The game is -- appropriately enough -- below the belt:
"A bipartisan group secretly gathered to game out a contested Trump-Biden election. It wasn’t pretty" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, July 25, 2020
I'm breathlessly waiting for the Globe expose on Event 201!
WASHINGTON — On the second Friday in June, a group of political operatives, former government and military officials, and academics quietly convened online for what became a disturbing exercise in the fragility of American democracy.
The group, which included Democrats and Republicans, gathered to game out possible results of the November election, grappling with questions that seem less far-fetched by the day: What if President Trump refuses to concede a loss, as he publicly hinted recently he might do? How far could he go to preserve his power? And what if Democrats refuse to give in?
“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project. She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially ... it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”
By that Deep State reasoning, we are already a dictatorship.
Using a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning, the group envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, one in which Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.
If it sounds paranoid or outlandish — a war room of seasoned politicos and constitutional experts playing a Washington version of Dungeons and Dragons in which the future of the republic hangs in the balance — they get it, but, as they finalize a report on what they learned and begin briefing elected officials and others, they insist their warning is serious: A close election this fall is likely to be contested, and there are few guardrails to stop a constitutional crisis, particularly if Trump flexes the considerable tools at his disposal to give himself an advantage.
“He doesn’t have to win the election,” said Nils Gilman, a historian who leads research at a think tank called the Berggruen Institute and was an organizer of the exercise. “He just has to create a plausible narrative that he didn’t lose.”
We already have that in the narrative being provided by the pre$$, namely Biden winning big.
The very existence of a group like this one, which was formed late last year, underscores the extent of the fear in Washington’s political circles — and beyond — that Trump will take the same hammer he has used to fracture the norms of executive governance over the past three years and upend the nation’s delicate tradition of orderly political transitions of power by refusing to concede if he loses.
Looks like the DEEP STATE to me.
“We have norms in our transition, rather than laws,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Foundation, who was not part of the game. “This entire election season is something a democracy expert would worry about.”
I'm sick of the experts the Globe talks joo, aren't you?
It is a fear that has been stoked by the president himself, who has repeatedly warned, without offering evidence, of widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots — which voters are likely to use at unprecedented levels because the pandemic has made in-person voting a potential health risk — to cast doubt on the results of November’s election.
“I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do,” he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace last Sunday. When asked if he would accept the election results, he said: “I’ll have to see.”
Trump failed the test of leadership right there.
Readers, I have begun this post in the same style I do every post, highlighting what I think are important or contradictory phrases, but at this point I would like to tell you how little I care for the unreality that is proffered forth by the Globe on a daily basis. It's superficial and shallow shit that never gets far below the surface, and it sucks. The fact is, I'm tired of wasting time on this drivel and find it only important insofar as it illuminates where the agenda is headed.
Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has taken to issuing foreboding warnings of his own. “This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work — they’re not real, they’re not fair,” he said at a fund-raiser on Thursday night. He has also mused publicly about Trump having to be escorted, forcibly if need be, from the White House.
A jail cell awaits him.
That happened in one of the four scenarios the Transition Integrity Project gamed out, according to summaries of the exercises provided to The Boston Globe, but constitutional experts — and the game play — was less focused on the possibility of a cinematic, militarized intervention on Inauguration Day, which is a possibility many still consider remote, than the room the Constitution appears to leave for a disastrous and difficult transition if the incumbent does not accept a loss.
“How well is our constitutional legal system designed to deal with an incumbent president who insists that he won an election but for the presence of fraud?” said Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College who has written a book on what would happen if Trump took such a stand, “and I think the rather unfortunate answer is our system is not well designed at all to deal with that problem,” said Douglas, who was not involved in the game.
Stay out of that town.
Brooks got the seed of the idea for the Transition Integrity Project after a dinner where a federal judge and a corporate lawyer each told her they were convinced the military or the Secret Service would have to escort Trump out of office if he lost the election and would not concede. Brooks wasn’t so sure. She and Gilman decided to turn the Washington parlor game into an actual exercise; they held an early meeting in Washington, with about 25 people, in December.
“When we started talking about this we got a lot of reactions — oh, you guys are so paranoid, don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t going to happen,” Brooks said.
This is what the $cum that are calling the shots in our society sit around and do while our lives and livelihoods go right down the toilet.
Two things have happened since then: Trump has displayed increased willingness to challenge mail-in ballots, and his administration has deployed federal forces to quell protests in front of the White House and in Portland, Ore., and has threatened to do so in other cities.
“That has really shaken people,” Brooks said. “What was really a fringe idea has now become an anxiety that’s pretty widely shared.”
Brooks, Gilman, and others recruited a slate of players including a former swing state governor, a former White House chief of staff, and a former head of the Department of Homeland Security. They invited both Democrats and Republicans who they knew had concerns about Trump’s comments on the election; nearly 80 people in all were involved. The Republicans were described by participants as “never Trump” or “not Trump Republicans.”
The "game" was rigged like the election will be if Biden wins!
They played using the so-called Chatham House Rules — in which participants can discuss what was said, but not who was there; some participants were willing to be named. They included Republicans Trey Grayson, the former Kentucky secretary of state, and conservative commentator Bill Kristol, as well as Democrats Leah Daughtry, who was CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Convention Committees, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, and progressive Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson.
Did joo notice something about them all?
The game was elaborate. The participants took on the roles of the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, relevant government officials, and the media —generally, Democrats played Democrats and Republicans played Republicans — and used a 10-sided die to determine whether a team succeeded in its attempted moves. The games are not meant to be predictive; rather, they are supposed to give people a sense of possible consequences in complex scenarios.
PFFFFFFFFFT!
It's all a ROLL of the DICE, huh?
This article is pure crapola!
Each scenario involved a different election outcome: An unclear result on Election Day that looked increasingly like a Biden win as more ballots were counted; a clear Biden win in the popular vote and the Electoral College; an Electoral College win for Trump with Biden winning the popular vote by 5 percentage points; and a narrow Electoral College and popular vote victory for Biden.
In only one scenario does Trump win, and he never wins the popular vote.
Looks like a TILTED FIELD to ME -- like the pre$$ polls!
That's not to be read as an endorsement of the president, btw.
Once you realize the deeper agenda at work under the COVID-19 cover, and that both parties are nothing but puppets and pawns to those who own and control them, the result of the election is meaningless. Both are pell-mell warp speed shots, etc. This "inside baseball" has grown tiresomely sickening.
In the scenarios, the team playing the Trump campaign often questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which often boosted Biden as they came in — shutting down post offices, pursuing litigation, and using right-wing media to amplify narratives about a stolen election.
To some participants, the game was a stark reminder of the power of incumbency.
“The more demonstrations there were, the more demands for recounts, the more legal challenges there were, the more funerals for democracy were held, the more Trump came across as the candidate of stability,” said Edward Luce, the US editor of the Financial Times, who played the role of a mainstream media reporter during one of the simulations. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress. If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.
Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control — in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest. The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service. (The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)
If THAT is the way he have to GET RID OF HIM, then SO BE IT!
The scenario that produced the most contentious dynamics, however, was the one in which Trump won the Electoral College — and thus, the election — but Biden won the popular vote by 5 percentage points. Biden’s team retracted his Election Night concession, fueled by Democrats angry at losing yet another election despite capturing the popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016. In the mock election, Trump sought to divide Democrats — at one point giving an interview to The Intercept, a left-leaning news outlet, saying Senator Bernie Sanders would have won if Democrats had nominated him. Meanwhile, Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.
The DEMOCRATS would ONCE AGAIN argue for SECESSION like they did 160 years ago, huh?
That's democracy with a Capital D!
Btw, I'm all for secession. We should break this nation apart and let each region go their own way, patrol their own borders, whatever. Fees and duties would fund regional and state provinces. I realize that means I'm hooked into some $ociali$t-type situation, but unlike the society-destroyers on the left, I accept the will of the majority because that is the contract I abide by being part of civilization.
That doesn't mean I don't think the minority opinion should be protected, it should. That's because fear of speech is replacing freedom of speech, and you are only for freedom of speech if it is speech you don't agree with. I'm not looking to shut down the Globe despite it's spew, although I hope the business model completely collapses.
That scenario seemed highly far-fetched, but it envisioned a situation in which both sides may have incentives to contest the election.
“There is a narrative among activists in both parties that the loss must be illegitimate,” he said.
According to the Constitution, the presidency ends at noon on Jan. 20, at which point the newly inaugurated president becomes the commander in chief.
The games, ultimately, were designed to explore how difficult it could be to get there.
“The Constitution really has been a workable document in many respects because we have had people who more or less adhered to a code of conduct,” said retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, a Republican and former chief of staff to Colin Powell who participated in games as an observer. “That seems to no longer to be the case. That changes everything.”
Yeah, we all know the Constitution has been abrogated, and it wasn't Trump's fault. He has actually pretty much adhered to it despite the Democrats hollering dictator.
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The Globe wants to redraw the electoral map and says a new Voting Rights Act is long overdue to honor John Lewis's legacy as the stars are aligning for progressives over three words that shake, rattle, and roil racists like Trump -- at least for now.
One thing Trump has going for him is his cognitive ability as opposed to Biden; however, when I flipped the page I realized he is a dead president walking because “fact-denying populism is being shown its limits.’’
"Tear gas fired again; Portland protest standoff continues" by Gillian Flaccus and Sara Cline Associated Press, July 25, 2020
PORTLAND, Ore. — Federal agents again repeatedly fired tear gas to break up rowdy protests in Portland, Ore., that continued into the early morning Saturday as demonstrations that have happened every night for two months showed no signs of letting up.
Thousands gathered in front of the downtown federal courthouse beginning Friday evening. Demonstrations have happened in Oregon’s largest city nightly since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in May. President Trump said he sent federal agents to Portland to halt the unrest but state and local officials say they are making the situation worse.
The latest demonstration went until federal agents entered the crowd around 2:30 a.m. Saturday and marched in a line down the street, clearing remaining protesters with volleys of tear gas at close range. They also extinguished a large fire in the street outside the courthouse.
Late Friday, a federal judge denied a request by Oregon’s attorney general to restrict the actions of federal police. The Federal Protective Service had declared the gathering in Portland that began Friday evening “an unlawful assembly” Harry Fones, a Homeland Security spokesman, said at a news conference Saturday afternoon some people launched large fireworks, threw hard projectiles and used power tools to damage property.
Craig Gabriel, Assistant US Attorney for the District of Oregon, said at the news conference that one person was arrested for failing to comply with orders. That person was later released without charges, bringing the total number of people arrested on or near the courthouse property since early July to 60.
“It’s the very few of the crowd who come not intent on doing anything with their voice but intent on destruction and intent on confrontation, unfortunately, with federal police,” Gabriel said, acknowledging that the majority of protesters are peaceful.
Meanwhile, in Seattle, police declared a riot Saturday following large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and deployed flash bangs and pepper spray to try to clear an area near where weeks earlier people had set up an “occupied protest zone” that stretched for several blocks.
The guy does have a point.
Via Twitter, police said they had made at least 16 arrests for assault on officers, obstruction and failure to disperse. They also said they were “investigating a possible explosive damage’’ to the walls of the city’s East Precinct police station.
Thousands of protesters had initially gathered peacefully near downtown in a show of solidarity with fellow demonstrators in Portland.
Earlier Friday night in Portland, the protest had drawn various organized groups, including veterans, Healthcare Workers Protest, Teachers against Tyrants, Lawyers for Black Lives, and the “Wall of Moms.”
The New York Times says the power of Moms' protests echoes global tradition (without mentioning the antiwar nature of it), but even though my mom loved me and I loved her, that didn’t stop racism.
As the crowd grew — authorities estimate there were 4,000 present at the peak of the protest — people were heard chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “Feds go home” to the sound of drums.
Later, protesters vigorously shook the fence surrounding the courthouse, shot fireworks towards the building and threw glass bottles. Many times these actions were met by federal agents using tear gas and flash bangs.
The state attorney general had sued the federal government, saying some people had been whisked off the streets in unmarked vehicles. US District Judge Michael Mosman ruled Friday the state lacked standing to sue on behalf of protesters.....
Was told it was a win yesterday.
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At least the police are better in Portland than they are in Springfield:
"‘One of the worst police departments in the country’: Reign of brutality brings a reckoning in Springfield; Long before a scathing report from the Justice Department, Springfield police exhibited a shocking brutality" by Dugan Arnett and Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff, July 25, 2020
SPRINGFIELD — It was the city’s worst-kept secret, an unspoken understanding between the local narcotics unit and people on the streets they policed.
If you run from the cops, a former narcotics officer with the Springfield Police Department told federal investigators, you “get a beat down.”
It was not just patrol-car rhetoric. Over the course of the past decade, the beatings came fast and fierce, and with such regularity that even the Trump administration — with its well-documented support for forceful police tactics — eventually intervened.
An explosive report released July 8 by the US Department of Justice, which details deep dysfunction within the department, has brought the national conversation on police brutality to the doorstep of this city of 154,000, where issues of crime and poverty have persisted even as recent economic development, including the construction of a billion-dollar downtown casino, has offered the promise of better days.....
So much for the casino, and anyone living out here knows you stay out of Springfield at all costs.
--more--"
Moving even further west:
"Malia Lazu rises from community organizer to bank president, but she still might not believe in capitalism" by Shirley Leung Globe Columnist, July 25, 2020
Malia Lazu has worn many hats during her two decades in Boston: community organizer, reality TV star, and political provocateur, but her latest role could be the most radical of all: bank president.
Until she went to work for Berkshire Bank about a year ago, Lazu had never held a corporate job. You would sooner find her protesting in the streets than presenting Power Points in the boardroom. Those close to Lazu aren’t even sure she believes in capitalism.
She is just the person you want if you convert the $y$tem to $tate communi$m.
Longtime friend Grace Moreno, head of the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce, likened Lazu’s career move to “AC/DC doing Bach,” but to Richard Marotta, chief executive of Berkshire, Lazu’s heavy-metal approach is exactly what the bank needed to make structural changes so communities of color feel welcomed — a customer base he sees as Berkshire’s future after its headquarters relocated to Boston from one of the whitest parts of the state.
“There are generations of group think,” Marotta said. “We as an industry, we as a company have to feel uncomfortable.”
As long as you clear a profit because we are all in thi$ together!
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Is it racist to ask if they qualify for the loan?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Helen Lowman looks at litter a lot. It’s her job, but while walking her dog in Westport, Conn., in March, she noticed an alarming trend. First she passed some dirty wipes on the ground. Then there were gloves, and finally a mask. Four months later, she said the litter of personal protective gear has only gotten worse. As more people wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, more personal protective equipment, or PPE, has been found as litter around the world. The issue has prompted environmental organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to sound the alarm. Some local governments, like Suffolk County in New York, have instituted fines for littering involving masks and gloves, and police departments, like the one in Swampscott, Mass., have warned that improperly discarding PPE is a crime. “This pandemic is causing the face of litter to change,” said Lowman, chief executive of Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit group that organizes cleanups. “We’re seeing a real shift in what is in the litter stream.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that the general public wear reusable cloth face coverings, but disposable masks are readily available; a pack of 50 can be purchased for around $30. Experts say the risk of catching coronavirus from a discarded mask is minimal, but the litter is causing concern for other reasons: Used masks and gloves, which cannot be recycled, pose a problem for the environment. Disposable masks and gloves aren’t necessarily better or worse than any other kind of litter, according to experts. “It’s quite alarming where these are ending up,” said Gary Stokes, founder of OceansAsia, a marine conservation group. “It’s not just the beaches. We’re getting them out in nature, but also downtown; you see them on the streets, in the gutter, on public transport.”
That's one of the things the potentates didn't plan on. It not only fouls up and pollutes their climate change nonsense, it also removes ones mind from the great big plastic patch in the Pacific.
I'm sorry, readers, but I am all feared out:
"It’s hard to scare the bejesus out of someone in a haunted house while socially distancing, which may explain the decision by Universal to cancel its Halloween Horror Nights this year at its US theme parks. The company said Friday it wouldn’t be hosting the celebration of all things scary at its Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood so that it could focus on operating its theme parks for daytime guests under pandemic restrictions. “We know this decision will disappoint our fans and guests. We are disappointed too, but we look forward to creating an amazing event in 2021,’’ the company tweeted. Halloween Horror Nights typically lasts more than a month starting in September, but it’s planned for more than a year. Each haunted house is a small, temporary attraction, elaborately designed and themed, built with studious attention to details and populated with “scare-actors” who chase but never touch the thousands of patrons passing through each night. Last month, Walt Disney World canceled its annual after-hours Halloween party at Magic Kingdom that typically begins in mid-August."
They cancel that far way and you know this trauma-inducing psyop pushing the agenda forward is only in its infancy.
F**k Disney and their locked down Haunted House.
"Shortages of health care workers are worsening in Houston, Miami, Baton Rouge, and other cities battling sustained COVID-19 outbreaks, exhausting staffers and straining hospitals’ ability to cope with spiking cases. That need is especially dire for frontline nurses, respiratory therapists and others who play hands-on, bedside roles where one nurse is often required for each critically ill patient. While many hospitals have devised ways to stretch material resources — converting surgery wards into specialized COVID units and recycling masks and gowns — it is far more difficult to stretch the human workers needed to make the system function. ‘‘At the end of the day, the capacity for critical care is a balance between the space, staff, and stuff. And if you have a bottleneck in one, you can’t take additional patients,’’ said Mahshid Abir, a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and director of the Acute Care Research Unit at the University of Michigan. ‘‘You have to have all three. . . . You can’t have a ventilator, but not a respiratory therapist. What this is going to do is it’s going to cost lives, not just for COVID patients, but for everyone else in the hospital,’’ she warned."
I've already seen this movie before, and the AI can't come fast enough.
They are rationing care during the Great Cull, and at least it won't cost money since the government is paying them to diagnose COVID, put 'em on a ventilator, and declare deaths from COVID.
If they need help, why don't they recall the hundreds of thousands of health professionals who were furloughed into unemployment during the urgent crisis when it was all hands on deck.
Wait, WTF?
I would say let's go get a drink, but.....
"New Orleans’s mayor is shutting down the city’s bars because of rising coronavirus numbers and forbidding restaurants to sell alcoholic drinks to go. Mayor LaToya Cantrell says some lines of people waiting to buy drinks were so long they became “a gathering in themselves, and no mask-wearing and the like.” Cantrell says the city is seeing daily increases in confirmed coronavirus cases about double its threshold of 50 a day for more relaxed rules. The rule against take-out sales of alcoholic drinks takes effect Saturday. The mayor’s orders came as the Louisiana Department of Health reported more than 2,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases, for a total of 103,734. New Orleans’s total rose 103 to 9,752."
When they shut down the Big Easy, you know it's full-blown Soviet-style Communism.
You can get your vodka at the liquor store and bring it home, get plowed, and beat the missus.
Lockdowns have been an UNMITIGATED DISASTER and FAILURE and it is time for the criminals who imposed them and all the collaborators to hang.
Oh, as if things were not bad enough, they are also bracing for a hurricane down there so BETTER LOCKDOWN!
Oh, right, already locked down.
Better lockdown!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"India began its first human trials of a coronavirus vaccine candidate as the world’s second-most populous country recorded nearly 49,000 new cases. The additional infections take India’s total to more than 1.3 million on Saturday, with surges seen in a quarter of the country’s 36 states and union territories. India has tallied 31,358 deaths, including 757 in the last 24 hours. It has reported a much lower death rate than the world’s two other worst-hit countries, the United States and Brazil. Johns Hopkins University showed the United States has more than 4.1 million cases (144,000 deaths) and Brazil with 2.2 million cases (85,000 deaths). The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a premier teaching hospital in the capital of New Delhi, says it has administered the first dose of a trial COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. The candidate vaccine, Covaxin, is among nearly two dozen in human trials around the world."
I'm sick of all the numbers being thrown at us. They are distortions at best, lies at worst.
"Africa’s total confirmed coronavirus cases have surpassed 800,000. That’s according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Africa has more than half the reported cases on the 54-nation continent, but infections are now climbing rapidly in other countries including Kenya, East Africa’s economic hub, with more than 16,000."
Asia shows them how it's done:
"Vietnam, lauded in coronavirus fight, has first local case in 100 days" by Richard C. Paddock New York Times, July 25, 2020
BANGKOK — Vietnam, which had gone 100 days without reporting a case of local transmission of the coronavirus, said Saturday that a 57-year-old grandfather in the central city of Danang had tested positive. How he got the illness remains a mystery.
To prevent a wider outbreak, the Health Ministry said it was conducting “extensive screening and testing in all at-risk areas in Danang.” Officials said they had tested and quarantined people who had been in close contact with the patient and were tracing others. So far, no other positive cases have surfaced.
The case of the Danang grandfather is yet another sign of how difficult it is to contain the virus even when a country has followed the best practices. The patient has no record of recent travel and appears to be a homebody who spends most of his time looking after his grandchildren.
Between the crap PCR tests and everything else, one almost believes they are making it up to justify their own repression.
Health officials, noting that mask use in Vietnam had become lax, urged members of the public to resume wearing them, especially in crowded places and on public transportation.
Oh.
Could the crapola propaganda be any more obvious?
Vietnam, one of the world’s few remaining communist states, has been among the most successful in the world in containing the virus. Soon after the illness emerged in China, Vietnam’s northern neighbor, the government quickly closed international borders, called for widespread use of masks and established strict quarantine and aggressive contact-tracing procedures.
That is the model the Free West is supposed to mimic.
Most foreigners are barred from traveling to Vietnam, and returning citizens are required to quarantine, which is where all of Vietnam’s other recent cases have been found.
The public has embraced the campaign and rallied around one famous case, that of Scottish pilot, Stephen Cameron, 43, who came so close to death that doctors in Ho Chi Minh City contemplated giving him a double-lung transplant. He spent more than two months on life support in a medically induced coma but recovered and flew home two weeks ago.
These article get more fantastic with each f**king paragraph.
It sure smells of kimchi.
As of Saturday, Vietnam had reported 416 cases and no deaths. Its last known case of transmission was in mid-April. The government has been considering resuming international flights to countries where the virus has been contained.
The discovery of the new case in Danang was a shock. Many people reportedly canceled travel plans in central Vietnam, a popular destination for domestic and foreign travelers.
The 57-year-old man, known as Patient 416, first showed signs of a cough and fever July 17 and was admitted to a hospital three days later. He was initially diagnosed with pneumonia. An X-ray showed lung lesions and, after he suffered respiratory failure, he was put on a ventilator.
So they killed him!
His tests for COVID-19 were positive from the outset, but it was not until Saturday, when the fourth test result came back, that the government officially declared that he had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
So they doubled the sample, doubled the sample, doubled the sample, and finally found COVID!
this is ROT GUT EVIL, folks!
The country’s acting health minister, Nguyen Thanh Long, confirmed the finding at a meeting Saturday of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19.
Health investigators concluded that the patient had not traveled outside Danang, one of Vietnam’s largest cities, and had rarely left home in the month before becoming ill.
Then lockdowns don't work -- or he died of something else entirely!
On July 7, he took his 92-year-old mother to a medical center for treatment for her heart ailment and, on July 16, visited her at the hospital where she had been transferred.
On July 17, he began to feel tired and feverish but attended an engagement party. The next day, he went to a family wedding.
Oooooh, he CAUGHT IT at the HOSPITAL, huh?
Health officials said that more than 100 people with whom he had been in contact had tested negative for the virus. About 50 of them have been placed in isolation as a further precaution.
That COULD BE YOU or ME, readers!
Specialist teams were sent from other parts of the country, including from Cho Ray Hospital, where Cameron was treated, to help with the treatment of Patient 416, whose condition appeared to be deteriorating.
“This patient is suffering from acute pneumonia with severe symptoms and rapid progression,” according to a statement posted Friday by the Health Ministry, and doctors were pursuing “a maximum treatment regimen.”
So NOT COVID and he is STILL ALIVE?
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They are going to send him to China so he can get better treatment:
"Officials push US-China relations toward point of no return" by Edward Wong and Steven Lee Myers New York Times, July 25, 2020
WASHINGTON — Step by step, blow by blow, the United States and China are dismantling decades of political, economic, and social engagement, setting the stage for a new era of confrontation shaped by the views of the most hawkish voices on both sides.
You know, this is where I came in about 14 years ago.
With President Trump trailing badly in the polls as the election nears, his national security officials have intensified their attack on China in recent weeks, targeting its officials, diplomats, and executives. While the strategy has reinforced a key campaign message, some American officials, worried Trump will lose, are also trying to engineer irreversible changes, according to people familiar with the thinking.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has inflamed the fight, brushing aside international concern about the country’s rising authoritarianism to consolidate his own political power and to crack down on basic freedoms, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. By doing so, he has hardened attitudes in Washington, fueling a clash that at least some in China believe could be dangerous to the country’s interests.
The combined effect could prove to be Trump’s most consequential foreign policy legacy, even if it’s not one he has consistently pursued: the entrenchment of a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.
Another Cold War, God help us all.
A state of broad and intense competition is the end goal of the president’s hawkish advisers. In their view, confrontation and coercion, aggression and antagonism should be the status quo with the Chinese Communist Party, no matter who is leading the United States next year. They call it “reciprocity.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in a speech Thursday that the relationship should be based on the principle of “distrust and verify,” saying that the diplomatic opening orchestrated by President Richard Nixon nearly half a century ago had ultimately undermined American interests.
“We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come: that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done,” Pompeo said. “We must not continue it and we must not return to it.”
For him to be talking about freedom while we are under increasingly severe and onerous lockdown restrictions from COVID is downright galling.
The events of the last week brought relations to yet another low, accelerating the downward spiral.
On Tuesday, the State Department ordered China to shut down its Houston consulate, prompting diplomats there to burn documents in a courtyard. On Friday, in retaliation, China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The Chinese Foreign Ministry the next day denounced what it called “forced entry” into the Houston consulate by US law enforcement officers Friday afternoon.
In between, the Department of Justice announced criminal charges against four members of the People’s Liberation Army for lying about their status in order to operate as undercover intelligence operatives in the United States. All four have been arrested. One, Tang Juan, who was studying at the University of California, Davis, ignited a diplomatic standoff when she sought refuge in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, but was taken into custody Thursday night.
Yeah, good thing we never do that to anyone.
This comes on top of a month in which the administration announced sanctions on senior Chinese officials, including a member of the ruling Politburo, over the mass internment of Muslims; revoked the special status of Hong Kong in diplomatic and trade relations; and declared that China’s vast maritime claims in the South China Sea were illegal.
The administration has also imposed a travel ban on Chinese students at graduate level or higher with ties to military institutions in China. Officials are discussing whether to do the same to members of the Communist Party and their families, a sweeping move that could put 270 million people on a blacklist.
“Below the president, Secretary Pompeo and other members of the administration appear to have broader goals,” said Ryan Hass, a China director on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council who is now at the Brookings Institution.
“They want to reorient the US-China relationship toward an all-encompassing systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed by the outcome of the upcoming US election,” he said. “They believe this reorientation is needed to put the United States on a competitive footing against its 21st-century geostrategic rival.”
They are simply carrying Obama's Pivot to Asia forward, so I don't know what he is blabbering about.
In Beijing, some officials and analysts have publicly dismissed many of the Trump administration’s moves as campaign politics, accusing Pompeo and others of promoting a Cold War mentality to score points for an uphill reelection fight. There is a growing recognition, though, that the conflict’s roots run deeper.
Let's pray that is all it is, and turn our attention to the real enemy: the sacker and stealers of Freedom and Liberty with a syringe in their pocket.
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The backlash is hypocritical.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I wonder where is our sister state?
"As temperatures and COVID-19 cases rise, is Mass. dropping its guard toward coronavirus?" by John Hilliard Globe Staff, July 25, 2020
As the region faced the prospect of baking heat continuing through Tuesday, there were more signs this weekend that people are letting down their guard amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Risks posed by the virus remain in Massachusetts, despite the state’s relatively low growth in numbers. On Saturday, the death toll due to the coronavirus grew by 12, reaching 8,291 confirmed deaths.
The same day in South Boston, beachgoers crowded the M Street Beach, where few were seen following health guidelines.
Esmerelda Oliveira, 51, watched the scene with concern from a nearby bench.
“There are no masks, no social distancing, nothing,” she said. “I have worries.”
The crowds grew on the South Boston beach as officials in Chatham registered people Saturday for a COVID-19 testing clinic after 13 people who had attended a house party there earlier this month tested positive for the coronavirus.
You kids do see what is going on here, right?
Now flood the streets in social protest!
Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a Boston College professor and director of its Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good, called reports of the new cases in Chatham “a worry” in an interview Saturday.
He said he thought many people in Massachusetts are becoming complacent about the coronavirus due to the state’s earlier success in limiting its spread.
“Until we have a vaccine, until we have an effective treatment, people just have to keep their guard up,” Landrigan said. “They have to keep doing what they have been doing so well, which is maintaining their distance, wearing masks when necessary. ... It’s not rocket science,” but as health experts repeatedly ask the public to comply with measures meant to stop the coronavirus, the summer’s hot, humid weather is making it tougher for people to follow those rules.
Mine is all the way up with antennae!
“It’s hard to stay inside on a hot day like this,” said Daniel Garrison, 55, at Carson Beach on Saturday afternoon. “Obviously people aren’t wearing masks, so we just tried to find a spot with less people, which wasn’t hard.”
What, you don't want to deprive yourself of oxygen in the oppressive humidity and have a silly looking tan line?
As temperatures rise, people searching for cooler situations will have fewer options thanks to the pandemic. Many indoor air-conditioned public spaces — like community centers, restaurants, and museums — are closed or operating at drastically reduced capacity.
“Clearly people need to avoid extreme heat, but they also need to avoid getting within 6 feet of each other, and that’s not always easy,” Landrigan said. “It is tough.”
I'm starting to run hot.
The cluster of COVID-19 cases has impacted several restaurants that were in the midst of a tourist season that has already taken a hit due to the pandemic.....
I wouldn't worry about eating out if I were you (no movie afterward, either, especially now that the focus is off the diddling of kids).
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Related:
"A Dorchester man was arrested after he entered Boston Medical Center, allegedly carrying a loaded handgun in a bag Friday afternoon, Boston police said. Dana Johnson, 40, faces charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and carrying a loaded firearm, Boston police said in a press release. Officers were called at about 12:50 p.m. after hospital security allegedly found the .40 caliber Glock 23 inside the bag, the release said. Officers conducted a pat and frisk and discovered additional rounds of ammunition in Johnson’s pockets, police said. Johnson is scheduled to appear in Boston Municipal Court."
The agenda-advancing false flag was called off at the last moment?
"Waterfall Arts is getting a $100,000 grant to assist in upcoming renovations and operations upgrades. The award from the charity Jane’s Trust will help clean up and revitalize the 84-year-old former Governor Anderson School building. The nonprofit group said the contribution will also help sustain the organization’s modified programming throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The arts organization received $350,000 from the US Environmental Protection Agency toward the building project last year (AP)."
At least some culture is being preserved because “it’s been devastating.”
"New Hampshire has announced that the ban on harvest of shellfish due to a harmful algal bloom has been lifted along the Atlantic Coast. The state’s Department of Environmental Services and the Fish and Game Department said the harvest closure, due what often is called red tide, was put in place in June for all species of shellfish. High concentrations of a microscopic marine algae capable of producing a neurotoxin that causes Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning, or ASP, had been found, but Chris Nash, shellfish program manager for the Department of Environmental Services, said the high concentration of marine algae began to subside in early July. “Repeated testing of shellfish tissues along the coast, in Hampton/Seabrook Harbor, and near the commercial oyster farms in Little Bay have all shown results that are below the detection limit of the tests,” he said (AP)."
The food supply chain is breaking all over the place.
Even worse, he wasn't wearing a mask:
"A rally in front of a Whole Foods Market in Cambridge drew crowds on Saturday, nearly a week after some workers there joined a federal class action lawsuit against the grocery store chain claiming the company discriminated against employees wearing Black Lives Matter face masks. Nearly 100 people stood in front of the River Street store around 5:30 p.m., holding painted banners depicting some of the employees who took part in the protest, and signs that said “White Silence = Violence.” A group of community members with drums, horns and other instruments played nearby....."
A pre$$-approved protest along with a proposal that would end single-family only zoning in large swaths of city (going to crowd you in there in the era of COVID?) as the country store in Vermont is shut down.
