Ten-hut!
"Last year, he was the country’s top military officer. Now, he is retired on the South Shore" by Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff, September 6, 2020
Last year, Joe Dunford was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country’s highest-ranking military officer, amid the turmoil of the Trump administration. Today, the 64-year-old native of South Boston and Quincy is adjusting to civilian life for the first time since college, a trim man sitting on his outdoor deck in an open-neck shirt and smiling at how once again — in what must seem like forever — he can get a good night’s sleep. “I’m pretty happy, and my wife is happy that I’m not underfoot,” said Dunford.
$till on the march, though:
He’s a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where he mentors national security and intelligence professionals. He works with several nonprofit organizations, including as chairman of Semper Fi & America’s Fund, which provides lifetime support to combat-wounded members of the US military and their families.
Dunford sits on the boards of Lockheed Martin and a private-equity company in New York, and he is co-chair of a congressionally funded, bipartisan study group on the future of Afghanistan, where he served as commander of US forces and the international security coalition in 2013 and 2014.
When are we leaving?
During a lengthy interview at his home, whose location he requested the Globe not identify for privacy purposes, Dunford spoke in detail about the challenges facing the military, the US role in a changing geopolitical landscape, and the growing military threat posed by China and Russia, but Dunford did not wish to discuss his personal or professional feelings about President Trump, whom he advised during much of his tenure as Joint Chiefs chairman from 2015 to 2019. He also declined to comment on Trump’s reported disparagement of slain US service members as “losers” and “suckers,” characterizations the president has denied making.
Dunford said his philosophy is to “behave in public the same way I did while on active duty. ... I feel I should not engage in any partisan politics.”
He can't say anything because it would still be insubordination.
The implications of any public comment on the president and his administration, he said, could complicate the job of Army General Mark Milley, his successor as Joint Chiefs chair and another Massachusetts native. “I’ve got to let the chairman be the chairman, and there can be only one chairman,” Dunford said.
After a pause, he smiled and repeated a quote from Army General Omar Bradley, a hero of World War II: “The best service a retired general can perform is to turn in his tongue along with his suit and to mothball his opinions.”
Although Dunford did not comment directly on national politics, the worldview he expressed differs significantly from the America First agenda the Trump White House has espoused.
To Dunford, the international institutions and agreements that followed the devastation of World War II — the United Nations, NATO, and the Bretton Woods economic agreement prominent among them — provided a durable framework for global stability that strong US leadership has helped maintain, “and while some believe that there needs to be some changes in the world order, what I would argue is that we had a vision for what a world order ought to be after World War II,” he said.
“That structure, that order, if you will, brought about peace and security for a long period of time,” he added. “The president is doing it his way. I’m not going to, as a military leader, comment on how the president is approaching it, but I would argue that the value of these relationships is as critical in the future as it has been in the past.”
No offense, sir, but I'm wondering what long period of peace he is talking about?
We have been at war for at least the last 20 years, with major aggressions as well as covert efforts since the 1950s.
It's a nice retrospective if it were true,
A weakening of US leadership and its alliances would have profound global consequences, he said.
Everyone else could take a deep breath for a moment.
“If the US doesn’t lead in developing those structures that can advance our diplomatic, our economic, our intelligence, and our security interests, somebody else will lead in doing that, and there are really only two candidates right now that would step up to take a leadership role in that regard,” Dunford said.
I'm not sure it's an either/or situation; however, maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.
“One is Russia and the other is China, and so the question I would ask is, which of those two countries do you think ought to be helping to establish the international laws, norms, and standards of the future?”
Not the models I had in mind, but it might it might be better than the genocidal reign of globalist Gates & Co.
You get a Lil Road and safe vaccine out of it anyway.
Dunford described China as “the most formidable adversary we will face” in the years ahead, an emboldened military power that is increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea and exhibiting a “might makes right” mindset.
“We shouldn’t look at this as an inevitable cold war. That’s not the picture I’m painting,” he said, “but what I do believe is that our military capabilities and our ability to demonstrate our alliance commitments will certainly be deterring to China in the region.”
Who will deter us, and the mindset he describes is one that dominates U.S. policy planning circles and the military.
China’s confidence and aggressiveness, particularly considering US and Chinese forces often operate in close proximity, “can result in a dangerous miscalculation, and I think that’s what most leaders are concerned about now ― more a miscalculation than a conscious decision to go to war,” Dunford said.
“You could easily drift into a crisis that could lead to a conflict, and we ought to be doing all we can do to mitigate that risk,” he said.
Stop sailing in their waters and flying in their airspace.
Dunford checked off a long list of other concerns, including Russia’s continued interference in US elections, the assumption that North Korea has an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the US mainland, and the combustible remnants of extremism in the Middle East and South Asia.
“I think violent extremism in some form is going to be with us for a long time,” he said. “Some people call it a generational problem. We called it a generational problem a generation ago, and it’s still with us.”
Yeah, the $elf-$erving "terrorists" will always be there lurking in the background like COVID.
Pardon me for the bad pun, but that narrative has blown up since that morning 19 years ago.
Whatever you believe of that morning, the official story has dissolved into dust like a WTC tower.
Dunford, who retired last Sept. 30, no longer is directly concerned with the country’s 1.3 million active-duty service members as part of his day-to-day portfolio, but after more than four decades in the military, he shares a bond with them that is unbreakable.
On this day, a former Marine-turned-contractor stopped by the house to check on the air-conditioning system, and there they were, the veteran and the retired Joint Chiefs chair, swapping memories of the Marine Corps.
Later, Dunford was asked if he can stop thinking about the challenges facing the United States, whether it’s possible as a civilian to set aside the full extent of the security concerns known to the Joint Chiefs chairman and few others.
“That’s an easy question to answer: No I can’t, because I care,” Dunford said, looking straight ahead, unflinching.
“I care about the world I’m going to live in. Your role changes, but you never stop caring. I care about the future of our country. Long after I’m gone.”
We all do, sir!
--more--"
Sorry, I'm not going to salute him nor this guy:
"Murder convict receives state’s first commutation hearing in six years" by Shelley Murphy Globe Staff, August 31, 2020
Thomas Koonce was a 20-year-old Marine home on leave in July 1987 when a night out with friends turned violent. A fight at a nightclub between rival groups from Brockton and New Bedford quickly escalated as it spilled into the streets.
Koonce was in a car trying to escape an angry crowd wielding bats when he stuck his gun out the window and fired a single shot, killing 24-year-old Mark Santos, according to trial testimony. Koonce told police he feared for his life and fired in self-defense, meaning to scare off the crowd with a warning shot. He said he accidentally killed Santos and rejected a deal by prosecutors that would have allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter and serve five to 10 years in prison.
I guess things haven't changed much after all, and the COVID shutdown of bars eliminated this kind of thing.
In 1992, an all-white jury convicted Koonce, who is Black, of first-degree murder, resulting in a mandatory sentence of life without parole. A decade ago, the trial prosecutor unsuccessfully urged the Massachusetts Parole Board to reduce that sentence, saying he believed it was unjust because the evidence didn’t support deliberate premeditation by Koonce.
He absolutely must have been innocent then.
Now, after 28 years in prison, Koonce has a chance at freedom, the first Massachusetts inmate to be granted a commutation hearing in six years.
“It certainly is a blessing,” Koonce, 53, said in a phone interview from MCI-Norfolk. “I’m not that same 20-year-old that committed that crime in 1987.”
I believe he has been redeemed, although I am concerned about the composition of the board.
Is it all white?
The Parole Board’s decision to grant the hearing follows sharp criticism from criminal justice reform groups for letting commutation and pardon petitions languish for years, effectively closing off a path to clemency for inmates who may have been sentenced too harshly or have been rehabilitated.
In August, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a national campaign to have 50,000 prisoners released over the next five years through clemency, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently urged Governor Charlie Baker’s administration to consider commutations and pardons for deserving inmates “to mitigate the spread of COVID-19″ in the state’s prison system.
“I’m a huge believer in second chances in life,” said Terrence Kennedy, a member of the Governor’s Council who has been pressuring the Parole Board and the Baker administration to resume pardon and commutation hearings.
Yeah, let's put more rapists and convicts back on the streets -- to make room for the social distance violators and those disobedient to tyranny.
Just one Massachusetts inmate has been granted a commutation over the past 23 years, a record of inaction that Kennedy called “outrageous.” Baker’s predecessor, Governor Deval Patrick, granted only one commutation and four pardons.
“The whole commutation-pardon system exists for a reason,” Kennedy said. “When they turn their lives around and do the right things they should have a meaningful opportunity to have a second chance.”
Something the person he killed doesn't have.
Massachusetts stands in stark contrast to a number of other states where governors have routinely commuted sentences as part of a national trend to reduce mass incarceration, according to Michael Meltsner, a Northeastern University Law School professor. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the sentences of 21 inmates, then in June he commuted another 21. More than half of them were convicted of homicides. In Oklahoma, which was then the state with the nation’s highest incarceration rate, 527 people convicted of low-level drug and nonviolent offenses were granted commutations on a single day in November.
Once again, we are last in something -- although this governor has enough power and doesn't need any more.
In May, the Massachusetts Parole Board notified those with pending clemency petitions that they could update them in light of new guidelines Baker approved in February.
Commutations are “an extraordinary remedy“ and are “intended to serve as a strong motivation for confined persons to utilize available resources for self-development and self-improvement as an incentive for them to become law-abiding citizens and return to society,” the guidelines state, but Virginia Santos said she and her family have never recovered from the death of her son, Mark, and she opposes his petition for commutation, yet the prosecutor who won Koonce’s conviction testified during a 2010 commutation hearing that the case bothered his conscience because he didn’t believe the evidence supported a first-degree murder conviction. “I cannot be silent when I helped bring about the conviction of a man for the wrong crime, a verdict that went too far,” John Moses wrote to the Parole Board after testifying.
Isn't the verdict the judge's jurisdiction?
If he had a problem, he should never have brought the case.
I'm sure race wasn't a factor.
Moses, who has since died, said the evidence did not support premeditation by Koonce and was more consistent with second-degree murder, which would have allowed him to become eligible for parole after 15 years. He also said he was concerned that Koonce did not receive a fair trial because his lawyer failed to question prospective jurors about racial bias, even though he had done so at the first trial.
The Parole Board rejected Koonce’s commutation bid a decade ago, writing that he had made significant strides in prison but his efforts “focused on helping others rather than addressing the underlying causes of his own criminal conduct.”
Since then, Koonce said he has done everything the board asked him to do and accepts full responsibility for his crime.
Through a spokesman, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said he is reviewing the case to decide whether he will oppose Koonce’s current petition.
Several months before Koonce was sentenced to life in prison, he fathered a son, Thomas Andrews, who is now 28 and works as a marketing and branding consultant in Atlanta. He said his father has inspired him by never giving up on himself or their relationship.
“That night was a tragic mistake,” Andrews said.
He said his father has taught him that “a single moment can change the rest of your life, but also you have the power to be accountable, to take responsibility and find ways to really give back in a way that’s meaningful.”
I'm not saying he shouldn't be released, but can he bring the dead back to life?
--more--"
Related:
"The Navajo Nation has joined calls for an accounting of the deaths at Fort Hood after one of its members became the latest soldier from the U.S. Army post to die this year. Pvt. Corlton L. Chee, a 25-year-old soldier from Pinehill, New Mexico, died Wednesday after he collapsed following a physical fitness training exercise five days earlier, according to officials at the central Texas post. He was the 28th soldier from Fort Hood to die this year, according to data obtained by The Associated Press. The Navajo Nation Council praised Chee in a statement Friday and urged the Army to thoroughly investigate his and the other soldiers’ deaths. “We are deeply disturbed by the string of deaths at Fort Hood, and if there is any malfeasance or negligence involved, the Navajo Nation calls on our national leaders to pursue every available avenue to protect the lives of our Navajo warriors and those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces,” Speaker of the Council Seth Damon said....."
Even the Globe is asking questions about what is going on down there, as we flip above the fold for the Globe's most important concern:
"Presidential campaigns are set to move into high gear for final stretch after Labor Day" by Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman New York Times, September 6, 2020
A presidential campaign long muffled by the coronavirus pandemic will burst into a newly intense and public phase after Labor Day, as Joe Biden moves aggressively to defend his polling lead against a ferocious onslaught by President Donald Trump aimed chiefly at white voters in the Midwest.
At least he hasn't started any new wars yet!
Private polls conducted for both parties during and after their August conventions found the race largely stable but tightening slightly in some states, with Trump recovering some support from conservative-leaning rural voters who had drifted away over the summer amid the worsening pandemic, yet Biden continues to enjoy advantages with nearly every other group, especially in populous areas where the virus remains at the forefront for voters, according to people briefed on the data.
That means Trump got the convention bounce that Biden did not, and probably because it was somewhat normal and not that bizarre virtual event held by Democrats.
Related:
Trump approval surges to 52% - Black voter approval jumps to 45% in race against Joe Biden
I guess the Times didn't see the Rasmussen polls as the entire population is starting to see through the veil of lies and deceit by the pre$$.
No president has entered Labor Day weekend — the traditional kickoff of the fall campaign — as such a clear underdog since George H.W. Bush in 1992. Trump has not led in public polls in such must-win states as Florida since Biden claimed the nomination in April, and there has been little fluctuation in the race. Still, the president’s surprise win in 2016 weighs heavily in the thinking of nervous Democrats and hopeful Republicans alike.
They must be hallucinating, huh?
Trump’s effort to revive his candidacy by blaming Biden’s party for scenes of looting and arson in American cities has jolted Biden into a more proactive posture, one that some Democrats have long urged him to adopt.
I had to stop reading at that point because of the BLATANT LIE by the NYT!
They would have been happy to keep him in the basement until after election day, but the city-sacking protests caused a slide in support so now the tottering old fool has to get out there!
Both parties see Trump with a narrow path to reelection that runs through heavily white states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, where his strategy of racial division could help him catch Biden, yet the president is also on defense in diverse Southern and Western states he carried in 2016, including Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.
I actually think he is going to win in an overwhelming landslide, taking the popular vote as well as nearly 400 electoral votes.
It is going to be one hell of a surprise when New York goes red!
Two Republican former governors, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, said that Biden had entered the fall with slight advantages in their states but that the race could easily turn.
Already has.
A consistent challenge for Trump has been his unwillingness, or inability, to drive a focused political message rather than becoming engulfed in less favorable debates, like his ongoing tirade against a report that he belittled American service members.
That set-up fake was brought to us by the Atlantic's Goldberg, who pushed all the Iraq WMD crap back in 2002-2003 and got on Fox last week because of this latest pile.
Biden is slated to visit Pennsylvania on Monday and Michigan on Wednesday, his third and fourth trips to critical swing states since last week, when he traveled to Pittsburgh for a speech rebutting Trump’s attacks and then to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to meet with the family of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot by police, and with others.
Now he is running all over the place!
Morgan Jackson, a top adviser to Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, said his surveys after the conventions indicated that Biden had a steady, if modest, advantage in the state and that the small number of swing voters were chiefly concerned about the pandemic.
“Charlotte is not burning,” Jackson said. “That’s a conversation taking place on Fox News but nowhere in reality here.”
Isn't that where the RNC was?
Very little protest there, huh?
Hmmmm.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the former Democratic presidential candidate, said Biden had so far struck the right chord for a Midwestern audience.
“Joe Biden’s words in Pittsburgh — that he both supports police reform and condemns lawless looting — were exactly what people needed to hear in Minnesota and across the country,” she said.
The pre$$ treats her as if she is the sole personification of the Midwest!
If that were so, she would be the nominee, not the old man.
The best chance for Trump, Republicans say, is to drive at a singular message linking Biden to the far left.
“He has to continue focusing on the network of anti-American lawlessness,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said of Trump, urging him to “emphasize American patriotism and history versus the left’s anti-Americanism” and to “turn Biden into McGovern.”
Trump’s campaign advisers maintain that their private surveys are more encouraging than public polling, but while Trump’s swerve toward a strident law-and-order message has helped him consolidate conservative support, his rhetoric about rioting in a handful of cities does not appear to have swayed moderates, strategists in both parties said.
That is a serious problem for the president, given the lack of significant third-party candidates in 2020, which raises the pressure on Trump to win over new voters.
????
Where there last time?
Jill Stein?
She certainly didn't cost Clinton with her paucity of votes.
Gary Johnson?
His 4% would have gone to Trump and he would have won the popular vote!
It's Biden who needs the third party to steal votes from Trump!
In his campaign’s data, Trump is leading Biden on the issue of the economy, though at least one senior official has cautioned that the president should not take too much encouragement from that; some Democratic and independent voters, the official said, see Trump as strong on the issue but still plan to vote for Biden.
Liesl Hickey, a Republican strategist who has been conducting extensive research on suburban voters, said the pandemic remained their central concern.
“The virus is still the most important issue for voters,” Hickey said. “Their lives are still disrupted. Schools are closed; businesses are closed.”
They know it's not Trump's fault, either, and she just confessed to the political motivations behind all the tyrannical governors.
Looks like COVID vanishes in November no matter what, as its political usefulness will be weakened and diminished after that.
Allies of Trump believe there is virtually no chance that he can win the popular vote, and they have seen some states on his victorious 2016 map shift markedly away from them. They are particularly pessimistic about Michigan, which Trump narrowly won four years ago, and are looking to flip Nevada, which has many white voters without college degrees, and especially Minnesota, the state he lost by the closest margin four years ago and the site of weeks of unrest following the police killing of George Floyd.
We were told there was virtually no chance he would win the presidency four years ago by the very same scribes, so.... grain of salt, please.
“There is no question that Joe Biden has to earn Minnesotans’ votes, that he has to explain why the chaos of today is going to be replaced with the calm he is proposing,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat who in 2018 captured a historically Republican seat in the suburbs.
Phillips said he had shared that view with the Biden campaign and expected the former vice president to visit his state soon, yet even as Trump attempts to win over states that were once reliably blue, he is also imperiled in traditionally red-tinted states that have been hit hard by the pandemic, like Florida and Arizona. A Trump strategy that is aimed at driving racial polarization in the Midwest could backfire in more heterogeneous states in the South and West.
With those dynamics in mind, at least two pro-Biden groups have approached Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former presidential candidate, about the possibility of funding an enormous blitz against Trump in Florida, arguing that delivering the state’s 29 Electoral College votes to Biden would effectively end the election. Trump’s weakness with older voters has made him acutely vulnerable in a state where affluent retirees have been a cornerstone of the Republican coalition, but aides to Bloomberg have so far demurred, explaining that the former New York City mayor has not approved any plans for spending money in the presidential race, people involved in the conversation said.
What?
$aid he would do all he could to defeat Trump, the man who tripled his wealth the last four years -- or was it all a mirage?
Still, the possibility of a knockout in the Sun Belt is enticing to Democrats, particularly as surveys from both parties continue to show Trump at risk in red-tinted states like Georgia. Sam Park, a Georgia Democratic state legislator who spoke at Biden’s convention, said the campaign had signaled that it planned to contest the state seriously in the final two months of the race, the first time a Democrat has done so this century. “If folks in Georgia turn out, Georgia turns blue,” Park argued, “and we see that opportunity, particularly given how diverse this state is.”
Only if they steal it.
Many Democrats in battleground states are anxious to see Biden visit in person — particularly in Wisconsin, where Hillary Clinton’s 2016 absence lives in political infamy.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said he had “been promised Biden several more times” after the Kenosha trip. He said Republican attacks on Biden’s limited travel had penetrated with some voters.
“I’ve heard some people who don’t live and breathe politics saying, ‘Oh, looks like Democrats aren’t going to come out again,’” he recalled.
Democrats in several states said Biden’s team was also weighing how to deploy campaign organizers in the field in the midst of a public-health crisis. One option under discussion is to send canvassers on door-drop assignments, delivering pamphlets but not engaging in extended conversation with voters. Trump’s campaign has been making door-to-door forays for some time, despite the virus.
An invisible campaign for an invisible candidate!
That's no way to win office!
The Trump campaign is expected to increase television spending next week, but several Republicans said that Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager since July, was taking a cautious approach after the former leadership spent huge sums on television and digital ads earlier this year, to no discernible effect. The light television spending and advertising blackouts in some key states have mystified allies, raising questions about how much cash the campaign has in the bank.
They don't need the TV time. People are woke.
Stepien said in a brief interview that a surgical approach to television ads was the right move for now, focusing on states where early and absentee voting are starting. Other campaign officials said that little was breaking through the clutter of news right now and that that would give them time to gauge the post-convention landscape.
“We should not be applying a 2004 media strategy to a 2020 campaign,” Stepien said, stressing the unique circumstances of the current race.....
It's all about COVID!
--more--"
The article originally appeared in The New York Times, who is also promoting Michael Cohen's book.
One can see Trump winning hugely and across the board as the Globe screams that Democracy is under siege and they need to protect the election!
Then they got this mail-in ballot:
"Re “A nervous edge as race hits final lap: Echoes of 2016 sound over the campaign as Trump, Biden set closing strategies” (Page A1, Aug. 30): The article by Jim Puzzanghera encapsulates — and perpetuates — the left’s misguided worldview in general and, more particularly, its jaw-dropping cluelessness about the role and contribution of Donald Trump in the world today. It would seem by now, especially after the Republican National Convention, that even coastal elites would recognize that, like it or not, Trump has a massive, impassioned, and fiercely devoted following. This following is growing steadily because it recognizes and sincerely appreciates the president’s many genuine accomplishments and the way they benefit the people of the United States. Contrary to what Puzzanghera wrote, most Americans I know believe Trump has handled both the civil unrest and the pandemic well, not “poorly,” and if anyone believes these issues add up to Trump’s being “toast” in November, they have got another shock coming. Just as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Joe Biden is setting up the left for a crushing defeat. Donald Trump will be reelected....."
Thanks to the New Breed of voter who will show up:
"Tuesday’s New Hampshire state primary will feature a handful of competitive races, where the winner will advance only to lose badly to an incumbent of the other party in the general election. Regardless of who they end up facing in November, four incumbents — Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican; Representatives Chris Pappas and Annie Kuster; and US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, all Democrats — are on track for comfortable victories, but there’s still drama in the Granite State. The New Hampshire primary provides the starkest New England test of Republican feelings toward President Trump this year. Trump has made himself a titillating subplot in the Republican primaries for Senate and in the First Congressional District...."
I think New Hampshire flips red this year (in a free and fair election, anyway).
Heck, the Democrats are already complaining like losers:
"Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris says foreign interference, doubt cast about the election by President Donald Trump and voter suppression could potentially cost her and Joe Biden the White House in November. “I am a realist about it. Joe is a realist about it," the California senator said during an interview with CNN's “State of the Union” that aired Sunday. The 2020 election will be the first U.S. election in over a century to be conducted during a pandemic, which is expected to lead to a massive surge in mail voting. Trump has repeatedly railed against mail balloting, which he says without offering proof will lead to widespread voter fraud, and for the first time in decades, both parties will be able to closely scrutinize who casts ballots due to a recent court ruling that wiped out tighter restrictions on poll monitoring. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russia is once again attempting to interfere in the election by amplifying discord in the country. That all adds up to a volatile environment that Harris says could alter the outcome. “We have classic voter suppression, we have what happened in 2016, which is foreign interference. We have a president who is trying to convince the American people not to believe in the integrity of our election system and compromise their belief that their vote might actually count,” Harris said. “These things are all at play.”
Continuing to repeat that ridiculous and discredited assertion is not helping them!
If the Russians really wanted to interfere they would start filling out mail-in ballots for Trump that the officials counting votes could then throw out.
"When Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, she blamed Russian interference and the former F.B.I. director James Comey's eleventh-hour resurrection of her emails for her defeat, but she also lashed out at something that got far fewer headlines: the Democratic National Committee's failure to keep up with Republicans in the data arms race. Now, the party has started the Democratic Data Exchange, a legally independent entity that allows campaigns, state parties, super PACs and other independent groups that are forbidden to coordinate with each other to share information on individual voters. Democratic officials involved in the new data program say the system will help them narrow what had been a yawning gap between their party and Republicans, who started a similar independent data operation ahead of the 2016 election....."
Obama left her that wonderful web operation and she blew it, and now we are told the Democrats are once again late out of the starting gate as fraud efforts are ramped up, and we all know the election will be decided by the increasingly-conservative Latinos:
"Why sign up to take an experimental vaccine? Participants in coronavirus trials say they have a mission" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, September 6, 2020
WORCESTER — The prospect of a coronavirus vaccine has stirred fevered discussion among experts and pundits: whether an effective vaccine can be identified before a second wave of illness hits; whether political pressure will lead to premature approval; whether the public will accept the vaccine, but it’s easy to forget that, first, it comes down to whether people like Gina Plata-Nino, a staff attorney at the Central West Justice Center, a legal services organization, will roll up their sleeves and accept an experimental shot.
The Globe is pu$hing the jab, of cour$e, and it's enough to make one howl in protest.
Three prospective coronavirus vaccines have entered the late-stage clinical trials in the United States, each enrolling 30,000 people. Earlier studies, involving much smaller numbers of people, found that the vaccines appeared safe and likely to work.
In the late-stage studies, half the participants get the vaccine and half get a placebo. Then they go about their daily lives, and researchers will see if those injected with the vaccine are significantly less likely to get infected than those who received a placebo. Crucially, they’re also watching for uncommon side effects that may emerge when a medication is given to a large number of people.
UMass is among 120 medical centers testing a vaccine made by Pfizer and the German company BioNTech. Boston Medical Center is also participating in the Pfizer trial. Additionally, Cambridge-based Moderna has been testing its vaccine at about 90 centers nationwide, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and AstraZeneca has recently started enrolling participants in testing its vaccine, with Fenway Health in Boston participating.
Our medical $aviors in the race for a vaccine!
Like the women at UMass, participants in the Pfizer trial at Boston Medical Center expressed altruistic motivations.
Jay Eaves heard about the study from his mother, a nurse in the infectious diseases group at BMC. Eaves, 42, who works for a company that transports animals used in research, knows two people who got sick with COVID-19. “I know this is something essential,” he said.
Aria Pearlman Morales, a 24-year-old medical student who hopes to go into research, got her second shot at Boston Medical Center on Friday. “I wanted to do my part, be of service to the greater community,” Morales said. ”Hopefully, as a future clinical scientist I hope to one day enroll my own patients [in research]. I wanted to experience what it would be like from the other side.”
For the Latina women in Worcester, the quick, anticlimactic injection followed a long morning of listening to a doctor describe the study, answering questions about their health, filling out forms, watching instructional videos, and having noses swabbed and blood drawn.
After 21 days, they will have to return for a second dose, and will come back for up to four additional clinic visits. For the next two years, they are asked to fill out a weekly diary of symptoms and report immediately if they have any symptoms resembling COVID-19. Participants also will receive stipends of $200 for each of the two injections and $150 for each follow-up visit.
That's all?
Since the trial started at UMass two weeks ago, 58 people have received their first shot, and the researchers expect to enroll 120 by the end of this week.
“I would not voluntarily sign up for this type of thing if it weren’t for the circumstances we’re in,” said Plata-Nino, the Worcester attorney, who is in her mid-30s. “I’m not a fan of needles,” but she was persuaded by Dr. Robert W. Finberg, the leader of the UMass study, and Dr. Matilde “Mattie” Castiel, Worcester’s commissioner of health and human services.
Both were concerned about the startling inequities revealed by the pandemic: Compared to whites, Latinos in Worcester are three times more likely to get COVID-19 and Blacks more than twice as likely, Castiel said. In March, UMass and the city created a health equity task force to research minority communities and teach them about COVID-19 and how to avoid it.
(Blog author simply shakes his head)
Finberg asked the group for help making sure that Latinos were represented in the study, and Castiel pushed its members to sign up.
Hilda Ramirez, 56, executive director of the Latino Education Institute at Worcester State University, was one of those pushed. She was reluctant.
“Anything like this is a little scary,” Ramirez said. “You’re going to get a vaccine where it’s not quite known what’s going to happen to your body,” but she, too, was sitting in an exam room at UMass Friday, grimacing as a nurse drew blood and swabbed her nose. “Mattie just told us we have to come,” she said. How did Castiel persuade her? By agreeing to do the same.
“There are numerous people from communities of color who do not feel comfortable with vaccinations,” Castiel said, and for good reason: Most are familiar with abuses of the past, from the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study, which documented the progress of syphilis in Black men without treating it, to the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women.
Castiel, 65, said she wanted to be able to say, “I’m Latina. Hey, I’m going to do the vaccination.”
Now she can say that. Sort of.
“Oh, that was the saline!” Castiel said when Bethany Trainor, a research nurse, gave her the injection. “You gave me saline. It felt like there was nothing in there.”
Sigh.
They don't even know what they are getting as they line up for slaughter, although I suspect the test subjects are being inoculated with dummy vaccines with no effects. The studies will then claim success on the antibodies and awaaaaaay we go!
Trainor said many participants find the shot easy to take, and there’s really no way for recipients to tell whether the injection is a placebo or a potential vaccine.
Castiel acknowledged the risks of taking an experimental medication, but considers them small — and worth it. “For the good of the community,” she said, “I’m going to take it.”
Is that one of the Yale brainwashing tools to turn public opinion and guilt everyone into a shot?
It sounds great, but when you get past the platitudes and catch-phrasing, it's a hell.
--more--"
Really burns me up:
"California has seen 900 wildfires since Aug. 15, many of them started by an intense series of thousands of lightning strikes. The blazes have burned more than 1.5 million acres (2,343 square miles). There have been eight fire deaths and nearly 3,300 structures destroyed....."
More like laser strikes, as the fires displace residents.
Where the election will be decided, and why:
"Spending cuts to schools, childhood vaccinations and job-training programs. New taxes on millionaires, cigarettes and legalized marijuana. Borrowing, drawing from rainy day funds and reducing government workers' pay. These are some actions states are considering to shore up their finances amid a sharp drop in tax revenue caused by the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. With Congress deadlocked for months on a new coronavirus relief package, many states haven't had the luxury of waiting to see whether more money is on the way. Some that have delayed budget decisions are growing frustrated by the uncertainty. As the U.S. Senate returns to session Tuesday, some governors and state lawmakers are again urging action on proposals that could provide hundreds of billions of additional dollars to states and local governments. "There is a lot at stake in the next federal stimulus package and, if it's done wrong, I think it could be catastrophic for California," said Assemblyman Phil Ting, a Democrat from San Francisco and chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. The budget that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in June includes $11.1 billion in automatic spending cuts and deferrals that will kick in Oct. 15, unless Congress sends the state $14 billion in additional aid. California's public schools, colleges, universities and state workers' salaries all stand to be hit. In Michigan, schools are grappling with uncertainty as they begin classes because the state lacks a budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Congress approved $150 billion for states and local governments in March. That money was targeted to cover coronavirus-related costs, not to offset declining revenue resulting from the recession. Some state officials, such as Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana, are pushing for greater flexibility in spending the money they already received. Others, such as Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, say more federal aid is needed, especially to help small businesses and emergency responders working for municipalities with strained budgets. The prospects for a pre-election COVID-19 relief measure appear to be dimming, with aid to states and local governments one of the key areas of conflict....."
The American public has already fixed blame for the deadlock, and it is clearly because of Democrats who view the suffering of the American people as a political boon.
All we know is Democrats blocked further aid checks in an extortion attempt at getting their whole agenda through while continuing onerous and oppressive lockdowns that have destroyed livelihoods.
Forget that the debt will soon exceed size of entire economy (we are fini$hed as a country, folks), as long as the political imagery and illusion can get them to November.
