babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalExclusive: Stephen King's The Stand Comes to Life Again
The timing is freaky.
June 2020
Exclusive: Stephen King’s The Stand Comes to Life Again
A new version of the legendary plague novel—starring Alexander Skarsgård, Whoopi Goldberg, James Marsden, and legions more—was in production just as COVID-19 hit. A preview of our worst nightmares.
By Anthony Breznican
May 20, 2020
FORCE FOR GOOD
Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abagail, the 108-year-old whose followers hold fast to their humanity.By James Minchin/CBS.
Stephen King didn’t call his novel The Virus. He didn’t call it The Disease or The End of the World As We Know It or anything that nihilistic. He wanted his 1978 book about a global pandemic that takes all but a fraction of human life with it to be called The Stand. When there are no rules, his thinking went, survivors have to make a choice: Do you go full Darwin and indulge dark, selfish instincts or do what’s right for the sake of others? “I wanted to write about bravery,” says King. “At some point, people do have to make a stand.”
snip//
It’s important to note that the virus in The Stand is not an organic virus that leapt to humans from another species. “It’s a literally weaponized human-made device,” says Elmore, noting that an aspect of King’s story was the way humans too often engineer their own self destruction. And there will be no reference to the actual coronavirus. “This is an alternate version of how things could have gone.”
The disease in The Stand is also catastrophically worse than anything we’ve seen in real life, killing more than 99 percent of the population. King tried to quell some fear by tweeting this fact in the early days of the pandemic, but even he now acknowledges the unsettling similarities that have turned up in real life. “When you hear reports that 100,000 or 240,000 people are going to die, you’ve got to take notice, and it is going to be bad. It’s bad right now,” says King, who wrote a new ending to the story that serves as the miniseries’ final episode. “It’s brought the economy to a complete stop. In a lot of ways, I mean, you see the pictures of Times Square or London, and you say, ‘It really is like The Stand.’”
more...
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/stephen-kings-the-stand-exclusive-first-look#intcid=recommendations_default-popular_edfd14f4-1309-468a-811d-1e5166d6d4c0_popular4-1
WH Shelves CDC's Church Reopening Advice in Fear of Backlash From Religious Trumpists,
I imagine there also might be a backlash when people start dying, which is already happening.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-shelves-cdcs-church-reopening-advice-in-fear-of-backlash-from-religious-trumpists-says-report?ref=home
White House Shelves CDC’s Church Reopening Advice in Fear of Backlash From Religious Trumpists, Says Report
LOVE OF GOD
Jamie Ross
Updated May. 21, 2020 6:25AM ET /
Published May. 21, 2020 5:05AM ET
Lockdown Delays Led to At Least 36,000 More Deaths
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/21/lockdown-delays-led-to-at-least-36000-more-deaths/Lockdown Delays Led to At Least 36,000 More Deaths
May 21, 2020 at 6:32 am EDT By Taegan Goddard
“And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than when most people started staying home, a vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.”
New to me, thanks Eugene Robinson...
A dog's breakfast...a dog's breakfast. UK informal. something or someone that looks extremely messy, or something that is very badly done.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/a-dog-s-breakfast
CDC's Redfield in the hot seat as White House looks for someone to blame
Quick retribution.
"We've been muzzled," a current CDC official told the network. "What's tough is that if we would have acted earlier on what we knew and recommended, we would have saved lives and money."
more...
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/498697-cdc-officials-say-lives-and-money-lost-by-delayed
******************************************
CDC's Redfield in the hot seat as White House looks for someone to blame
By Kristen Holmes, CNN
Updated 5:51 PM ET, Wed May 20, 2020
(CNN)A day after President Donald Trump privately excoriated the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to Republican senators during a lunch on Capitol Hill, the fate of the agency's director, Dr. Robert Redfield, is in question.
more...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/robert-redfield-trump-cdc-testing/index.html
Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, former WH butler who served through 11 presidencies, dies of COVID-19
Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, former White House butler who served through 11 presidencies, dies of COVID-19
By Aris Folley - 05/20/20 04:10 PM EDT
Video, pix at link~
Wilson Roosevelt Jerman, who served as a White House butler for more than five decades, has died of COVID-19 at the age of 91, local media report.
Granddaughter Jamila Garrett said in an interview with FOX 5 DC that that Jerman first began working at the White House as a cleaner under the Eisenhower administration in 1957.
She said it wasn’t until the former President John F. Kennedy came into office in the 1960s that her grandfather was promoted to butler after building a rapport with the first couple.
snip//
In her interview with the news station, Garrett took the chance to thank former first lady Michelle Obama, whose husband was the last president under whom Jerman served, for including a photo of her grandfather in her recent memoir "Becoming."
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/498811-wilson-roosevelt-jerman-former-white-house-butler-who-served-through
Senate panel votes to subpoena in Hunter Biden probe
Senate panel votes to subpoena in Hunter Biden probe
By Michael McAuliff
New York Daily News |
May 20, 2020 | 3:20 PM
WASHINGTON — The Senate dove back into its election-year investigation of the Biden family Wednesday as a committee voted on party lines to subpoena a consulting firm for the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board.
The firm, Blue Star Strategies, worked for Burisma, the company that President Trump tried to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate while Trump held up foreign aid to the at-war nation.
Promote health. Save lives. Serve the vulnerable. Visit who.int
Trump and his defenders insist there is a nefarious connection between Hunter Biden and Burisma, and that Joe Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to stop a probe into the company. Biden did lean on Ukraine to remove the prosecutor, but it was at the behest of the Obama administration and European allies who regarded the official as corrupt.
No evidence has suggested Joe Biden did anything other than carry out U.S. policy, although Trump and his allies have pointed to Hunter Biden's lucrative board fees to suggest impropriety.
more...
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-hunter-biden-senate-subpoena-20200520-otq7q2b5uzctzdnkj5qqtm23he-story.html
3M billed government $7.63 for 85-cent earplugs. It now has $1 billion COVID contract
Inept and probably criminal any way you look at it.
3M billed government $7.63 for 85-cent earplugs. It now has $1 billion COVID contract
By Tara Copp
May 20, 2020 03:31 PM
A former FBI agent responsible for investigating contracts after Hurricane Katrina warns that the more than 20,400 contracts awarded by the U.S. to date for COVID-19 supplies is at risk for waste and fraud. By Kevin Keister | Tara Copp
The company that has been awarded the largest single COVID-19 federal contract once boasted it charged the Defense Department $7.63 for earplugs that cost 85 cents a pair to produce.
That company, 3M, was awarded a $1 billion contract on April 15 for “medical and surgical instruments, equipment and supplies,” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The IDIQ contract — “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” — was awarded without taking competing bids from other vendors.
It is also the largest federal contract 3M has been awarded among at least 47 others it has signed with various federal agencies to produce protective gear for the COVID-19 outbreak such as medical gloves, gowns and particularly respirator masks. The masks are critically needed for doctors, nurses, first responders and essential workers.
snip//
The 3M contract is just one of more than 20,400 contracts for pandemic-related supplies or services that the U.S. government has signed since March 13, when the White House declared a national emergency due to the coronavirus.
More than 6,000 of those contracts, worth a total of $8.5 billion, like the 3M contract, were awarded without seeking competing bids, according to the Federal Procurement Data System, a government database that tracks all federal spending.
more...
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article242868916.html
Pompeo Threw Lavish Dinners for Fox Hosts, GOP Megadonors--With Taxpayer Money
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/mike-pompeo-threw-lavish-dinners-for-fox-hosts-megadonors-with-taxpayer-moneyDepartment of State
Pompeo Threw Lavish Dinners for Fox Hosts, GOP Megadonors—With Taxpayer Money
Trump’s secretary of state, already under scrutiny for urging the removal of the State Department’s inspector general, reportedly held about two dozen events with guests like Karl Rove, Laura Ingraham, and Ken Langone.
By Eric Lutz
May 20, 2020
Before becoming the latest casualty in Donald Trump’s war on independent oversight, watchdog Steve Linick was said to be investigating allegations that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been forcing aides to perform personal errands, like walking his dog and picking up his dry cleaning. The president has minimized the brewing scandal. “I don’t think it sounds like that important,” he told reporters on Monday. But the issue, of course, is not merely a matter of asking a staffer to run a quick errand as a favor. If true, it could also perhaps point to a broader culture at the State Department in which Pompeo was taking advantage of his post for personal gain, as many a Trump associate—and indeed, Trump himself—have done.
If he was treating staffers as his own personal errand-runners, what else was Pompeo doing on the taxpayer dime? Well, according to NBC News, Pompeo held about two dozen so-called “Madison Dinners” at the State Department since taking the post in 2018, taxpayer-funded affairs featuring billionaire executives, Republican lawmakers, members of the conservative media.
Named for the meals former President and Secretary of State James Madison held with foreign diplomats to pick their brains, the lavish events appear to bear less resemblance to those meetings of minds and more to the kind of elbow-rubbing a politically-ambitious former congressman, CIA director, and current secretary of state might engage in to build a base for a future run. Just 14 percent of those invited to the dinners have been foreign officials or diplomats, according to guest lists obtained by NBC News; the rest of the invitees consisted of deep-pocketed figures from the business world, the media, or Washington. The State Department defended the dinners, which are not listed on Pompeo’s public schedule, as educational events where the secretary “has gained knowledge listening to his guests from all across the political spectrum and all around the world.” But critics charge that the invitees for the dinners—Fox News personalities like Laura Ingraham, powerful Republicans like Karl Rove, major GOP donors like Home Depot founder Ken Langone — don’t quite fit the bill for a diplomatic dinner.
snip//
A senior White House official told NBC News that Trump “would have fired Pompeo months ago” if he had been aware of his secretary of state’s conduct, but it’s hard to imagine that’s true. Early administration officials like Tom Price and Scott Pruitt had been forced out when it became clear that swirling questions about their ethics weren’t going away. But Trump has never actually cared about such grifts and wastes of taxpayer dollars and conflicts of interest—why would he, when he is the most brazen offender?—and has only grown bolder in recent months. Trump could still throw Pompeo under the bus, of course. But for now, he is sticking with him. “He’s a high-quality person,” Trump said of Pompeo Monday. “He’s a very brilliant guy.”
"With Obama He's Going For the Jugular"...
Too bad mf45 has nothing positive to run on. But that's the reality, absolutely nothing he can point to as a success.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-goes-after-obama
Trump Campaign
“With Obama He’s Going For the Jugular”: As Trump Goes After Obama, Some in Trumpworld See a “Big Risk”
Frustrated with his campaign (he “feels he’s doing it all alone”), Trump has settled on a campaign bank shot: hit Obama to destroy Biden. But there’s a problem: “Obama can’t be ‘softened’ up.”
By Gabriel Sherman
May 19, 2020
snip//
But Trump’s targeting of Obama has been causing consternation among Republicans, who fear he is pursuing a base-incitement strategy when he needs to appeal to crucial suburban voters in must-win battleground states. “Going after Obama is a big risk,” a former West Wing official said. “Obama is seen as trustworthy and reasonable. If you attack him and people don’t buy it, then you have a huge swing and a miss in front of the entire country.” Another prominent Republican agreed: “Trump cannot draw Obama into this. Obama can’t be ‘softened’ up. American people know him and like him.”
Trump has been leaning on powerful Republicans to join his war on Obama, sources told me. Last Thursday, Trump tweeted at Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham, saying that Graham needed to call Obama to testify at hearings on Michael Flynn’s unmasking and the origin of the Russia probe. Graham rejected the request. “Trump thinks Lindsey isn’t doing anything on Flynn,” a former White House official said. According to the former official, Trump recently asked prominent allies to tweet negative things about Graham, and he has been complaining that Graham is a hanger-on. “Trump has said, ‘Since [John] McCain died, Lindsey follows me around and shows up to play golf and I don’t even invite him,’” according to the source briefed on the conversation.
Trump’s Obama preoccupation is likely to grow harder to let go of. Obama is breaking his postpresidential silence and goading Trump. On a private call with Democrats earlier this month, Obama deemed Trump’s COVID-19 response a “chaotic disaster.” During a virtual graduation ceremony last weekend, Obama told students: “This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing.” NBC News reported that Trump won’t invite Obama to the White House for the 44th president’s official portrait unveiling. “Trump hates Obama,” a former Trump adviser told me. “He used to go around calling Obama a ‘child.’” As a prominent Republican told me, “With Obama he’s going for the jugular. I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts out the really dirty stuff.”
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: NY
Home country: US
Current location: Florida
Member since: Mon Sep 6, 2004, 09:54 PM
Number of posts: 171,082
