brooklynite
brooklynite's JournalThe inside story of how Trump's denial, mismanagement and magical thinking led to the pandemic's dar
Source: Washington Post
As the number of coronavirus cases ticked upward in mid-November — worse than the frightening days of spring and ahead of an expected surge after families congregated for Thanksgiving — four doctors on President Trump’s task force decided to stage an intervention.
After their warnings had gone largely unheeded for months in the dormant West Wing, Deborah Birx, Anthony S. Fauci, Stephen Hahn and Robert Redfield together sounded new alarms, cautioning of a dark winter to come without dramatic action to slow community spread.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, among the many Trump aides who were infected with the virus this fall, was taken aback, according to three senior administration officials with knowledge of the discussions. He told the doctors he did not believe their troubling data assessment. And he accused them of outlining problems without prescribing solutions.
The doctors explained that the solutions were simple and had long been clear — among them, to leverage the power of the presidential bully pulpit to persuade all Americans to wear masks, especially the legions of Trump supporters refusing to do so, and to dramatically expand testing.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/trump-covid-pandemic-dark-winter/
BREAKING: London going into Christmas lockdown (Boris Johnson announcement)
New restrictions will come in for the parts of London, the south-east and the east of England which are currently in tier 3, he says.
These areas will enter tier 4, broadly equivalent to the national restrictions brought in during November.
In tier 4:
Residents must stay at home, apart from limited exemptions
Non-essential retail, indoor gyms and leisure facilities and personal care services must close
People must work from home if they can, unless this is not possible eg manufacturing and construction sectors
People should not enter or leave tier 4 areas
Tier 4 residents must not stay overnight away from home
You can only meet one person from another household in an outdoor public space
Communal worship can continue to take place
The measures take effect from tomorrow morning (Sunday 20 December).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/dec/19/coronavirus-live-news-uk-deaths-climb-as-australia-battles-to-contain-covid-19-cluster
My SIL, a Physician's Assistant, got the COVID vaccine yesterday...
You gotta have friends.....
https://twitter.com/craigcaplan/status/1340067072576008196Drink!
Illegal winery busted at Alabama sewage plantSheriff's officials say they've busted an illegal winery that was operating at a municipal sewage plant in a small north Alabama town.
The DeKalb County Sheriff's Office said in a statement it received an anonymous tip about an alcohol operation at a municipal building in the town of Rainsville on Thursday. Investigators then uncovered what's described as a large illegal winery inside the Rainsville Waste Water Treatment Plant.
Photos released by investigators show glass containers, buckets, a fermenting rack and other equipment often used by people who make wine at home.
The agency says officers seized a lot of illegal alcohol, and arrests are expected. The town of about 5,100 people is 100 miles northeast of Birmingham.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-winery-busted-at-alabama-sewage-plant/
Trump's ex-staffers have no regrets
The AtlanticAnyone who went to work for Trump inside or outside the government surely knew the terms of the bargain. They’d be answering to an untested and impulsive president. They weren’t getting Dwight Eisenhower as a boss—they were getting Dwight Schrute.
Was it worth it? I asked nine seasoned officials, credentialed lawyers, flameouts, worker bees, operatives—some who voted for Trump twice, some who absorbed his harshest attacks. They all insisted that it was.
Plenty of Republicans refused to work for Trump. Those who signed up found various ways to justify their choices. A powerful mythology surrounds the presidency. Many see the Oval Office as the place where wars are won and economies rescued, making a job offer from the duly-elected president an irresistible tug.
“The vast majority of people who worked in the White House were decent people who were doing the best they could to serve the nation,” John Kelly, the second and longest-serving of Trump’s four White House chiefs of staff, told me. “They’ve unfortunately paid quite a price for that in reputation and future employment. They don’t deserve that. They deserve better than that, because they kept the train from careening off the tracks.
To my prophetic friends: You were either right or you were wrong
Christian PostThere is no middle ground. There is no third option. There is no reality in which Trump actually did win but in fact didn’t win. Or in which he’s the president in God’s sight but not in man’s sight.
Not a chance. To entertain possibilities like this is to mock the integrity of prophecy and to make us charismatics look like total fools. (To our critics, we already do look like fools, but that’s another matter. Sometimes truth itself can seem foolish to those who reject it.)
To be clear, I myself am a charismatic, having spoken in tongues since January 24, 1972. I have even been called the leading apologist for the charismatic movement by those outside of the movement. And I am a strong believer in prophetic ministry today, having participated in it on different levels over the years.
Translation: You're making Christian psychics sound silly.....
Matthew Yglesias: The Latinx problem
VoxThe word originates in academic and activist circles, having been coined in 2004 and only gaining popularity about 10 years later. The term is meant to solve two problems. One is that the Spanish language uses the masculine term “Latino” to refer not just to men but also to mixed-gender groups, implying a kind of problematic privileging of the male gender. The other is that the binary nature of grammatical gender — Latino men and Latina women — is a poor fit for the needs and lives of nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people. In academic and activist circles, “Latinx” suggests itself as an elegant gender-neutral solution.
The message of the term, however, is that the entire grammatical system of the Spanish language is problematic, which in any other context progressives would recognize as an alienating and insensitive message. As Terry Blas has written for Vox, in actual Latin American countries, the term “Latine” has gained some currency as a gender-neutral grammatical form. Using a word like that would mark you out as unusual in any Spanish-speaking community. But it’s a formulation that at least respects the basic way the Spanish language works, instead of trying to foist a series of unpronounceable words on it.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who represents a heavily working-class, heavily Hispanic area in and around Phoenix, advises Democrats to “start by not using the term Latinx.”
Congress to receive first batch of Covid-19 vaccines, but uncertainty lingers
Source: Politico
The limited batch of doses, which is expected to soon arrive in the House and Senate and was first reported by POLITICO, marks a major development for lawmakers and frontline workers in a Capitol complex that has battled dozens of cases this year.
But the sudden announcement of vaccines stunned many lawmakers who had been kept in the dark about whether they would get doses at all. Now, members are preparing for their first doses in what’s expected to be the final week in session of the 116th Congress.
Vaccines for federal agencies and officials across Washington have been arriving at Walter Reed Medical Center in recent days, and thousands of doses are expected to be designated for Congress.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/capitol-hill-first-coronavirus-vaccine-448008
Watch live: Pence publicly receives coronavirus vaccine
Source: The Hill
Vice President Pence on Friday is scheduled to publicly receive a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
His wife, Karen Pence, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams will also receive the vaccine.
The event is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m.
Read more: https://thehill.com/530788-watch-live-pence-publicly-receives-coronavirus-vaccine
Profile Information
Name: Chris BastianGender: Male
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 94,489
