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Quote:

Originally Posted by JAFF (Post 262074)

I’m better on my wife and daughters

WTF are you doing on your daughters?

Judge approves ‘crime fraud exception’ in special counsel probe of Trump classified d

‘Unhinged’: Trump Ripped In Withering Editorial From Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post

Fox News CEO Raged Over Anchor Fact Checking Trump, Emails Reveal

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainm...19a2051&ei=140

Quote:

According to emails contained in Dominion attorneys' slide deck used against the company in a hearing earlier this March, Suzanne Scott— Fox News CEO since 2018—wrote to Fox News Executive Vice President of Primetime Programming Meade Cooper on December 2, 2020, demanding the network's reporters immediately stop fact-checking Trump's false claims about the election and the security of Dominion's voting machines, claiming it was bad for business.

"This has to stop now," wrote Scott. "[...] this is bad business and there is clearly a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material."

"Bad for business," she emphasized.

NY grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump, sources tell CNN

Dominion’s historic defamation case against Fox

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/31/media...uit/index.html

Quote:

Dominion Voting Systems’ historic defamation case against Fox News will proceed to a high-stakes jury trial in mid-April, a Delaware judge ruled Friday, in a major decision that dismantled several of the right-wing network’s key defenses.

The judge’s decision is a painful setback for Fox News and sets the stage for an agonizing, weekslong trial, where the network’s highest-ranking executives and most prominent hosts could be called to the stand to testify about the 2020 election lies that were promoted on its air.

Both sides had asked Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis for a pretrial ruling in their favor, declaring them the winner. After thousands of pages of filings and exhibits, and a series of courtroom clashes, Davis decided the case should go to trial. But one question jurors won’t need to weigh, he concluded, was whether Fox’s claims about Dominion were true or false.

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote.

Unless there is an out-of-court settlement — which is always possible — Davis’ ruling means jurors will need to decide whether Fox News defamed Dominion by repeatedly promoting false claims that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 presidential election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Dominion wants $1.6 billion in damages.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin on April 13 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, deny all wrongdoing. They’ve argued that their conspiracy theory-filled broadcasts after the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment, because their on-air reporters were merely reporting on “newsworthy allegations.”

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement after the ruling. “Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.”

Judge blocks key Fox defenses
In his 130-page ruling, Davis dismantled several of Fox News’ potential trial defenses, dealing a significant blow to the network. On the whole, these findings from Davis take away several key arguments that Fox could’ve presented to the jury, making it harder for them to prevail at trial.

Davis ruled that Fox News can’t invoke the “neutral report privilege,” which protects journalists who neutrally pass along newsworthy allegations in an unbiased fashion. Dominion had argued that Fox News hosts essentially took a side while covering the fallout of the 2020 election, by throwing their weight behind the false idea that the results were illegitimate, and Dominion was to blame.

“The evidence does not support that (Fox News) conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting,” Davis wrote. “(Fox News’) failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates that its reporting was not disinterested.”

The judge also blocked Fox News from using the “fair report privilege” with the jury. That legal doctrine protects journalists who report on what is being said at official proceedings, like congressional hearings, or on allegations being levied in court filings, like in a civil lawsuit.

Davis pointed out that the timeline of Fox’s on-air statements didn’t sync up with the lawsuits, many filed by pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell, that sought to overturn the 2020 election.

“Most of the contested statements were made before any lawsuit had been filed in court,” Davis wrote, adding that out of the nearly 20 broadcasts on Fox’s networks that Dominion claims damaged their reputation, “only one broadcast at issue even mentioned Ms. Powell’s lawsuit.”

(L to R) Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and chairman of Fox News, and Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, walk together as they arrive on the third day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 13, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Judge in Dominion defamation case skeptical of Fox's arguments, as both sides seek a pretrial win
The judge gave Dominion a boost by determining that the on-air statements at the heart of the litigation were either factual assertions or “mixed opinion,” which might make it harder for Fox to defend itself in front of the jury. Fox had asked Davis to rule that the statements were “pure opinion,” and therefore couldn’t be defamatory under the First Amendment.

“The context supports the position that the statements were not pure opinion when they were made by newscasters holding themselves out to be sources of accurate information,” Davis wrote.

Davis additionally wrote in his ruling that even if the statements were opinion, Fox News would not be protected under the Constitution, given that they appeared to “charge Dominion with the serious crime of election fraud.”

“Accusations of criminal activity, even in the form of opinion, are not constitutionally protected,” Davis wrote

The voting technology firm cheered these parts of Davis’ ruling in a statement on Friday.

“We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a statement.

Damning revelations
Fox’s legal liability will be decided at trial. But the case has already battered Fox’s reputation.

Incriminating texts and emails have shown how Fox executives, hosts and producers didn’t believe the claims the network was peddling about Dominion. These revelations drove a dagger through the idea that Fox News is anything but a partisan GOP operation focused on ratings — not journalism.

The lawsuit is seen as one of the most consequential defamation cases in recent memory. Fox has argued that a loss will eviscerate press freedoms, and many scholars agree that the bar should remain high to prove defamation. Other analysts have said holding Fox accountable for knowingly airing lies won’t pose a threat to objective journalists who would never do that in the first place.

The case has elicited a mountain of evidence exposing Fox News as a right-wing profit machine lacking the most basic journalistic ethics — and willing to promote unhinged election conspiracy theories to preserve its lucrative business.

Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch conceded in his sworn deposition that several of his top hosts endorsed election lies on the air that he knew were false. And after the 2020 election, its most prominent stars and top executives privately trashed the conspiracy theories that were being spread on-air, according to internal text messages and emails revealed in court filings.

The legal filings showed how worried Fox News executives and hosts were of losing viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism. And in multiple instances, Fox News executives and hosts started to crack down on those at the network who fact-checked election lies, private messages revealed in court filings showed.

Despite what appeared on air, Fox News executives and hosts privately criticized the Trump camp for pushing claims of election fraud. Hannity said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s then-lawyer, was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.” Rupert Murdoch said it was “really bad” that Giuliani was advising Trump.

Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other major cities could face huge water cuts

Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other major cities could face huge water cuts in feds’ proposed plan to save the Colorado River

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/us/co...ate/index.html

CNN
—
The Biden administration on Tuesday released a highly anticipated analysis of the Colorado River crisis that paints a dire picture of what that river system’s collapse would portend for the West’s major cities, farmers and Native tribes.

In the draft analysis, the US Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation offers two different scenarios for how to slash water usage should the levels in Lakes Mead and Powell continue to plummet, with the immediate goal of keeping enough Colorado River flowing through the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams to supply hydroelectric power to hundreds of thousands of customers.

But the implications of the analysis go far beyond hydropower.

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The Colorado River provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in seven states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California. Decades of overuse, combined with years of drought worsened by the climate crisis, have spurred a sharp drop in water levels in recent years at Lakes Mead and Powell, the nation’s largest reservoirs that power Hoover and Glen Canyon and provide water for drinking and agriculture to millions.

SOLVING THE WEST'S WATER CRISIS

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Why the Great American Lawn is terrible for the West’s water crisis
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Photo gallery: How desalination is used to tackle water scarcity
In both of the federal government’s scenarios, states, farms and tribes could be forced to cut nearly 2.1 million more acre-feet of their Colorado River usage in 2024, on top of existing water-conservation agreements struck in past years.

That is an enormous amount of water, roughly 684 billion gallons and nearly equivalent to what the entire state of Arizona was expected to use from the Colorado River this year.

The Interior Department is expected to make a final decision on the cuts – and how and when they would be implemented – later this summer.

After an epic winter full of record-breaking snow and flooding rainfall in the West, state water officials have said the pressure is easing to find an immediate solution to the Colorado River’s woes. But Deputy Interior Sec. Tommy Beaudreau told CNN that the department didn’t consider this year’s historic winter in its analysis.

“While it’s encouraging, it’s great, the long-term trend here has been continued drought and water shortages,” Beaudreau said. “But there’s a chance even with a good water year that it just kind of pushes the curve out a few months and we have to continue our planning process accordingly.”

Water intake towers at the Hoover Dam on April 3.
Water intake towers at the Hoover Dam on April 3.
Will Lanzoni/CNN
What the cuts would mean for cities, farmers and tribes
As pressure mounts for the federal government to come up with a fair deal for water users, Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner, said Tuesday in a news conference that the Colorado River “is one community comprised of 40 million people and landscapes that need us to get this right.”

Touton and other officials spoke Tuesday in front of Lake Mead’s dramatic bathtub ring, showing how much the water levels there have fallen.

And while the extent of the water cuts is the same in the two main scenarios, the difference lies in who would bear the brunt of the cuts.

In one, major Western cities – including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix – would take the vast majority of the water cuts if Lake Mead levels were to plummet further, because these cities have a lower priority claim to the water, compared to farmers and Native tribes.

The Colorado River flows through the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge in Yuma, Arizona.
Did this winter solve the Colorado River crisis? No -- but it took some pressure off, for now
And it would be a major blow to those cities; 90% of Las Vegas’ water supply comes from the river, while Phoenix’s water supply is about 40% Colorado River water, for example.

“For purposes of the analysis, we show what the effect would be,” Beaudreau told CNN, adding he hopes the stark figures help spur an agreement among seven basin states.

The other scenario examines what would happen if the water cuts are spread equally among cities, farmers and tribes alike – an option that some high-priority water users have warned could result in a prolonged, high-stakes court battle between states and the federal government.

There is also a third scenario the feds offered: Do nothing. But that is not an option states or the federal government are seriously considering as the Colorado River continues to decline.

Will Lanzoni/CNN
Beaudreau called the no-action option the “most severe” for the river basin, but said it was important to include to emphasize why more cuts are so critical should water levels plummet further.

The federal government is trying to paint a picture that shows what a future with less water would actually look like, Beaudreau said, in hopes that sparring states can come together with a short-term agreement on cuts.

“There has been a lot of negotiation and conversation among the states and with the Interior Department, but a lot of it’s been conceptual and abstract,” Beaudreau told CNN. “Putting things down on paper to give direction I think will meaningfully move the conversation.”

Arizona’s top water official Tom Buschatzke said the federal plan “presents multiple paths forward, but those paths have dire consequences.”

“In some cases, it may spur opposition or even litigation,” Buschatzke said at Tuesday’s news conference. “Instead, let us accelerate our discussions in the basin for a collaborative consensus-based outcome.”

California’s lead negotiator in the Colorado River talks, JB Hamby, echoed that sentiment, and said Arizona, California and the other states are looking to “develop a true, seven-state consensus in the coming months – ideally in the next 45-day period.”

The two main scenarios may also not be what is finalized later this summer, as states continue to negotiate among themselves. And a third, less-severe option could ultimately emerge based on how water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell respond to this winter’s rain and snow, as well as water cuts that are already being implemented across farms and cities in the Southwest, Beaudreau said.

Administration officials are incentivizing water cuts across agriculture in exchange for federal dollars. Last week, Beaudreau and other administration officials announced the first deal it signed in a series of short-term agreements to fallow water-intensive farmland and keep more water in Lake Mead. More fallowing agreements, some of which are still being negotiated, could be coming in the next few weeks.

A canal runs through Imperial Valley farm land in Southern California on April 4.
A canal runs through Imperial Valley farm land in Southern California on April 4.
Will Lanzoni/CNN
The result of those programs could change the landscape enough by late summer that the feds could ramp down the extent of the water cuts in their final decision.

“It all depends on how much the shortages are,” he said. “If there’s conservation in the system that keeps water in Lake Mead, and we have to make minimal shortage reductions on top of [existing drought guidelines], that is an accomplishment in and of itself.”

A vehicle drives down a road in Ivins, Utah.
The fastest growing metro in the US is looking to a shrinking reservoir to keep the boom going
A combination of those fallowing agreements and the good winter rain and snow are expected to raise elevations in Mead and Powell in the short term, which could stave off bigger cuts. State negotiators have told CNN they hope the good winter helps take some of the immediate pressure off and gives them more time to come to an agreement on water cuts.

Beaudreau said that while he hopes the seven states can strike a short-term deal, he doesn’t yet know whether than can be achieved. If not, he reiterated Interior is prepared to act and implement cuts itself to keep the system from crashing.

“I think this is a step towards facilitating what I hope is some consensus coming out of the basin, but it also shows at the end of the day, the [Interior] Secretary will do what’s necessary and responsible to keep the system operating,” Beaudreau said.

“The judge is pissed”: Judge says Fox News has a “credibility problem” after Murdoch

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainm...e4a5f1e4&ei=61

Quote:

The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News called out the network's "credibility problem" after a last-minute revelation about billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch's role at the company.

Rupert MurdochJustin Sullivan/Getty Images
Rupert MurdochJustin Sullivan/Getty Images
© Provided by Salon
Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion, alleged on Tuesday that Fox News withheld information that would have allowed the voting machine company to obtain more of Murdoch's communications in the lawsuit, according to The Washington Post.

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Nelson told Judge Eric Davis that the company was led to believe that Murdoch was only an officer at Fox News' parent company, Fox Corp., but in recent days the company learned that he also has an officer title at Fox News.

"This alone has meant that we are missing a whole bunch of Rupert Murdoch documents that we otherwise would have been entitled to," Nelson said. "It's very troubling that this is where we are. It's something that has really affected how we have litigated this case."

Davis "echoed Nelson's frustration," according to the Post, and said the missing information about Murdoch's title may have affected his decision-making in limiting the scope of the case.

"I could have made an entirely wrong decision," Davis said before calling out the network's "credibility problem."

"My problem is that it's been represented more than once to me that he's not an officer of Fox News," Davis said. "I need to feel comfortable that when you represent something to me, it's the truth. I'm not very happy right now. I don't know why this is such a difficult thing."

Related

"Stunning proof": Legal experts say Rupert Murdoch deposition admission is "absolutely devastating"
Legal experts observed that it was unusual for the "mild-mannered" judge to be "fairly steaming."

Related video: New detail in Dominion’s case against Fox News (MSNBC)

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"Wow," tweeted attorney George Conway. "The judge is pissed, as he should be," he wrote.

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Dominion is suing Fox over false claims made by Trump allies that the company rigged the election against former President Donald Trump. Internal messages released in the lawsuit show that Murdoch, executives and hosts trashed the conspiracy theories they aired and Murdoch acknowledged in his deposition that some hosts "endorsed" the false claims.

An attorney for Fox said that Murdoch's title at Fox News was an "honorific," according to the Post.

"Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of Fox News in our [Securities and Exchange Commission] filings for several years and this filing was referenced by Dominion's own attorney during his deposition," a spokesperson for Fox said in a statement.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Dominion sued Fox Corp. as well as Fox News and were able to depose Murdoch and obtain some of his internal communications but Nelson argued that the company should have received additional documents, adding that Dominion is "still evaluating our options."

The judge said that he does not anticipate the revelation to derail the case but would need to determine how to handle the issue, according to the Post.

"I don't know if this is something we have to turn the battleship around, that it's that big of a deal," he said. "We'll deal with it."

At the end of the hearing, Davis told a Fox attorney, "I'm not mad at you."

"I'm mad at the situation I'm in," he said. "So, I have to figure out how I deal with that."

Jury selection in the trial is slated to begin on Thursday.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst, said he would "feel queasy" heading into the trial if he was an attorney for Fox.

"I would not want to be in the position of defending Fox here. I think they're headed for a full-blown journalistic and legal disaster. It is very difficult to successfully sue a media outlet for defamation in this country… that's a very high bar," he said. "But here we have Fox's own texts in black and white, where they call the election fraud claims, and I quote, 'nuts,' 'insane,' 'B.S.'"

Read

Dominion judge sanctions Fox for withholding evidence

How a 'wire fraud' investigation could create even more problems for Trump: legal ana

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...b91c9f02&ei=18

Trump asking for money from his minions for his defense and using it for almost ANYTHING else. Not his first fraud.

Mother Nature is a bitch, when you dont respect the environment

Thousands of acres are underwater in California, and the flood could triple in size this summer

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/us/tu...ate/index.html

The dumbest speaker of the house ever

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/polit...ing/index.html

McCarthy sold his soul to be Speaker, now Biden has him by the nuts. The only 2 men who can raise the debt ceiling are the Majority Leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House.

McCarthy cant get his own party to agree on ANYTHING, but they default on the US Debit, the republican party will be dead.

Settlement reached in Dominion defamation lawsuit against Fox News

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-ne...-23/index.html

Settlement reached in Dominion defamation lawsuit against Fox News

The hoax of the election, was the republican lies.

Trump’s Fake Georgia Electors Are Now Ratting on Each Other

You — yes, you — are going to pay for the century-old mistake that’s draining the Col

You — yes, you — are going to pay for the century-old mistake that’s draining the Colorado River

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/yo...ocid=Peregrine

Its a long article. Water rights are a huge deal out west. This contract is going to go to the courts.

My Pillow Guy pays big bucks to prove he is full of shit

What does Don Lemon and tucker carlson have in common?

Two Bannon associates sentenced to prison in border wall scheme

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/polit...non/index.html

Trump con job, phony wall

Quote:

Two associates of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon were sentenced to more than seven years in prison collectively in connection with defrauding donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a border wall scheme, according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Brian Kolfage was sentenced to over four years in prison and Andrew Badolato was sentenced to serve three years “in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as ‘We Build The Wall’ by soliciting donations using false statements and then stealing the resulting donations,” the US attorney’s office said.

Kolfage, 41, and Badolato, 58, were indicted alongside Bannon and each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in April 2022. Kolfage also pleaded guilty to two counts of filing a false tax return and one count of wire fraud in connection with filing a false tax return. Bannon, who pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and denied any wrongdoing, was pardoned by then-President Trump in his final days in office. Bannon still faces charges in New York state court.

Both men were each sentenced to three years of supervised release. Kolfage must also forfeit $17.8 million and pay $2.8 million in restitution. Badolato must forfeit $1.4 million and pay $1.4 million in restitution, according to the release.

US District Judge Analisa Torres said that Kolfage’s and Badalato’s actions would “undoubtedly have a chilling effect” on political donations and that their crime called into question the effectiveness of political involvement.

“The fraud perpetrated by Mr. Kolfage and Mr. Badolato went well beyond defrauding individual donors. They hurt us all,” Torres said in a statement.

Bannon and Kolfage promised donors that the campaign, which ultimately raised more than $25 million, was “a volunteer organization” and that “100% of the funds raised … will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” according to the indictment.

But instead, according to prosecutors, Bannon, through a nonprofit under his control, used more than $1 million from We Build the Wall to “secretly” pay Kolfage and cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon’s personal expenses.

Kolfage, according to the charges, spent more than $350,000 of the donations on personal expenses, including cosmetic surgery, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, payments toward a boat, home renovations, jewelry, personal tax payments and credit card debt.

The unnecessary price of Covid-

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/op...11d64ef8&ei=23

Quote:

According to a new report, half a million Americans may have died unnecessarily of Covid-19. At the same time, the US government spent trillions to deal with the pandemic when better preparedness could have saved many lives and much money. American schools were also closed for many months unnecessarily, with students paying the price.

Opinion: The unnecessary price of Covid-19
Opinion: The unnecessary price of Covid-19
© Provided by CNN
Peter Bergen - CNN
The report, “Lessons from the Covid War,” by the Covid Crisis Group, is being published as a 347-page book Tuesday. It will likely stand as the most authoritative account of American policy failures and successes during the war against Covid-19.

The report makes for sobering reading, concluding that “no country’s performance was more disappointing than the United States.” The group came to that conclusion because, despite the great depth of scientific knowledge in the United States, American “excess deaths” during the pandemic were about 40% higher than the European death rate.

If the US had had a similar rate to Europe by the end of 2022, “probably” at least half a million Americans wouldn’t have died, according to the report. That’s a big number. The federal government also deployed $5 trillion to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. That is also a big number.

So how did the US get into this mess?

Given America’s hyper-partisanship, just about everything about the Covid-19 pandemic was deeply politicized – from the precise origins of the coronavirus in China, to lockdowns, mask-wearing, school closures, vaccines, and the best drugs for treatment.

As a result, there has been scant official reckoning over how the government fared during the pandemic and what lessons might be learned for the inevitable next pandemic.

A 2022 bipartisan bill seeking to establish a National Covid Commission never made it to the floor for a vote in the US Congress. This is astonishing when you consider that more Americans have died of Covid – around 1.1 million so far – than all the Americans who died in every US war going back to the American Revolution.

So, without a congressionally mandated inquiry like the 9/11 Commission, 34 American public health experts, physicians, and other policy experts decided to investigate what went right and wrong during the pandemic.

Starting their work in early 2021, the non-partisan Covid Crisis Group conducted “listening sessions” with 274 people who had played some role in responding to the pandemic or had been affected by it.

The group was directed by Philp Zelikow, a leading historian and former senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration who had also served as the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, which had set the gold standard for how to conduct a comprehensive examination of a major catastrophe and the lessons that could be learned from it.

Other members of the Covid Crisis Group included Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota who had been publicly warning of the emergence of a global pandemic for a decade and a half before Covid-19 first emerged; Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, the former Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, former chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

Origins

The report examines both the “lab leak” theory that the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China, and the natural transmission theory that the virus moved from a wild animal into humans. But the report doesn’t come down on the side of either theory, which seems fair enough given the inadequate evidence.

The Chinese government’s penchant for secrecy was on full display in the early days of the outbreak. As a result, the origin issue may never be fully settled as it would have required considerable transparency by the government about what was happening in Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic.

Yet, as the report points out, “both theories drive toward common urgent insights for action.” If the virus occurred because of animal transmission, that calls for improved surveillance for new viruses, using tools such as monitoring both work absenteeism and Internet searches that might indicate new viruses may be making the rounds, as well as increased biomedical surveillance.

And if it was a lab leak, better safeguards must be put in place for research on viruses worldwide given that “synthetic biology” will likely be one of the defining technologies of the 21st century.

The botched US response

The American health system is a patchwork of 2,800 state and local systems, according to the report. This would have made a coordinated national response to Covid-19 challenging to pull off in any administration, but the Trump administration’s response at the federal level “failed quickly.”

Some Trump officials did understand the likely dimensions of the Covid pandemic early on. Matthew Pottinger, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who spoke Mandarin and had covered the SARS outbreak in China, served as senior director for Asia at the National Security Council. Pottinger warned then-President Donald Trump in late January 2020 that the virus spread quickly from human to human, often without apparent symptoms.

The Trump administration soon banned non-American travelers from China from arriving in the US. While that may have slowed the spread of the virus in the U.S. a bit right at the beginning of the pandemic, travel bans were not especially effective given that the coronavirus is so transmissible, often spreading without symptoms in an age of mass global travel.

A problem in the US government’s early response was the lack of effective tests for the virus during the first months of the pandemic. By contrast, South Korea, better prepared for the emergency, had tens of thousands of tests running daily by mid-February 2020, according to the report.

The report found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – despite its name suggesting that it is at the forefront of preventing the spread of disease – didn’t do operational pandemic preparedness, but instead acts as a quasi-academic institution that collects and analyzes data after an incident has happened. In a chilling finding, the report says when it came to tracking Covid-19 cases in the United States, researchers at The Atlantic magazine’s Covid Tracking Project did a better job in real-time than the CDC did.

Compounding the problem at the federal level was President Trump, who, as is well known, continuously played down the threat posed by the virus and refused to wear a mask when masking was one of the few tools that prevented the spread of the virus before vaccines. By April 2020, Trump had decided that Covid wasn’t much worse than the flu, and he wanted to “reopen” the economy as he was “deep into his reelection campaign,” according to the report.

As a result, the Covid Crisis Group concluded that “Trump was a co-morbidity” with Covid. Comorbidity is a medical term meaning that a patient suffers from two or more chronic diseases simultaneously.

With little in the way of federal executive leadership, the war against Covid-19 was left up to the governors of the 50 states and to local authorities. The conventional narrative that red states favored opening up for the economy’s sake and blue states favored shutting down to save lives is overly simplistic, according to the report.

Most states adopted more of a purple approach whether they were run by Republican or Democratic governors – they chose to begin to open up when the virus seemed to be abating, as it was in May 2020, and close back down again whenever the virus came roaring back, as it did in the winter of 2020-2021.

Given the understandable angst that many Americans had over school closures, the report points to some fascinating data from UNESCO showing that in countries like France and Spain, schools closed or partly closed for only two weeks and 15 weeks, respectively. While in the US the average school closures lasted 77 weeks, which particularly affected children from disadvantaged communities and kids with disabilities. “Closed schools, even with remote education, failed many students, particularly those already most at risk for disrupted learning,” the report noted.

The UNESCO school data suggests that there must have been a more thoughtful way to manage American school closures. The report points to research about safe and smart ways to keep schools open that was undertaken by Covid Crisis Group member Danielle Allen of Harvard, Brown University, and the research institution, New America (where I work), as emblematic of an approach that could have been followed but wasn’t. It included developing infection prevention and control programs at each school.

Operation Warp Speed

The operation to develop workable vaccines was a true American success story. The report credits a framework outlined by Richard Danzig, a former US Secretary of the Navy with expertise in biowarfare, who wrote to an informal network of colleagues in late March 2020, advocating for “previously unthinkable government support” for vaccines financially and for expediting their laborious approval process.

Danzig also recommended invoking the Defense Production Act so that the manufacturing of the vaccines could be scaled up quickly. Danzig said that if the right resources were directed at developing a vaccine, it could be available as quickly as only six months, which would be an extraordinarily fast turnaround as typically effective vaccines take five to ten years to develop.

Danzig’s ideas helped germinate Operation Warp Speed, led on the Pentagon side by General Gustave Perna, an expert on logistics, and on the civilian side by a former Big Pharma executive, Dr. Moncef Slaoui. With political top cover provided by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who supported Operation Warp Speed, General Perna secured $26 billion to fund the operation, according to the report.

The vaccines that succeeded in Operation Warp Speed were based on messenger RNA (mRNA) rather than on a weakened or inactive form of the virus typical of many vaccines. Using mRNA, researchers made cells produce a protein that instigated the immune response against the coronavirus. The basic science of mRNA had been around for decades, but it had never been used in a workable vaccine.

Companies such as Pfizer and Moderna produced effective vaccines in just months. The government invested $1 billion in Moderna and placed another $1.5 billion order for 100 million vaccine doses. Pfizer didn’t take US government money during the research phase for its vaccine, but the government initially guaranteed to buy more than 100 million doses from Pfizer for $1.95 billion.

As Danzig had suggested, the Defense Production Act ensured that the materials needed to make the vaccines were quickly secured. At the same time, the government partnered with major American pharmacy chains to ensure that jabs got into arms quickly once they became available.

The report underlines how a perfect constellation of factors made Operation Warp Speed succeed, including the right leaders at the Pentagon and in the private sector harnessing existing, long-term basic research into mRNA. Operation Warp Speed was arguably the most significant achievement of President Trump and his administration.

Vaccine hesitancy

You might have the best vaccines in the world, but that doesn’t do you much good if there are substantial percentages of your own population who are hesitant to be vaccinated.

A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel co-chaired by Dr. Helene Gayle – who had led efforts to combat AIDS at the CDC – warned in October 2020 that the CDC needed to develop a campaign using behavioral science and social marketing techniques while partnering with hospitals, faith-based organizations, and community centers to help increase vaccination uptake. But as the report notes, “That didn’t happen.”

Vaccinations also became politicized; by July 2022, 90% of Democrats reported being vaccinated to some level, compared to only 69% of Republicans. It turns out that your politics, in this case, could literally kill you.

During the Delta wave of Covid-19 in 2021 and the Omicron wave of 2022, “the vast majority of hospitalized patients were unvaccinated,” according to the report. By early 2022, one study found that there were somewhere between 120,000 and more than 350,000 excess deaths in the US because of vaccine hesitancy.

What should be done?

The key to preparing for the next pandemic is, of course, preparedness. The Covid Crisis Group underlines how “time is everything” when managing a possible pandemic, as just one week can mean the difference between a mere outbreak and the emergence of a full-blown pandemic. That means creating “early warning radars” worldwide that can detect emerging threats and ensuring the most stringent controls at labs around the world doing “gain of function” research so manipulated viruses don’t escape into the outside world.

The Covid Crisis Group has performed a major public service with its comprehensive investigation of the pandemic, an investigation that the US political system proved largely incapable of doing. This itself points to a general failure of American governance that the report underlines on many of its pages.

Still, the publication of this report by a group of concerned experts is also a testament to the enduring strengths of American civil society, which Alexis de Tocqueville had noted in his travels around the United States almost two centuries ago.

If you dont believe there will be another outbreak in the next 20 years, think again. If the government doest make necessary changes, it will be the same results

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAFF (Post 265327)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/op...11d64ef8&ei=23

If you dont believe there will be another outbreak in the next 20 years, think again. If the government doest make necessary changes, it will be the same results

I call BS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racehorse (Post 265330)

I call BS

Of course its BS, its CNN.

Nobody died from Covid, they died with Covid. Huge difference. Even the CDC has came out on several occasions saying the measures taken were to harsh, and recently against the vaccine. It is not like they weren't told by other doctors, but they chose to only listen to Fauci.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lov2fish (Post 265331)

Of course its BS, its CNN.

Nobody died from Covid, they died with Covid. Huge difference. Even the CDC has came out on several occasions saying the measures taken were to harsh, and recently against the vaccine. It is not like they weren't told by other doctors, but they chose to only listen to Fauci.

thats fucking retarded.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lov2fish (Post 265331)

Nobody died from Covid, they died with Covid.

o

Technically, nobody ever died from AIDS ...... they died from AIDS-related complications. The AIDS virus depletes your immune system, making you vulnerable to every disease under the sun. Usually, people with AIDS die from something like pneumonia, but they get pneumonia because the AIDS virus ruined their immune system.

So, while technically nobody may have ever died from COVID, many people have certainly died as a result from having COVID ...... to deny the severity, the seriousness, and the potential deadliness of COVID is tantamount to sticking your fingers in your ear, and saying "No !!! I don't believe it !!!"

o

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAFF (Post 265327)

If you don't believe there will be another outbreak in the next 20 years, think again. If the government doesn't make necessary changes, it will be the same results.

o

I don't believe that the results will be the same as when COVID was at its peak, in 2020 and 2021 ...... I think that the worst is behind us.

But I pity the poor bastards who refuse to get the vaccination and the subsequent booster shots while fiercely clinging to their right to be obstinate in the face of disaster.

o

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles (Post 265349)

It may not be covid, some other respiratory virus will mutate and we will be the same boat.

No one fought vaccinations before this pandemic occurred. Before covid children would receive 14 inoculations and then boosters for decades. You dont like what the governments advise, go to the Mayo Clinic site see what they say.

1,000,000 + people in this country died due to covid. The only way to prevent this is better education from the medical community, about vaccinations, masking, social distancing, and better more efficient air handling in buildings like offices with better filters. Schools included. I know the last one sounds silly, but researchers found the school ventilation helped spread it.

And if you dont like what I post, go look at how Japan and S Korea did with covid. They didnt allow politics to get in the way of public health. They have had problems with avian flu and they were ready to follow public health instructions.

Modern global travel is going to bring another virus to our shores. Created by nature or an enemy of this country. It will happen again, and is you want to live in fox la la land, so be it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAFF (Post 265362)

And if you don't like what I post ......

o

Since you quoted me, where is this coming from?

o

Quote:

Originally Posted by omahacolt (Post 265333)

thats fucking retarded.

What is so fucking hard to understand about it? Nobody died from just Covid. They had compromised immune systems and it exasperated their death. In that case a multitude of illness would have killed them. Facts are they weaponized a version of the flu and fucking retards believed all the shit shoved in their faces. That is factual whether you fucking believe it or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles (Post 265367)

o

Since you quoted me, where is this coming from?

o

i was speaking to anyone who answered my post. My apologies I was not clear about that, it was not directed to you

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racehorse (Post 265330)

I call BS

Go ahead, the facts support the effects of covid, in this nation and world wide.

There is only one conspiracy, and it is pushed forward those who cant accept the death toll. And the data goes across platforms. Insurance claims, adjustment on family insurance, health AND life. Claims on social security, hospital bills, death certificates, IRS and state tax notification. Job openings, closing or transferring investments due to death.

1 million people + in the US died during the pandemic. Countries that reached 80% + vaccinated had fewer deaths.

If this nation had been able to vaccinate 80% of the adults, the school closings would have been shorter. The mortality with kids was lower, but kids become vectors that spread colds and the yearly flu. We have known this, most rest homes ban little kids during flu season. Japan and S Korea have had mask mandates for DECADES, so many people and so little space. And it works.

How many right wing christian radio personalities died from covid?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybe...h=1aff2cb13105

Bullshit that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lov2fish (Post 265331)

Heres the advise from the CDC

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-1...ations-us.html

CDC changed the guild lines because Omicron is less lethal, but is more easily spread. Like H1N1, the 1918 pandemic flu. The flu shot I have received for the last 20 years.

But that shot was not going to work. 100 years had past since the last world pandemic, and the speed that it infected individuals was unprecedented. IU medical struggled with keeping their wards clean during an early part of the pandemic. Someone suggested they start testing the air ducts, and the virus was small enough to get through the filters and recycled though the hospital. Think about all the schools that have central heat/air and all those kids infected but not symptomatic.

The CDC did not have the benefit of hindsight.

Four Proud Boys members found guilty of seditious conspiracy

This is a conspiracy

corruption in washington? shocking

I AM SHOCKED

At least 8 fake electors have been granted immunity in the Georgia Trump investigatio

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/polit...ity/index.html

Innocent people dont need immunity

Herschel Walker was a joke of a candidate. Now he may be center of a huge scandal.

Herschel Walker was a joke of a candidate. Now he may be center of a huge scandal.

https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...l/70183561007/

Quote:

Herschel Walker's candidacy for Senate in Georgia last year, when he lost to Raphael Warnock, was always a joke. Walker failed not solely because Warnock was a better candidate, but also because Walker was a first ballot buffoon, and lied with the same kind of ease he did when running over SEC defensive backs.

There are numerous examples of how bad he was but one of the best was when Walker showed up to a debate with a ridiculous special deputy badge to try and boost his law enforcement credentials. It was one of the most farcical moments of the campaign. It was one of the most farcical moments of any campaign.

That was all bad. That was all really, really bad. Yet what Walker is accused of now is so much worse. It didn't seem anything could be, but oh, it is. And none of it should be a surprise.

Read this paragraph. It's from a Daily Beast story published on Tuesday about a plethora of possible crimes Walker may have committed, according to the story. It's one of the most remarkable paragraphs you will read today...this week...this month...ever:

"According to the legal experts who spoke to The Daily Beast for this article, this scheme appears to not just be illegal—it appears to be unparalleled in its audacity and scope. The transactions raise questions about a slew of possible violations. In fact, these experts all said, the scheme was so brazen that it appears to defy explanation, ranking it among the most egregious campaign finance violations in modern history."

NFL SUBPOENAEDNFL facing investigation of workplace, discrimination issues

The Daily Beast says emails it obtained shows a scheme by Walker to get money from a billionaire family friend named Dennis Washington under the premise of that cash being a campaign contribution. That's legal. Instead, the Daily Beast says, unbeknownst to Washington and his staff, Walker was asking the billionaire to wire the money, over $500,000, directly to an undisclosed company owned by Walker. If true, that's not legal. That's extremely not legal. That's Goodfellas.

The Daily Beast says that emails show Washington did indeed complete Walker’s wire requests, but Washington believed the money was strictly for Walker's political campaign.

Herschel Walker speaks during a campaign stop in 2022.
In short, this is what Walker is accused of doing, according to the Daily Beast. He allegedly took money that was supposed to be for his campaign, and put it into his own company, HR Talent, the Daily Beast reported.

Two more graphs from the Daily Beast story you should focus on:

"Saurav Ghosh, director of federal reform at Campaign Legal Center, called the arrangement 'jaw-dropping.' Jordan Libowitz, communications director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said if Walker 'used the campaign to funnel money into his own business, that’s one of the biggest campaign finance crimes I’ve ever heard of.' Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director of Documented, remarked that the exchanges were 'stunning and, to my knowledge, without parallel in recent history.'”

“Campaign finance laws are designed to prevent massive under-the-table payments like those described here,” Fischer said. “While we don’t have all the facts, these emails point to highly illegal, potentially even criminal activity.”

'SEVERE AND PERMANENT INJURIES'Ex-NFL lineman Taylor Lewan suing James Andrews for 'improperly performed' surgery on knee

One of the lessons from all of this isn't solely about Walker. It's this era we're in; the Era of the Grift. It's not a shock that Walker and Donald Trump are longtime friends because no one is a bigger grifter and fraudster than Trump. If the accusations against Walker are true, he learned a lot from his buddy on how to game the system.

Walker was never a viable candidate and in a way this story gives us a peek at an alternate universe, and we get to see what it would have been like had Walker won. His administration would likely have been one filled with these types of accusations and scandals. Walker wasn't just unqualified; he was embarrassingly so. One of the other scandals was that Walker campaigned on a platform of denying abortion access but multiple women said he paid for theirs. There were also accusations of domestic violence.

People make mistakes but Walker's political life went beyond that. His candidacy seemed like it was birthed because he lost a bet. It was real, though.

Now, if these accusations are true, Walker has bigger problems than his clown-sian campaign. He may need a good lawyer.

Trump deposition, he’s a star, so he can do what he wants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XsF7nfSEno

How do evangelicals back this creature for president?

His own words, he can do what he wants when he wants to any woman.

Only because it’s the lesser evil. Today’s Democrats seem to be bowing to Satan himself

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigalbert (Post 265844)

Only because it’s the lesser evil. Today’s Democrats seem to be bowing to Satan himself.

o

This is the difference between Republicans and Democrats ......

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

EMMA GOLDMAN

o

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles (Post 265857)

o

This is the difference between Republicans and Democrats ......

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

EMMA GOLDMAN

o

o

Liberals and Conservatives are a lot more alike than they are different ...... Barack Obama and Donald Trump are a lot more alike than they are different.

The same is trues of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ...... they are a lot more alike than they are different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9etoocgcWm8

o