babylonsister
babylonsister's Journal"More than 1M people in US...facing their first holiday season without a loved one..."
Isabella Isaacs-Thomas
How to care for your mental health in a difficult holiday season, according to therapists
Health Dec 21, 2020 5:23 PM EST
Chances are the final weeks of 2020 look markedly different than what you would’ve predicted on the first day of this year. With COVID-19 case and death counts on the rise and hospitals continuing to fill up, many are grappling with the ways that the unchecked coronavirus has sabotaged their daily lives, their economic stability and their time-honored traditions at the end of a year where shared celebration and community may feel more important than ever before.
More than a million people in the U.S. are also estimated to be facing their first holiday season without a loved one who has died from the disease.
Regardless of your circumstances, it’s likely that this moment is impacting your mental health in one way or another. In an American Psychological Association poll from late October, 62 percent of adults reported that they felt “more anxious” than they did at the same time last year.
One major driver of that anxiety? The pervasive uncertainty of living through a pandemic. We’ve been dealing with the same answerless questions for months: When will we be able to feel safe spending time with the people we care about, but don’t live with? Will in-person work and school ever resume a more normal tempo? How long will we have to wear masks and stay vigilant?
more...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-to-care-for-your-mental-health-in-a-difficult-holiday-season-according-to-therapists
Democrats say more COVID relief needed after current measure becomes law
TheHill.com
Democrats say more COVID relief needed after current measure becomes law
By Naomi Jagoda - 12/22/20 06:00 AM EST
Democrats are arguing that more coronavirus relief legislation will need to be enacted early in the incoming Biden administration, even as they tout the $900 billion package that lawmakers unveiled on Monday.
Democrats are highlighting provisions in the agreement that they fought for, including extended unemployment benefits, a second round of direct payments and rental assistance. But they wanted the package to be bigger and say the relief in the $900 billion measure is insufficient.
Democrats had initially wanted a much larger relief package than the one Congress is considering this week.
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House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in an interview with The Hill Sunday evening that Democrats worked hard to get stimulus checks of $600 in the bill, though their preference was payments of $1,200, and to get a $300 weekly boost to unemployment benefits, though they wanted that amount to be $600 per week.
“Those are two of the areas that we had to fight for, because [Republicans] wanted nothing, they wanted zero in those two categories,” Waters said.
more...
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/531199-democrats-say-more-covid-relief-needed-after-current-measure-becomes-law
Embassy Courtyard Named After Jared Kushner
https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/21/embassy-courtyard-named-after-jared-kushner/
Embassy Courtyard Named After Jared Kushner
December 21, 2020 at 1:30 pm EST By Taegan Goddard
[div class="excerpt"“The courtyard of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was named Monday in honor of White House Special Advisor Jared Kushner in recognition of his work on behalf of President Trump both for regional peace and in strengthening recognition of the Israel’s connection to the ancient biblical city which is also its capital,” the Jerusalem Post reports.
Eric Boehlert: Trump plots martial law from White House -- the press shrugs
https://pressrun.media/p/trump-plots-martial-law-from-theTrump plots martial law from White House — the press shrugs
The Normalizing Olympics
Eric Boehlert
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"Trump Discussed Naming Sidney Powell as Special Counsel on Election Fraud," read the botched headline. Fact: There was no "election fraud" in 2020, so it's irresponsible for the Times to treat the debunked claim as fact in its headline by reporting Trump might appoint a special counsel for the phony topic.
The Times didn't think discussing a military coup warranted front-page coverage, but on Sunday the Times did run a big, page-one story about how Joe Biden's emerging cabinet isn't liberal enough for certain Democratic activists. It was the third time in seven days the Times ran essentially the same Dems in Disarray story about Biden's unfolding administration. (Alliances have been "strained," his choices are "vexing" "frustrated" and " increasingly skeptical" supporters.) This time, the paper gave that redundant story higher billing than the stunning report about Trump's advisers urging martial law to protect this reign of power.
It's like the Normalizing Olympics — the press has spent four years turning often-seditious Trump behavior into 800-word stories that run on page 28.
The Times was not alone in basically shrugging a White House meeting that has likely never taken place in American history before. On Sunday morning, the Washington Post homepage included no mention of Trump considering the idea of imposing martial law. I couldn’t find a single major newspaper that ran the story on the front page over the weekend.
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All through Trump's unprecedented crusade against democratic elections the press, time and again, has refused to acknowledge the severity of his actions and the deep Republican support he enjoys when he attacks the democratic process. It’s sadly fitting that after four years of failing to call out Trump, much of the press downplayed the White House talk of martial law. The normalizing never stops.
'Mis-communicator in chief': DeSantis must like how his foot tastes. It's constantly in his mouth
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/20/2003150/-Fort-Lauderdale-newspaper-dubs-Gov-Ron-DeSantis-mis-communicator-in-chief'Mis-communicator in chief': DeSantis must like how his foot tastes. It's constantly in his mouth
Lauren Floyd
Daily Kos Staff
Sunday December 20, 2020 · 1:57 PM EST
snip//
For this example of DeSantis’ departure from reality and more, South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s editorial board blasted the governor, President Donald Trump’s mentee, as "Florida’s mis-communicator in chief."
The newspaper cited as evidence the governor’s claim that reports of Florida's 1.19 million COVID-19 infections and 20,473 deaths have been manipulated to seem worse than they are. He's deemed "anti-masker" Kyle Lamb and conservative blogger Jennifer Cabrera more reliable sources on the virus, and DeSantis is dodging South Florida mayors seeking mask mandates like an anti-masker dodges common sense.
Biden Calls Bipartisan Stimulus Plan 'Down Payment' on Recovery
From December 4, but still...
Biden Calls Bipartisan Stimulus Plan ‘Down Payment’ on Recovery
By Jennifer Epstein
December 4, 2020, 4:14 PM EST
President-elect Joe Biden described the $908 billion pandemic relief proposal from a bipartisan group in the House and Senate as “just a down payment” and that he expects Congress to approve more stimulus spending in early 2021.
“They’re on their way to being able to come up with a package that meets the basic immediate needs that we have, but I’ve made it real clear, it’s just a down payment,” he told reporters Friday in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden said he thinks there will be “enough Republicans that would join enough Democrats in the Senate and the House” to pass the $908 billion agreement. He expects enough Republicans to come to the table next year on another stimulus bill because “the country is going to be in dire, dire, dire straits if they don’t.”
more...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/biden-calls-bipartisan-stimulus-plan-a-downpayment-on-recovery
Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?
I hope so. I hope he's fucking miserable.
https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/20/is-trump-cracking-under-the-weight-of-losing/
Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?
December 20, 2020 at 7:26 am EST By Taegan Goddard
“The narcissistic Trump has spent the last half a century—but especially the last half a decade—making himself and keeping himself the most paid-attention-to person on the planet. But in the month and a half since Election Day, Trump has been seen and heard relatively sparingly and sporadically. No-showing unexpectedly at a Christmas party, sticking to consistently sparse public schedules and speaking mainly through his increasingly manic Twitter feed, he’s been fixated more than anything else on his baseless insistence that he won the election when he did not.”
Full article here:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/20/trump-white-house-losing-448903
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And that is not something Trump will ever be able to abide.
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How Pharma Money Colors Operation Warp Speed's Quest to Defeat COVID
I know this is a couple of weeks old, but might explain a lot. I kept seeing mf45 was benefiting from waiting for the Moderna vaccine to come on the market; could he be getting kick backs? 
How Pharma Money Colors Operation Warp Speed’s Quest to Defeat COVID
By Rachana Pradhan
November 30, 2020
April 16 was a big day for Moderna, a Massachusetts biotech company on the verge of becoming a front-runner in the U.S. government’s race for a coronavirus vaccine. It had received roughly half a billion dollars in federal funding to develop a COVID shot that might be used on millions of Americans.
Daily Beast logo
This story also ran on Daily Beast. It can be republished for free.
Thirteen days after the massive infusion of federal cash — which triggered a jump in the company’s stock price — Moncef Slaoui, a Moderna board member and longtime drug industry executive, was awarded options to buy 18,270 shares in the company, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The award added to 137,168 options he’d accumulated since 2018, the filings show.
It wouldn’t be long before President Donald Trump announced Slaoui as the top scientific adviser for the government’s $12 billion Operation Warp Speed program to rush COVID vaccines to market. In his Rose Garden speech on May 15, Trump lauded Slaoui as “one of the most respected men in the world” on vaccines.
The Trump administration relied on an unusual maneuver that allowed executives to keep investments in drug companies that would benefit from the government’s pandemic efforts: They were brought on as contractors, doing an end run around federal conflict-of-interest regulations in place for employees. That has led to huge potential payouts — some already realized, according to a KHN analysis of SEC filings and other government documents.
Carlo de Notaristefani, an Operation Warp Speed adviser and former senior executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals, owned 665,799 shares of the drug company’s stock as of March 10. While Teva is not a recipient of Warp Speed funding, Trump promoted its antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, even with scant evidence that it worked. The company donated millions of tablets to U.S. hospitals and the drug received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in March. In the following weeks, its share price nearly doubled.
Two other Operation Warp Speed advisers working on therapeutics, Drs. William Erhardt and Rachel Harrigan, own financial stakes of unknown value in Pfizer, which in July announced a $1.95 billion contract with HHS for 100 million doses of its vaccine. Erhardt and Harrigan were previously Pfizer employees.
“With those kinds of conflicts of interest, we don’t know if these vaccines are being developed based on merit,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a liberal consumer advocacy group.
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https://khn.org/news/article/how-pharma-money-colors-operation-warp-speeds-quest-to-defeat-covid/
Officials increasingly alarmed about Trump's power grab
2 hours ago - Politics & Policy
Officials increasingly alarmed about Trump’s power grab
Jonathan Swan
Senior Trump administration officials are increasingly alarmed that President Trump might unleash — and abuse — the power of government in an effort to overturn the clear result of the election.
Why it matters: These officials tell me that Trump is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists and flirting with blatant abuses of power.
There are 32 days until President-elect Biden's inauguration.
The big picture: Their fears include Trump's interest in former national security adviser Michael Flynn's wild talk of martial law; an idea floated of an executive order to commandeer voting machines; and the specter of Sidney Powell, the conspiracy-spewing election lawyer, obtaining governmental power and a top-level security clearance.
A senior administration official said that when Trump is "retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends."
more...
https://www.axios.com/trump-officials-alarmed-overturn-election-results-a844d1d2-acb2-47a9-87ce-ac579458b1ea.html
GOP Congressman Announces That He Won't Take The COVID Vaccine Because He's An American
12/19/20 11:41am
GOP Congressman Announces That He Won't Take The COVID Vaccine Because He's An American
Ken Buck of Colorado made the stunning admission to Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News.
By Ed Scarce
5 hours ago by Ed Scarce
See, this is what happens when you put irresponsible people in positions of responsibility. They endanger other people with their willful ignorance and inevitably this leads to more people behaving in similar, destructive fashion.
Source: The Independent
Representative Ken Buck was asked on Friday about when he would receive the coronavirus vaccine given other members of Congress, such as Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, got the jab.
Dr Jonathan Reiner on CNN was not impressed, nor was Rep. Eric Swalwell.
more...
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/12/gop-congressman-announces-he-wont-take
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