions and favored helping children of immigrants get a good education so they could be integrated into American society. Perry even took a hit for his moderate position supporting immigrants in the primaries even before his memory slip in a debate. Romney failed to support even the Dream Act for a pathway to be given to children of immigrants supported by Mark Rubio, a Cuban-American Republican senator of Florida. The second key demographic is the young people vote ages 18-29. This was 18% of the electorate in 2008, and about 19% in 2012. Obama took this demographic with a lead of 34 points in 2008 and a lead of 24 points in 2012. So that even with diminishing support such large numbers meant there was a large cushion to win the election by combining several demographics even if the Democratic position eroded somewhat because of the economy and unemployment at near 8%. This is what happened because of the 6 out of 10 voters, or 60% of the electorate who voted, Romney won 51% to Obama's 47%. This enabled Obama to get the small victory margin he needed in the popular vote. In many ways Romney was "an unnatural candidate" as the Wall Street Journal described him in its editorial, being a private equity business executive fighting a election with Democrats fighting to protect middle and working class interests....

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Instead of "ring fencing" bad loans one bank at a time, which is what is being done for Bank of America and Citigroup by the government , Bair, Bernanke and others favor something like the Resolution Trust Corporation, which would contain all bad assets of banks. Bair in an interview said she would like to see them priced at what they would get in today's market, meaning that the steep discounts issue would be faced squarely. What this will need is a lot of government money to restore confidence so that investors are willing to put their private money in the banks. And Senator Schumer says he is hearing the number of $1 trillion or more. This would let banks take these bad assets off their balance sheets, like they did with the Brady bonds for bad Latin American assets and with the Resolution Trust Corporation for bad assets in the savings and loan crisis. It was the original intent of TARP but two things happened, first the pricing of these assets was in limbo, with nobody willing to say how steep the discount should be. The auction process proposed was a vague and shaky one. Second, things deteriorated so quickly that it became urgent to instead do bank recapitalizations for $250 billion. Now the same issue has to be addressed directly by another administration with control of Congress, so that the big bucks funding of $1 trillion can be possible to do. Something like a separate institution that holds all bad bank assets. And the government taking on a big part of the burden, and with it some ownership of the banks that hopefully could payback some of this $ 1 trillion....

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Property sales are estimated to fall by 28-33% in China, twice as earlier forecast by S&P Global Ratings. This is a steep decline that will affect the Chinese economy so dependent on construction. This week there were reports of property buyers in 100 cities getting together to withhold payments on unfinished apartments. Property developers depend on these payments as they have severe liquidity problems and need cash for operations.

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For a change see parts of Tokyo you normally do not see, and way down in Kyushu island see the Kagoshima region. It is part of this trip to Japan for a 4 day break suggested in The Times of London. 1) Take the Toei streetcar- take the Tokyo Sakura tram running from Minowabishi station in Arakawa, where bits of old Tokyo still exist in narrow alleyways and pubs. Take the tramcar to Waseda station in Shinjuku. An hour's ride and 30 stations with a one day ticket to hop on and off as you feel like. 2) Take in the Sumoida Hokusai museum, and see the famous works of Katsuhika Hokusai, at a museum dedicated to him. Don't miss the woodblock print Under the Wave off Kanagawa, and the series Thirty six views of Mt. Fuji.  3) On Day 2 head to Kagoshima, a 2 hour plane ride from Tokyo. There are 20 flights from Hnaeda airport in Tokyo to Kagoshima airport. You will see Mt. Fuji from the plane at 11,000 feet. In Kagoshima take the airport bus to the city centre and get on the Sakurajima Ferry, about 15 minutes running 3-4 times an hour, 24 hours a day. It goes to Kirishima-Kinkowan National Park, with active volcano Mount Sakurajima, cedar woods, sandy beaches, azalea covered mountain slopes. Try the mineral springs or onsen for a serene atmosphere. 4) For Day 3 take the Ibutama train for an hour ride from beachside town of Ibusuki for sea views, and look for "Mystery Island." During the summer months a sandbar causeway appears for some time allowing one to cross and look at the uninhabited island amidst the sound of the waves and sea air. Then back to Tokyo after a zen period of serenity and calm.   ...

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DW.com has this exceptional story on the elections in France through the pictures drawn by cartoonists in French newspapers. As polls show Macron with over 60% of the vote, cartoonists reflected on the situation of a new president with little experience and his "en marche" movement only one year old, looking at it with skepticism. Cartoonist Antoine Chereau shows a common person reflecting on the situation, with the title Macron leads in the first round, the person says that after being deceived by the right and the left, the French are now choosing to try out deception from the centrist. Loic Secheress shows Macron at the steering wheel of a car, with the title the second round Uberized, two passengers in the back saying they do not want to go right or left, and Macron saying- then alright we are going straight into the wall. On the Socialists splitting the vote between Hamon with 6% and Melenchon with about 20%, instead of putting up one candidate and heading into the runoff,  cartoonist Plantu shows Hamon and Melenchon riding one bike in opposite directions, with the title - the losing machine. Cartoonist Soulcie drawing for Le Monde shows a tour guide in front of the Louvre museum pointing to the pyramid architecture in front of the museum and saying- here are the last remains of the socialist civilization. Allan Barte's drawing looks at the elections as another disappointing experience for voters. He shows two voters in front of posters of Marine Le Pen and Macron, one saying I hadn't realized what the expression really meant until now, and the girl next to him says "election piege a cons," meaning "elections are a trap for idiots" used in the May 1968 street protests in France. ...

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Quentin Letts writes this exceptional and humorous account in the Daily Mail of the events that unfolded in the weeks after the Darling-Salmond debate on the Scottish referendum for independence, and after the first polls showed Alex Salmond's Scotland Independence Party ahead in the vote. Here he describes in good humored as well as insightful detail -the moves, maneouvring and efforts of London politicians, the media, and the elites, during the days leading to the referendum as alarm grows about a breakup of Britain. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, 100 Labor MPs rushing to Edinburgh to plead with the Scots, and the clever Alex Salmond who had a flair for old style political haranguing, all figure in what Letts says was a worthwhile topic for a Shakespearean tragedy, showing Britons in uncharacteristic passionate terms. Lets does not mince words about the motivations of the actors- Labor Party seeing damage to its own prospects in the next elections by losing its Scottish base will do everything to avoid the prospect of dissolution. Cameron of the Conservatives looking to energize the English vote with a promise of devolution for all including Englishmen to improve his own prospects, when the UK Independence Party and Nigel Farage were threatening the Conservatives from the right. One actor Letts does not mention is Britain's former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown, who is from Scotland. Brown may have saved the day by his passionate plea to fellow Scottish voters to stay with Britain, the only truly credible voice from London in Edinburgh and the countryside. As it turned out Glasgow went to the Independence Party, but Edinburgh went to the "Stay Together" alliance with over 60% of the vote, and prevented any last minute surge for the independence vote. Brown pointed out in an oped in the WSJ that Scotland had gained on almost equal terms with England and the rest of Britain in terms of average incomes as a result of efforts in recent decades, truly important bedrock considerations....

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Fox News leads in total viewers in 2015 with an average of 1.8 million viewers in prime time. It also leads in the 25-54 year demographic. By comparison CNN had average of 490,000 viewers, MSNBC had average of 352,000 viewers. A major problem for cable news channels is an aging demographic. The median age for most channels is over 60 years, for CNN 61, for MSNBC 63 and Fox News even older at 67 years of age. In the the crucial 25-54 year old demographic FOx News does poorly with 207,000 total day viewers, CNN does badly with 149,000 and MSNBC at 89,000, posing some serious questions for all the cable news channels in the U.S. Among news shows "O'Reilly Factor" with 2.8 million viewers was first, followed by "The Kelly File" by Megyn Kelly. News stories about Pope Francis, terrorism in France and in the U.S., provided added momentum to news channels in 2015.

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John Cochrane, professor at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago points to the simple truths about U.S. healthcare- out of control pricing because of the pathologies created by previous laws and regulations. He points out that costs are high in healthcare because regulations keep them high. Supply of new doctors is controlled because Congress and the AMA made it that way with a cap on residency programs and AMA opposing the expansion of medical schools. In a system of open competition new hospitals and health care businesses would challenge old ones which is not happening in a regulated market with regulations working to limit competition for the firms already in the business and with the influence to limit competition. Insurance costs for major expenses in an open and deregulated competitive market without the regulations would be so much lower than todays costs that its likely we would not even need a mandate such as the one the Obama healthcare law imposes.

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A recovery in Intel's business of making microprocessors for PC's. Computer demand from corporate customers, medium and small businesses is increasing. Intel showed a 40% increase in profit for the 2nd quarter of 2014. Demand for tablets is softening and buyers are using large smartphones instead of the smaller tablets. Intel CEO Krzanich, says the installed base of PC's that is about 4 years old is about 600 million strong, and is refreshing for these business customers. Intel is also shipping chips for tablets with plans to ship chips for 40 million tablets in 2014. The Internet of Things group, making chips for non-computer devices, showed an increase of 24% in revenue. So far Intel shares are up 20% in the first half of 2014. Intel plans to add $20 billion to its stock buyback plan and plans to repurchase about $4 billion of its shares in the 3rd quarter of 2014.

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This WSJ editorial says president Obama's second inaugural address missed the opportunity to bind old wounds with a reference to King on Martin Luther King day. The president chose to set forth a broader liberal agenda including climate change. The editorial points to the tone of the inaugural as setting the tone for the rest of the term and the possibility of return to the rancor that characterized the first term. "We the People" from the Consititution was mentioned several times in the sense of "collective action" that defined this text as government action. The programs of Medicare Medicaid and Social Security as "committments we make to each other." And the programs "do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great," which are seen by the Journal as not appropriate for an Inaugural address that rises above the fray of politics.

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How millenials are helping increase auto sales in the U.S. in 2015-2016. About a quarter of Toyota's sales in the last quarter of 2015 were to millenials, according to Toyota executives cited in the WSJ.

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The Hulme Company mail order catalog business in Minnesota may not be representative of small business, considering the errors and the scale of the debt taken on. But even if a small fraction of this debt taking tendency is representative of small business, it means that small business will not generate jobs as it did in the past. Small business will actually layoff people. And small business will not be able to provide the bounce the economy will need in years to come. The following is an an anaysis of this venture. The owners of this small business Bidwell and Ms. Guarino bought a luxury goods maker that was losing money for $600,000. Their business was to sell $500 garment bags and $1200 duffel bags. The experience of Bidwell was with Target, Tonka Toys and a cigarette distributor. Ms Guarino had a $130,000 job with a magazine publisher, running regional magazines like Minnesota Parent, which she quit. She had some experience as a handbag designer in California before that. They had never seen hard times, no, they had only seen good times. And were willing to spend heavily on the business like the $600,000 for a business, Hulme Company, that lost $150,000 on sales of $450,000 making duck hunting gear, the business they bought in 2003. All this for a tiny factory employing 3 seamstresses, and with no brand name for luxury goods like leather duffels. Their lender's experience- Kassim who founded Maple Bank in Champlin, Minnesota, considered it pretty typical of small business in those days to do everything on debt and loaned $550,000 over 5 years. So the lender was in for the ride. Another bank Stephens bank loaned on SBA approved loans which were later cut off. Guarino had no experience in this business, and simply relied on Bidwell's experience. The borrowing went on and on from friends, taking in debt with total lack of understanding of what debt means, from their daughter, the entire $50,000 savings of Bidwell's wife, and finally with banks refusing to lend after having friends put up their CD's and collateral on loans. Debt to equity ratio gets to 5 to 1. Second mortgages on the house getting Bidwell and extra $130,000. Even in the best year 2006 sales at $1.4 million, and earnings before taxes and other items at $325,000, not enough to pay the interest and other payments on loans that later totaled $2 million by year end 2007. $500,000 from friends and family including $20,000 from his daughter or two thirds of their savings. 600,000 catalogs went out in 2007. With the Hulme Company behind on payments in 2008, the catalogs mailed in 2008 dropped to 175,000. It is a very capital intensive business from the standpoint of catalog cost. $1 million in inventory at year end 2007, or two thirds of sales of $1.5 million in 2007, was a sign of how expansion preceded even getting the financing in place, and going out into the dark thinking sales wil materialize. So even in the best year 2006 the business was not viable, and would have collapsed even without the financial and credit conditions of 2008, ruining the owners in the process. By 2008 it led to the usual things in this kind of business failure, Bidwell's divorce, loss of his home as he falls behind on mortgage payments, Guarino's loss of job and friends whom she borrowed from, and both deeply in debt. Evaluation of the failure is as follows. Seamstresses and the small factory space could be obtained for a fraction of the cost in an emerging market country, even in an eastern European country, and no cost needed to be incurred for the purchase of Hulme Company or for sending out catalogs. Only travel expenses to meet high end retailers who might carry this merchandise, and go to the country where the plant was setup. Sales would come first, and expansion to meet sales very carefully done so that the plant could be downscaled if sales dropped. Even then scores of small luxury goods makers in China or other emerging market countries could put the owners out of business. The lesson if you can't watch costs, if you don't understand what debt means, then you don't pass the most basic of tests. You cannot run business on savings, home equity or credit card loans, or business loans with personal guarantees. Costs tend to just run up to the money one has artificially created. It will ruin you. If you don't have experience with the business and the product area, or can't put together a group of people with the experience to guide you on the pitfalls and what to watch for, you don't pass the next basic test. Only then does one get to the other tests about whether there is a market, the price and value of the offering and so on. This is before the current economic crisis. Now all these tests become more important than ever, or it will kill you and quickly. One has to be paranoid and very careful after 2008. Stephens Bank loaned money on SBA loans ...

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Jacobs and Richtel of the NYT give this exceptional story of how Mexico changed between 1980 and 2016. Following the joining of NAFTA free trade zone the Mexican diet and food ecosystem began to more closely resemble the food diet system in the U.S. bringing with it severe health consequences. Soda and coke are now more entrenched in Mexico, as are fast food outlets. In 1980 only 7% of Mexicans were obese, compared to 20% in 2016, according to Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. And diabetes kills 80,000 people a year, becoming the top killer according to the World Health Organization. A trade expert at Tufts University, Timothy Wise, says Mexico took on the worst aspects of a first world country like the U.S., with few protections. A similar problem is taking place in India and China as obesity grows, according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, as low nutrient highly processed foods of large food companies with huge advertising budgets take a prominent place in diets. This is a growing problem for countries from Colombia to Ghana and Nigeria. ...

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Hernando De Soto, a prominent economist, heads the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. He has an intimate knowledge of the workings of the Egyptian economy, and describes the socio-economic marginalization of large parts of Egyptian society as Economic Apartheid. Simply put Egypt has fallen behind the times, way behind the economic progress in large developing countries.The Institute was hired by the Egyptian government in 1997, with the financial support of the US Agency for International Development, to look into what reforms were needed. It presented its 1000 page report in 2004- after years of work involving 120 Egyptian and Peruvian technicians, participation of 300 local leaders and interviews with thousands of ordinary people- to the Egyptian cabinet. The then Finance Minister Hassanein supported it and the cabinet approved it. What followed was a cabinet shakeup, and blocking of any reforms by hidden interests wanting to protect the status quo. De Soto's objective was to find out how many people were marginalized in Egypt, and how much of the economy operated outside the legal system- small business that did not have the protection of property rights or access to normal business tools and credit, that makes businesses grow. He found that 9.6 million people were employed in this sector operating "extralegally" with no protections. This being the largest sector of employment in Egypt. His action plan was intended to remove the legal impediments to these people and businesses urban and rural, so that they could grow. He says the value of these businesses outside legal protections is $248 billion or 30 times larger than the total value on the Cairo stock exchange, and 55 times greater than all the foreign direct investment in Egypt since 1800 including Suez Canal and Aswan Dam. De Soto says that because of burdensome, discriminatory and bad laws it takes 500 days to open a small bakery, getting a legal title on a vacant piece of land would take 10 years of red tape. This barrier of bad laws, poorly trained bureaucrats, inertia of the status quo, prevents people from legalizing their property and business. As a result whereas one of these types of small businesses is now India's largest company called Reliance Industries, and another Infosys is the second largest software company, most Egyptian enterprises are stuck being small and relatively poor, and do not generate jobs for the demographic surge of young people. De Soto's point is that Egypt will need good leadership to pull off this task of legal reform, and democracy alone will not be enough. Empowering the large majority of the Egyptian people operating outside the legal protections will mean giving property rights for $400 billion of assets, De Soto says. And this would unlock an amount of capital hundreds of times larger than what foreign direct investment and aid has brought to the country....

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Dilip Hiro's new book on the emergence of two states India and Pakistan in 1947 presents the story in terms of the two founding leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The division of the region into conflicting states is shown as a result of the divergent views and politics of the two leaders. Jinnah who was skeptical of the mass civil disobedience movement of Gandhi and preferred a legislative approach, and Gandhi who appealed to the masses and oppressed millions in British India. Jinnah and Gandhi's style and approach were fundamentally different. Seven decades later Pakistan has failed to build a genuine participatory democracy for most of this period with military actively involved in government, and India in the manner of Gandhi built institutions of participatory democracy under different political parties. Jinnah was an assistant to Dadabhai Naoroji, India's first nationalist leader at the turn of the century, when the two were in London. Naoroji passionately argued against the British policies that entrenched the poverty of millions of Indians in the countryside. Ironically it was Gandhi, not Jinnah, who took up Naoroji's call for bringing hope to the hundreds of millions of people on the subcontinent in "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India," first published in 1901, and showing how the draining of the country by the British was leaving India weak and oppressed. In 2015 that struggle of Naoroji for bringing hope and economic opportunity to millions of people is the task taken up by India's new government and the new government in Pakistan. Naoroji, the first Asian to be elected as a member of the British parliament, established the East India Association in 1867, the predecessor organization to the Indian National Congress which he founded with Hume, and is the leader Gandhi and Jinnah most respected in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Naoroji was elected to the British parliament for the Liberal party from Finsbury Central in 1892, and was assisted in his campaign and duties as a member of parliament by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the light of this common upbringing for Gandhi and Jinnah, the nineteen forties and their aftermath could be seen as a detour, not the substance of political life on the subcontinent- just as Mao and Chiang Kai Shek are a sort of detour for today's China. Particularly in a globalized world where technology continues to open up unbelievable economic opportunity, interchange and communication. ...

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India lags behind in the number of tourists visiting the country. Part of the reason was the lack of good infrastructure in the country. Indian Railways and new highways, modern river transport has opened up remote parts of the country from the jungles of Assam to deserts of Rajasthan, the mountainous regions of Kashmir, Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh, Arunachal, and the river regions of the Brahmaputra river and Ganges to tourism. Compared to France with 100 million tourists a year India has about a tenth of that.  Tourism is now seen as an engine for job growth as small handicraft industries can tap into the tourist market, hotels and restaurants can add to employment. The new budget for 2025-26 recognizes this by almost tripling the 95 million euros budget for 2024 to 283 million euros in 2025. Delhi with images of pollution is a distraction yet the tourist from Europe or America can find much to see in smaller towns and metros in the country from Buddhist and Vedic civilizations thousands of years old and recent history after invasions from Western Asia and Europe since 1600, and interesting cuisine, culture, language and regional influences. ...

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Trump rally for 100 Days in Warren, Michigan, at a community college gymnasium, April 29, 2025. DJT also visits Selfridge Air Force Base and says it will get 15 new F-16 jets to replace old jets.  DJT says we're "getting woke lunacy and transgender ideology the hell out of our government." Border crossings of 8400 in February 2025 and 7200 in March 2025 are the lowest since the 1960's, one of the lowest ever, compared to 140,000 in March 2024 under Biden. DJT says he is protecting the middle class and Main Street. The millions of jobs lost to China, DJT says he is bringing them back. He talks about creating manufacturing jobs and restoring the industrial base of America that was lost in the last 30 years.  Trump lists the cost of everything from eggs to gasoline at the pump. He says there are three states where gas at the pump is below $2.00 a gallon. He cites the 345,000 jobs created in 100 days and the lowering of inflation.   ...

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FR24 gives this video of the televised national debate in France between Macron and Le Pen. Macron took up the challenge of not enough attention being given to Le Pen's ties with Russia and her position of skepticism when it comes to the European Union and climate change. "You are dependent on the Russian government and you are dependent on Mr. Putin. When you speak to Russia, you are speaking to your banker." Le Pen says she had taken that loan from a Czech-Russian bank only because French banks refused to lend to her. "I'm absolutely and totally free woman." The candidates also clashed over Le Pen's proposal for banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves. Le Pen described the veil as "a uniform imposed by Islamists." Macron sad that such a plan would violate France's secular rules and would trigger "civil war" in a country that has the largest Muslim population in western Europe. The Fench colonoized parts of North Africa during the period after 1830, with French colonies in Algeria, Morocco and other parts of the region, leading to immigration from this part of the Arab world. After a series of terrorist incidents the French public lost patience with Islamist tendencies leading to a general swing to the right in French politics including Macron. Yet mainstream parties such as Macron's continue to support France's secular values. The traditional parties from the period before Macron such as the Le Republicains of the De Gaulle period in the sixties and the Socialists from the Mitterand period (1981-1995) both failed to win more than 5% of the vote in 2022 showing the many changes happening in France.  During the Macron period as president Yellow Vest protests brought up the issues of working families having a hard time making ends meet. Macron has responded to such protests with some aloofness but also with a tendency to organize town hall meetings to listen to people express their frustrations.  France has established a stronger welfare state than the US and Britain, and for this reason issues related to the dislocation of smaller towns because of the shift of manufacturing to China are part of the general trend that had affected both the US and western Europe, requiring a more unified response. This now takes shape with the renewal of manufacturing in the US and all the western European countries. Candidates with platforms such as Le Pen's to provide relief for the current surge in the cost of living could offer temporary band aid solutions but not address the root causes that require a renewal of French manufacturing and bringing good jobs home or closer to home. The will and aspiration to bring a next generation industrial revolution to France and Europe is the kind of solution that is needed, one that would revive towns and communities across France and across Europe. Much of the technological capabilities are there in Europe, needed is the will and aspiration.  ...

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On Canada's Justin Trudeau- looking back at his 10 years 2015-2025 mostly inherited the work of his father. He tackled Covid, improved childcare, tackled the renegotiation of trade with Republicans in the US, but lacked the major achievement of the 1970's of Pierre Trudeau setting up Canada as an independent state. The Washington Post looks at the political career of Justin Trudeau. He is the son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, a politician from Quebec, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1984 except for one year in 1979-1980. During that period Pierre Trudeau a lawyer practicing labour law in Montreal and educated at the University of Montreal had three significant accomplishments. Canada Act of 1982 passed into law by Queen Elizabeth and the British Parliament, set up Canada as a sovereign state. Prior to this only the British Parliament could amend the Canadian Constitution under the Dominion Act of 1867 under Queen Victoria. As a Quebeker Pierre Trudeau succeeded highly respected Lester Pearson as head of the Liberal Party, and held off the Party Quebecois's effort for separatism in the early 1980's. By 1981 the Canadian Supreme Court 9-0 rejected the Party Quebecois bills that conflicted with the Charter of Rights set up under the Canada Act which protected minorities in Quebec having education in English.   ...

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Lessons can be learned about careful reopening in fighting the coronavirus from other countries. Here the Netherlands experienced a rise of cases by 500% within two weeks of reopening after some poor decisions. The Mark Rutte government decided to open all bars and nightclubs resulting in a twelve fold surge in these locations in one week. Most of the new coronavirus cases were in people 18-29. Data from Dutch public health institute shows 4 out of 10 new cases linked to bars and nightclubs with 262% surge in cases for young people 18-24 years. This goes to show that with the vaccination drive what we see is the cases shifting to younger people, the unvaccinated, and to activities like nightlife. People going to work, or doing hybrid remote work with trips to the office, workers in factories, people doing essential shopping, are not causing the rise in cases. Much can be learned from these examples in working out reopening that does not lead to new crises with surging cases in new waves of coronavirus. Earlier in 2020 summer tourists who ignored mask and social distancing restrictions in Croatia brought on a post summer coronavirus wave to Germany and Austria. This time Greece and Portugal are introducing restrictions. Greece plans to make vaccine health pass required effective July 21 to go into restaurants. Another lesson from Netherlands this week is that a 20,000 person music event of 2 days in Utrecht where QR codes were required showing vaccination or PCR tests failed. About 1000 cases were attributed to the Utrecht event alone. Reasons given are that people faked the QR codes, or that the covid testing system produced too many false results as much as 20%. The same QR code system was followed at nightclubs resulting in big problems. One can never be sure that things work as expected and the risks are great as this adds up. Even vaccines offer limited protection and only if fully vaccinated depending on the type of vaccine. One dose of the vaccine is simply inadequate, and obesity, other morbidities can lead to problems. Withdrawing the mandatory use of face masks in most situations is also a risky decision of the Dutch government. Face masks offer the added protection at a time of variants that spread quckly, and when large parts of the population have only one dose of the vaccine, some elderly are still not vaccinated, and young people have not been vaccinated in large numbers. ...