Pentagon Uses Pandemic Response Cash To Pay Defense Contractors for More War Toys
Plus: House votes to keep funding the government, DHS recalls intelligence reports, Jeff Bezos is starting a preschool, and more...
Defense contractors make out big from funds allotted for pandemic response. The Department of Defense (DOD) got $1 billion to "prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus." Instead, it used a lot of the funds—allotted by Congress in March as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—to buy more machinery of war, doling it out to defense contractors for things like drone surveillance tech and developing a new flight controller.
The Washington Post, which uncovered the questionable spending, reports that "hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund" went to "projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response," including:
$183 million to firms including Rolls-Royce and ArcelorMittal to maintain the shipbuilding industry; tens of millions of dollars for satellite, drone and space surveillance technology; $80 million to a Kansas aircraft parts business suffering from the Boeing 737 Max grounding and the global slowdown in air travel; and $2 million for a domestic manufacturer of Army dress uniform fabric. […]
Hundreds of millions of dollars also flowed to several large, established companies, such as GE Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electric, which received two awards worth $75 million in June. A subsidiary of Rolls-Royce received $22 million to upgrade a Mississippi plant.
In addition, "10 of the approximately 30 companies known to have received" DOD money "also received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, another relief package created by the Cares Act," points out the Post.
Weber Metals, a California-based subsidiary of German firm Otto Fuchs, received between $5 million and $10 million through PPP in April to support 412 jobs, and then got an extra boost through a $25 million DOD relief award in June. Weber officials did not respond to requests for comment. […]
ModalAI, a small California company that builds drone flight controllers and computing platforms, received $3 million through the Pentagon program for an 18-month effort to develop a new flight controller. In April, it received a PPP loan of between $150,000 and $350,000.
The Defense Department's excuse?
"We need to always remember that economic security and national security are very tightly interrelated and our industrial base is really the nexus of the two," said Ellen Lord, undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, in a statement.
The agency was far from the only entity to put CARES Act money to questionable ends, or the only failure of federal lawmakers and agencies to properly oversee that spending—a lot of which ended up going to bail out state-favored industries and to pet projects with questionable relation to fighting disease or dealing with economic hardships.
But the government giving out masses of money to buy military gear and calling it a life-saving attempt to help the American people through the coronavirus pandemic is probably the most egregious perversion of the concept of public health.
Some Democrats in Congress are now calling for an official investigation. "For the Administration to choose to use funds Congress made available to fight COVID-19 on the wish lists of defense contractors … is unconscionable and should be investigated fully and prosecuted if warranted," wrote Reps. Mark Pocan (D–Wisc.) and Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) in a letter to the heads of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Armed Services Committee.
Maybe they and other members of Congress shouldn't have handed over a billion in free-floating pandemic-relief funds to the Defense Department in the first place.
FREE MINDS
The Department of Homeland Security reportedly recalled 20 open-source intelligence reports, which "had already been shared with state and local officials," reports CNN. More:
The recalls come in the wake of a shakeup at the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, stemming from a July report that the department compiled "intelligence reports" about the work of two US journalists covering protests in Portland, Oregon.
After that report, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf directed the intelligence branch to cease collecting information involving US members of the media and ordered a review of the incident. The move was in response to a Washington Post report that DHS disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports summarizing tweets written by the two journalists.
FREE MARKETS
A potentially positive development on the fight over independent contractors? "The Labor Department on Tuesday announced a proposal that could deem millions of janitors, construction workers and gig workers to be contractors rather than employees, its most ambitious step toward blessing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft," reports The New York Times:
The proposal is a so-called interpretive rule, not a regulation that has the force of law. But it could have significant influence were it to be finalized.
It would technically cover only laws that the Labor Department enforced, like the federal minimum wage and overtime rules. States and other federal agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service, would be free to make their own determinations, as California has done in a recently enacted law that effectively requires companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their workers as employees.
But employers tend to follow the department's guidance, and the determination could have influence in other contexts and jurisdictions.
More here.
COVID-19 BEHIND BARS
Elderly prisoner who sold pot released despite the Department of Justice's (DOJ) objections.
Actual arguments DOJ is making in an attempt to block compassionate releases of elderly and medically vulnerable people incarcerated in federal prisons: they were going to die in prison anyway, so who cares if it's from COVID or something else? Totally sick. https://t.co/bAy4Ubli6h
— Lauren Krisai (@laurenkrisai) September 22, 2020
Atilano Dominguez, who is 80 years old and was jailed for 27 years for selling marijuana, was granted compassionate release, according to Kevin Ring of FAMM, which fights mandatory minimum sentencing laws and advocates for criminal justice reform.
QUICK HITS
• The House of Representatives has decided to keep funding the government.
• Introducing the Bezos Academy, a free Montessori-style preschool funded by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. "This classroom is just the beginning," Bezos posted to Instagram. "The @bezosacademy opens its doors on Oct. 19th. This one in Des Moines, WA, is the first of many free preschools that we'll be opening for underserved children."
• "The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009," reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised "between $17 million and $20 million" for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) to help cover costs for people who have served felony sentences but cannot vote because of unpaid court fees and fines.
• Will Pennsylvania be the Florida of the 2020 election?
• Wired takes a deep dive into the California Consumer Privacy Act and why privacy advocates don't want to see it strengthened.
• SXSW is already announcing that it will be entirely online in 2021.
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Senate Report Details Hunter Biden’s Shady Foreign Business Dealings
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/09/23/hunter-biden-interim-report-n2576734
Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
Hunter Biden opened a bank account with Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden.
Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army. Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow.
It’s always amazing how blatantly corrupt and crooked politicians and their families are. I wonder if there is anything that could ever really be done about it.
Progressive Privilege. Nothing we can do. Just hope it isn’t your house they burn down in the next riot.
I guess they’ll have to impeach Trump again.
I quit working at shoprite and now I make $65-85 per/h. How? I’m working online! My work didn’t exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…GFr after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn’t be happier.
Here’s what I do…>> Click here
Wasn’t just Hunter either. Was Biden’s whole extended family.
Takes a village?
his uncle is the worst
“Totally sick.”
Why?
also apparently Hunter was laundering money as many of those big deposits were then wired in smaller chunks to various foreign nationals by Hunter. Possibly in relation to human trafficking. Per the report.
Now the US Senate is peddling conspiracy theories?
Hunter Biden?! Dealing with people who traffic sex workers? I am stunned.
Hey, at least he didn’t have a single meeting with a Russian sent by the other campaign on the promise of dirt.
THAT would be a scandal.
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Of course, the Washington Post’s headline about this was…
“GOP senators’ report calls Hunter Biden’s board position with Ukraine firm ‘problematic,’ but fails to show how it changed U.S. policy”
Nothing to see here, per the Post.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Defund the police’ activist Alyssa Milano calls 911 sparking massive police presence in her quiet California neighborhood claiming a gunman was on her property – but it was really a teen shooting at squirrels with an air gun
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8756911/Defund-police-activist-Alyssa-Milano-sparks-massive-police-presence-calling-911.html
Well duh, when she says defund the police, she means in other people’s neighborhoods.
Too bad she didn’t get swatted. 911 should have her number on their Do Not Call list.
That kid might have confused her with a squirrel.
“”The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009,” reports the Los Angeles Times.” And? I’m still not sure what the difference between this and posting someone’s mug shot at the local precinct is. It seems on the same level as banning the use of security cam footage by the police. It doesn’t do anything to your privacy that people with eyes don’t.
There is a point where the pervasive use of technology crosses the lines on expectation of privacy. For example, a cop walking by while you are talking on a cell phone might overhear you planning a crime. That doesn’t mean it is just ok to evesdrop on every phone conversation made outside your house.
One thing we have certainly seen is that the government, working with private entities, has been able to use technology to intrude on our privacy in ways that were unthinkable 50 years ago- even though it is just a logical extrapolation of precedent. There needs to be lines drawn, or we will find our every movement monitored by AIs.
Do you see a difference between over-hearing (or even deliberately listening to) a person talking on a phone in public, and wire-tapping a phone conversation?
I see a difference of degree. Note I didn’t say wire tapping- just eavesdropping.
In any case, the difference in degree is what the government has used to push the boundaries of allowable year over year. They can’t go creeping around looking into your house, but maybe they can do overflights with high resolution IR cameras to see if you have a grow room in your house? They can’t wiretap every call, but maybe they can collect metadata on every call in the country? They can’t offer carte blanch access to that data, but maybe they can restrict access to it with a super secret court that rubber stamps everything?
The government pushes these boundaries all the time, and too often gets away with it because nobody is there to challenge them until we’ve long, long long ago crossed the line of decency.
The root issue is not how our government collects evidence to prosecute our legal transgressions. It is how many things we have made illegal. That is much more a violation of decency.
Remove the prohibitions and we eliminate the incentive to spy on us.
it is aggregation of data. The same reason a GPS recorder on your car is a search. If they can track your whereabouts over time they glean a lot of attention from you at small cost. Its a 4a violation.
Tailing you utilizes limited resources. Ussc has differentiated the two.
Hmmm, alright this may be a thing were I’m not fully understanding how its used. I’m thinking of situations where you have someone on camera committing a crime, then you use the driver’s license database to identify who they are. It sounds like what you are talking about is tracking somebody in the hopes of finding out that they are committing a crime.
Banning facial recognition for fishing expeditions seems appropriate, but not banning facial recognition for determining who committed a crime you already know about and have video/camera evidence of.
The worry, and even the ACLU agrees, is using photo recognition to track people through multiple camera points over time. Could be a single use case in which I have no issue as you described.
Amateurs. AI will use facial recognition software 30,000 times a second.
“Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised ‘between $17 million and $20 million’ for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) to help cover costs for people who have served felony sentences but cannot vote because of unpaid court fees and fines.”
Fantastic news. More voting by felons will undoubtedly help Democrats — and that’s good for us Koch / Reason libertarians.
Being looked at as a pay to vote scheme. Remember these same laws make it illegal to give someone 100 dollars to say miss a work shift to vote. Bloomberg own statements say this is being done to increase Biden’s vote totals, not being done neutrally.
Talk about buying votes.
Well really we’re all felons at this point, most of us the government have simply declined to prosecute. I know I one time crossed a state line with an onion in my car, I’m pretty sure that’s felony transportation of agricultural products or some such.
Having an onion on your belt is still okay, though? It was the style back in the day.
Are you going to tell us about the time you went to Morganville to get a new heel for your shoe?
This is the type of brilliant cultural reference I come to reason boards for.
It certainly used to be.
I lived in Arizona in the 80s, and the state had produce inspection stations on the highways. Often that meant declaring (and losing) a bag of renegade oranges, or becoming a smuggler.
Don’t remember about onions.
I’ve told people about those stations. Usually get shocked faces.
They still had them between California and Oregon as of 5ish years ago.
Yeah, we thought we were in trouble for the giant cooler full of beer, but they only made us toss out a few apples.
California is renowned for them. They’re on every major road between CA and other states. Not on the road you take to get to Deep Springs though. Or on the roads that go around Lake Tahoe, though you aren’t taking a semi on some of those.
I remember going through one of those on I-40 about 15 years ago. Not sure if it’s still out there or not, though.
bloomberg clearly paying for votes, would be illegal if anyone else did this.
Well if his record holds he just wasted a lot of his money again on this election.
Just wait till he finds out that most of those felons were freed by Trump’s FIRST STEP prison reform . . .
Remember when that journalist said something to the effect of Bloomberg being more effective by giving every American a million dollars? This is probably the pilot program.
https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1269951088964370432
CAMEROTA: “What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?”
BENDER: “Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/08/21/chicago-mayor-doesnt-want-protesters-on-her-block-because-she-wants-to-feel-safe-at-home-n2574810
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot justified implementing a ban on protesters being able to demonstrate outside her home in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood, citing the large number of threats she and her wife have received during the city’s heightened unrest.
“I think that residents of this city, understanding the nature of the threats that we are receiving on a daily basis, on a daily basis, understand I have a right to make sure that my home is secure,” Lightfoot told reporters, according to the Chicago Tribune.
She concluded with, “But every other home and business owner can fuck off.”
She is at least consistent, being a pol who insisted she had to have a haircut during the height of the pandemic lockdown because she is one of the people who actually matter.
How can you tell?
White liberals dumb themselves down when they speak to black people, a new study contends
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liberals-dumb-themselves-down-when-they-speak-black-people-new-study-contends/
A new study suggests that the words you use may depend on whether the club secretary’s name is Emily (“a stereotypically White name,” as the study says) or Lakisha (“a stereotypically Black name”). If you’re a white liberal writing to Emily, you might use words like “melancholy” or “euphoric” to describe the mood of the book, whereas you might trade these terms out for the simpler “sad” or “happy” if you’re corresponding with Lakisha.
But if you’re a white conservative, your diction won’t depend on the presumed race of your interlocutor.
Makes sense, when I code in Malbolge I don’t use basic
“If you’re a white liberal writing to Emily, you might use words like “melancholy” or “euphoric” to describe the mood of the book, whereas you might trade these terms out for the simpler “sad” or “happy” if you’re corresponding with Lakisha.”
I think only part of that is racism. The other part is that they are pompous windbags who use an inflated vocabulary to signal to the other windbags how intellectual they are. The racism part is the assumption that white people don’t see through their BS
Wait, didn’t the Smithsonian tell us that grammar is racist?
Not racist, just that using proper grammar is a white behavior. Whether or not “white behavior” is a good thing is an exercise for the reader.
I quit working at shoprite and now I make $65-85 per/h. How? I’m working online! My work didn’t exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…FEd after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn’t be happier.
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They, Liberals, will often use the words they think will endear them to other groups to prove their wokeness or belonging to the group just like when John Kerry or Hillary Clinton tried to use rural white linguistics, slang, hillbilly words, when in the country. Its not just racist its classist and they do it to everyone so hopefully the black community won’t be too offended since liberals treat everyone has underclass trash
Most well intentioned… we all know what that leads to.
It’s not surprising at all that the very people who think the only way for certain races to advance themselves is through government action see these people as inferior in some ways.
Not counterintuitive at all. They also think black people are too dumb and helpless to obtain a drivers license for photo ID
They don’t really think that. They just don’t want anyone to check ID during elections for some reason.
“It’s time to step up
To prep up”.
“To help keep you free
From the risk of HIV”.
Obviously the drug makers believe that black people need to be talked to only in short, simple sentences that rhyme.
#CancelDescovy
Covid cases, Sweden vs EU
https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_3525-1.jpg
Something ‘very strange’ is occurring amid Europe’s second wave of infections
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6193353286001
Something “very strange” is currently taking place in Europe amid its second wave of coronavirus infections, according to Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
He said in France there has been a huge second wave of infections, “bigger than the first one … but no increase in deaths”.
“Which is strange”.
It’s all bullshit, which is not strange – – – —
Don’t worry. New guidance to hospitals and coroners will again broaden the criteria for COVID death, from “died from COVID” to “died with COVID” to “died knowing somebody who might have had COVID”. That will get COVID death rates back up.
New talking point is ‘died from Covid 19 and related complications.’ Nice and broad. Strip the Covid from in front of the the related complications and we can include just about anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6HcP172F1g
25:53 into the vid
It would seem that the people most likely to die from getting infected have done it already. That’s kind of how deadly disease works, the already feeble are the first to go.
A bunch of 20-somethings who have been forcibly locked up for the last 6 months are getting it now, and they aren’t gonna die.
it’s not strange at all. viruses get less deadly over time, or they don’t keep spreading
I read “which is strange” in Inspector Clouseau’s voice. Am I the only one?
Peter Sellers or Steve Martin?
Peter Sellers. Steve Martin’s Clouseau is too wacky to work here.
Exclusive: China sharply expands mass labor program in Tibet
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-tibet-exclusive/exclusive-china-sharply-expands-mass-labor-program-in-tibet-idUSKCN26D0GT?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
BEIJING (Reuters) – China is pushing growing numbers of Tibetan rural laborers off the land and into recently built military-style training centers where they are turned into factory workers, mirroring a program in the western Xinjiang region that rights groups have branded coercive labor.
They’ve got no reason not to. Seriously, what action can anybody outside their country take to stop them that would hurt the person taking the action worse than it hurts China?
Well, they Beta tested it with the Uyghurs, and there was no adverse reaction, so now they’re going into full implementation.
I’m genuinely impressed by the brilliant arguments put forth by #Resistance leaders concerning RBG’s Supreme Court seat.
The Constitution gives presidents the power to nominate Supreme Court justices with the Senate’s advice and consent regardless of the time left in a president’s term. But the Constitution also requires that a president be elected by the states, not installed by a foreign power.
BOOM! Evan McMullin has just demonstrated that all of Orange Hitler’s Supreme Court appointments are literally unconstitutional.
#TrumpRussia
It’s good to see somebody besides Hillary Clinton refusing to accept the outcome of the 2016 election.
and here I recall Trump winning on election night in 2016, when the votes were counted up per state. I guess that was a false memory, like all the antifa stories in the past 4 years.
A modest proposal to get a lot of people killed in a civil war…..
A modest proposal to save American democracy
A law journal just floated a wild idea to add 127 more states to the union. And it’s all constitutional.
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review
To create a system where every vote counts equally, the Constitution must be amended. To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states. These states — which could be added with a simple congressional majority — would add enough votes in Congress to ratify four amendments: (1) a transfer of the Senate’s power to a body that represents citizens equally; (2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts; (3) a replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote; and (4) a modification of the Constitution’s amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans.
Seriously, when emotional morons say “every vote must count” what do they really want? Do they mean that every persons preferences must be honored? How do they think, outside of some sci-fi hive mind scenario, that we would all have the same preference? As long as we use some form of democratic process, there will be losers. Are their votes not “counted”?
“hive mind scenario”
It isn’t sci-fi, it’s the modern left
[5] rename the whole resulting mess “Panem.” Who will be District 1, you ask? They’ll all be District 1. Except where you are living.
And you.
And you.
Why stop at doing this with DC? You could turn Virginia into 634 states, Connecticut could become 342 states, California could become 10,942 states. All equally represented. We could have a 24,534 member senate with 243,843 congressmen. This man is a goddamn genius. Why not just have direct democracy?
If only the founders would have come up with a system where there was some sort of smaller division of governments, say “local” governments that were based in the region they served and were more able to respond to the wants and needs of the electorate in their direct geographical reason. Alas, the founders were short sighted and designed a progressive endorsed system where we are bound to the whims of god-king-emperors at the presidential and governor levels that get to rule by dictates and are completely unrestrained by any sort of document that limits their powers.
“This man is a goddamn genius. Why not just have direct democracy?”
It was an unsigned Note. I don’t know whether that means a student wrote it, and it’s their cultural practice to not formally acknowledge student authors, or if it’s something the Review Editorial Staff came up with (perhaps with help of Harvard faculty or outside practitioners). In any event, they chose to publish it, and give it their imprimatur.
Amazing.
To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states.
More proof that they know they’ve lost the argument.
yeah, it’s Constitutional. But in practice a new state would have to at least match Wyoming in population, so no more than 10 states there.
But then why not split up California in to multiple states? There was a proposal to split it into 6, which would help conservatives trapped there get better representation in the Senate.
I was thinking, “That sounds dumb enough to be in the Harvard or Yale Law Reviews.” Click on the link and, yep, Harvard.
Or I could have finished reading the full hyperlink. Same/same.
(2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts;
This is already the case. These people are children.
A modest proposal to throw Ian Millhiser in a woodchipper.
How about dividing up each current state into new states, each consisting of a 100 mile square area. That’d make for an interesting Senate.
Shit, just use all the existing zip code areas.
Great news.
Christopher F. Rufo
@realchrisrufo
VICTORY: The President has just signed a full Executive Order abolishing critical race theory from the federal government, the military, and all federal contractors. The president has effectively declared war on CRT—and extended the battlefield to all of our institutions.
To begin, the president explains that our nation was founded on the ideal that “all mean are created equal” and denounces critical race theory’s “pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country.”
The President writes that the “malign ideology” of critical race theory “is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of country.” He cites my original reporting on the Treasury Department, Argonne National Labs, and Sandia Labs.
The ambition of the executive order is breathtaking: the President will prohibit federal funds from supporting critical race theory trainings in the federal government, in the military, and by all federal contractors.
The point on federal contractors is a major escalation: if a private company wants to work with the US government, they can no longer teach critical race theory anywhere in their offices. This could potentially disrupt CRT programs in half of the Fortune 500.
The executive order will also disrupt the flow of money to academia’s critical race theory programs. The order stops all federal grants that support CRT—with the potential to cripple hundreds of academic projects moving forward.
Finally, the executive order has a strong enforcement component: all federal diversity programs must be approved directly by OMB and OPM, and agencies are directed to initiate adverse action proceedings against managers who continue to hold CRT trainings.
The executive order also opens the legal floodgates: the President instructs the Attorney General to assess whether critical race theory trainings create a “hostile work environment” and constitute a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The President’s executive order is nothing short of astonishing: he has used all of the mechanisms of power to disrupt the “ideological poison” of critical race theory—and immediately takes the fight to the bureaucracy, universities, and woke corporations. He is playing to win.
“The executive order also opens the legal floodgates: the President instructs the Attorney General to assess whether critical race theory trainings create a “hostile work environment” and constitute a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” This is the most important thing that he could possibly do. If Critical Race Theory rightly gets declared a hostile work environment, that’s a huge monetary incentive to abandon all training related to it. No company can live through the ensuing lawsuits that would open the doors for.
Was ecstatic to see this EO last night. It was funneled money to neo marxist organizations disguised as race theory.
Honestly same, this is probably one of the best things Trump has done, and I think the only bad part is that he waited so long to do it. Be real easy for the next president to overturn the EO. Well unless, they get a couple court cases setting precedent that Critical Race Theory is a hostile environment. Once that’s precedent, a president won’t be able to do much to stop each department from getting sued if they try to implement it again.
While I completely disagree with CRT, using executive orders to squash ideas is troubling. Would your dick get hard if a Democrat used that power to ban something you approve of? Doubtful. The problem isn’t CRT as much as the government having the power to push or eliminate ideas.
He is not squashing ideas he is saying those particular ideas have no place in a workplace that he has jurisdiction over. Do you not see the difference?
He just told you he didn’t. He isn’t known for his sophisticated understanding of the subjects he discusses.
“Hi I’m sarcsic I’ll happily live under tyranny because I don’t like the methods tyranny was dispatched by!”
Actually stupid fuck since this also addresses “muh private bizniss” that uses CRT as well as contractors, CRT is entirely the problem.
He isnt squashing ideas. He is stopping the federal funding of CRT.
Do you not understand the difference?
A business has a choice. One of them allows for federal bids.
Remember: Not paying for someone else’s birth control is the same as blocking access to them. Liberals actually believe this.
It’s no wonder some believe refusing to fund companies that push CRT is the same as squashing CRT as an idea.
Where you as troubled as when southern states could no longer fund KKK interests?
My goodness you’re dense. Did you get the part where I completely disagree with CRT? My point was that the executive has too much power, and that whooshing noise was my point flying over your head. Because you don’t mind the government having excessive power so long as your guy is in charge. You love tyranny when you are the tyrant.
Government refuses to do businees with companies that force their employees to endure racist propaganda disguised as training, and as a result government is the problem?
This “one answer for every question” thing isn’t working for you man.
If a president issued an executive order saying that a agency’s and contractors need to stop having training sessions that teach Jesus christ is the messiah I would also agree that is good to ban
That is already illegal under the establishment clause.
There are any number of bad ideas the government will not let you teach on their dime. And unlike Jesus, most of them arent given Constitutional protection. And unlike CRT, most of them dont explicitly run afoul of the Constitution and Civil Rights Act.
White Pipo have Civil Rights, too.
Agencies? Yes. Contractors? Ehh… that gets a little sticky. I agree that Trump should take a hard line on actual federal agencies. I don’t love the idea of the federal government forcing its own ideologies on private enterprises via backdoor mandates to do business with them. For me, it’s analogous to the penaltax method of implementing Obamacare- “no, we’re not FORCING you to do anything, we are just giving you a tax break if you do it.”
No, CRT is the problem
Why, the Federal government should be bankrolling the Catholic church, because otherwise Trump is squashing the religious ideals of catholics contrary to their first amendment protections.
Honestly Trump just gets better and better.
FYI, RBG was appointed by Clinton, who got 43% of the popular vote and was also impeached.
https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1308586151771549698
I knew
@Reuters
would stealth-edit this religiously bigoted hit piece on ACB (written by
@danieljtrotta
& edited by
@rosalbaob
), so I archived it.
Then vs. Now
https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1308499683283615744
This is based on a Newsweek story that was corrected. And journalists don’t care. This is now the 4th news outlet shearing this even after the correction. This is why your industry is going extinct and deserve to die. You guys killed it.
https://twitter.com/dhookstead/status/1308451193962729473
ESPN’s Max Kellerman says without any evidence that “extremist right-wing agitators” are responsible for the riots around America.
Maybe ESPN should cover sports.
Max Kellerman also said that the Clippers would beat the Nuggets and that Kawhi Leonard was the best player in basketball.
Pretty much anything he says can be discounted as basic bitch idiocy.
New England Journal of Medicine says masks are meant as a placebo to calm anxiety from covid…
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
Copy of page in question.
https://mobile.twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1308142943484686337/photo/1
Pretty much the same thing as the security theater carried out at airports. Confiscating fingernail clippers doesn’t make anyone safer but all the song and dance convinces the “do something!” crowd.
I had my fingernail clippers confiscated by security, walked into the terminal area, went to one of the convenience stores there, and bought a sandwich, a drink, AND NEW CLIPPERS.
That’s painful. I haven’t been in an airport since 1998 (I’ve always hated air travel) and I think I’ll keep it that way.
And people who want to wear them should be free to do so, and the private companies that want to impose mask requirements on their customers should be free to do so.
And we should all be free to ridicule those progressives who fault President Trump for not forcing everyone to wear them all over the country. Off all the good reasons to reelect a President–from a libertarian perspective–surely “because he was reluctant to use the coercive power of government to force people to wear masks against their will” is one them.
But Ken, what good is a placebo if some people are allowed to question it and shatter the delusions about its effectiveness?
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection
Sigh. There was a long argument in the roundup yesterday about the history of the science on the efficacy of masks. The NEJoM presents the info as if the science was long ago settled. Who are we supposed to believe, actual doctors, or grad students who study studies?
Will there be any apologies to myself or Rufus for our absolutely correct claims?
Focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of Covid-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.
LOL! Fuck you Redfield! Real doctors say fuck you.
I suspect most people who are wearing masks still think it protects them from other people rather realize that it’s supposed to protect other people from them.
From what I can tell most people wear masks only when required by the business that they are in. Businesses probably feel masks give their customers a sense of security. I don’t know, there might also be some liability risk of having customers not wear masks.
Maybe it’s just the people that I talk to, but I don’t know very many people that wear masks because they think they are being protected by them at all.
helps with hyperventilating too
This is Really Good oputunity for everyone who wana make a big amount at home own laptop And make your family happy so can u do….ReadMore.
The biggest story today is probably the news that the House just passed a short-term spending bill to keep the government open through December 11th. The government would have had a partial shut down next Thursday without that bill.
Why is that big news?
Because that was the last bit of leverage the House Democrats had to get their $3.5 trillion stimulus bill passed in the Senate. If the Democrats had said, “If you don’t pass our $3.5 trillion stimulus bill in the Senate, we’ll let the government shut down and blame Senate Republicans for it”.
Now that the Democrats have funded the government through the election, it’s like they’re throwing in the towel on stimulus at this point. They’ve giving up, and they’re concentrating on the Supreme Court fight instead. If Joe Biden wins or they get control of the Senate, they’ll look at bailing out the states again.
Four years from now, silly libertarians will claim that there was no significant difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on spending. The rest of us, however, will remember that if it weren’t for Republican opposition in the midst of a pandemic, amidst a recession, and just before an election, we would have spent an additional $3.5 trillion in stimulus.
Feel it. Know it. Live it.
Tepublicans were bad while the Democrats were cataclysmic
Wow, they got House Dems to cry uncle? What happened to the Republicans as of late? They used to be such pussies.
haha! so true.
SXSW is already announcing that it will be entirely online in 2021.
2021 slogan for the festival:
Make Austin a Dull Backwater Again!
Introducing the Bezos Academy, a free Montessori-style preschool funded by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. “This classroom is just the beginning,” Bezos posted to Instagram.
No wonder wapo is peddling panick porn. Have to harm the competition.
Montessori or madrassa style?
“hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund” went to “projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response,”
I think the Defense Department is covered under the “we are all in this together” clause.
It is a mostly peaceful military.
The weirdness of this complaint is that many state governments also used the funds for things that have little to do with Covid. Yet ENB with laser like focus only complains about this piece of misspent funds.
How DARE she write about subjects that are in the news without harping on what you feel to be more important? Obviously that makes her a Biden voter. A good Trump voter would ignore his federal government and instead focus on states with Democrat governors.
There are already two of us here and you’re biting our schtick.
Youre still doing the pathetic schtick? So libertarians are fine with bad spending as long as it isnt DoD. Defense isn’t even her beat dummy.
Youre just sad man. Hope you can get help soon.
My schtick is pathetic? What’s pathetic is you and John freaking out when Reason tries to put a libertarian spin on something in the news, and misses what you feel to be more important. Then you trash the magazine that is kind enough to provide this forum for your bitching. You’re the sad one.
Lol
Oh you mad!
Whats libertarian about solely complaining about one small part of misspent tax dollars?
I bitch at their slant. They weren’t always this slanted.
You apparently have no independent thought and go out of your way to get mad when people do.
They take what is in the news and try to put a libertarian spin on it. They rarely produce any new stories. That’s just the way it is. So accept that they’re not up to your high standards and quit your bitching or find a new way to waste your employer’s time.
“quit your bitching”
Paging Alanis Morissette!
State government spending dollars on unrelated projects is also in the news dummy. In fact there is more coverage there than the DoD story. Them choosing which angle to cover is slant. Is is selection bias.
Sorry you’re so pathetic. I truly am.
More accurately…
The Reason blog, which is a minor function of the overall Reason organization, discusses what is in the news. The blog is not meant to be a newspaper not source of original journalism. That goes triply for the morning Roundup, which is meant as something to peruse while drinking coffee.
The magazine, on the other hand, publishes long-form, researched, edited articles.
At least this time they know where the money went. I remember after the first audit that was about 500 billion that they couldn’t even account for
If you tell people you’re spending half a trillion dollars to prepare to fight space aliens, and they tend to panic. If the President you’ve ridiculed for 4 years announces a Space Force, you can just treat it as a joke and have Steve Carrell and John Malkovich reassure everyone it’s just a farce.
When Joe Biden’s in Town, but It’s Hard to Tell
An expert retail politician has become perhaps the most conspicuous practitioner of social distancing in America.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/us/politics/joe-biden-campaign.html?smid=tw-share
In contrast, Mr. Biden’s supporters said they felt little need to announce themselves too aggressively and welcomed the Democratic nominee’s lower-key presence. “I like that he’s sleepy,” Ms. Fox said. “It would be nice to have a president that allows me to sleep at night.”
You can’t make this shit up.
he needs a nap by 10AM
Someone posted a calendar showing how he’d shut down ops before noon something like 50% of the days in September so far.
This is the best the Democrats could offer, boys and girls.
“I like that he’s sleepy,” Ms. Fox said. “It would be nice to have a president that allows me to sleep at night.”
Preferably with a pillow over your face.
“The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
Good thing sarcasmic told us fear of always on body cams were a right wing talking point and not possibly a privacy concern.
I haven’t said anything either way on the subject you lying sack of shit.
Youre going with that huh? You didn’t enter a thread about body cams with a hyperbolic cry of right wing talking points? Okay man. Seek help.
You are accusing me of making arguments I never made. That makes you a dishonest sack of shit. Apologize or fuck off. I was man enough to apologize when I attributed calls to violence from Nardz to you. Let’s see if you’re half the man I am.
“That makes you a dishonest sack of shit”
You straight up lied about saying something positive about me because it made you look very bad.
Tell us about dishonesty more drunk.
” I was man enough to apologize”
Not to me after you lied.
Pillow talk is different, sweetie.
Lol watching you post incoherent nonsense because you know I’m right is awesome.
So that’s a yes that you did that? Should I follow up with you then said you didnt read comments before making your hyperbolic strawman even though those you accuse of being right wing here brought up the privacy concern?
Seek help man. Honestly.
I mean if you were bitching about right wing talking points in that thread and the ones you accuse of being right wing were making privacy concerns as the primary discussion point…
What is someone to infer?
Don’t be a jeff. Own up to your arguments.
I rarely make arguments. Haven’t you figured that out yet? My hyperbolic straw men as you call them are me making fun of whatever it is I’m making fun of. If you take it personally, which you obviously do, then you’re the one who needs help.
And it doesn’t surprise me that you aren’t man enough to own up to false accusations. No surprise at all.
“My hyperbolic straw men as you call them are” arguments that you are making but too cowardly to stand behind.
Happy to help.
Finally. We agree. You don’t make arguments. You pathetically bitch.
lol! Says the guy who feels compelled to drop a hostile turd on every one of my comments, and who complains incessantly about Reason hating Dear Leader! Haaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Hmm, trophy wife of noted First Amendment hater John McCain is coming out for Biden.
Man, anybody who loves killing dark-skinned folks is ALL for Biden, aren’t they?
The neo-cons still hate him because he’s still undoing their wars.
Has Liz Cheney weighed in yet? It wouldn’t surprise me if she endorsed Biden, too.
It’s cute how they dressed up their hatred as “Trump is destroying all norms” when, in reality, it is simply that he doesn’t have much of a war boner.
If not, they ain’t black.
http://twitter.com/TheDamaniFelder/status/1308631974958043136?s=19
Behold. The Left treating black men like the subhuman animals they really think we are ????????
Anyone who uses more than one question mark is a subhuman animal.
It’s a downward pointing finger in the tweet
Reason roundup missed this. Tots by accident I’m sure.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-committees-report-hunter-biden-burisma-probe
There is nothing in that article about prostitution or other sex work. How is this news?
It actually does mention possible human trafficking in relation to prostitution.
Local news.
They’re too busy worrying about a backwater Eastern European dictator.
Missed the cut, along with Middle East peace deals.
“probably the most egregious perversion of the concept of public health.”
The concept of “public health” is itself a perversion; there is only individual health. So a perversion of a perversion?
Not true! Just ask a Puritan and/or Marxist.
BREAKING: Hunter Biden Received Millions From Wife Of Ex-Moscow Mayor, Paid Suspects Allegedly Tied To Trafficking, Had Contacts With Individuals Linked To Chinese Military, Senate Report Alleges
https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-hunter-biden-received-millions-from-wife-of-ex-moscow-mayor-paid-suspects-allegedly-tied-to-trafficking-had-contacts-with-chinese-military-senate-report-alleges
It’s Russians all the way down.
Come on. This is a local, fake story. How did the Dems know that Trump was a Russian puppet? Because Hunter told them. He has all the Russian connections, but nothing untoward or questionable. But Orange Man Bad.
https://twitter.com/TheFirstonTV/status/1306699767402188801
Asked about Trump supporter who was murdered in cold-blood in Portland, leftist woman responds:
“Tough luck. Don’t be a f**king Trump supporter in Portland.”
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/857776849534959616
Bill Nye the Science Guy on gender, circa 1996. (Season 4, Episode 8)
“[Chromosomes] control whether we become a boy or a girl.”
Science is such a bigot…
She’s got a point; Antifa and BLM should consider that same rationale when they go outside their deep blue shitholes as well.
When can we wall off these Democrat run cities like in Escape from New York?
Heros
https://twitter.com/CommiesLmao/status/1308588718626926595
Mark and Patricia McCloskey got photos of them pointing guns at protesters made into holiday cards.
And hand one to some harpy shouting “abolish the suburbs” at them.
Fn based
“Abolish the suburbs” isn’t a bad idea. Too many white liberal Karens ensconce themselves there so they don’t have to live with the consequences of the racial “justice” policies they support.
I’m fully on board with forcing white liberals to live in neighborhoods dominated by minorities. Five years of navigating life in the ghetto and being abused by the low-impulse control cretins that live there is the least they deserve.
https://twitter.com/JJusseroKIRO7/status/1308539118142459904
Democratic Socialist Of America group & Black Lives Matter members marched to Seattle City Council Andrew Lewis home demanding he change his vote to defund SPD.
So, if loud mobs have moral authority, then most lynchings were justified?
It is fascinating how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The targets and messaging of the far left progressive wing may change, but it sure seems like their tactics and goals don’t.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1308540166936518656
VICTORY: The President has just signed a full Executive Order abolishing critical race theory from the federal government, the military, and all federal contractors.
The president has effectively declared war on CRT—and extended the battlefield to all of our institutions.
JesseAZ beat you to it above, but I’m very happy to see it again. No more tax dollars subsidizing racism. This bullshit would have never gotten off the ground if government bureaucrats hadn’t funded it and forced it on people.
Too bad it’s still firmly entrenched in state colleges and universities.
Because professors can bring money into the college through federal grants by teaching it. Once your pet research project has to rely on private sector funds, a lot of colleges aren’t going to be as interested in supporting you.
If the morons in CA really want to help the Uber and lyft drivers to just remove the law that forces them to work for rides hare companies
http://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1308573572646891520?s=19
The Proud Boys announced they are doing a rally in a park in Portland on Saturday. In turn, all the regional antifa groups are promising to violently oppose them. Last month, an antifa shooter killed a conservative activist in downtown. #PortlandRiots
I wonder, how big a group can the Proud Boys get together on a given day? It seems unnecessary for Antifa to get all wrapped around the axle about them.
Unfair fights are the only ones Antifa are interested in having.
Antifa can’t afford to tolerate even one crimethinker on their turf!
“OK this roped off part of the park here is where we will meet!!!! Gee I hope no members of Antifa show up and foil our plans!!!”
/fills designated area with dummies in MAGA hats and booby traps
That would be hilarious! Coordinate with the Feds and round up all these Antifa idiots…
Murkowski Backtracks on RBG Vacancy, Killing Democratic Hopes Of Blocking Trump’s SCOTUS Nominee
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/09/23/game-over-washington-post-admits-democrats-powerless-to-stop-trump-from-fillin-n2576728
Holy shit, Cocaine Mitch must have given her a dip into his powder stash.
Wonder what kind of payoff she got?
Even Romney said he would vote on the nominee, since it’s the normal process.
Don’t count your chickens, GOP, but this is what I thought she’d do. Let’s see if it’s a Present or Yes vote.
Surprised Sasse wasn’t on that Townhall list.
You can’t shoot up an old man with amphetamines every day – he literally won’t survive that.
https://twitter.com/alec_sears/status/1308408738315931658
This is every day so far in the month of September that the Biden Campaign has called a full lid before Noon
It’s a sign of my age that when Biden’s handlers call a “lid” I automatically think he’s going home to smoke some weed.
We’d all be better off, Joe included, if that’s how he spent the rest of his days.
+1 coke can with a hole in the side of it.
From the retweets:
“After journos are done asking Biden what his favorite snack is before bed, or what color he thinks Trumps aura is, can one of them please ask “Are you feeling okay?”, because this is concerning.”
Seattle to Pay Ex-Pimp $150,000 to Come Up With ‘Alternatives to Policing’
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/22/seattle-to-pay-ex-pimp-150000-to-come-up-with-alternatives-to-policing-n954170
Advice to ENB, Learn to Pimp!
“It’s Madam!”
What Is He Hiding? Biden Says ‘I’m Not Going to Answer’ Whether He’d Pack the Supreme Court
https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/22/biden-wont-rule-out-packing-the-supreme-court-n953465
“It’s a legitimate question, but let me tell you why I’m not going to answer that question,” the Democrat replied. He said he would not answer the question “because it will shift all the focus. That’s what [Trump] wants. He never wants to talk about the issue at hand, he always tries to change the subject. Let’s say I answer that question. Then the whole debate’s going to be ‘Biden said or didn’t say. Biden said he would or wouldn’t.’”
Joe Biden Doesn’t Agree Voters Should Know His List of SCOTUS Candidates Before Election
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/21/joe-biden-voters-dont-deserve-appoint-supreme-court/
Biden also said his 1st choice is to select an African-American woman, but outlined his reasoning for not releasing a list of nominees
Pressed on if the American people should know who he’ll appoint: “No they don’t, but they will if I’m elected. They’ll have plenty of time.”
He has also refused to comment on whether he supports the court packing idea his party is pushing right now or not.
I guess we have to elect him to find out what he says.
You know what he thinks based on his refusal to comment.
Possibly he doesn’t know what to think as his staff hasn’t yet told him.
Fair, and frankly, it’s possible he forgot
Several times.
This morning.
If it were that important, it’d be on the teleprompter.
He thinks that saying anything will lose him votes, and plans on doing whatever is most politically convenient upon election.
^ This is the correct answer.
They can’t pack the court purely through executive action though, and they know it.
It’s being used as a way to rile up the lefty base, the fact that it’s a pipe dream is hardly relevant. That’s why I’m surprised he hasn’t voiced support for the idea, if he wins he has no obligation to actually do it because “those evil GOP Senators won’t let me!”.
They cancelled Inkmaster yesterday.
ViacomCBS Paramount is rebranding themselves as “the Paramount Movie Network” when they launch Paramount+. They’re just doing made for TV movies. Bar Rescue is moving to some other ViacomCBS channel, and they’re recasting Yellowstone as a series of TV movies–rather than as a traditional episodic TV show.
I suspect Yellowstone is another one of those shows that’s wildly successful in terms of gross numbers but with a demographic that advertisers don’t really care about.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal is having similar issues.
Such [cable] networks have been a cash cow for decades, because subscriber fees—which cable providers pay to carry channels and then pass on to consumers through monthly bills—have risen annually regardless of a channel’s viewership. But cord-cutting has gradually picked up pace since 2014, and the pandemic is accelerating the trend for most operators, including Comcast.
And providers are starting to push back hard on paying for unpopular channels. NBCUniversal could have difficult negotiations in coming months, including with its own parent, Comcast, as well as Charter Communications Inc. CHTR -0.66% and Altice USA Inc., ATUS -0.84% people familiar with the company’s carriage agreements say. NBCUniversal’s challenge is to keep enough fresh programming on each network to justify the cost to providers.
Consumer choice through streaming is destroying Hollywood from the inside. This is impacting and will impact cable and network news operations, too.
Keep up the good work, America.
P.S. Inkmaster should probably go to the Discovery channel.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nbcuniversal-chief-takes-aim-at-cable-channel-fiefdoms-in-entertainment-overhaul-11600794819?
One of the benefits of this COVID stupidity is that Hollywood has been getting absolutely cornholed. Some of my friends and relatives were whining about The Dark Crystal getting cancelled. I suppose this is going to be the next “Firefly” where people delude themselves into thinking it was going to be an all-time great series based off of one semi-promising season.
You better not be bad-mouthing Firefly. It is an all time great serious even with just one season!
I don’t know anything about Dark Crystal…
Firefly is Manic Pixie Dream Girl In Space, and one of the best things about PoundMeToo is that it rid us of Whedon’s teenage-girl sensibilities for the conceivable future.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1308670063432486912
Portland tonight: #Antifa rioters dance in a mosh pit in the middle of Burnside street in front of the Penumbra Kelly police building. Last night they shut down the same street as well. #PortlandRiots
https://twitter.com/JoshLekach/status/1308628535645335552
This meme was sent in a PRIVATE group chat on Instagram and was not publicly posted.
Instagram is monitoring and censoring your private conversations.
“hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund” went to “projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response,”
Good, best possible result then.
Then she ate them.
https://twitter.com/mrwtffacts/status/1308187808885084160
In 2004, Lisa Sparks broke the world record for the highest number of men slept with in a single day, sleeping with a total of 919 men in 24 hours.
Talk about sloppy seconds….
Gross.
So you’re saying sarc has a chance?
Why would I sleep with her when I your mom gives such wonderful blow jobs?
Oh wait! That was your mom! Oh gross. *hurries to bathroom to wash off dick*
Any one else have sympathy for the 920th guy in line?
To be fair, there’s not much sleeping going on.
Robert Evans approved.
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any actual sleeping going on.
Damn, ninja’d by EISTAU.
919 three-pump chumps lol
The best part of this morning was reading that Barr told Nadler to fuck off and he’s not sending any more people to his “oversight” committee.
I’m glad we’re at the point where we don’t have to pretend anymore that Democrats and Republicans should find ways to get along. No point in playing ball with someone who’s been a bad-faith, entitled actor for the last 20 years.
Surely you’re not suggesting that congress critters take responsibility for their own actions? If they wanted to be held accountable for their fuck-ups they wouldn’t have gone into government in the first place.
Just 1% of US Counties Have Had Nearly Half of All COVID-19 Deaths
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/09/22/just-1-of-us-counties-have-had-nearly-half-of-all-covid-19-deaths/
In fact, New York City has exerted an outsized influence on the national COVID-19-related death rate. Removing New York City’s deaths moves the U.S. from eighth place in the world in deaths per million to 13th place.
50 Counties with the Most COVID-19 Deaths
RANK COUNTY NAME STATE TOTAL DEATHS
1 Kings County NY 7,315
2 Queens County NY 7,243
3 Los Angeles County CA 6,330
4 Cook County IL 5,157
5 Bronx County NY 4,939
6 Maricopa County AZ 3,259
7 New York County NY 3,173
8 Miami-Dade County FL 3,055
9 Wayne County MI 2,955
10 Harris County TX 2,498
We should also point out that Utah, a state with a similar urbanization rate to New York City, didn’t have a statewide lockdown, only had a city mandated lockdown in Salt Lake City for a couple of weeks, currently enjoys an unemployment rate that’s about a third of the state of New York’s–and there isn’t a county in Utah that appears anywhere on that list.
https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
yeah, Salt Lake City and New York City, same difference.
“Urbanization rate” means what, they live in towns with at least 50,000 people?
There was an error. It should have read, “We should also point out that Utah, a state with a similar urbanization rate to New York
City[state] . . . ”The urbanization rate for the state of New York was 87.9% in 2010.
The urbanization rate for the state of Utah was 90.6% in 2010.
https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states
Sometimes it means a city of 50,000 people or more, but when the U.S. Census Bureau uses the term, they usually mean more than 1,000 people per square mile.
That link I just gave you was using census bureau data from 2010.
People in New York state are clustered around New York City. People in Utah are clustered around Salt Lake City.
>>10 Harris County TX 2,498
Houston always gives Texas a bad name. go Cowboys.
Harris County, TX has a population of 4.713 million.
Kings County, NY has a population of 2.533 million.
1/3 as many deaths, 2 x the population.
Hell, LA County has 10.04 M, almost 4 x the population. Not much worse than Houston. Cuomo should be reviled for the Nanna murderer he is.
absolutely … was just taking a shot a Houston because it deserves one.
I live here and, yes, it does.
Beta did a decent number on it, these last two days.
saw the results. hope you’re safe.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/lies-damned-lies-and-health-statistics-the-deadly-danger-of-false-positives/
Because of the high false positive rate and the low prevalence, almost every positive test, a so-called case, identified by Pillar 2 since May of this year has been a FALSE POSITIVE. Not just a few percent. Not a quarter or even a half of the positives are FALSE, but around 90% of them. Put simply, the number of people Mr Hancock sombrely tells us about is an overestimate by a factor of about ten-fold. Earlier in the summer, it was an overestimate by about 20-fold.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1308768859080536066
Remember when
@neil_ferguson
said #Covid would kill 500,000 Britons unless the UK locked down until late 2021?
And it locked down until June instead. And maybe 40,000 died (though who really knows?). And then he said his forecast had been low?
He’s just not good at math, is he?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/22/unexplained-excess-deaths-home-almost-nine-times-higher-covid/
Unexplained deaths in private homes are nearly nine times higher than those from Covid-19 amid fears that many people are still not accessing lifesaving medical treatment.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 830 excess deaths at home in the week ending September 4 compared to the five-year average. In contrast, just 99 people died with coronavirus mentioned on the death certificate in the same period. Only seven of those died at home.
The figures also show that there were 371 fewer deaths in hospitals, suggesting hundreds of people who would normally have been taken in for treatment had died at home instead.
Even accounting for that number, it still means there are around 450 excess deaths a week at home, from unknown causes, of people who may not ordinarily have died (the graphic below shows how the number of excess deaths in the UK compared to other countries as of last month).
https://twitter.com/Hold2LLC/status/1308103196854726657
AZ COVID Update: 9/21/20
Nothing to report on hospitalization metrics, because they all remained at their record low today.
Nothing of note with cases, and the already-low Diagnostic Pos% went down a little while Sero Pos% is still more than double
2 deaths reported. 7DA = 4/9
schools are still fucking closed to in person because of the false positivity test rates. Teachers calling in sick for the few schools that have opened. This shit is old.
resurgence haven’t you heard? England on fire and all …
Defense contractors make out big from funds allotted for pandemic response.”
Um thats what the money was for to keep business in business so they could pay their employes.
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1308451578869809152
this is the standard being used for a covid case in the moderna vaccine trial
note that a +PCR test is NOT sufficient
also requires 2 of the general symptoms or 1 specific
it’s clear scientists and FDA know that PCR alone is not a “case” confirmation.
why don’t politicians?
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised “between $17 million and $20 million” for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) to help cover costs for people who have served felony sentences but cannot vote because of unpaid court fees and fines”
I thought buying votes was illegal!
Its OK, he is a billionaire Dem, not GOP.
How many billionaires and major corporations have to blatantly side with the left before the left thinks maybe they aren’t a threat to billionaires and major corporations?
“An inevitable consequence of this U.S. retreat is that other great powers will fill the military and economic vacuum left in Afghanistan. China’s interest in Central Asia is far reaching and it will look to use Afghanistan as a corridor for its “March West.” The only uncertainty is how this will affect a future Afghan government and its development as a regional economic force.”
—-The Diplomat
https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/chinas-stake-in-the-afghan-peace-process/
This is something we’ll hear more about–especially if Trump loses and Biden wins: If the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, the Chinese will move in!
If China wants to invade Afghanistan after the experiences of both the USSR and the USA over the last 40 years, then they’re nuts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmT0_hKSUrw
In terms of soft influence, I understand there is tremendous potential for mining in Afghanistan, and if Afghanistan becomes a hotbed of mining to serve an ever resource hungry China, that’s probably the best thing that could happen from a stability standpoint.
From an American standpoint:
It’s better than domination by Pakistan.
It’s better than domination by Iran.
It’s better than a forever war by the USA.
The sooner the warlords of Afghanistan start thinking about how to get rich mining for the Chinese instead of how to institute a caliphate and take over the world, the better off we’ll be. That’s what winning the War on Terror looks like.
More likely, this will be an opportunity for us to bleed the Chinese out by funding those same assholes that were killing us to kill them. The cost to us will be a small fraction of what we had been spending to prop up the current Afghan government, and the cost to China will be about the same as what we had been spending.
Let China move in its not our job to protect people who would kill us if they had teh chance.
https://www.wtvq.com/2020/09/22/with-taylor-grand-jury-decision-looming-federal-buildings-eye-closure-security/
Everyone knows that when you’re expecting a peaceful protest to occur, you board up all the windows in downtown and cease all activity.
And they were right: Nobody charged with the killing.
From one aspect, they are right: Taylor was dead long before the police pulled the trigger. The shitty warrant that got rubber-stamped and the idiot higher-up that okayed the tactics got Taylor killed.
They won’t be held responsible, either.
A guy who has spent his life being a relative of someone and a woman who has made a career pretending to be someone else give us all advice:
“Most Important” Election: Prince Harry, Meghan Ask Americans To Vote ”
Of course, they wouldn’t dare be other than neutral, right?
“Meghan, who married Queen Elizabeth’s grandson in 2018, criticized US President Donald Trump during his 2016 election campaign as being misogynistic and divisive.”
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/prince-harry-meghan-markle-ask-americans-to-vote-most-important-us-election-2299900
When do the investigations of Bruit interference begin?
>>”projects that have little to do with the coronavirus response,”
dafuq you expect the military to do about a cold virus? everybody saw how it took out that destroyer in like fourteen hours.
also long live the Kansas Comet. legend.
He and Brian Piccolo are running the power sweep together again.
dammit dude I already cried about this once today …
Will Pennsylvania be the Florida of the 2020 election?
The courts have declared Governor Wolf unconstitutional, if that helps.
i start my online bussiness with USA contries…READ MORE
NBA Players Wear Special Lace Collars To Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Commissioner Adam Silver and President Xi Jinping told us to wear them so we did.
The Bee is not always funny, but when it is, damn, it’s hilarious.
Fisher-Price Releases ‘My First Peaceful Protest’ Playset With House You Can Actually Burn Down
laughing so hard I think I am gonna choke…
Little-Known Judge Tedina Cruzette Throws Hat In Ring For Trump’s SCOTUS Consideration
it hurts…
Gotta find new ways to train kids to demand free stuff on the threat of vandalism, now that Halloween is canceled.
From another WAPO article about the Pentagon’s CARES spending.
“Shortly after they decided to repurpose the funds, top Defense Department procurement officials explained their reasoning to members of Congress, arguing that the $1 billion could be diverted because the Department of Health and Human Services had accessed other funds. And in a statement to The Post on Monday, they argued that funding niche defense capabilities is essential to maintaining the economic and national security of the United States.
So the Pentagon told Congress about this back then, but no one complained until six weeks before the election?
Wonder why?
“But the government giving out masses of money to buy military gear and calling it a life-saving attempt to help the American people through the coronavirus pandemic is probably the most egregious perversion of the concept of public health.”
well yeah, but why was ANY of that money allocated to the DoD?? did anyone really think that was the right organization to make purchases supporting public health?? it shows more to me what a total joke the entire CARES act was – just a collection of loosely allocated, vaguely directed, and completely unsupervised slush funds. this is on Congress a whole lot more than the individual departments or agencies. if you hand some government functionary a pile of uncontrolled cash, aren’t they likely to use it to keep their vendors available to supply them, their support team employed and in place, and their production lines hot and available to do what they are needed for once the situation returns to normal??
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