Based an analysis of the exit polls, ABC News projects Joe Biden as the winner of the South Carolina Democratic primary.
[...]
Based on an analysis of exit polls, Sen. Bernie Sanders will finish second.
ABC
UPDATE: Final total...
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Gag, he won't be quitting now
About that Taliban deal
When will you Congress people get smart?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
The most transparent president in history
Yeah, right before the election to boost his chances. Not that there'll actually be one.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
OK, worry a LITTLE
Trump held another presser, covering the deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here's the latter issue:
Not TOTALLY under control then.
Jesus, the man is barely literate.
Oh? No media bashing now, eh?
Can't we all, Larry. Can't we all.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
Whatever happened regarding the man v. woman case, the CDC is taking the blame so Trump doesn't have to.
Not TOTALLY under control then.
Jesus, the man is barely literate.
Oh? No media bashing now, eh?
When he was told what he could say.
In other words, no. He is not confident at all. And he just described half the country with those underlying conditions and the elderly.
Woman? Man? Two people?
Not to correct it, but to remove it? Why not correct it if indeed it was a man? Because he doesn't want to make Trump look bad for not knowing? Because there IS more than one? The attempts to keep people from panicking by hiding information should work just about the opposite of what they're aiming for.
That's because he wasn't considering closing the Mexican border. He just answers questions by the seat of his pants, according to whatever he thinks the person is getting at. He thought he'd be accused in a negative way of not considering the Mexican border if he didn't say he was. Now the question makes him look kind of stupid for considering it, so he's changing tune.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
Where'd he get the details?At his news conference earlier, President Trump had described the victim as a woman in her late 50s.
“Unfortunately one person passed away overnight. She was a wonderful woman, a medically high-risk patient in her late 50s,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room.
The Hill
What happened to the 19-year-old man? It's one person (so they say), how hard could it be to get the details right?Washington state officials later described the person as a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions.
Desperate
Somebody whose job is looking to not be so secure is desperate to fix the problem.
Hope that works out for you, Alex.
Hope that works out for you, Alex.
I guess Congressional subpoena power is no power at all
And no point asking the Supreme Court to take it up.In a two-to-one ruling, a panel of federal appeals court judges on Friday ordered the dismissal of House Democrats’ case seeking the testimony of Donald McGahn -- meaning the former White House counsel would not have to appear before a congressional committee.
[...]
The Justice Department, arguing on the president's behalf, has contended that "the constitution forbids federal courts from resolving this kind of interbranch information dispute."
“We agree and dismiss this case,” the judges wrote in their 88-page opinion.
[...]
In November, a federal district judge ruled that McGahn must comply with a congressional subpoena.
But the Justice Department appealed that ruling and, on Friday, won out in the higher court.
ABC
As if it's not too late to worry about that. And under that reasoning, why is the Supreme Court considering the cases where various entities are trying to subpoena Trump's tax returns? Hm?U.S. Appeals Court Judge Thomas Griffith, in his majority opinion, warned that enforcing the committee’s subpoena would amount to an overreach by "unelected judges" -- and risk politicizing the judicial branch.
Will. If Trump can get away with it, then subsequent presidents can."If federal courts were to swoop in to rescue Congress whenever its constitutional tools failed, it would not just supplement the political process; it would replace that process with one in which unelected judges become the perpetual 'overseer[s]' of our elected officials," Griffith wrote.
In her dissenting opinion, Judge Judith Rogers argued that the majority's finding may set the stage for future presidents to block oversight requests from the legislative branch with impunity.
Exactly."The court removes any incentive for the Executive Branch to engage in the negotiation process seeking accommodation, all but assures future Presidential stonewalling of Congress, and further impairs the House’s ability to perform its constitutional duties," Rogers wrote.
When the impeachment power and public opinion options fail to produce results - as they will in any case where the majority is in the same party as the subpoenaed party - what's left is the power of the purse, which will also fail if the same party controls the House. And if it doesn't, what exactly are they going to withhold?
Bingo. So the courts have just declared that SOME people are indeed above the law when it comes to being held accountable.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
Let's see how long this lasts
If you have troops in a foreign country, shouldn't it be the government of the foreign country with whom you make deals to remove them?The United States signed a historic peace deal with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, Saturday that officials hope will mark the beginning of the end of America’s longest war. Under the deal, all U.S. troops would withdraw from Afghanistan in 14 months if the Taliban meet their commitments.
Politico
That's a lot of dependencies.The signing between Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban officials will set the stage for the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after 19 years of violence that has killed more than 3,500 Americans and coalition troops and tens of thousands of Afghans since the U.S. invasion following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
[...]
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper traveled to Kabul on Saturday to appear beside Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for a joint declaration.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we are finally making substantial progress toward ending our nation’s longest war,” Esper said. “Today’s release of the Joint Declaration between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States marks a pivotal moment in the peace process.”
[...]
The U.S. withdrawal hinges on the Taliban’s fulfillment of major commitments that have hobbled peace agreements in the past, including breaking with al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and maintaining the reduction in violence seen over the last week, Esper said. It is also dependent on difficult negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government over power-sharing and a lasting cease-fire.
Of that, there can be no doubt. It's the one sure thing in the deal.Esper stressed that the withdrawal is “conditions-based.”
“However, should the Taliban fail to honor their commitments, they will forfeit their chance to sit with fellow Afghans and deliberate on the future of their country,” Esper said. “Moreover, the United States would not hesitate to nullify the agreement.”
Okay, two things.Senior officials in the military and intelligence communities are concerned that the Taliban will not hold up its end of the deal. Many fear the administration “is putting too much stock in the promises of the Taliban and they will simply sign anything to get us to leave,” one former Trump administration official told POLITICO.
Good luck, everybody.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE: 3/2 Uh-oh. "Snag".
UPDATE: 3/10 Looks like a failed deal.
They eat their own
Garth Brooks wore a Barry Sanders jersey to a recent concert in Detroit, leading to some of his online followers mistakenly believing the country music icon was showing support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Barry Sanders is a former NFL running back for the Detroit Lions who is now in the NFL Hall of Fame.
[...]
The reaction to Brooks wearing a Sanders jersey prompted outrage on Instagram and Facebook, most of which seemingly coming from supporters of President Trump.
"Can’t you just do what you get paid to do ???? Why why why does it have to involve politics !!! So sad. We don’t pay good money for anything other than to watch you perform. Thought you were different," one wrote.
“G is a Democrat socialist!” wrote another person.
“If this is for Bernie Sanders, I’m done with you. I thought you were a true American that loves Our Country?” wrote another.
“Weird. That a millionaire would like a socialist. Hey Garth are you going to distribute your millions?” asked another.
The Hill
A little bit of good news in these darkening times for democracy
A Wisconsin court of appeals handed Democrats a win on Friday by overturning a ruling that sought to purge up to 209,000 people from voter registration rolls.
The ruling gives a boost to Democrats in a state that's poised to play a decisive role in the 2020 presidential race. President Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016.
The conservative group that brought the case, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said it plans to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
A lower court judge in January ordered the purging of more than 200,000 people from voter rolls because they may have moved.
On Friday, the appeals court also overturned an order by the same judge that had found the state elections commission in contempt for not moving forward with the voter roll purge.
[...]
Even if voters are removed from rolls, they can register on site if they bring the proper documents, according to the state's election commission. Wisconsin holds its primaries in April.
The Hill
Checking in on James Comey
Like the previous post, this article comes from Bill Conroy. This time, from June 1, 2013, long before James Comey got crossways with Donald Trump.
But, I digress...
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
And that case is where I came across the articles in these last two posts on Pence and Comey. Bill Conroy is an investigative journalist who broke the House of Death story and reported extensively on it. I'll try to get some posts up from those articles soon as stories with a relationship to a Netflix series Narcos: Mexico and a recent USA Today report on the case that formed the basis for the series.President Barack Obama is expected to nominate former George W. Bush-era Deputy Attorney General James Comey as the next director of the FBI, according to multiple media outlets that have published fawning reports about Comey’s supposed independence and upstanding moral character.
[...]
But is Comey, who now serves on the board of the giant British Lender HSBC, really the guy in the white hat the commercial media – always enamored of power and not so much principle – paints him to be?
HSBC must think so. The bank brought Comey onboard, providing him annual compensation of some $190,000, to serve as window dressing for their recovery from over-indulging in the illegal drug market. The lender late last year received a slap on the wrist from the US Department of Justice (paying a relatively small fine compared to its billions in annual profits in exchange for promising to be good citizens in the future) — but only after admitting to allowing its US and Mexican subsidiaries to serve as money-laundering machines for Mexican and Colombian narco-traffickers.
[...]
So, in some senses, it could be argued Comey is now collecting a consulting fee that is, in part, being paid to him from the fruit of drug-money laundering.
However, there is a far more sinister story buried in Comey’s record of government service.
[...]
According to former DEA Special Agent in Charge Sandalio Gonzalez, Comey played a key role in helping to cover up what he describes as “one of the darkest chapters in the history of US federal law enforcement.” The case to which Gonzalez is referring is the House of Death — in which a US government informant assisted, and even participated in, the torture and murder of a dozen people, mostly Mexican citizens, who were then buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez, Mexico.
Narco News
But, I digress...
"To this day" means June 1, 2013, of course. In a wild string of events since 2003, the informant is now attempting to avoid deportation to Mexico, I believe. That will be covered in a future post I hope to write that I mentioned earlier.Gonzalez, incensed by the House of Death murders and the near assasination of a fellow DEA agent and his family, wrote a letter to his counterpart at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, denouncing the informant’s activities and the complicity of federal agents and prosecutors in the bloodshed. The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro (aka, Lalo) was under the supervision of ICE as well as the US Attorney’s Office for Western Texas — then headed by Johnny Sutton — while Comey was deputy attorney general and Sutton’s boss.
[...]
Gonzalez’ letter made its way to then-US Attorney Sutton, who, rather than investigating the serious charges contained in the letter, instead complained to his superiors at DOJ headquarters in Washington.
Comey served as deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005. The House of Death murders played out between August 2003 and January 2004. The commercial media, though, to this day has been silent about the ensuing cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of DOJ that has assured no one in Justice has been held accountable for the House of Death murders — which were carried out by an informant who had made his US government handlers aware of his assistance and even participation in the murders, often in advance of the murders.
I'm not sure if that is still the case. Maybe I'll find out researching the future post.DEA commander Gonzalez personally briefed the staffs of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D.-Vt., about the House of Death carnage and DOJ officials’ complicity in the murders.
Still, no one at DOJ (which oversees the DEA) or the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE) has ever been questioned publicly, under oath, by any member of Congress about their role in allowing the informant, Ramirez Peyro, himself a former Mexican cop, to participate in murder while working a case for DOJ — while Comey was managing the department.
I'm surprised Trump's henchmen haven't dug into this.In fact, the only investigation ever conducted was an internal agency probe, known as the JAT, undertaken jointly by DEA and ICE, that to this day —despite numerous FOIA requests filed by Narco News seeking its release — remains buried, its findings never made public.
There is a long paper trail illuminating the facts, which has been uncovered by Narco News over the course of years, but, again, ignored to this day by a commercial media now fawning over the impending nomination of Comey as the next FBI director.
[...]
The assertion that Comey played a role in the House of Death cover-up, in light of his pending nomination to be the top dog at the FBI, should be a big deal, given one of the FBI’s jobs is to handle informants during criminal investigations, and to also deal with the intricacies and sensitivities of law enforcement operations carried out on foreign soil. Narco News did contact Comey previously to ask him about his role in the House of Death case, but he declined to comment.
[...]
So it seems the die is cast, and we as a nation will likely put a man in one of the most powerful posts in the nation, a position where he will make calls daily on civil rights, and life and death, without fully vetting his role in what former DEA Special Agent in Charge Gonzalez describes as one of “the darkest chapters in the history of U.S. federal law enforcement.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
A reason for Mike Pence to be covering up Russian election interference
This is from an article by Bill Conroy published on May 29, 2017.
And the we come to the personal reasons Pence might not want to admit knowing anything.When President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, spoke clandestinely with Kremlin officials this past December about the status of US sanctions against that nation, Pence defended him initially — but claimed later that Flynn lied to him about the content of the conversations.
Despite the fact the Trump administration was informed by a member of Congress in November of last year that Flynn was working as a paid agent of the Turkish government while advising Trump on national security matters, Pence insists he only learned of Flynn’s Turkish lobbying pact through the media this past March.
Pence’s claimed ignorance of these events, until they became public via the media, is even more surprising in light of the fact he was responsible as head of Trump’s transition team for overseeing the vetting process for White House appointees like Flynn.
Narco News
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.[O]ne of Pence’s main corporate backers, Eli Lilly & Co., was charged by U.S. officials with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in 2012 in relation to its business practices in Russia.
[...]
While serving as a US congressman from 2001-2013, and thereafter as governor of Indiana [...] , Pence also served the interests of another Indiana-based corporation that has deep business roots in Russia — Cummins Inc.
These two Indiana-based Fortune 500 companies with major business interests in Russia — diesel-engine manufacturer Cummins and drug-maker and distributor Eli Lilly — ranked as the No. 2 and No. 3 donors, respectively, to Pence’s federal campaign coffers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
[...]
In addition to being a leading contributor to Pence’s congressional and gubernatorial campaigns, Eli Lilly also donated $15,000 to an economic development fund used by Pence “to travel overseas, rent luxury sports suites, lobby lawmakers and fly to Iowa ahead of its first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest,” according to an investigation by the Indianapolis Star.
[...]
Jon Mills, media spokesman for Cummins, stressed that the company has “no concern about our perception” with respect to donations made to Pence’s political campaigns over the years or because of the fact Vice President Pence’s brother is an executive at Cummins.
[...]
That’s not to say Pence’s brother has done anything wrong, but he would be considered a potential target of a foreign intelligence service looking to compromise the vice president.
[...]
Some media outlets, including CBS News and the Daily Beast, have reported that behind the scenes [Paul] Manafort played a key role in convincing Trump to pick Pence as his vice presidential running mate. Is it possible that Manafort took an interest in Pence, in part, because he saw him as a Moscow-friendly ally, if push came to shove?
[...]
Given his home state’s reliance on these two huge employers and their past financial support of his political career, it can’t be ruled out that Pence is willing to carry some water for Trump on the Russian front, if that path dovetails with Cummins’ and Eli Lilly’s investment interests in Russia’s economy.
Friday, February 28, 2020
Another ignorant Trump toady for a very important post
Trump likes him because he made an ass of himself on Trump's behalf during the impeachment hearings.
Three hundred, forty-five, same difference.“As a U.S. Attorney, I arrested over 300 illegal immigrants on a single day,” Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) says on his congressional website.
[...]
Ratcliffe played a supporting role in the 2008 sweep, which involved U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states and was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to a Justice Department news release. The effort targeted workers at poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride who were suspected of using stolen Social Security numbers.
Only 45 workers were charged by prosecutors in Ratcliffe’s office, court documents show. Six of those cases were dismissed, two of them because the suspects turned out to be American citizens. One of those citizens, a 19-year-old woman, was awakened in her home and hauled away by immigration agents, the woman said in an interview.
[...]
A third was a legal resident worker.
WaPo
Only because Trump's acting DNI isn't being nominated.Ratcliffe has made the immigration roundup of poultry workers, code named Operation Plymouth Rock, a defining example of his conservative bona fides.
[...]
Two people involved in the planning or execution of the enforcement effort said they could not recall Ratcliffe playing a central role.
A.J. Irwin, a former immigration investigator who was involved in the early planning stages before retiring, said in an interview that the operation was a costly failure.
[...]
Irwin said he raised questions about its goals and methods during planning sessions in 2007. Irwin said he questioned why they were devoting so many resources to a case he thought would net only low-level offenders.
[...]
“At the end of the day, it did not deliver,” Irwin said. “It was the biggest waste of money and hype.”
[...]
He dismissed Ratcliffe’s claim of having arrested 300 immigrants in the country illegally, in part because ICE agents and U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states were involved. Also, he said, federal prosecutors do not arrest suspects.
[...]
Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman in ICE’s El Paso office who also participated in the operation, questioned Ratcliffe’s characterization of his role in the arrests. “No, that doesn’t sound factual. That sounds incorrect,” she told The Washington Post.
Zamarripa said she does not recall Ratcliffe being involved. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” she said.
[...]
“Operation Plymouth Rock led to the successful prosecution of hundreds of illegal aliens,” the campaign brochure said.
[...]
Ratcliffe’s campaign literature later claimed that “as a result of John’s efforts” Pilgrim’s Pride paid a $4.5 million “criminal penalty.” The agreement to pay the money was not struck until December 2009, a year after Ratcliffe left the prosecutor’s office. The company did not admit wrongdoing and the government brought no civil or criminal charges against it.
[...]
Ratcliffe has dialed back his earlier claims that he had won convictions in a high-profile terrorism case as a federal prosecutor. His planned nomination has drawn opposition from Senate Democrats and tepid support from key Republicans.
Some current and former intelligence officials have said Ratcliffe is the least-qualified person ever nominated to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies.
His resumé.Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of the president and has alleged anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Trump tweeted out his plan to nominate Ratcliffe several days after the lawmaker attacked former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during a hearing.
But, hey. It's Texas, right?In 2004, he was hired as an assistant federal prosecutor in the sprawling Eastern District of Texas and was named chief of anti-terrorism in the office, despite an admitted lack of experience.
“My background isn’t in law enforcement and I don’t have any real specialized training,” he said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News in early 2005.
The only good thing is if he's confirmed, it gets him out of Congress. And with any luck, he'll only serve a year before Trump is unelected.The same year he became a prosecutor, Ratcliffe was elected mayor of Heath, an unpaid post he would hold for eight years while working for the Justice Department. In his run later for the House, Ratcliffe cited his leadership of Heath — a wealthy lakeside community of 8,000 that has a yacht club and a private golf course — as an example of his government service and fiscal acumen.
[...]
In 2016, seeking reelection, he claimed a central role in a major federal terrorism case. “There are individuals that currently sit in prison because I prosecuted them for funneling money to terrorist groups,” he is quoted as saying in campaign literature.
Stephens, Ratcliffe’s spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about which cases Ratcliffe was referring to. But the same news release refers to a high-profile case from that time. “In 2008, Ratcliffe served by special appointment as the prosecutor in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, one of the nation’s largest terrorism financing cases,” it says.
Stephens acknowledged this week that Ratcliffe’s assignment was not to prosecute the case but rather “to investigate issues related to” why an initial prosecution of Holy Land Foundation resulted in a mistrial.
UPDATE:
“Intelligence should never be guided by partisanship or politics. Unfortunately, Congressman Ratcliffe has shown an unacceptable embrace of conspiracy theories and a clear disrespect and distrust of our law enforcement and intelligence patriots that disqualify him from leading America’s intelligence community,” [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi said in a statement.
[...]
“Last summer, this nomination was withdrawn after revelations about Congressman Ratcliffe’s clear lack of qualifications and many misleading statements about his resumé,” Pelosi added. “The President is now ignoring these many serious outstanding concerns and letting politics, not patriotism, guide our national security.”
[...]
[Ratcliffe] was one of the president’s fiercest defenders during former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and the House impeachment hearings in the fall.
[...]
Republican members of the committee often yielded their time to Ratcliffe and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who questioned the diplomats' political motivations and furthered conspiracy theories, such as suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
The Hill
Sorry, rural kids, you lose
I do believe the cruelty is the point with this administration.
Hey, I have a way: keep funding the kids' education and lunches while you work with Congress to get you a law you can honor.More than 800 schools receiving federal funds under the Rural and Low-Income School Program could become ineligible due to a sudden change in bookkeeping, The New York Times reported Friday.
[...]
According to the Times, the letter said an audit of the program showed that districts had “erroneously” received funding when they had not met eligibility requirements outlined in the federal education law since 2002.
The Education Department argued that schools were not using the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates to determine if at least 20 percent of the students at their schools were below the poverty line.
Instead, schools used a percentage of students who qualified for subsidized school lunches, which the Times noted follows the same guidelines for determining if a student is living under the poverty line, and is better than the Census at ensuring each student attending the district is counted.
The Education Department has allowed this form of reporting in the past 17 years since the laws governing who qualifies for these funds were created.
[...]
“When you discover you’re not following the law Congress wrote, you don’t double down; you fix it,” Hill told the Times. “If that’s what Congress wants, Congress should pass it, and the Education Department will happily implement it. We will also continue to look for ways to help ensure students are not unnecessarily harmed.”
The Hill
The change comes less than a month after the Department of Education cut funding for the Rural Education Achievement Program, a fund created by Congress to assist rural schools.
Elements of medical
Under control, don't worry. Thoughts and prayers. Let's do thoughts and prayers.
"Closed the border."
Here's what actually happened:*
And I'm sure they will.The plan, which went into effect at 5 p.m. ET, includes temporarily denying entry to foreign nationals who visited China in the 14 days prior to their arrival to the United States, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Friday.
Restrictions also apply to US citizens who have been in China's Hubei province, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, in the two weeks prior to their return to the United States. Upon their return, those citizens will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of up to 14 days, he said.
US citizens returning from the rest of mainland China in the 14 days prior will undergo health screenings at selected ports of entry and face up to 14 days of self-monitored quarantine.
[...]
If travelers who spent time in China show no symptoms, DHS said, they will be sent to their final destination and asked to quarantine themselves for up to 14 days in their homes.
CNN
And I'm sure they'll all be honest.The agency issued a new directive this weekend that requires airlines to ask passengers on flights from outside the United States whether they've been to mainland China in the past 14 days.
What about surgical gloves?All frontline employees will also be permitted to wear surgical masks.
*UPDATE:
No worries, everything under control here
Did Trump assure him the virus would be gone by April?Japan's northern island of Hokkaido declared a state of emergency on Friday over the rapid spread of the new virus there.
Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki said the emergency will continue until mid-March.
Suzuki, wearing a face mask, urged all residents to stay home this weekend, which he said is a critical time to keep the situation from worsening.
[...]
Since the first patient was detected in late January, the island prefecture has seen a steady increase in the number of patients, with the pace accelerating in recent days. As of Friday, Hokkaido has 63 confirmed cases, including two deaths.
Public health and virus experts have raised concerns about the developments in Hokkaido, saying clusters of infections with unknown transmission routes have emerged.
[...]
Amid growing criticisms of his leadership and crisis management, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has asked schools throughout Japan to close until the end of March.
SFGate
BTW, Hokkaido is home to over 5 million people, who are being told to stay indoors this weekend. Why will it be okay to go outside on Monday?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
University of Minnesota is running a Coronavirus Resource Center
From their Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Authoritarian response to pandemic
Fairly muzzled, if you ask me.Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) on Friday said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to "stand down" and not appear on five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the coronavirus.
[...]
Anthony Fauci was scheduled to do all five major Sunday talk shows, but says Fauci canceled the appearances after Vice President Pence took over the administration's response to the disease.
[...]
"I can repeat what he said, he said, 'I was not muzzled. However, I was to go on the Sunday talk shows five of them. The vice president's office then took over the control of this situation, and told me to stand down, not to do those shows,'" Garamendi said, quoting Fauci.
"Now, you can draw your own conclusions whether he was muzzled or not, but clearly he was scheduled to do Sunday talk shows and he was not to proceed with that," the congressman added.
MSN
With Trump's message: Everything's fine. Totally under control.Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow told reporters Friday, "No one's being stifled. No one's being told what to say," with Kudlow adding it was more about coordinating the message.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure we're any the worse off from not hearing from Anthony Fauci:
And the case in Davis, California? Are they eating cats there, too?In a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence, who is heading the anti-virus effort, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Anthony Fauci explained "the science behind" the virus: that it spreads from a bat, to a cat, and then to humans in China.
According to a press pool report on the meeting, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the disease jumped from species to species.
“Fauci described the science behind the coronavirus, saying it jumped from a bat to a ‘civic cat’ served at feasts in China and then humans,” said the pool report, referring to “civet cats,” which are considered a delicacy in parts of China. “‘Lo and behold now ... we have a new Coronavirus,’ Fauci said.
Washington Examiner
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Incompetence (like you wouldn't believe) in the face of a looming national health crisis
No protective gear?!? I hope they had the sense to bring their own.A whistleblower is alleging that HHS officials dispatched more than a dozen workers to aid quarantined Americans evacuated from China, without providing proper training or protective gear — a move that potentially exposed them to the coronavirus infection.
Politico
Whistleblowers haven't gotten federal protection since at least Obama's term.The complaint from an HHS employee also claims those workers were not consistently tested for the virus, and their deployment came over objections from various HHS staffers.
The whistleblower is now seeking federal protection over allegations that the individual was unfairly and improperly reassigned after bringing concerns about the workers’ safety to HHS officials.
Yeah, Alex hasn't been doing so well.An HHS spokesperson said whistleblower complaints are taken very seriously, and that the department is “providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act. We are evaluating the complaint and have nothing further to add at this time.”
Two people with knowledge of the situation told POLITICO the whistleblower’s claims were accurate.
Reports of the complaint outraged some on Capitol Hill, and at least one lawmaker, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), called on HHS Secretary Alex Azar to resign Thursday night.
Ay-yi-yi
"It could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows."
If Trump had written A Tale of Two Cities:
Nobody really knows. It's like a miracle.
Speaking on MSNBC's "Hardball," [Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former health policy adviser in the Obama administration], now a special adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that Trump's comments indicated how little the president knew about public health.
He also stressed that health officials still do not know vital information about the virus, which first appeared in China and has since infected more than 80,000 people in more than three dozen countries. The U.S. has reported 60 confirmed cases of the virus.
"I found most of what he said a little incoherent," Emanuel said, pointing to Trump's admission that he was shocked by the number of people who die from the common flu annually.
"You know, [Trump's] a guy that admitted that he’s surprised that 25,000 to 69,000 people each year die of the flu. That just tells you how little he actually knows about public health and about the health of the American public," he added. "He just revealed how ignorant he is about the situation. We don’t know how similar or dissimilar this is to the flu.
"We know one thing. It is actually more communicable than the flu. It passes between people very, very easily."
[...]
The CDC’s Anne Schuchat said at Wednesday's press conference that the "trajectory" for the coronavirus in the U.S. remains "very uncertain," adding that now was the time for businesses and schools to look into "pandemic preparedness plans."
The Trump administration earlier this week requested $2.5 billion in emergency funding from Congress for its coronavirus response. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has countered that with a call for $8.5 billion in emergency funding.
The Hill
Don't speak ill of Dear Leader
They'll be getting purged.Emails obtained by NBC News showed Veronica Blette, head of the [EPA's] WaterSense program, forwarding tweets highlighting remarks that Trump made to reporters at the White House complaining about the number of times toilets at the White House needed to be flushed, adding commentary to her coworkers such as "sigh" and "I can't even."
Other EPA officials at the WaterSense agency also reacted similarly, including one who wrote to a faucet company executive: "We don't like faucets that only put one drop of water on my hands — LOL — the only ones I think of that might actually just drip are for Barbie doll play houses!"
The Hill
And WTF is NBC doing collecting their emails and doxing them? Is NBC Trump Stasi?
The earth has to fight back somehow
Wait. Is sub-Saharan Africa not warm? Because my president told me this thing would die out in warm weather.
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Nothing to worry about, folks
The guy in charge of the coronavirus response:
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
FAIL
Sure, they all just went home and are watching Netflix until they're called back in.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Want to bet these people are not getting screened for coronavirus?
Here's how Trump gets out of the jam he's in. Don't screen people who show up with flu symptoms, and if they die, just say it was from the flu.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)