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Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

Who is Rick Bright? The Coronavirus Whistle-Blower Who Said The Trump Administration Steered Contracts to Cronies - The New York Times - "Rick Bright, the ousted chief of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, said he was pressured to steer millions of dollars to the clients of a well-connected consultant."
uestionable contracts have gone to “companies with political connections to the administration,” the complaint said, including a drug company tied to a friend of Jared Kushner’s, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. It said Dr. Bright was retaliated against by his superiors, who pushed him out because of “his efforts to prioritize science and safety over political expediency.”
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Cronyism. Nepotism. The Trumpies are just plain corrupt.

With New Hot Spots Emerging, No Sign of a Respite - The New York Times
In New York City, the daily onslaught of death from the coronavirus has dropped to half of what it was. In Chicago, a makeshift hospital in a lakefront convention center is closing, deemed no longer needed. And in New Orleans, new cases have dwindled to a handful each day.

Yet across America, those signs of progress obscure a darker reality.

The country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic with little hope of release. For every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere, leaving the nation stuck in a steady, unrelenting march of deaths and infections.

...
Rural towns that one month ago were unscathed are suddenly hot spots for the virus. It is rampaging through nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons, killing the medically vulnerable and the poor, and new outbreaks keep emerging in grocery stores, Walmarts or factories, an ominous harbinger of what a full reopening of the economy will bring.

While dozens of rural counties have no known coronavirus cases, a panoramic view of the country reveals a grim and distressing picture.
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Let's see how those red-staters take it. Will they denounce aid to blue states as enabling all sorts of Bad People even as they want aid for their states? That's a pattern that I saw with Hurricane Sandy and natural disasters in their own states. They demanded that blue states be self-reliant while wanting aid for their states.

Or will pro-Republican oligarchs bail them out? Oligarchs like Charles Koch and Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer.
 
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Proud to join my colleagues in supporting this bill. https://t.co/BVJVRt57CA" / Twitter
noting
Nanette D. Barragán on Twitter: "It is unconscionable for Trump Admin to bail out #BigOil & gas corps with #CARESAct funds intended to help families, workers & small businesses survive #COVIDー19.
@SenMerkley & I introduced the #ReWINDAct today to say loud and clear: #NoBigOilBailout! https://t.co/qRW6t2jVoU" / Twitter
noting
ReWIND Act Prohibits Bailout of Fossil Fuel Industry with CARES Act Funds During Public Health Crisis – Nanette Diaz Barragán
Congressmembers Nanette Diaz Barragán (Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Jared Huffman (Calif.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (Ore.) introduced the legislation. It would safeguard CARES Act taxpayer funds for struggling businesses and Americans out of work because of COVID-19 by making sure they are not used to pay off bad debt taken on by fossil fuel corporations before the public health crisis. North American oil and pipeline companies have more than $200 billion in debt that will mature between 2020 and 2024.

“It would be unconscionable to bail out big oil and gas corporations with money intended to help families, workers and small businesses survive this global pandemic,” said Rep. Barragán. “The CARES Act passed to help Americans struggling to make it through the COVID-19 public health crisis – not to make it easier for fossil fuel companies to drive us closer to climate catastrophe.”

...
The ReWIND Act:
  • Precludes loans, loan guarantees and other financial instruments from the Main Street Lending Programs of the CARES Act from going to fossil fuel companies;
  • Puts a two-year prohibition on banks and other solvent financial institutions who avail themselves of Title IV CARES Act provisions such as debt guarantees, additional borrowing authority or loans or loan guarantees from operating, or making new equity investments in fossil fuel companies.
  • Puts a moratorium on new federal fossil fuel leases until after the COVID-19 National Emergency is over.
  • Caps the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) at its current physical limit of 713,500,000 barrels and reiterates that private oil cannot be stored in the SPR.
  • Repeals the statutory authority for Department of the Interior to institute a royalty-in kind program that would accept oil and natural gas from producers in lieu of cash royalties. The royalty-in-kind program was shuttered in 2009 after it was ensnared in a wide-ranging ethics scandal.
  • Takes away the authority under to use title III of the Defense Production Act to provide loans or loan guarantees to fossil fuel companies.
  • Repeals the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to lower royalty rates for fossil fuel leases on federal lands and waters.
  • Eliminates the authority of the Secretary to eliminate or reduce royalty rates for Deep Water leases on the Outer Continental shelf. This cleans up the existing code, as this authority had expired.
  • Ensures that the public can participate in rulemakings by extending public comment periods that were already under way until after the COVID-19 national emergency is over. It also suspends new rulemakings that are not specifically in response to the COVID-19 crisis, until after the national emergency is over.
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The bill itself: H.R.6707 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): To amend the Mineral Leasing Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to limit the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to reduce certain royalties, to amend the CARES Act to limit the provision of assistance to certain businesses, to impose a moratorium on certain oil and natural gas lease sales, the issuance of coal leases, and modifications to certain regulations, to extend certain public comment periods, and for other purposes. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress - the bill was introduced by Rep. Barragan and it has 29 cosponsors, all original.
 
Trump wants to cut payroll taxes for the year and end capital gain taxes in order to spend more money to balance state budgets which has suffered from the economic freeze.

The death toll in the US is a fraction of what it would have been had the states not imploded their economies, and Trump is saying 'I need a favor though.' The GOP is a cancer.
 
Do you ever get the feeling a web board troll is in charge of Trump's campaign? No, this isn't a joke.
article said:
As President Trump toured an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix on Tuesday, his visit through the facility was accompanied by a head-scratching musical soundtrack: the Paul McCartney-penned “Live and Let Die,” as performed by Guns 'N Roses.
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lyrics said:
You used to say live and let live
You know you did
You know you did
You know you did
But if this ever changin'
In which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
Live and let die
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Are these lyrics of a Libertarian or the Head of Richard Nixon?
 
Stock market: Why stocks are going up even though the economy is bad - Vox
The stock market is doing fine, even though everything else is definitely not.

At the onset of the coronavirus crisis, Wall Street had a meltdown. Stocks plunged amid fears of the disease’s spread and its potential impact on the global economy, sometimes to the point that trading was halted altogether to rein in the chaos. But in recent weeks, the market has been pretty okay. It’s not at the record highs it was in mid-February, but it’s not bad — the S&P 500 is hovering around where it was last fall. And given the state of the world — a deadly global pandemic with no end in sight, 30 million Americans recently out of jobs, an economy that’s fallen off of a cliff — a relatively rosy stock market is particularly perplexing.

Sure, the stock market isn’t the economy, but right now, it seems particularly divorced from what’s happening on the ground. “The gap between markets and economic data has never been larger,” wrote Matt King, global head of credit strategy at Citigroup, in a recent note.
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Emily Stewart on Twitter: "How is the stock market fine when everything else is, you know, definitely not?
A possible explanation, with the caveat, as one source put it: “If I’m being dead-ass honest, though, nobody knows what’s really going on.” https://t.co/1ChzbKr7bc" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Hint: it starts with a C and ends with -apitalism
(aka this is what happens when Wall Street captures Congress and writes themselves bailout check after bailout check as working people die) https://t.co/S5o9yfD4zc" / Twitter
Then a lot of capitalism apologists complaining that that is Not True Capitalism.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Do you ever get the feeling a web board troll is in charge of Trump's campaign? No, this isn't a joke.
article said:
As President Trump toured an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix on Tuesday, his visit through the facility was accompanied by a head-scratching musical soundtrack: the Paul McCartney-penned “Live and Let Die,” as performed by Guns 'N Roses.
Click to expand...
lyrics said:
You used to say live and let live
You know you did
You know you did
You know you did
But if this ever changin'
In which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
Live and let die
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Are these lyrics of a Libertarian or the Head of Richard Nixon?
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LOL...I saw that...Another Beautiful Clownstick Production...it could have been worse :D

 
crazyfingers said:
What will it take to get through some people's little selfish heads that the masks have a dual purpose and that research is strongly suggesting that 25%-50% of people who are infected have no symptoms but can still spread C19 to others?

Do they have a clue about that or do they just not give a shit if they infect and kill other people?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/health/why-people-dont-wear-masks-wellness-trnd/index.html

View attachment 27539
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They have been fed at the tit of The Wagstaff Doctrine. If a liberal or expert is for it, it is wrong.

It has gotten so bad, they are actually protesting preventing deaths at the scale of hundreds of thousands to millions.
 
House hits gas, Senate pumps brakes on $2T more in relief | TheHill
Congress is under the gun to pass yet another massive round of coronavirus relief, as small-business funds dry up, state budgets are ravaged and unemployment claims soar to record highs.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats are planning to unveil an enormous CARES 2 package in the coming days, with a possible floor vote as early as next week — a blistering pace for a proposal expected to rival the size of the initial CARES Act, which topped $2.2 trillion and was signed into law March 27.

...
The brewing partisan battle promises to be the fiercest yet, following four earlier rounds of emergency relief, and will come as the federal government’s response to the coronavirus crisis grows increasingly polarized on Capitol Hill and around the country.
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Andy Slavitt @ ?????? on Twitter: "COVID Update May 6: Like many countries we picked a strategy to beat COVID-19. We just decided not to stick to it. 1/" / Twitter
He has a nice Twitter thread:
COVID Update May 6: Like many countries we picked a strategy to beat COVID-19. We just decided not to stick to it. 1/

“It’s a long and difficult road & after we climbed halfway we decided it was too hard and decided to roll back down the Hill.” 2/

StayHome was a first step to flatten the curve. We reduced the infection rate likely from a number between 2 and 3 to closer to 1.

Given exponential math & limited supplies & resources, this likely saved 10s if not 100s of thousands of lives. 3/

But we only flattened the curve, we didn’t crush it. (And the virus is still there.) And we only flattened on average. In most places, the virus is still growing. Medium summarizes my tweets each night & I put this down a couple days ago. 4/

A new kind of lazy thinking has made its way into the intellectual and kind-of anti-intellectual dialogue. (I’ve had 4 different news anchors ask me to respond to how @ChrisChristie thinks we should approach pandemic response.)5/

That thinking boils down to: it’s too hard. We’ve got to open up the economy because it’s too hard to get enough testing & contact tracing to make people feel safe.6/

They want a start a food fight of hardened realists who can tolerate death to “get our country back” & the “public health mafia” who are willing to kill the economy for the sake of a few people who will die soon anyway.7/

And if those people say that number is going to be big, they’re just alarmists. 8/

There are is a major fallacy here. There is no plan by Chris Christie or otherwise to bring the economy back without addressing our public health crisis. 9/

The reason is he can’t. Without a credible plan to address the public health crisis, tell me how consumers start buying cars, small businesses sign leases & employers start hiring?

They don’t say. They just complain about the “other” position.10/

This may build into a big food fight to preoccupy & entertain us with something besides dealing with the actual virus. But I don’t need to be invited to debate opportunities on the topic.11/
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If one can use the Defense Production Act to keep meatpacking facilities running, one can use it to get production of more testing and more supplies.

This handwringing about how we can't keep more people alive is also very demeaning and very defeatist.
 
There is, however, a plan to slowly steadily bring the economy back, but by solving the public health crisis. It was put forward by...the Trump White House all of 3 weeks ago. It had gates & stages & hinged conditions on the ground. But none of them have been met. 12/

Rather than wait, Trump grew impatient. He wants life to go back to the way it was before the pandemic. He wants the economy growing.

I don’t know how to explain it to him but let me try.13/

All this takes work.

He says he disbanded the Task Force midstream because at some point we have to go back to normal. Before the job is done. 15/
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Just like George Bush II proclaiming "Mission Accomplished".

Doing so fits in very well with his very low conscientiousness. He is very impulsive and very undisciplined, and he likes his briefing books short, almost as if he cannot or will not do any sustained study of anything. I don't see how Mitch McConnell can put up with him. MMC has titled his memoirs "The Long Game", and according to a New York Magazine profile on him, hf likes to put his notes into his pockets rather than throw them away. So in his mind, Trump must be hopelessly undisciplined.
 
Trump acts like keeping Americans safe is a bridge too far. 16/

This is not easy. But it’s not impossible either. Other countries are managing keep people safe & open their economies. (If you think this is because of country size or testing see the 2 tweets that follow)17/

Let’s take a look.

COVID-19 seems to be a uniquely tough American foe. The rest of the world is figuring it out. The Czech Republic did it with masks. China with isolation. Germany with testing. Hong Kong with experience. New Zealand with alerts. Greece with discipline. 27/

*Hong Kong— oh, but they’re an island. Yes. So is Manhattan. Contagion on a dense island can be a disaster.
*New Zealand— oh, but they’re remote. Well they had a color coded warning system like we announced. But they stuck with it.18/

*Korea— oh but they’re too authoritarian. Actually no. Everything was opt-in/optional.
*Germany— yeah, but she’s a scientist. And where did they get all those tests.
*Greece— we could never show that discipline!
*Czech Republic— but they have to wear these arcane masks!19/

Point is— this can be done. Not perfectly. Not without loss of life. Not with a perfect economy but with testing & tracing & masks, it’s a strategy if you can stick to it. 20/

In case you think I haven’t gone into the details of the strategy:
-testing https://medium.com/@ASlavitt/heres-...testing-more-people-for-covid-19-ed3f10bb9952
-tracing https://medium.com/@ASlavitt/to-ope...act-tracing-workforce-of-180-000-82ebad460a2a
-masks https://medium.com/@ASlavitt/the-three-most-likely-scenarios-to-defeat-the-coronavirus-5a63ac30aec8 21/
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Here’s How The US Can Start Testing More People for Covid-19 - "It’s time to turn Covid-19 testing into a real industry so that every American who wants a test can get one. But instead of taking that on, the White House task force is abandoning ship."

To Open the US Economy, We Need a Contact Tracing Workforce of 180,000

The Three Most Likely Scenarios to Defeat the Coronavirus - "Unlike new treatments and a vaccine, wearing a mask doesn’t require scientific breakthroughs to stop the spread of Covid-19"

His scenarios:
  1. Development of a safe and effective vaccine
  2. Development of ways to manage the disease without directly attacking the virus (what a vaccine provokes)
  3. "A reusable, cleanable highly functional and nearly free mask"

Also, all those countries are reasonably open and democratic ones - features of those countries that were not changed by their efforts to fight the disease.
 
We had a strategy. Trump gave it a few weeks & then decided “liberate!”

Basically, he’s a quitter.22/

Not that the Task Force was a font of straight talk.

But he doesn’t need a task force to hawk fake cures. If anything he’ll have more latitude.

What we will have is even less accountability. And less coordination. And even less visibility. 23/

His strategy will be now to talk about rushing a vaccine by September instead. I am all for that.

But maybe hit a layup or two before you tell me how you’re going to sink a shot from half court. 24/
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Almost like Trump stumbled on doing something worthwhile. But a vaccine that's available by then would not be very well-tested, and there would be serious ethical problems with administering it.
 
Patooka said:
angelo said:
I'm full of shite? So Creepy's figure of 600.000 Americans dead from the Chinese virus is correct? :realitycheck:
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It's less than the 46 trillion who would die if they believed the bullshit you spew, considering it has been proven without doubt you can't argue in good faith.
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Did Creepy pedo Biden say 600.000 dead Americans or not! I love the way you're trying to dodge the facts! In fact, does Biden know WTF he is right at this moment?
 
One thing is clear. Our government has a higher tolerance for unnecessary deaths than other countries. School shootings, shootings in church, at concerts, in night clubs. People in nursing homes. Meat plants. Prisons. 25/

As @davidfrum
told me, it’s impossible to get an A in managing a pandemic. There are no silver bullets. But it’s really not hard to get a B.

Listen to experts. Create a plan. Show empathy. Stick with it. It’s the best you can be expected to do. 26/

Our expectations are simple.

The truth, no matter how hard.
To know that our safety matters.
A plan which uses all our tools & best thinking that we stick with.
Candor in discussing the tough trade offs.

We’re not getting that. /end
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Lots of vacuous happy talk, very unlike Angela Merkel, who seems almost Churchillian. Trump is also being upstaged as a leader by some states' governors.
 
angelo said:
Patooka said:
angelo said:
I'm full of shite? So Creepy's figure of 600.000 Americans dead from the Chinese virus is correct? :realitycheck:
Click to expand...

It's less than the 46 trillion who would die if they believed the bullshit you spew, considering it has been proven without doubt you can't argue in good faith.
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Did Creepy pedo Biden say 600.000 dead Americans or not! I love the way you're trying to dodge the facts! In fact, does Biden know WTF he is right at this moment?
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Not dodging the facts. He said it, then almost immediately corrected himself. To claim otherwise is spin. If you think misspeaking disqualifies you to run for President, I have some bad news for you. And if you think Biden is the least articulate person to have ever run for President, I have some even worse news for you. Neither is even remotely factual.

"Over 600,000 dead, many of them are people who are those workers, those nurses, doctors, some of them, because they have put themselves in a position to save other people's lives, protect the rest of society," Biden said Thursday on MSNBC. "And we talk about that number like 600 plus thousand people ..."

Host Joe Scarborough interrupted Biden, correcting him by saying, "60,000."

"Yeah, 60,000," Biden responded. "I misspoke ... over 60,000 dead."
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But speaking of dodging, you still have yet to provide any evidence to your claim that, "The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem". We can talk about dodging, if you like.
 
Joe Biden concedes that he made a mistake. Has Trump ever done so?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Our nurses have given so much these last few weeks. At the bare minimum, they deserve to stay home if they have COVID-19. That's why I'm proud to stand with my colleagues in demanding the CDC revise its guidance to keep our nurses safe #NationalNursesDay https://t.co/papGLZEWXW" / Twitter
noting

Signed by the NYC House delegation, including AOC herself

[url=https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1258165003380649984]Brian Schatz on Twitter: "Lotta tough talk about being a warrior for capitalism from people who don’t pack meat or stock shelves or clean things or serve people." / Twitter
Yes, from people who can easily hide away from the virus.

Janet Kay🌴☀️🦎 on Twitter: "@brianschatz Yeah, I noticed that. I'm also hearing a lot of "get out there and get to work" from people hunkering down from safe bunkers and rich. https://t.co/5GLitlXZiu" / Twitter

Colby Williams 🌈🌹🕊 on Twitter: "@brianschatz Every politician touting that “America wants to go back to work” should lead by example and work in a hospital or grocery store for a week, to show us how safe it is." / Twitter

Rocky on Twitter: "@brianschatz They’re not screeching to be allowed to go back to work; they’re screeching to force the people who serve them to get back to work" / Twitter

StuckAtHomeInMI on Twitter: "@brianschatz @danpfeiffer If the economy is so ready to be open, why doesn’t Trump go do a tour of the states he is encouraging to open? Why doesn’t he man up and visit a covid unit to see what the disease does to patients. Putin did it. What is Trump afraid of?" / Twitter
 
Public Citizen on Twitter: ".@AOC: If big corporations don't pay taxes but they're getting bailed out by the federal government, why are we cutting out undocumented people who are actually paying taxes? https://t.co/xgzGMoMiqm" / Twitter

Kristen Clarke on Twitter: "What this headline doesn't state is that Georgia will not be convening grand juries until June 12.
So tattoo parlors, bowling alleys & barbershops are open under Kemp's rules. But the suspected murderers of a Black man are free until further notice. https://t.co/jOAm6PPUj6" / Twitter

Samuel Roberts, PhD on Twitter: "Folks, @Elmcor is a 50+ yr old service org started by Black Panthers & other activists in Queens. Please donate! "Line at Queens food pantry stretches 8 blocks" (link) via @ABC7NY (link) @Kassandra_Fred @TracieMGardner @AOC" / Twitter

Coronavirus New York City: Line at Queens food pantry stretches for 8 blocks - ABC7 New York
Nearly two months into the pandemic, the strain on some families is at an all-time high. With no jobs and no income, some have no way to pay rent and even putting food on the table is difficult.

Demand for food assistance is rising at an extraordinary rate, and at a food pantry in Queens on Wednesday, the line stretched for eight blocks.

At one of the hardest-hit communities in Corona, a food pantry at Elmcor, located on Northern Boulevard, opens at noon on Wednesdays and goes until 4 p.m., or until they run out of food. Last week, they served at least 540 families.
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Elmcor Youth and Adult Activity, Inc. – Building a Better Community One Life at a Time
 
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