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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[REDSTATEWARD]

As a reminder:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/?fbclid=IwAR0IdhN1nWPYkqy1sE0Ye_aY_gyDB4qx6HpHK8ug6v8cckAQZSzNziBQjtM

Yes, in 2018 President Trump fired the entire US Pandemic Response Team.

In addition, “Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. Among the countries abandoned? China.”

Such amazing leadership!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture. For starters, Trump hasn’t succeeded in cutting the budget.

He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.

More AP Fact Checks
A look at some of the Democrats’ remarks:


MIKE BLOOMBERG: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.” — debate Tuesday night.

JOE BIDEN, comparing the Obama-Biden administration with now: “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

THE FACTS: They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.

Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.

Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.

The broader point about there being “nobody here” to coordinate the response sells short what’s in place to handle an outbreak.

The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.

Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.


“The CDC’s response has been excellent, as it has been in the past,” said John Auerbach, president of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health, which works with government at all levels to improve the nation’s response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nation’s public health leadership, but Auerbach said CDC’s top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.

Will the preparations be enough?

One of the lessons learned in prior crises, such as the anthrax attacks, is not to offer false assurances when scientists have questions about the illness.

The CDC, for example, can accurately test for the virus but has struggled to get working test kits to state health departments. That’s key if there’s a need to rapidly increase the number of tests being performed.

The U.S. closed borders to travelers from China to buy time as preparations began but, “classically that’s not the way you address an outbreak,” Fauci told The Associated Press this week. “If you do it for a very limited period of time, temporarily until you can get things in order in your own country, it could have some benefit. But in general, the concept of closing borders, you cannot do that for an extended period of time.”

But with infections now in much of the world, one of the questions for U.S. policymakers is whether it’s time to modify any of those border or travel restrictions.

___

[barton]

And as Ward and the WSJ writer both know, the GOP really really cares about public health!  That's why they cut funds for agencies like the CDC, defunded dozens of preventive healthcare programs, and have been busy dismantling the EPA since day one. 

Hmm.  The AP( your previously anointed one-of-the-best news sources) has a different take on that...

I should have put  "tried to" in the first clause of that second sentence - sorry about that.   The rest of it was accurate, however,  and EPAs duties have a profound effect on public health - but obtusely pretend it doesn't if that helps you sleep comfy.  I'm sure you can build up a tolerance to mercury and glyphosate.   

[josh]

AP is wrong, Ward, as far as I can tell:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/

Feb. 1, 2018 at 1:53 p.m. EST
Four years after the United States pledged to help the world fight infectious-disease epidemics such as Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out, U.S. government officials said.

The CDC programs, part of a global health security initiative, train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at their source.

Most of the funding comes from a one-time, five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. About $600 million was awarded to the CDC to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics. That money is slated to run out by September 2019. Despite statements from President Trump and senior administration officials affirming the importance of controlling outbreaks, officials and global infectious-disease experts are not anticipating that the administration will budget additional resources.

Two weeks ago, the CDC began notifying staffers and officials abroad about its plan to downsize these activities, because officials assume there will be “no new resources,” said a senior government official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss budget matters. Notice is being given now to CDC country directors “as the very first phase of a transition,” the official said. There is a need for “forward planning,” the official said, to accommodate longer advance notice for staffers and for leases and property agreements. The downsizing decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The CDC plans to narrow its focus to 10 “priority countries,” starting in October 2019, the official said. They are India, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia; Jordan in the Middle East; Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal in Africa; and Guatemala in Central America.

Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo. Last year, when Congo experienced a potentially deadly Ebola outbreak in a remote, forested area, CDC-trained disease detectives and rapid responders helped contain it quickly.

This next phase of work may be at risk if CDC cuts back its support, she said. “It would be akin to building the firehouse without providing the trained firemen and information and tools to fight the fire,” Reynolds said in an email.

If more funding becomes available in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, the CDC could resume work in China and Congo, as well as Ethiopia, Indonesia and Sierra Leone, another government official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss budget matters.

In the meantime, the CDC will continue its work with dozens of countries on other public health issues, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, polio eradication, vaccine-preventable diseases, influenza and emerging infectious diseases.

Global health organizations said critical momentum will be lost if epidemic prevention funding is reduced, leaving the world unprepared for the next outbreak. The risks of deadly and costly pandemic threats are higher than ever, especially in low- and middle-income countries with the weakest public health systems, experts say. A rapid response by a country can mean the difference between an isolated outbreak and a global catastrophe. In less than 36 hours, infectious disease and pathogens can travel from a remote village to major cities on any continent to become a global crisis.

On Monday, a coalition of global health organizations representing more than 200 groups and companies sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar asking the administration to reconsider the planned reductions to programs they described as essential to health and national security.

“Not only will CDC be forced to narrow its countries of operations, but the U.S. also stands to lose vital information about epidemic threats garnered on the ground through trusted relationships, real-time surveillance, and research,” wrote the coalition, which included the Global Health Security Agenda Consortium and the Global Health Council.

The coalition also warned that complacency after outbreaks have been contained leads to funding cuts, followed by ever more costly outbreaks. The Ebola outbreak cost U.S. taxpayers $5.4 billion in emergency supplemental funding, forced several U.S. cities to spend millions in containment, disrupted global business and required the deployment of the U.S. military to address the threat.

“This is the front line against terrible organisms,” said Tom Frieden, the former CDC director who led the agency during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks. He now heads Resolve to Save Lives, a global initiative to prevent epidemics. Referring to dangerous pathogens, he said: “Like terrorism, you can’t fight it just within our borders. You’ve got to fight epidemic diseases where they emerge.”

Without additional help, low-income countries are not going to be able to maintain laboratory networks to detect dangerous pathogens, Frieden said. “Either we help or hope we get lucky it isn’t an epidemic that travelers will catch or spread to our country,” Frieden said.

The U.S. downsizing could also lead other countries to cut back or drop out from “the most serious multinational effort in many years to stop epidemics at their sources overseas,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

CDC spokeswoman Kathy Harben said the agency and federal partners remain committed to “prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease threats.”

The United States helped launch an initiative known as the Global Health Security Agenda in 2014 to help countries reduce their vulnerabilities to public health threats. More than 60 countries now participate in that effort. At a meeting in Uganda in the fall, administration officials led by Tim Ziemer, the White House senior director for global health security, affirmed U.S. support to extend the initiative to 2024.

“The world remains under-prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberately released,” Ziemer wrote in a blog post before the meeting. “. . . We recognize that the cost of failing to control outbreaks and losing lives is far greater than the cost of prevention.”

The CDC has about $150 million remaining from the one-time Ebola emergency package for these global health security programs, the senior government official said. That money will be used this year and in fiscal 2019, but without substantial new resources, that leaves only the agency's core annual budget, which has remained flat at about $50 million to $60 million.

Officials at the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Security Council pushed for more funding in the president's fiscal 2019 budget to be released this month. A senior government official said Thursday that the president's budget "will include details on global health security funding," but declined to elaborate.

[josh]

[josh]

[REDSTATEWARD]

Voter suppression in the democrat primaries caused by ?


27 Feb 2020
Former Chicago Mayor and former President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the voter turnout in the first three Democratic Party presidential nominee primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada was down from 2018 and 2019.

He characterized that as a “flashing yellow light.”
While discussing 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) ability to turn out voters with his socialist message, Emanuel said, “2018. Major election for the Democrats, one of the biggest since Watergate, Bernie’s PAC endorsed 22 candidates. [It] went 0 for 22. Not even by a fluke did one happen. A couple of elections you won, they had nowhere on the radar. His pack was 0 for 22. That tells you, in 2018, when Democrats are having this massive national win, gubernatorial races, congressional races, statehouses, that didn’t work.”

He continued, “Number three, the turnout model that he’s looking at has not materialized. One of the things I’m concerned about right now is that while viewership in the debates are up—2018, big turnout, 2019, big turnout for Democrats,—participation in our primaries is barely surpassing 2016. That’s a flashing yellow light. I am concerned. Now it’s only three. We’ll see what Super Tuesday produces, but that’s a concern.”

[josh]

"More than 300,000 Democratic votes were cast on Tuesday — easily breaking 2008's record of 288,000 votes — while roughy 156,000 Republican votes were cast, per New Hampshire's secretary of state."
NYT

Voters in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday set a state party record, following lower-than-expected turnout in Iowa.
The total of 300,622 ballots surpassed the state’s previous record from the 2008 primary, when 288,672 ballots were cast, according to the secretary of state.
For Democrats trying to gauge interest in the race, that was a welcome contrast to turnout in the Iowa caucuses Feb. 3. Party leaders had anticipated the turnout in Iowa might top the nearly 240,000 who showed up in 2008. But despite the close race and the eagerness of many Democrats to defeat President Trump, turnout barely beat the 170,000 mark from 2016.

LA Times

Turnout on Caucus Day itself may have been underwhelming, but the number of participants in the Nevada Democratic caucuses reached roughly 100,000, according to the Nevada State Democratic Party.

Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed victory in Saturday's caucuses, the third nomination contest on the party's 2020 calendar.

About 25,000 voters took part in the caucuses on Saturday, Feb. 22, short of the approximately 84,000 who participated on Caucus Day in 2016. However, 75,000 voters took advantage of early caucus voting Feb. 15-18 — a procedure that didn't exist during the last cycle. That brought participation to nearly 100,000, about one out of every six Nevada Democrats.

Still short of 2008. Obama and Clinton were more exciting than this group. Suppression has nothing to do with it.

But it does suggest that the enthusiasm for Sanders might be weaker than hoped. Or that more people will be happy with any of the candidates.

Perhaps we can get rid of caucuses, finally.

The primary in NH set a new record.

[Driver125]

Yes, in 2018 President Trump fired the entire US Pandemic Response Team. Such amazing leadership!

Yes….and with typical Trump awareness and decisiveness immediately moved to take the opposite and precisely wrong course of action. Consistency--the Trump hallmark.

[LarryBnDC]

Voter suppression in the democrat primaries caused by ?


27 Feb 2020
Former Chicago Mayor and former President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the voter turnout in the first three Democratic Party presidential nominee primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada was down from 2018 and 2019.

He characterized that as a “flashing yellow light.”
While discussing 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) ability to turn out voters with his socialist message, Emanuel said, “2018. Major election for the Democrats, one of the biggest since Watergate, Bernie’s PAC endorsed 22 candidates. [It] went 0 for 22. Not even by a fluke did one happen. A couple of elections you won, they had nowhere on the radar. His pack was 0 for 22. That tells you, in 2018, when Democrats are having this massive national win, gubernatorial races, congressional races, statehouses, that didn’t work.”

He continued, “Number three, the turnout model that he’s looking at has not materialized. One of the things I’m concerned about right now is that while viewership in the debates are up—2018, big turnout, 2019, big turnout for Democrats,—participation in our primaries is barely surpassing 2016. That’s a flashing yellow light. I am concerned. Now it’s only three. We’ll see what Super Tuesday produces, but that’s a concern.”

Asshole

[LarryBnDC]

From 2012:

"They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us."

When challenged to produce hard evidence about his claims on the negative impact of turbines, Trump is said: "I am the evidence, I am a world class expert in tourism."

The public gallery burst into laughter.

The course was built on sand dunes despite protests from locals and environmentalists. The dunes, which were home to rare wading birds, were bulldozed to make way for the fairways in 2009 and 2010.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-boasts-draw-laughs-in-scottish-parliament/


Fast forward and Scotland is investigating Trump.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51666413

[oilcan]

Folks should read or at least get a synopsis of Dark Towers,  the new book on Trump and Douchebank.   The question is becoming, as we see with Larry's link,  when DIDN'T Trump launder money.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Towers.html?id=GWOIDwAAQBAJ

[LarryBnDC]

Folks should read or at least get a synopsis of Dark Towers,  the new book on Trump and Douchebank.   The question is becoming, as we see with Larry's link,  when DIDN'T Trump launder money.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Towers.html?id=GWOIDwAAQBAJ

Yet folks still wonder how he bankrupted casinos.

Laundromat for Russian mob money.

[barton]

Folks should read or at least get a synopsis of Dark Towers,  the new book on Trump and Douchebank....

Like Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, it belongs in the horror genre.

[LarryBnDC]

Trump,

“Worst Polls, just like in 2016 when they were so far off the mark, are the @FoxNews Polls. Why doesn’t Fox finally get a competent Polling Company?”

[barton]

Little reality check from a working American who can't afford health insurance but makes too much to qualify for Medicaid....

Like 27.5 million other Americans, I don’t have health insurance. It’s not for a lack of trying – I make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to buy a private health insurance plan on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Since I can’t afford to see a doctor, my healthcare strategy as a 32-year-old uninsured American has been simply to sleep eight hours, eat vegetables, and get daily exercise. But now that there are confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, the deadly virus could spread rapidly, thanks to others like me who have no feasible way to get the care we need if we start exhibiting symptoms.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are confirmed coronavirus cases in at least 50 countries on six continents, and more than 2,800 patients have died from the virus. This certainly qualifies as a pandemic under the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of the term, which, under a typical presidency, should necessitate a swift response from US health officials. However, the Trump administration appears to still be prioritizing the profit margin of the healthcare industry over preventing the spread of a deadly pandemic.

Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, (a former senior executive at pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly) refused to commit to implementing price controls on a coronavirus vaccine “because we need the private sector to invest … price controls won’t get us there”. Even the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, notably didn’t use the word “free” when referring to a coronavirus vaccine, and instead used the word “affordable”. What may be considered affordable for the third-most powerful person in the US government with an estimated net worth of $16m may not be affordable for someone who can’t afford a basic private health insurance plan that still requires a patient to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Given the high cost of healthcare in the US, I haven’t seen a doctor since 2013, when I visited an emergency room after being run off the road while riding my bike. After waiting for four hours, the doctor put my arm in a sling, prescribed pain medication and sent me home. That visit cost more than $4,000, and the unpaid balance eventually went to collections and still haunts my credit to this day, making it needlessly difficult to rent an apartment or buy a car. But even a low-premium bronze plan on the exchange comes with a sky-high deductible in the thousands of dollars, meaning even if I was insured, I’d have still paid for that ER visit entirely out of pocket....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-millions-of-americans-uninsured