Breaking News Events

[homoe]

The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.

But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."

Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University near Toronto whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.

"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC’s interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.

Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview.

"Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.

Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.

Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.

But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic.

Rachael Maddow covered this story on Monday Night's show in great deal. For more info...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...ovid-19-412809

[homoe]

WASHINGTON — Scrutiny of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy intensified on Monday amid new reports alleging improper business dealings and persistent charges that the longtime Republican donor is subverting postal operations in order to make mail-in voting difficult in November’s presidential election.

“I am calling on Mr. DeJoy to be fired or resign,” government watchdog Lisa Graves told lawmakers on Monday morning, during a briefing on postal operations before the House Oversight Committee. True North Research, the organization Graves heads, found that DeJoy — who runs a North Carolina shipping firm — had been sued by his brother Dominick for allegedly siphoning money from the trucking company founded by their father.

Over the weekend, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued DeJoy for intending to send a mailer that could foster confusion over how to properly vote by mail in that state. The mailer “provides false statements about voting in Colorado,” the lawsuit charges, and “will disenfranchise Colorado voters.”

On Monday, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in the wake of a Washington Post report that described how DeJoy reimbursed employees at his company, New Breed, for making political donations to Republicans.

https://news.yahoo.com/scrutiny-of-p...230112268.html

[homoe]

“He really does believe he deserves a third term,” the intelligence analyst said in suggesting an even more shameless power grab on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut.”

Malcolm Nance said he believes Donald Trump is dead serious about seeking a third term should he win in November ― and perhaps more. (Watch the video above.)

Nance, MSNBC’s intelligence analyst, said on Monday that the president could maneuver to make himself “dictator for life.”

In an interview about the president’s “dictatorial impulse” on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid called Trump a “baby Putin.” She asked Nance whether Trump’s grandiosity should be taken seriously.

Nance answered in the affirmative and addressed the president’s comments in Minden, Nevada, that he would “negotiate” to run again in 2024 because he was “entitled” to another four years, defying the Constitution.

“In his mind he really does believe he deserves a third term,” Nance said. “He has a whole cast of enablers who sit around and do nothing but tell him all day, every day, he’s right and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it. And you control the United States and you have so many people that love you, it’ll be easy to pass a constitutional amendment making Donald Trump dictator for life. I think he really has that in his head.”

FDR’s four-term presidency (he died just months into his final stint) led to the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951, limiting presidents to two terms.

“Trump is not joking about a 3rd term,” Nance tweeted after the show. “Ignore it at your peril.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/malco...b6e27db1328b47

[Cin]

'Where Will Everyone Go?' New Report Documents How Climate Migration Could Reshape US
"The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting," a new report shows, suggesting the U.S. is "on the cusp of a great transformation" involving the relocation of millions of displaced people.

Potentially millions of people in the U.S. will be displaced as the climate crisis makes certain regions increasingly uninhabitable, prompting new migrations that will reshape the country, a new report shows.

The story published Tuesday is the second installment in a series on global climate migration that stems from a collaboration between ProPublica and the New York Times, with support from the Pulitzer Center.

While the first article in the series focused on the movement of climate refugees across international borders, the latest story focuses on how climate migration within the U.S. will reshape the country.

As report author Abrahm Lustgarten explains, "In much of the developing world, vulnerable people will attempt to flee the emerging perils of global warming, seeking cooler temperatures, more fresh water and safety."

But here in the U.S., many people have for years "avoided confronting these changes in their own backyards," he writes.

"The decisions we make about where to live are distorted not just by politics that play down climate risks, but also by expensive subsidies and incentives aimed at defying nature," Lustgarten adds in the report. "People have largely gravitated toward environmental danger, building along coastlines from New Jersey to Florida and settling across the cloudless deserts of the Southwest."

In light of a summer in which millions of people have endured the devastating combined effects of a pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes, and heatwaves, the journalist wonders: "Might Americans finally be waking up to how climate is about to transform their lives? And if so—if a great domestic relocation might be in the offing—was it possible to project where we might go?"

Lustgarten argues that the U.S., where 162 million people—nearly one in two—will "most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment" in the coming years, is "a nation on the cusp of a great transformation."

"The changes could be particularly severe" for 93 million Americans, and "if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least four million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life," according to the analysis.

The story is accompanied by a set of maps depicting likely shifts in the niche of human habitability, and the scenarios "suggest massive upheavals in where Americans currently live and grow food."

Several factors are driving changes in the suitability of different environments, researchers note. These include extreme heat and humidity—the collision of which will create what scientists call "wet bulb" temperatures that will "disrupt the norms of daily existence"—as well as larger and more frequent wildfires, rising sea levels, declining crop yields, and economic damages related to higher energy costs and lower labor productivity.

According to the analysis, the greatest climate risk exists in counties throughout the Southeast and the Southwest where the perils are likely to intermingle and generate "compounding calamities."

"The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting," the report states. Public officials in Florida "have already acknowledged that defending some roadways against the sea will be unaffordable," explains Lustgarten. Furthermore, "the nation's federal flood-insurance program is for the first time requiring that some of its payouts be used to retreat from climate threats across the country."

If "it will soon prove too expensive to maintain the status quo"—as Lustgarten argues it will—then what might we expect?

The author paints a grim picture of the possible consequences of mass relocations between now and 2070, arguing that such a population shift is:

"likely to increase poverty and widen the gulf between the rich and the poor. It will accelerate rapid, perhaps chaotic, urbanization of cities ill-equipped for the burden, testing their capacity to provide basic services and amplifying existing inequities. It will eat away at prosperity, dealing repeated economic blows to coastal, rural and Southern regions, which could in turn push entire communities to the brink of collapse.

Mobility itself, global migration experts point out, is often a reflection of relative wealth, and as some move, many others will be left behind. Those who stay risk becoming trapped as the land and the society around them ceases to offer any more support.

While a growing number of citizens consider climate change a top political priority, Lustgarten argues that "policymakers, having left America unprepared for what's next, now face brutal choices about which communities to save—often at exorbitant costs—and which to sacrifice."

Lustgarten devotes considerable attention to what he describes as the negative effects of the country's property insurance system, which has distorted perceptions of risk and incentivized real estate development in locations vulnerable to disasters. The experts he talked to anticipate shocks to the financial system and the upending of "entire communities" once "all the structural disincentives that had built Americans' irrational response" to the threats posed by climate change begin "reaching their logical endpoint."

"Until now," the report notes, "market mechanisms had essentially socialized the consequences of high-risk development. But as the costs rise—and the insurers quit, and the bankers divest, and the farm subsidies prove too wasteful, and so on—the full weight of responsibility will fall on individual people."

"And that's when the real migration might begin," says Lustgarten.

Past experiences with socio-environmental disasters in the U.S. raise concerns about the welfare of people who are displaced as well as those who are left behind. When the Dust Bowl "propelled an exodus of some 2.5 million people" from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, "they were funneled into squalid shanty towns" in California, the author writes.

Experts told Lustgarten that similar problems are likely to arise in the 21st century, as hundreds of thousands of climate refugees move to cities already struggling with poverty, inequality, and "long-neglected" infrastructural systems "suddenly pressed to expand under increasingly adverse conditions."

In the 1930s, "Colorado tried to seal its border from the climate refugees," the report notes. And "the places migrants left behind never fully recovered."

Barring a reorientation of economic priorities and resources through far-reaching legislation like the Green New Deal, Lustgarten suggests that the decisions made by policymakers "will almost inevitably make the nation more divided, with those worst off relegated to a nightmare future in which they are left to fend for themselves."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...uld-reshape-us

[homoe]

“Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy refuted Trump’s claim that he’ll be calling in to the show every week until Election Day.

A “Fox & Friends” phone conversation with Donald Trump came to an awkward end on Tuesday after co-host Steve Doocy knocked back the president’s assertion that he’ll appear on the show weekly through Election Day. Trump, who had a recurring spot on the Fox News morning show before he ran for president, started the phone interview by saying he’d agreed to call in on a weekly basis, “like the old days.” “I haven’t heard that, well that’s an exclusive right there,” Doocy exclaimed. As the call came to an end nearly an hour later, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked if the chats would continue weekly. Trump replied: “Yeah, we’re going to do it every week, every Monday, I think they said. And if we can’t do it on a Monday we’ll do it on a Tuesday like we did today.” “Sounds good,” Kilmeade said.

“Mr. President, thank you very much. You may want to do it every week, but Fox has not committed to that,” Doocy then added. “We’re going to take it on a case-by-case basis. And Joe Biden, as well, is always welcome to join us for 47 minutes, like we just did with the president.”

The Democratic presidential nominee has not appeared on the conservative network in the lead-up to the election. Network hosts have said the Biden campaign has declined multiple requests.


Trump is a veteran “Fox & Friends” guest and featured on the “Monday Mornings with Trump” segment from 2011 until announcing his presidential run in 2015. He routinely used that platform to project his racist and baseless birther conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama.

CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, whose new book “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” explores Trump’s relationship with the conservative network, noted that Trump harnessed those weekly appearances to tap into Fox News’ Republican base and that he may be instigating an attempt to reopen that powerful avenue to reach his base directly in the final weeks of the election season.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump...b68d1b09c912ac

[Cin]

Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US

Wildfires and climate crisis cited as possible causes for the deaths of thousands of migrating species heading south for the winter

Thousands of migrating birds have inexplicably died in south-western US in what ornithologists have described as a national tragedy that is likely to be related to the climate crisis.

Flycatchers, swallows and warblers are among the species “falling out of the sky” as part of a mass die-off across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and farther north into Nebraska, with growing concerns there could be hundreds of thousands dead already, said Martha Desmond, a professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Many carcasses have little remaining fat reserves or muscle mass, with some appearing to have nose-dived into the ground mid-flight.

Article continues here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...western-us-aoe

[C0LLETTE]

SHUCKS

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) will no longer pay for the Uber (UBER) rides of its junior sales and trading staff, reversing a reimbursement policy implemented after the COVID-19 pandemic started, Bloomberg News reported.

[homoe]

~~

If Joe Biden is elected can I just say I hope he reinstates Col Vindman and gives him the promotion he so richly deserves!

[homoe]

Originally Posted by homoe

The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.

But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."

Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University near Toronto whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.

"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC’s interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.

Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview.

"Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.

Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.

Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.

But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic.

Rachael Maddow covered this story on Monday Night's show in great deal. For more info...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...ovid-19-412809

Top Trump health appointee taking medical leave after insurrection remarks
Michael Caputo will be gone for 60 days while his top aide, Paul Alexander, will leave HHS permanently, the agency said.

[homoe]

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Attorney General William Barr suggested the idea of lockdowns to combat coronavirus were the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties” in history “other than slavery.”

Barr made the controversial statement Wednesday night minutes after taking aim at his own Justice Department, criticizing prosecutors for behaving as “headhunters” in their pursuit of prominent targets during political probes. The comments came during a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

“You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest,” Barr said. “Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

[homoe]

A California family is accusing Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of trespassing on their wildfire-ravaged property for a photo op!

NO I doubt that, BUT it would be something Trump would do! Like tossing rolls of paper-towels at hurricane victims, brandishing a bible in front of a boarded up church, etc etc...

[homoe]

TORONTO, ONT – Canada is extending the agreement to keep the U.S. border closed to non-essential travel to Oct. 21 during the coronavirus pandemic.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said Friday they will continue to base the decision on the best public health advice available to keep Canadians safe.

The restrictions were announced on March 18 and have been extended each month since.

Many Canadians fear a reopening. The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world.

Canada is seeing an uptick in cases in recent weeks. Canada largest province, Ontario, reported 401 new cases on Friday.

Essential cross-border workers like healthcare professionals, airline crews and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they move food and medical goods in both directions. Much of Canada’s food supply comes from or via the U.S.

Americans who are returning to the U.S. and Canadians who are returning to Canada are also exempted from the border closure.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/...ons-to-oct-21/

[homoe]

“The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life,” McConnell said in a statement Friday.

~~~
Mitch, you cold calculating hypocritical F#*K FACE!

[homoe]

‘I’m laughing cause sometimes you have to, just to stop from crying.’

Lebron James has weighed in on actress Lori Loughlin getting to choose the prison where she will serve her two-month sentence for her role in the college admissions scandal.

Lori Loughlin is one step closer to serving her two-month prison sentence for her role in the nationwide college admissions scandal at the facility of her choice, according to federal court documents. The former "Fuller House" star and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, were sentenced to two and five months, respectively, by Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton last month. The sentences are in line with the terms of their plea deals laid out months ago.

According to a judgment on file at the United States District Court in Massachusetts obtained by Fox News, Gorton signed off on the recommendation that Loughlin "be designated to a facility closest to her home in [California], preferably the camp at FCI Victorville, if commensurate with the appropriate security level."

BF roommates, the next time you run into a scrape with the law and have to serve some jail time, put in a request where you'd prefer to serve your sentence, lets see how that works out for YOU!

[homoe]

Trump Calls It A 'Beautiful Thing' That Cops Struck Journalist Ali Velshi With Rubber Bullet

President Donald Trump called it “the most beautiful thing” that MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi was struck in the knee with a rubber bullet while he was covering a peaceful protest in Minneapolis in May.

Trump inexplicably deemed it “law and order” as a campaign rally crowd in Minnesota cheered him on Friday. Velshi was breaking no law — nor were protesters — when he was injured by police.

Trump mistakenly recounted in his tale that Velshi was painfully struck by a tear gas canister and complained afterward. “Oh my knee, oh my knee,” the president mocked.

[homoe]

President Donald Trump has mocked the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish that she not be replaced until a new president can be installed, falsely suggesting the quote was created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.

Asked about justice Ginsburg’s statement that was dictated to her granddaughter and later reported by NPR, the president told Fox News on Monday morning: “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and [Chuck] Schumer and Pelosi?”

He added: “I would be more inclined to the second.”

[homoe]

~~
WOW big shock there!

[homoe]

Originally Posted by homoe

President Donald Trump has mocked the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish that she not be replaced until a new president can be installed, falsely suggesting the quote was created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.

Asked about justice Ginsburg’s statement that was dictated to her granddaughter and later reported by NPR, the president told Fox News on Monday morning: “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and [Chuck] Schumer and Pelosi?”

He added: “I would be more inclined to the second.”

Tucker Carlson Slams Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ‘Pathetic’ Dying Wish.

Carlson was parroting a conspiracy theory initiated earlier in the day on his cable network by President Donald Trump.

“I don’t know that she said that. Or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi?” Trump said on Fox News Monday morning.

“Mr. President, this is low. Even for you,” Schiff fired back on Twitter.

Within hours, other right-wing figures, including Carlson, repeated Trump’s talking point.

[Cin]

'Colossal Backdoor Bailout': Outrage as Pentagon Funnels Hundreds of Millions Meant for Covid Supplies to Private Defense Contractors
"If you can't get a Covid test or find an N95, it’s because these contractors stole from the American people to make faster jets and fancy uniforms."

Instead of adhering to congressional intent by building up the nation's inadequate supply of N95 masks and other equipment to combat the Covid-19 crisis, the Pentagon has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in appropriated taxpayer funds to private defense contractors for drone technology, jet engine parts, Army uniform material, body armor, and other purposes not directly related to the pandemic.

As the Washington Post reported Tuesday morning, the Department of Defense—headed by former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper—"began reshaping how it would award the money" just weeks after Congress in March approved a $1 billion fund under the Defense Production Act to help the nation "prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus."

"The Trump administration has done little to limit the defense firms from accessing multiple bailout funds at once and is not requiring the companies to refrain from layoffs as a condition of receiving the awards," the Post noted. "Some defense contractors were given the Pentagon money even though they had already dipped into another pot of bailout funds, the Paycheck Protection Program."

As the U.S. still faces major shortages of testing supplies and N95 masks six months into the pandemic, the Post reported that the Pentagon has used congressionally approved funds to dish out $183 million to luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce and other companies to help "maintain the shipbuilding industry," tens of millions for "drone and space surveillance technology," and $80 million to "a Kansas aircraft parts business."

A subsidiary of Rolls-Royce also received $22 million from the Pentagon "to upgrade a Mississippi plant," according to the Post.

Mandy Smithberger, a weapons industry analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Post, "This is part and parcel of whether we have budget priorities that actually serve our public safety or whether we have a government that is captured by special interests."

The Pentagon's misuse of taxpayer funds aimed at addressing the Covid-19 pandemic has drawn a rebuke from the Democrat-controlled House Appropriations Committee, which characterized the Defense Department's rewards to defense contractors as a clear violation of congressional intent.

"While the Department plans to execute a portion of that funding for personal protective equipment (PPE) as intended by Congress, most of the funds will be used to address the impact of Covid–19 on the [defense industrial base], which was not the original intent of the funds," the committee said in a July report (pdf).

Pentagon officials insisted to the Post that the funds were allocated appropriately, citing the need to "protect key defense capabilities from the consequences of Covid," but Slate's Elliot Hannon argued the Defense Department's generous taxpayer-funded gifts to private corporations amount to little more than "a colossal backdoor bailout for the defense industry."

Pointing to the Pentagon's handouts to Rolls-Royce and other major companies, Hannon wrote, "That doesn't exactly sound like PPE."


https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ns-meant-covid

I guess this is okay, because according to our president, covid 19 effects virtually no one. So no need for PPEs. And too much testing only ups the count of positive cases anyway. I cannot believe anyone would actually vote for this guy.

[nhplowboi]

WTH???!!!!