Zorro
Zorro's JournalCOVID in Florida: State records nearly 32,000 new cases, setting one-day record, CDC reports
The state has seen nearly 60,000 new infections over the past two days as the omicron variant spreads and lines at testing centers grow.Florida reported nearly 32,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, the most in a day during the pandemic, according to figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The total of 31,758 – published Friday on the CDC’s website – surpassed the previous high, set Aug 27, when Florida reported 27,668 additional cases as the delta strain of the coronavirus spread across the state and nation.
On Wednesday, Florida reported 26,811 new cases. Infections statewide have risen by nearly 300% over the past several days.
Through Thursday, Florida has had 3,864,288 cases since the pandemic began in March 2020 and 62,374 deaths.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/coronavirus/2021/12/24/covid-omicron-variant-florida-record-cases-reported-testing-centers-close-christmas/9016240002/
In An English Country Garden
Don't know why this tune just popped into my head, but it's a sweet delight.
Rudy Giuliani and One America News sued by Georgia poll workers falsely accused of electoral fraud
Source: Washington Post
Two election workers who counted votes for the 2020 presidential election filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the parent company of One America News, senior staff at the far-right TV network and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former president Donald Trump.
Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who worked in Fulton County, Ga., allege that One America News and Giuliani, who frequently appears on the network, knowingly spread misinformation about them, including falsehoods that they logged illegal ballots for Joe Biden in the election.
The two women “have become objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment … because of a campaign of malicious lies,” their attorneys wrote in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Deliberate efforts to spread disinformation about America’s election workers undermine the integrity of American elections … and accordingly, threaten democracy.”
The legal action seeks to force the defendants to delete false statements about the two women from their platforms. It also asks for compensatory and punitive damages.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/24/trump-giuliani-oann-election-fraud/
Merry Christmas, Rudy!
Fox News Host's Incendiary Fauci Comments Follow a Network Pattern
Comments by Jesse Watters, a host of “The Five,” were in keeping with previous derogatory remarks about Dr. Anthony Fauci by hosts and conservatives.The Fox News host Jesse Watters used notably violent language this week in urging a gathering of conservatives to publicly confront Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s foremost infectious-disease specialist, who has become a frequent source of criticism on the political right.
Referring to tabloid-style surprise interviews, Mr. Watters said in a speech that activists should “ambush” Dr. Fauci with adversarial questions that he deemed “the kill shot.” Describing the imagined effect of such a filmed confrontation, Mr. Watters added: “Boom! He is dead! He is dead! He’s done!”
Dr. Fauci called the comments “horrible” in an interview with CNN and said Mr. Watters “should be fired on the spot.”
Fox News has not disciplined Mr. Watters for the remarks. The network said in a statement that the comments were “twisted completely out of context” and that “it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci.”
The host’s amped-up language was in keeping with the tone of prominent conservative figures, who for months have routinely and casually referred to Dr. Fauci in bracingly derogatory terms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/business/media/fox-anthony-fauci-jesse-watters.html
How Republicans will retcon the past to try to reelect Trump
When you’re in the midst of a difficult period — as we are now with omicron raging, inflation disturbingly high and President Biden’s domestic agenda hanging by a fraying thread — it can be difficult to imagine a future in which present problems have worked themselves out and everything is looking positive.
But you know who has imagined that different future? Republicans. And they’re already putting the pieces in place for a gigantic retconning project, in which the history of the pandemic and the U.S. economy will be rewritten to justify the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
This may be the best way to understand the former president’s newfound enthusiasm for touting coronavirus vaccines, which has shocked some of his most loyal supporters.
“I came up with a vaccine,” Trump boasted in an interview released Wednesday to right-wing media personality Candace Owens. Despite Owens’s disagreement, Trump insisted that “if you take the vaccine, you’re protected” and “people aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”
Trump has also been publicly encouraging people to get booster shots. He’s practically sounded like Anthony S. Fauci.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/23/how-republicans-will-retcon-past-try-reelect-trump/
John Thune, a Likely Successor to Mitch McConnell, Weighs Retirement
Mr. Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, is considering giving up his South Dakota seat because of both family concerns and Donald Trump’s enduring hold on the G.O.P.WASHINGTON — Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican and a potential future leader, is seriously considering retiring after next year, a prospect that has set off an intensifying private campaign from other Republicans urging him to seek re-election.
Mr. Thune is only 60, but a combination of family concerns and former President Donald J. Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican Party have prompted the senator, who is in his third term, to tell associates and reporters in his home state that 2022 could be his last year in Congress.
His departure would be a blow to South Dakota, which has enjoyed outsize influence in Washington, and could upend Senate Republicans’ line of succession. Mr. Thune has been open about his ambition to lead his party’s caucus after Senator Mitch McConnell makes way, and quiet but unmistakable jockeying is already underway between him and Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming.
“John is the logical successor should Mitch decide to not run again for leader,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Thune, while noting that Mr. McConnell’s hold on their caucus remained “very secure.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/us/politics/john-thune-senate-retirement.html
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, poised to launch, will open a new window on the cosmos
NASA’s long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion marvel of engineering and scientific ambition, is finally poised to rocket into deep space from a launchpad in French Guiana, on the northeast shoulder of South America. What happens in the following days and weeks will either change our understanding of the universe or deliver a crushing blow to NASA and the global astronomical community.
The Webb must cruise for 29 days to a unique orbit around the sun that keeps it roughly 1 million miles from Earth, four times the distance to the moon. At launch, it will be folded upon itself, a shrouded package inside the cone of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket. After it escapes Earth’s gravity, it must begin opening up, blossoming into a functioning telescope.
That starts with the deployment of the solar panels to make the whole thing work. Next comes the unfurling of a tennis-court-size expanse of multilayered foil — the sun shield, akin to a giant umbrella, ideally more reliable than what you would get from a drugstore.
Then, the telescope must deploy 18 hexagonal, gold-covered, beryllium mirrors, which collectively act as a light bucket 21 feet across, designed to capture ancient light emitted more than 13 billion years ago as the embryonic universe was still learning how to create stars and galaxies.
What could go wrong?
NASA actually has an answer to that question: This mission is vulnerable to, and therefore must avoid, 344 potential “single-point failures,” according to an independent review board.
https://wapo.st/3H94BJ4
Great article with great graphics, link should not be behind a paywall.
Keeping my fingers crossed that the launch and deployment are successful.
Inside the nonstop pressure campaign by Trump allies to get officials to revisit the 2020 vote
More than a year after Donald Trump lost the presidency, election officials across the country are facing a growing barrage of claims that the vote was not secure and demands to investigate or decertify the outcome, efforts that are eating up hundreds of hours of government time and spreading distrust in elections.
The ongoing attack on the vote is being driven in part by well-funded Trump associates, who have gained audiences with top state officials and are pushing to inspect protected machines and urging them to conduct audits or sign on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 results. And the campaign is being bolstered by grass-roots energy, as local residents who have absorbed baseless allegations of ballot fraud are now forcing election administrators to address the false claims.
The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.
State and local officials said no one has presented actual evidence that rampant fraud tainted the 2020 election, and numerous ballot reviews and legal proceedings have affirmed that the vote was secure. Yet they and their staffs have been forced into a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, debunking a steady stream of false allegations only to see similar claims emerge again from other groups or in other states.
The onslaught is exhausting and troubling, officials said, as they launch preparations for the 2022 midterm elections — and is further eroding faith in the nation’s voting systems.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-officials-pressure-campaign/2021/12/22/8a0b0788-5d26-11ec-ae5b-5002292337c7_story.html
Ted Kaczynski, the 79-year-old Unabomber, transferred to prison medical facility
Source: Washington Post
Theodore Kaczynski — who came to be known as the “Unabomber” for killing three people and injuring many more in a series of mail bombings over 17 years — has been transferred to a federal prison medical facility known for treating inmates with significant health problems, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Kaczynski was transferred on Dec. 14 from the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., where he was serving multiple life-in-prison sentences, to FMC Butner, a federal medical center in North Carolina, said spokeswoman Kristie Breshears.
She declined to provide details of Kaczynski’s condition. David Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski’s brother, said he had been told recently by someone who corresponds with his brother that he had been moved to a different facility, but the Bureau of Prisons declined to tell him why that was. David Kaczynski, who tipped the FBI to his brother as a possible suspect, said his brother does not respond to his letters.
Kaczynski, 79, pleaded guilty in 1998 to carrying out mail bombings in a deranged campaign against modern technology.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/unabomber-kaczynski-hospital-ill/2021/12/22/4f773f82-6367-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html
Trump's intentions aside, Ted Cruz says he's next to secure the 2024 GOP presidential nomination
The Texas senator, who placed second in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, says there’s historical precedent for the runner-up to get the nod the next time aroundSen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is expressing optimism about his odds of securing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination even as former president Donald Trump hints that he might run again.
In an interview with the Truth Gazette, a conservative outlet run by 15-year-old Brilyn Hollyhand, Cruz said he would “absolutely” consider a run for the White House in 2024. In fact, Cruz said he thinks it is very likely that Republican voters will give him the nomination.
Noting that he ended up “placing second” during the 2016 GOP primaries, Cruz said there is a historical precedent for runner-up candidates like him to get the nod the next time they jump into the presidential race.
“There’s a reason historically that the runner-up is almost always the next nominee,” Cruz said. “That’s been true going back to Nixon or Reagan, or McCain or Romney. That’s played out repeatedly.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/22/cruz-trump-2024-nomination/
The most hated man in the Senate becoming the GOP's 2024 presidential nominee? Sounds about right.
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