Just picking at what the Globe has to offer, and with each passing day I find myself with less of an appetite:
It's 1,000 COVID-19 deaths as Massachusetts has suffered some of the highest death rates in the country from the coronavirus, partly because a wave of infections tore through nursing homes across the state early in the pandemic.
I would just like to note that the wave of infections in nursing homes was because the criminal tyrant, 'er, governor, who was on TV as I was typing, sent sick people there.
Speaking or criminal chief executives (or soon to be anyway):
With the pace of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout lagging the timetable US and Massachusetts officials laid out only weeks ago, some prominent public health leaders are criticizing what they say is poor planning and a lack of urgency by government leaders.
That's government all over and sure doesn't assure one regarding the product; however, I've learned to take the dekes and deceptions of my agenda-pu$hing pre$$ with a grain of salt. They want us to relax and breathes would a boa constrictor.
(below fold)
He is under pressure to act and the move was just the beginning of a saga that is likely to engulf the Senate for the rest of the week, according to the Wa$hington Compo$t, so I will leave that for another day even as it boosts Biden and shows a potential path for his agenda in Congress, which will give him some breathing room when he enters the White House next month, according to Carl Hulse of the New York Times.
He is in line to become Massachusetts Speaker of the House after DeLeo announced his resignation, although there is a dark-horse candidate who could pull an upset.
The Globe says Beacon Hill needs to get its act together and pass the economic development bill on this, the 50th anniversary of the EPA.
The Globe already got mine, but there are a few rules you must abide by (of course) before you’re allowed the privilege of letting them devour your tree at a handful of farms around Massachusetts.
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The page A2 lead:
"Biden said he would invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of coronavirus vaccines. The law, enacted in 1950, gives the president the power to compel companies to produce and distribute supplies. Biden said Trump’s vaccine distribution efforts were falling far behind what had been promised and said he would ’'move heaven and earth’' to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic, but he also warned Americans that the worst of the coronavirus assault — ’'maybe the toughest of this entire pandemic’'— remained ahead of them, despite early rounds of vaccinations underway....."
I'm so sick of being threatened with this f**king hoax, even with a possible bioweapon variant out there.
The directly below co-lead:
The Wa$hington Compo$t says FTI Consulting is looking for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and will advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks.
I don't see any jail time there, do you?
The briefs:
Here is something even more earth-shaking:
"The United States sold the ambassador’s residence in Israel for more than $67 million in July, according to an official Israeli record of the sale that shines new light on a transaction that has been shrouded in secrecy. The State Department confirmed the sale in September but refused to identify the buyer or disclose the sale price of the sprawling beachfront compound in the upscale Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. On Tuesday, it said the sale had been “open and transparent.” The Israeli business newspaper Globes has identified the buyer as the U.S. casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a strong supporter of both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A representative of Adelson said the billionaire had no comment. Congressional aides told The Associated Press in September that lawmakers in the House and Senate were looking into whether the sale of the residence complied with regulations. The sale helped to cement Trump’s controversial decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem in 2018 and to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. By selling the residence, it would make it harder for future presidents to reverse the decision to move the embassy..... "
Yeah, President-elect Biden has criticized the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem but says he will not reverse it, and the symbolism regarding Adelson's hold on American politics (cheated out by the unholy and criminal Democratic trinity and Deep $tate) can't be immunized or walked back (btw, the Israelis gave the Palestinians in Gaza their usual holiday gift and did you see who will be his neighbor).
Meanwhile, a vote to legalize abortion in Argentina was balanced on a knife’s edge, according to the New York Times, before they plunged it in.
The New York Times said it more than doubled, but it was the exact same number in 2018.
Look, I'm sorry some of them lost their lives but considering all the death they have brought with their own lies, the self-serving whining for an occupational hazard has grown lame
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Page A4 leads with the Globe's Political Notebook:
The Wa$hington Compo$t says he did not single out any Republican leaders by name, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, appeared to be among those he was targeting.
It's Biden’s, not Trump’s.
Who would want to ruin Christmas in such a way?
Seasonal flu, 'er, COVID is its first big test as safety net, according to the New York Times, despite being around the past ten years during cold a flu season.
COVID-19 has never been isolated, folks, and now we are told it has mutated like all coronaviruses.
I'm sick of the slop they constantly serve out these days, sorry.
The article by Katie Benner of the New York Times, says:
"The orchestrated farewell was a reflection of how Barr navigated his tenure running a Justice Department for a president who viewed it as hostile toward him, but Barr also showed flashes of autonomy at the end of his tenure. His reversal on voter fraud broke from the president. He said he saw no need for a special counsel to investigate President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter as Trump clamored for one, and Barr even acknowledged that some of his suspicions about the Obama administration’s examination of Russian election interference were misguided. Historians will debate whether Barr, 70, was trying to preserve his reputation. Already a polarizing figure, he had faced a new groundswell of criticism in recent weeks for easing restrictions on election-related investigations as Trump ramped up his complaints about voting irregularities and for ensuring that the department’s examination of the Russia investigation continues into the Biden administration. Barr’s allies say he simply followed his instincts, honed by his maximalist view of executive power, and was untroubled by perceptions that he was serving Trump’s personal agenda. Either way, an examination of Barr’s tenure, based on interviews with allies, critics, current and former law enforcement officials, and academics shows that no matter what Barr says or does, Trump will ultimately define his legacy as attorney general....."
Oh, how quickly they forget about Barr after he undercut and blocked Trump at every turn, and as for Trump's increasingly lame attempts to right the wrong of a stolen election as he anxiously awaits the list of lawmakers who support his effort (106 House Republicans back him ) and the Supreme Court sends mixed signals on his chances with his supporters threatening violence after they unanimously ruled that three Muslim men may seek monetary damages from the government agents they say placed them on a no-fly list because they refused to become FBI informants (now you know where the "terrorists" come from!).
He has been left targeting voting by mail as a federal judge in Arizona blasted his fraud claim and the high court all but ended his long-shot legal efforts to overturn election, according to Adam Liptak of the The New York Times. He expected to prevail after rushing the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in October, but was roundly rejected by all but Thomas and Alito.
They ruled against him in Wisconsin and in Alaska and basically killed his chances even after thousands of supporters returned to Washington for rallies to back his desperate efforts to subvert the election that he lost to Joe Biden and cheered for him as he flew overhead on his way out of town for the Army-Navy football game -- an event that was reminiscent of cross burnings!!
The long-shot effort is in the hands of Pence after the electoral college vote from an election that was as clean as a whistle (we all knew who was going to win Massachusetts) and that affirmed Biden as victor with leading Republicans calling him president-elect for the first time, essentially abandoning Trump’s assault on the outcome after the electoral college vote in a bid to counter Trump’s attempts to overturn the results with false claims that the election results are somehow in doubt.
So what is Trump’s endgame, or does he just retire to Mar-a-Lago?
The intrigue borders on the ridiculous, as he has plenty of cash in the bank. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up back on TV with some high-profile gig or monument erected to himself after weighing naming an election conspiracy theorist as a special counsel (a consideration that sent shock waves through the president’s circle). He's already channeling Grover Cleveland, according to theWa$hington Compo$t, in a long-shot effort to reverse Biden’s victory and block the transition but then again, he is no Lincoln, either.
The Globe says Trump attorneys must face disciplinary action for the baseless lawsuits sabotaging Americans’ faith in the election system and in democracy itself (remember Conyers thundering at Rove during Attorneygate?) as Joe Kennedy delivered his farewell speech on House floor and hopes to follow in his granduncle's footsteps and fill those shoes and maybe even run for president someday -- something that Louisiana congressman-elect Luke Letlow will never be able to do, and oddly enough, the newly elected N.H. Speaker of the House died unexpectedly from, you guessed it, COVID-19.
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Page A5:
The Wa$hington Compo$t says "the United States has invested billions of dollars in Somalia over the past decade, in part to build and train Danab, the only effective, apolitical fighting unit in the country’s war against Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab. Now, with hundreds of the US troops who trained them leaving Somalia under orders from the Trump administration, current and former Danab officers are fearful that diminished American supervision will leave the elite division vulnerable to political interference from Somalia’s government, which is embroiled in a bitterly disputed election scheduled for February. Somalia continues to weather thousands of Al Shabab attacks big and small every year. While the US military ramped up a drone campaign in recent years — which it says will continue despite troops being ’'repositioned’' to neighboring Kenya and Djibouti and allegations that the campaign has killed dozens of civilians — Al Shabab still controls the majority of Somalia’s rural interior and runs an extensive tax racket that keeps it well funded....."
For those not in the know, the proper spelling and pronunciation is Al-CIA-Duh and Al-CIA-Bob.
The AP says the new accusations are a sign of Putin’s despair (ha-ha-ha), and they claim there was a secret Russian spy unit with expertise in poisonous substances trailing him and near when he was poisoned, with one official even confessing to a plot to poison him, according to Anton Troianovski of the New York Times, a top associate of Navalny in what echoes the Skripal fiasco from a few years back.
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Page A8:
"The first reported US case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado, Governor Jared Polis said Tuesday. It was found in a man in his 20s who is in isolation near Denver and has no travel history, state health officials said. Scientists in the United Kingdom believe the variant is more contagious than previous strains of SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines being given now are thought to be effective against the variant, Colorado officials said. Public health officials are investigating other potential cases and tracing contacts to gauge the spread of the variant in Colorado. “There is a lot we don’t know . . . but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious,” Polis noted. “The health and safety of Coloradans is our top priority.” Polis and state health officials were expected to address the public Wednesday. The discovery of the variant lead the CDC to issue new rules on Christmas Day for travelers arriving from the United Kingdom, requiring them to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test."
As per the script, and no word on weather it is more deadly or just season flu.
Nevertheless, the travel restrictions are being implemented.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts the United States will see 400,000 coronavirus deaths by Jan. 20, the day President Trump is to leave office. The country surpassed 100,000 deaths in May and 200,000 four months later. It passed 300,000 in three months, and 400,000 looks set to take just one month, the CDC determined, using a collection of mathematical models. The United States has one of the highest mortality ratios, behind only Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The predicted pace would mean an additional 65,000 deaths in coming weeks. The numbers are a reminder of the increasing speed with which the virus claims lives, underscoring the urgency of vaccination efforts. Weekly deaths are predicted to rise through Jan. 16, even though national case numbers have been falling for two weeks amid patchy holiday reporting....."
Well, there were supposed to be 2 MILLION dead Americans by now according to the damn models that shut us down, and only 6% of those deaths are COVID specific.
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Page A12:
"The coronavirus pandemic might not be the ’'big one’' that experts have long feared, a World Health Organization official warned Tuesday during the global health agency’s last virtual media briefing of the year. Since the first reports of the novel coronavirus began circulating nearly a year ago, the WHO has repeatedly warned that the world must prepare for even deadlier pandemics in the future. ’'This pandemic has been very severe,’' WHO emergencies chief Mark Ryan said. ’'It has affected every corner of this planet, but this is not necessarily the big one.’' The coronavirus, he said, should serve as a ’'wake-up call.’' ’'These threats will continue,’' he said. ’'One thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together. We need to honor those we’ve lost by getting better at what we do every day.’' After the novel coronavirus emerged in China late last year, 2020 is coming to an end amid the rollout of new coronavirus vaccines. Case numbers are rising in some places, public health experts are warning about a highly transmissible variant of the virus first detected in the United Kingdom in September and since documented in more than 20 countries. While the variant does not appear to be more deadly or vaccine-resistant, it does transmit faster and is probably fueling outbreaks from England to South Africa. On Tuesday, German health officials said they detected a case of the UK variant dating back as early as November. An elderly coronavirus patient who had the variant ultimately died of the virus. The patient’s daughter had returned from Britain in mid-November, and the man’s wife was also infected with COVID-19, the illness the novel coronavirus can cause, but she survived, Agence France-Presse reported. Germany is one of several countries to temporarily bar travelers from the United Kingdom to prevent the variant’s spread. Much of England is under a lockdown. India on Tuesday confirmed its first cases of the UK variant after finding it in six people who had recently arrived from Britain. Indian Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told reporters Tuesday that the country probably would issue a temporary ban on flights from the United Kingdom as a result. Countries across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have documented cases of the fast-spreading form of the virus. Canada on Saturday was the first to report it in North America. It is probably already circulating undetected in the United States, according to public health experts. The United States has the world’s highest count of coronavirus infections and fatalities (Washington Post)."
Is it not interesting and somewhat coincidental that the variant is showing up where they are vaccinating first?
What if the VARIANT is IN the VACCINE?!
I'll tell you this, it wouldn't be the first time.
Btw, Russia is no help:
"After months of questions over the true scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia and the efficacy of a Russian-developed vaccine, the state statistical agency in Moscow has announced new figures indicating that the death toll from COVID-19 is more than three times as high as officially reported. Russia has reported more than 3 million cases of infection, making it the world’s fourth-hardest-hit country, but only 55,827 deaths, fewer than in seven other countries. A demographer at a government agency who questioned the official fatality figures, dismissing them as far too low, was fired over the summer. New data issued Monday by Rosstat, the state statistics agency, however, indicated that the demographer was right and the real number of fatalities is far higher than previously reported. The agency reported that the number of deaths between January and November was 229,732 higher than over the same period last year, an increase that a senior official blamed largely on the coronavirus. Tatyana Golikova, a deputy prime minister leading Russia’s efforts to combat the pandemic, told a government briefing Monday that more than 81 percent of the increased number of deaths in 2020 was “due to COVID,” which would mean that the virus had killed more than 186,000 Russians so far this year. This is still far fewer than the more than 334,000 deaths caused by COVID-19 in the United States but means that Russia has suffered more fatalities as a result of the pandemic than European countries like Italy, France, and Britain, whose poor record has been regularly cited by Russian state media as proof of Russia’s relative triumph. As of Tuesday afternoon, the webpage giving Rosstat’s new data was inaccessible. The gap between the official death rate and the real one is largely explained by Russia’s practice of recording a death as coronavirus-related only in cases where an autopsy has confirmed the coronavirus as the main cause. Critics say this has allowed authorities to massage the numbers. Russia in August became the first country to register a coronavirus vaccine, but a recent survey found that only 38 percent of Russians intend to get vaccinated (New York Times)."
The exact opposite is the truth, the numbers have been vastly overinflated, and the New York Times projection regarding the numbers is sickening.
That is when the Spanish flu got rolling 100 years ago, AFTER the VACCINATIONS!!
