babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalTrump to order government to vaccinate Americans first
Really, who does he think he is? 
Trump to order government to vaccinate Americans first
By Morgan Chalfant - 12/07/20 05:52 PM EST
President Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday affirming that Americans should receive coronavirus vaccines before any are distributed to other nations.
Trump will sign the order during a White House summit on Operation Warp Speed, the public-private program aimed at accelerating the delivery of a vaccine for COVID-19.
The executive order also lays out a framework for U.S. government agencies to coordinate in order to assist foreign countries in getting immunizations after the American public is vaccinated, according to the official.
more...
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/529128-trump-to-order-government-to-vaccinate-americans-first-at-summit
Trump Plots Mass Pardons
Have I mentioned lately what a POS he is?
https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/07/trump-plots-mass-pardons/
Trump Plots Mass Pardons
December 7, 2020 at 11:09 pm EST By Taegan Goddard
“Trump recently told one adviser he was going to pardon ‘every person who ever talked to me,’ suggesting an even larger pardon blitz to come. As with most Trump conversations, the adviser wasn’t sure how seriously to take the president — although Trump gave no indication he was joking.”
“The president relishes his unilateral authority to issue get-out-of-jail-free cards. Lately, though, he’s been soliciting recipients, asking friends and advisers who they think he should pardon.”
Eric Boehlert: Sunday morning shows need to ban Republicans who won't admit Biden won
https://pressrun.media/p/sunday-morning-shows-need-to-banSunday morning shows need to ban Republicans who won't admit Biden won
Playing footsies with autocrats
Eric Boehlert
1 hr ago
Just ten percent of Congressional Republicans will acknowledge Joe Biden won the election last month, according to a new tally by the Washington Post. That means just 10 percent of Congressional Republicans should be invited by television news producers to appear on Sunday morning programs to discuss the day's events. By continuing to welcome Republican election deniers on TV and treating their comments as serious and mainstream, the press is doing damage to election integrity, just as Trump loyalists are doing damage.
At this point, it doesn't matter if Sunday morning hosts push back on Republicans who refuse to recognize Biden's victory, whose margin now stands at seven million votes. Simply by engaging election deniers and giving them a national platform, the Sunday programs are doing the GOP bidding in its attempt to sow doubts about our democratic process.
snip//
This idea of banning public officials from news forums based on their outrageous views isn't as radical as it seems. There's precedent for mainstream news organizations to cut off access to experts and officials whose views do damage to our public discourse and democracy. Years ago, newspaper and television news would regularly quote climate deniers while presenting to news consumers the idea that there was a "debate" about whether humans are accelerating climate change, and if the crisis is even real. Over time, as the scientific evidence became overwhelming and global conditions rapidly got worse, news outlets realized the folly — and the danger — of treating partisan, conservative climate deniers as serious people, and made a conscious effort to exclude them from coverage.
The same is true of election deniers. Yet the media continue to cater to their dangerous, corrosive behavior, the likes of which we've never seen before in American politics. One CNN report recently suggested Republicans had “no choice” but to back Trump’s election sabotage. Politico dismissed Trump’s ongoing rampage as nothing more than “performance art” and “bad sportsmanship.” Elsewhere, the New York Times cast a sympathetic eye on Republicans state officials who supposedly faced the tough “choice” of certifying verified voting results, or helping Trump cast doubt on them as he tries to overturn an election.
For a month now, the Beltway press has largely treated the GOP's enabling of Trump as a tricky political dance they're reluctantly undertaking. Leaders of the GOP don't deserve any media sympathy while they stand idly by and watch Trump wage war on free and fair elections in America. They also don't deserve to be ushered onto Sunday morning TV shows to push election lies.
How Biden's Digital Team Tamed the MAGA Internet
https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/06/1312053/How Biden’s Digital Team Tamed the MAGA Internet
December 6, 2020 at 7:59 am EST By Taegan Goddard
“The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Mr. Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events.”
“Mr. Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes, but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed.”
I'm 'Stealing Christmas to Keep You Safe,' Canadian Leader Gives Emotional Virus Message
December 4, 2020 4:02PM ET
I’m ‘Stealing Christmas to Keep You Safe,’ Canadian Leader Gives Emotional Virus Message
“If you don’t think that Covid is real right now, you’re an idiot,” Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said
By Peter Wade
The premier of the Canadian province of Manitoba, Brian Pallister, got choked up as he pleaded with fellow citizens not to gather together during the coming holidays due to the potential spread of coronavirus.
During a Thursday news conference, Pallister ridiculed virus deniers and spoke emotionally to Manitobans about the need to celebrate this holiday season apart.
As Pallister spoke about the importance of people heeding his advice, the premier choked up at the idea of having to strongly advise people not to celebrate with family and friends.
Pallister continued while his voice cracked with emotion, “I’m the guy who’s stealing Christmas to keep you safe. Because you need to do this now. You need to do the right thing. Because next year we’ll have lots to celebrate.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1334929603303976961
more...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/im-the-guy-stealing-christmas-to-keep-you-safe-brian-pallister-1099036/
Frank Bruni: Death Came for the Dakotas
Death Came for the Dakotas
In terms of the coronavirus, they’re a theater of American disgrace.
By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist
Dec. 5, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET
snip//
The Dakotas are a horror story that didn’t have to be, a theater of American disgrace. Want to understand the tendencies — pathologies might be the better word — that made America’s dance with the coronavirus so deadly? Visit the Dakotas.
snip//
Just before Thanksgiving, Noem announced the passing of her 98-year-old grandmother, one of 13 residents of a South Dakota nursing home who died in a two-week period. The home’s administrator told The Daily Beast that the other 12 residents, along with many of the nursing home’s workers, had tested positive for the coronavirus, but not Noem’s grandmother. (Hmmm …) While Noem publicly mourned her lost family member, she drew no particular attention to Covid-19’s rampage among her grandmother’s companions.
I get the sense that Noem has presidential aspirations (though she has denied that). If she ever presses the accelerator on those, please remember this savage season, and please remember her damning indifference to it.
When I said “horror story,” I was cribbing. That was a description used in a series of mid-November tweets from a South Dakota emergency room nurse, Jodi Doering, that went viral. Doering was reeling from tending to dying Covid-19 patients who continued to insist that the coronavirus was some kind of hoax.
“They stop yelling at you when they get intubated,” she wrote. “It’s like a horror movie that never ends.” I altered that last sentence. Doering put a curse word before “horror,” and who can blame her?
more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/covid-north-south-dakota.html
David Corn: 274,000 Dead, and Trump Obsesses Over Election Conspiracy Theories. Where's the Outrage?
274,000 Dead, and Trump Obsesses Over Election Conspiracy Theories. Where’s the Outrage?
A 9/11 a day and…meh?
David Corn
In the late 1990s, conservatives and Republicans were fond of shouting “Where’s the outrage?” in response to Bill Clinton’s sex scandal. They couldn’t believe Clinton was getting away with it, as he preserved his high standing in public opinion polls and escaped removal from office. William Bennett, the right-wing moralist who had been education secretary in the Reagan administration, even wrote a book titled The Death of Outrage, in which he proclaimed this sordid episode cast a dark shadow on the entire nation: “This is moral bankruptcy, and it is damaging our country, its standards, and our self-respect.”
All the harrumphing was about an improper Oval Office tryst that did indeed tarnish the highest position in the land. But that fin-de-siècle chest-banging seems rather quaint and silly now, for today there is a lack of outrage over a far more significant matter: the death of more than a quarter-million Americans. On Wednesday, the United States set a new record for COVID-19 deaths: 2,804. This is just 173 shy of the death toll of 9/11—that cataclysmic event that reordered elements of American society. The United States is looking at that level of loss on a daily basis. Yet there is little uproar.
Where’s the outrage?
Has a single Republican leader declared this is not acceptable? Has the president of the United States said this must not continue? Corporate and religious leaders have not pounded the tables in public. Even many Democrats seem to be reluctant to cry out.
Of course, Trump cannot be expected to note the ghastly milestones. For 10 months, he has downplayed the pandemic and refused to adopt the basic advice of public health experts: encourage people to wear masks, to stay home, and to engage in social distancing. His inept response to the crisis has led to a death count far higher (per capita) than that in other industrialized democracies. His refusal to develop a robust testing program and to promote mask-wearing is certainly responsible for the painful deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
Where’s the outrage?
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/274000-dead-and-trump-obsesses-over-election-conspiracy-theories-wheres-the-outrage/
Secrecy and spin: How Florida's governor misled the public on the COVID-19 pandemic
Secrecy and spin: How Florida’s governor misled the public on the COVID-19 pandemic
By Mario Ariza, David Fleshler and Cindy Krischer Goodman
South Florida Sun Sentinel |
Dec 03, 2020 at 5:53 PM
A look at how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tried to spin COVID-19 narrative to help himself and President Donald Trump.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced, a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation has found.
DeSantis, who owes his job to early support from President Donald Trump, imposed an approach in line with the views of the president and his powerful base of supporters. The administration suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters who supported the governor’s approach to the disease.
The DeSantis administration’s approach to managing COVID-19 information carries costs. It supports a climate in which people proudly disdain masks, engage in dangerous group activities that could spread the disease, and brush aside information that conflicts with their political views. With partygoers packing Florida bars and holiday travelers filling hotels and guest rooms, the state faces a few difficult months before the possible relief of vaccines.
These findings are based on interviews with more than 50 people, including scientists, doctors, political leaders, employees of the state health department, and other state officials, as well as more than 4,000 pages of documents.
The DeSantis administration refused to reveal details about the first suspected cases in Florida, then denied the virus was spreading from person to person — despite mounting evidence that it was.
State officials withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, relenting only under pressure or legal action from family members, advocacy groups and journalists.
The DeSantis administration brushed aside scientists and doctors who advocated conventional approaches to fighting the virus, preferring scientists on the fringes who backed the governor’s positions.
The governor’s spokesman regularly takes to Twitter to spread misinformation about the disease, including the false claim that COVID was less deadly than the flu.
The governor highlighted statistics that would paint the rosiest picture possible and attempted to cast doubt on the validity of Florida’s rising death toll.
more...
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-coronavirus-florida-desantis-spin-ss-prem-20201203-tyjmgkos6bd7vo7vnripqliany-htmlstory.html
Susan B. Glasser: The President Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off?
Letter from Trump’s Washington
The President Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off?
The dangerous “yeah, whatever” phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency.
By Susan B. Glasser
December 3, 2020
On Wednesday, more than three thousand Americans died because of the coronavirus, the nation’s deadliest day yet during the pandemic. The same day, the President of the United States chose to release, on social media, a forty-six-minute videotaped address from the White House. He called it possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” The pandemic’s grim toll was never mentioned. What was? The “tremendous vote fraud and irregularities” in last month’s election, the results of which the President still refuses to accept. The “statistically impossible” victory of Joe Biden, and the idea that the Democrats had so “rigged” the election that “they already knew” the outcome in advance. It was all “corrupt,” “shocking,” “constitutionally absolutely incorrect,” and “so illegal.” The President said he knew full well that he would be “demeaned and disparaged” for continuing to speak out, especially now that even some of his advisers have “disappeared” or, as he claimed, been bullied into silence. But he would do so anyway.
snip//
There are only two possible conclusions from listening to this folly: either the President actually believes what he is saying, in which case he is crazy, or he does not, in which case he is engaged in the most cynical attack on American democracy ever to come from the White House. Is Trump “increasingly detached from reality,” as even the dispassionate, strictly nonpartisan Associated Press put it, in recounting the speech? Or is that conclusion, harsh as it is, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt by implying that he is just misguided or uninformed? There is another explanation, after all, for this reckless speech: What if, in fact, the President is not delusional but is the purposeful, malevolent creator of an alternate reality, knowingly spewing disinformation, discord, and division? Either variant, of course, is terrible.
snip//
The temptation is to look away, to move on, to cringe and avert your gaze. That is exactly what the Republicans in the Senate, who have stood by Trump through impeachment and other ignominies, have done this week, pivoting so seamlessly into bashing the new Biden Administration that they never even stopped to acknowledge its existence. Like the vast majority of his G.O.P. colleagues, Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, has yet to publicly admit that Biden won. Nonetheless, he gave a speech on the Senate floor decrying Biden’s choices for top posts. “I will not support any nominee who doesn’t provide full transparency into their work on behalf of a foreign government. I will not do it,” Cornyn said. Never mind, in other words, the past four years of the Trump Administration, when a President and his children profited every single day off undisclosed foreign business arrangements.
more...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-president-is-acting-crazy-so-why-are-we-shrugging-it-off
"...no one is actually allowed to live at Mar-a-Lago full time. Not even Donald Trump."
I hope this remains true. I want that sob as miserable as possible.
Where is President Trump going to live after he leaves office?
Dylan Stableford and Sam Matthews
Wed., December 2, 2020, 12:51 p.m. EST·4 min read
On Jan. 20, President-elect Joe Biden will move into the White House — and that means President Trump is going to have to find somewhere else to live. Since he changed his legal address from Trump Tower in New York City to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., some have assumed that’s where he’ll go after leaving Washington.
He’s voted from that address in the most recent Florida primary and general election. Construction work and renovations are reportedly being done to expand the living quarters. And ABC News reported last week that members of his Secret Service detail have been asked if they’d like to relocate to the area.
There’s just one problem: Per an agreement with the town of Palm Beach, no one is actually allowed to live at Mar-a-Lago full time. Not even Donald Trump.
Trump first purchased the 126-room, 62,500-square-foot mansion and 17.5-acre estate as a home for $10 million in 1985. But when he found himself in some financial trouble in the early ’90s, Trump sought to divide the land into smaller properties.
Local officials rejected that plan, so he decided to convert it into a private club, promoting it as a historic property and charging membership fees instead of selling it off.
But that deal came with rules set forth by the town of Palm Beach, which Trump agreed to in a written contract. One of those rules is that none of its nearly 500 members is allowed to stay there for more than seven days at a time, or more than 21 days in a single calendar year.
more...
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/trump-maralago-permanent-residence-after-he-leaves-office-175100408.html
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Member since: Mon Sep 6, 2004, 09:54 PM
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