|
|||||
|
| Porn Users Forum » User Ranks » User Post History |
Post History:
LKLK (0)
|
| 1301-1350 of 1583 Posts | < Previous Page | 1 | 2 | 7 | 12 | 17 | 26 | Page 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | Next Page > |
| 03-17-20 10:33am - 1742 days | #3 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
TheWrap Cinema Stocks Drop Up to 31% as Coronavirus Shuts Theaters, Delays Releases Coronavirus Could Sink 2020 Box Office to Below $8 Billion for First Time in 20 Years by Jeremy Fuster | March 16, 2020 @ 3:57 PM “We still don’t know just how long theaters will have to remain closed, how many films this will affect,” Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock tells TheWrap There is no historical precedent for the financial drain that the coronavirus is about to do to the movie business, but multiple box office and financial analysts told TheWrap that the growing wave of theater closures and postponed film releases may sink 2020 domestic grosses to levels not seen since the turn of the 21st century. Domestic grosses for 2020 may well sink below $8 billion for the first time since 2000, analysts said, while admissions may fall below 1 billion tickets sold for the first time since 1976. This past weekend, overall grosses dropped 45% from the previous weekend, to $55.3 million, lower than even the box office weekends following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To find a total that low, we have to go back all the way to Halloween weekend of 1998, when overall ticket sales fell to $50.8 million before inflation adjustment. With the postponement of “A Quiet Place Part II” and “Mulan,” two films that were expected to drive springtime moviegoing, those numbers are going to sink even lower even if some theaters manage to stay open. Others, however, said that trying to put any sort of estimates on how big the drop will be is a fool’s errand at this point. “We are still at the earliest stages of this slump, and we still don’t know just how long theaters will have to remain closed, how many films this will affect, or what studios will do whenever this all ends,” Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock said. “How could anyone try to make a prediction when the situation changes almost on an hourly basis?” The American movie theater industry tried longer than other countries to maintain a “business as usual” mantra. As recently as last Wednesday, theater owners and regional trade organizations were assuring the public that theaters would remain open. But as millions have been encouraged to stay home and local officials in major cities have begun forcing closures, their hand has been forced. On Sunday night, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered that all bars, nightclubs, and yes, movie theaters be closed for at least the remainder of March while restaurants will only be open for delivery and takeout. Then, after the Trump Administration recommended at a White House press conference on Monday that the public avoid gatherings of more than 10 people, Cineworld announced that all 543 Regal Cinemas locations in the U.S. would close indefinitely, joining countries across Europe and major Asian markets like China, where over 70,000 cinemas have remained dark since late January. Also Read: Cinema Stocks Drop Up to 31% as Coronavirus Shuts Theaters, Delays Releases For the theaters that haven’t received orders to close, seating capacity has been severely curtailed. After first reducing screening capacity by 50%, AMC Theaters announced early Monday that it would cap the number of tickets sold for each screening at 50, in keeping with the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control to prevent community spread of the virus. But now that Regal has made the first big move, other nationwide chains are expected to follow suit and announce they are closing soon. The CDC also recommends that this 50-person limit be enforced for at least the next eight weeks, a time period that extends to the first two weekends of May. That would likely force Disney to postpone the release of the Marvel Studios blockbuster “Black Widow,” a film that was supposed to kick off the summer moviegoing season, with an opening weekend topping $100 million. If health officials are correct in their prediction that social distancing will have to continue for two months or more, domestic grosses for the box office will sink below $8 billion while estimates of financial losses for the film industry will likely spiral well above $20 billion. Also Read: Regal, Showcase Cinemas Become First US Theater Chains to Close Nationwide Amid Coronavirus Crisis The Trump administration on Monday even suggested that the crisis could last into “July or August,” which would effectively shut down the entire summer blockbuster season for the first time in movie history. Dennis Carroll, former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Security and Development Unit, told USA Today that it is difficult to predict exactly how long the crisis will last as there is so little information known about the virus. Strong containment efforts in China and South Korea, the first countries to face outbreaks, have led to significant reductions in new cases over the past week, but those cases are still being reported. “By May we could be returning to some state of normalcy,” he said. “But, again, what we don’t know about this virus is epic. Holding a May date as a beacon of hope may soothe some of the angst but who knows?” And there’s a new wrinkle that even further complicates matters for theaters: day-and-date releasing. As streaming and video-on-demand have become more popular over the past decade, theater owners have resisted even the idea of theatrical releases hitting the home market before the long-sacrosanct three-month theatrical window. That standoff has prompted clashes with Netflix over Oscar-contending films like “Roma” and ‘The Irishman” that opened in select theaters but began streaming well before then. But as the coronavirus has thrown out all industry norms, Universal on Monday decided to pull the trigger on Monday and announce that while “Trolls World Tour” will be released to theaters on April 10 — assuming theaters are still open — the animated sequel will also be available for 48-hour digital home rental on the same day for a suggested price of $20. Universal is also cutting short the exclusive theatrical window of current releases like “The Invisible Man” and “The Hunt” with plans to put them up for digital rental as early as this Friday. Also Read: Universal to Release 'Trolls World Tour' for Digital Rental on Same Day as Theatrical Release “It can’t be a positive sign for any theater owner, regardless of the circumstances, that Universal decided to make this move so quickly,” Bock said. “‘Trolls World Tour’ wasn’t going to be a massive hit. The first film made less than $400 million (worldwide). But it wasn’t a small release either. It was going to be a strong draw for families. Not even Disney announced any streaming moves for ‘Mulan’ when they pulled it, so now it’s going to be interesting to see if any other studios see Universal’s move as a green light to try and go straight to home release with some of these spring blockbusters.” While it could simply be a temporary, extraordinary measure for extraordinary times, Universal’s video-on-demand move shows how coronavirus has so severely damaged an industry long viewed as recession-proof. The resiliency of movie theaters through the decades has been a point of pride for owners and mentioned in speeches by leaders like Motion Picture Association CEO/Chairman Charles Rivkin, who boasted of it in his keynote speech last year at CinemaCon — the annual industry convention whose 2020 edition was canceled just last week. “Since that first nickelodeon theater opened in Pittsburgh 114 years ago, we’ve been hearing about our demise for more than a century,” Rivkin said. “Through two world wars, the Depression, and calls for censorship and through new technologies — each one of them guaranteeing the end.” Also Read: Trump-Touted Coronavirus Testing Website Launches, But Still Not Available Nationwide While the immediate outlook looks bleak, movie theaters as a whole should survive this. Analysts expect a quick rebound to normal business and possibly even a boost for theaters in some regions as many Americans will be looking to finally get out of the house after weeks or months in isolation. But what the landscape of the industry will look like on the other side of this crisis is unclear. “My best guess is that this could permanently shrink the movie theater market in terms of locations that are open,” Bock said. “It’s no secret that the theatrical industry was already on thin ice, and this is the worst possible time for any of this to happen. They will have a hard time in the short term for them to convince people to come out the longer this goes. Theaters that were already having a hard time financially might not get back up from this.” “Larger chains like AMC and Regal might survive, but it may not make business sense for some theaters that go bankrupt because of this to be replaced. The days of having two different cineplexes across the street from each other or a few blocks apart may be over.” | |
|
||
| 03-17-20 03:57am - 1743 days | #2 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The US is being invaded from the North by Canadians. Read the news report below to see how Canadians are sneaking into California (and other parts of the US?). Homeland Security and the Border Patrol are armed with handguns and submachineguns, I assume. When will President Trump jump on their asses to get them to do their job of keeping America safe? ---------- ---------- Canadian boy gives iconic response to Disney park closure: 'Took a long trip to get here' In The Know Alex Lasker Mar 16th 2020 4:46PM An 8-year-old Canadian boy gave an instantly iconic response to a reporter during a segment on Disneyland’s recent closure over coronavirus concerns. Elias Sharf, an uncharacteristically sophisticated child who was just trying to visit Disneyland with his family, shared disappointment over his canceled plans with KTTV reporter Rick Lozano outside of the California park on March 13. “It’s closing for the whole month and we come from Canada. Took a long trip to get here,” a very calm Elias lamented, before sipping his Starbucks drink. The legendary interview went viral after Arash Markazi, a sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times, shared a clip of it on Twitter, calling it “the best thing I’ve seen today." “I’d like to think he took a drag of his cigarette a couple minutes later as he talked about missing out on ‘It’s a Small World,'” the columnist added. Naturally, the mature-beyond-his-years Elias was an instant hit among Twitter users. “lol he’s so sophisticated,” Naira Banks wrote. “I felt what he was saying when he took the sip,” another user wrote. “Outside of the hockey rink, this is the maddest any Canadian is capable of being,” joked another. “Nuclear-level mad. Livid. This is how Canucks absolutely f****** lose it. Murderous Canadian rage.” After the clip racked up over 5M views over just one weekend, Markazi got in touch with Elias’s father, Forrest Scharf, who seemed to be getting a kick out of his old-timey son’s newfound fame, and even said the youngster would like to meet with the writer one day. “If we come back to Southern California in the near future, I’ll get in touch,” he wrote. “Elias would enjoy meeting the person that got him in the spotlight.” | |
|
||
| 03-17-20 01:50am - 1743 days | #5 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
It might have been common for men of power to have sex with women, but Harvey Weinstein took it to an extreme, in his abuse and force and non-consensual sex. Too many women have accused him of rape. Oral and vaginal and whatever. Plus, he stated he never used his position to harm the career of women actresses, which appears to be a lie. As well as stating that all the sex he did was consensual. Which was another lie. So Harvey Weinstein was an extreme example, of the old Hollywood, where men of power used that power to have sex. He assaulted women, and used his powerful position to damage the careers of women who were able to refuse his advances. By saying the women were difficult or whatever other lies he made up to lessen their chances of getting jobs. | |
|
||
| 03-16-20 06:03pm - 1743 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The coronavirus precautions are now expanding. In my area (California), they are closing all bars, wineries and non-emergency dental services. Public libraries are closed until further notice. Public schools are closing. All seniors 65 and older, and people with chronic conditions are advised to self-isolate at home. Regal Theaters (movie theaters) nationwide are closed starting tomorrow until further notice. AMC Theatres announced on Monday that it will close all theaters nationwide for six to 12 weeks in response to the coronavirus pandemic. There are probably other closures and restrictions. But the US pandemic is getting serious treatment. In spite of what Trump said recently that the coronavirus will disappear by April. As a side note, the US stock market has been experiencing heavy losses, and is now at the lowest level since the start of the year. Edited on Mar 16, 2020, 11:32pm | |
|
||
| 03-16-20 03:28pm - 1743 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
I've been reading many myths about protection from the coronavirus. These are myths, and will not protect you. A common myth is that eating garlic and drinking water can protect you from getting infected. Those are myths. Another myth is that the bite of a werewolf will protect you, or maybe even regrow your hair. Werewolfism is not a cure for male baldness. Nor is it a protection against the coronovirus. However, the bite of a vampire will protect you against the virus. Vampires are known to be immune to most viruses that infect humans. Once you have turned, you should be safe from the coronavirus. Except you now have to be worry about wooden stakes driven through your heart. And if you are the sparkly kind of vampire from the Twilight Saga series, you don't have to worry about sunlight, as long as you don't mind revealing your inner sparkles to adoring fans. Be safe, people. There are dangers roaming the outside world. | |
|
||
| 03-15-20 12:30pm - 1744 days | #6 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Max von Sydow as The Emperor Ming and Ornella Muti as Princess Aura were two of my favorite characters from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie. von Sydow was evil, and Muti was gorgeous. | |
|
||
| 03-14-20 02:57am - 1746 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The Hollywood Reporter Max von Sydow, Star of 'The Seventh Seal' and 'The Exorcist,' Dies at 90 5:40 AM PDT 3/9/2020 by Duane Byrge The acclaimed Swedish actor, who played the Three-Eyed Raven on HBO's 'Game of Thrones,' earned two Oscar nominations and starred in 11 films directed by countryman Ingmar Bergman. Max von Sydow, the legend of Swedish cinema who dueled with Death in a game of chess in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and portrayed the resolute Father Merrin in William Friedkin's The Exorcist, has died. He was 90. Von Sydow, who starred in 11 films directed by Bergman, typically playing a tormented protagonist, died Sunday at his home in Provence, France. "It's with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max Von Sydow on March 8, 2020," his wife, French documentary filmmaker and producer Catherine von Sydow, said Monday. The imposing von Sydow received a best actor Oscar nomination — rare for a performance in a non-English-language film — for playing a Swedish father who emigrates to Denmark to build a better life for himself and his son in Pelle the Conqueror (1987). The somber drama, directed by Bille August, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the foreign-language Oscar. Two decades later, von Sydow worked closely with another young actor and was nominated again, this time for his silent, supporting turn in the Stephen Daldry 9/11 drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). He was the only male Swedish actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. One of the most admired actors of his era, von Sydow made his first foray into U.S. movies in a big way, portraying Jesus in the George Stevens epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). His once said that working on that film was like "being in a prison." "It was the hardest part I've ever had to play in my life," he said, and that wasn't because it was his first English-language role. "I couldn't smoke or drink in public. The most difficult part of playing Christ was that I had to keep up the image around the clock. As soon as the picture finished, I returned home to Sweden and tried to find my old self. It took six months to get back to normal." Von Sydow reportedly passed on the opportunity to play the title role of the SPECTRE villain in Dr. No (1962), but he did play the bad guy Blofeld in another James Bond movie, Never Say Never Again (1983). He also was menacing as the slick assassin in Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor (1975) and as a "pre-crime" boss in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002). Von Sydow's estimable body of work also includes Hawaii (1966), the spy thrillers The Quiller Memorandum (1966) and The Kremlin Letter (1970), March or Die (1977), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Dune (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990), Until the End of the World (1991), Needful Things (1993), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) and Robin Hood (2010). Although generally associated with his venerable performances in "serious" films, von Sydow periodically ventured into sillier fare, where he enjoyed playing against audience expectations. That included turns as Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon (1980) and as a sinister beer maker in the lowbrow Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy Strange Brew (1983). More recently, von Sydow played explorer Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and the Three-Eyed Raven on HBO's Game of Thrones — for which he received an Emmy nomination — and filmed Thomas Vinterberg's Kursk (201  .He was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929, in Lund, Sweden. His father was a professor of comparative folklore at the local university, and his mother was a teacher. He began acting in school plays. After two years in the Swedish military, von Sydow enrolled at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school; during his three years there, he helped form a theater group, which also included actress Ingrid Thulin. By the time he graduated in 1951, he had already performed in two films directed by Alf Sjoberg, Only a Mother (1949) and Miss Julie (1951). Von Sydow's acting prowess won notice, and he was given a Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, a grant to young actors of promise. The following year, the gaunt, 6-foot-4 actor joined the municipal theater in Malmo, where he met and first collaborated with Bergman. Von Sydow won acclaim for playing the 14th century knight Antonius Block and engaging in an existential game of chess with the black-shrouded Death (Bengt Ekerot) in the bleak The Seventh Seal, then teamed with Bergman for another film released in 1957, Wild Strawberries. As a member of Bergman's repertory company, the blue-eyed von Sydow also played a charismatic conjurer in The Magician (195 , a raped girl's revenge-seeking father in The Virgin Spring (1960), a clueless husband who loses his wife to schizophrenia in Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and an artist tormented by the fear he's lost his talent in The Hour of the Wolf (196.His other collaborations with Bergman included Winter Light (1963), Shame (196 and The Passion of Anna (1969).Working with the filmmaker, especially at the start of his career, was his "most important experience, no doubt," von Sydow told Backstage magazine in 2012. "It was very special, I was very privileged, and I'm very grateful for all the wonderful opportunities he gave me," he said. "It was also a period of learning, experimenting and developing. He gave young people wonderful opportunities, and he was a great inspiration for everybody. Sometimes he was difficult, of course, and there were some people who had great difficulties working with him, but most of us were very spoiled by him." In The Best Intentions (1992), von Sydow played Bergman's grandfather in the film that August directed and Bergman scripted. Von Sydow often portrayed characters that were much older than he was. In The Exorcist (1973), he played the 80-year-old Father Merrin ("The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!") when he was 43. "Somebody gave me the [William Peter Blatty] book to read and said, 'They want you to play a priest,'" he said in a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "I read the book and I thought, of course, it was for the young priest. So I said, 'That's a good part.' And they said, 'No, no no. They want you for the exorcist!' I still don't really know why." Von Sydow underwent three hours in the makeup room each day to look the part. He then got an opportunity to play a younger Father Merrin four years later in John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic. Another notable role for him was Karl Oskar, a Scandinavian farmer who comes to Minnesota, in the Jan Troell epics The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972). Both also starred Liv Ullmann. Von Sydow ventured into directing in 1988 with Katinka, a turn-of-the-century drama about a dreamy woman trapped in a loveless marriage. He employed legendary Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who had long captured von Sydow's most stirring performances, to shoot the film. Von Sydow was married to actress Christina Olin from 1951-79 and then to Catherine Brelet, who served as his assistant on several films, since 1997. He also is survived by his four sons. Mike Barnes contributed to this report. | |
|
||
| 03-13-20 10:13am - 1746 days | #1579 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The real news is slowly coming out: President Trump reveals that it's the CDC and former black President Obama who are responsible for the coronavirus. If the CDC and Obama had done their job, America would be much better prepared to fight the virus. But the CDC and Obama were incompetent. It took a Republican president, Donald Trump, to step in fight the virus with truth, justice, and the American way of fighting a clean, healthful fight to save American lives. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified at a House hearing that the U.S. has failed to meet the capacity for testing. On Thursday, Trump revealed in a tweet that ex-Vice-President Joe Biden was responsible for the death of thousands of Americans from illness. Shame on the CDC and Obama and Biden. Vote for Trump, in 2020. ------ ------ Trump slams CDC for lack of coronavirus testing, blames Obama NBC News Rebecca Shabad Mar 13th 2020 11:40AM WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for being ill-prepared to test for the coronavirus and he blamed President Barack Obama for the situation. "For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.....," Trump wrote. In a follow-up tweet, Trump continued his broadside, ".... Their response to H1N1 Swine flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!" On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified at a House hearing that the U.S. has failed to meet the capacity for testing. "The system is not really geared to what we need right now," he said. “That is a failing. Let's admit it." Two issues have led to the slow process in testing for COVID-19. One was that the CDC had initially put out narrow guidelines for who could be considered for testing. Those criteria were eventually expanded and so far about 11,000 specimens have been tested, according to the CDC. South Korea, on the other hand, has been testing nearly 20,000 people each day for the disease, according to reports. There were also technical issues with the test kits in which they tested for more than just the novel coronavirus, and the glitch affected the integrity of the kit. Trump tweeted on Thursday that "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 epidemic which killed thousands of people," and said "The response was one of the worst on record." Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates responded that Trump should focus on fighting the current outbreak instead of "desperately tweeting lies about ten Obama-Biden Administration." | |
|
||
| 03-13-20 08:36am - 1746 days | #1578 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Although President Trump has declared the coronavirus will not hurt the US, he has also stated that testing for the virus will soon happen on a large scale. Do not fear, US citizens. Our brave, stable-genius President will lead us out of the pandemic, with courage and grace. The president has also revealed that not only is China the source of the virus, but that the Center for Disease Control, based in the US, has not been doing its job of protecting American citizens: The CDC would "always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic." Harsh words from a president, but the president is a truthful man. The president has been cutting funding for the CDC for at least a few years now, because he knew the money was being wasted, and could be spent on better things like building a wall to keep out the dirty Mexicans. The president needs to fire the entire CDC staff and get volunteers who can work for free and save our great nation. Here is a brief summary of some of the cuts Trump did to the CDC (and he proposed further cuts in 2021): ------ ------ Trump administration budget cuts could become a major problem as coronavirus spreads By Chris Morris February 26, 2020 9:45 AM EST The Trump administration recently requested $2.5 billion in emergency funds to prepare the U.S. for a possible widespread outbreak of coronavirus. Critics, though, are pointing out that money might not be necessary if the administration hadn’t spent the past two years largely dismantling government units that were designed to protect against pandemics. The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded. That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China. Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business. Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.) Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process. The effects of those cuts are being felt today. While the CDC announced plans to test people with flu-like symptoms for COVID-19, those have been delayed and only three of the country’s 100 public-health labs have been able to test for coronavirus. The administration’s request for additional funding came roughly two weeks after officials said HHS was almost out of funding for its response to the virus. The cuts could be especially problematic as COVID-19 continues to spread. Health officials are now warning the U.S. is unlikely to be spared, even though cases are minimal here so far. "It's not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a press call Tuesday. ------------- ------------- Trump: coronavirus testing will soon happen on 'large scale' Thomson Reuters Lisa Lambert Mar 13th 2020 7:57AM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday morning that coronavirus testing in the United States will soon happen on a large scale, but did not provide any details on how that would be accomplished. "The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!" he wrote in a tweet. Trump also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the U.S. organizations leading the fight against the deadly infection, for having a testing system that he said would "always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic." Trump did not elaborate on why the system was inadequate, but on Thursday, the top U.S. official on infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, said people cannot get tests easily and the U.S. testing system "is not really geared to what we need right now." U.S. officials and lawmakers are struggling to get a sense of how many people in the country have contracted the virus, which they attribute to low testing rates. | |
|
||
| 03-12-20 03:52pm - 1747 days | #1577 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: The Democrats are using the coronavirus as a scare tactic to destroy Donald Trump, the greatest, most genius President of the United States of America. On Wednesday, Trump banned travel from Europe for 30 days, Trump boasted that “the virus will not have a chance against us.” So Trump stands firm against the virus, while demon Democrats Biden and Sanders are running in fear. God bless Donald Trump, our finest president. --------- --------- Happening now icon Disneyland temporarily closes its theme parks as virus spreads Biden reveals coronavirus plan, calls Trump’s handling a ‘colossal’ failure Yahoo News Brittany Shepherd Mar 12th 2020 3:45PM WASHINGTON—Former vice president Joe Biden announced his campaign’s plan to combat coronavirus while slamming the Trump administration’s handling of the spread of the outbreak during a speech Thursday afternoon. “The administration’s failure on testing is colossal,” said Biden in Wilmington, Delaware. “It’s a failure of planning, leadership, and execution. “We have to help the world to drive coordinated global strategy, not shut ourselves out from the world. Unfortunately, this virus laid bare the severe shortcoming of the current administration.” Biden offered thinly veiled criticism of Trump as he ticked through the details of his campaign’s plans, which included free virus testing and collaboration with doctors and experts. He chided the White House’s travel bans for Europe. "Neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia... labeling [coronavirus] a foreign virus does not displace accountability for misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump admin,” said Biden, a reference to some conservative voices online that have referred to coronavirus as the “Wuhan Virus,” a term not used by the scientific community. “Coronavirus does not have a political affiliation." Biden’s address comes as economic and health uncertainty seemed to reach a fever pitch. Plummeting stock market numbers coupled with mixed messages from the Trump administration on the severity of the outbreak have left many questioning the fates of their investments and driving others to stockpile medical supplies with damaging consequences. “The markets will respond to strong, steady, capable leadership that addresses the root of the problem, not efforts to cover it up,” said Biden. Positioning himself as a de-facto leader, Biden is attempting to clear a path to the nomination where he’s seen as not only the commander, but also healer-in-chief, able to unite a fractured Democratic party and a country desperate for answers. His Delaware speech is the first of several case tests to see if his message will stick with voters. Biden and rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have cancelled campaign events amid growing calls for individuals to practice social distancing and concerns that COVID-19 will spread in close quarters. The Biden campaign announced a public health advisory committee earlier in the week “to minimize health risks for the candidate, staff, and supporters.” The group of doctors and experts will advise the campaign on a continuous basis. During his speech, Biden says his campaign is “reimagining” the format for upcoming large planned events. “Downplaying it, being overly dismissive, or spreading disinformation is only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease,” said Biden. Sanders held a coronavirus roundtable in Detroit alongside medical professionals before the Michigan primary and pushed for a free vaccine once it is developed. He’s set to make his own remarks later Thursday evening. CNN made dramatic changes to their debate format, too, moving the location from Arizona to D.C., and cutting the live audience as well as the media spin and file room, instead asking journalists to tune in from home. Over the last few weeks, Trump has attempted to downplay the effects of COVID-19 despite warnings from government doctors about the disease’s severity. During a testimony on Capitol Hill, National Institutes of Health doctor Anthony Fauci said that “many, many millions” could be infected with the virus if the government mishandles. “Things will get worse than they are right now,’” Fauci added. The World Health Organization Wednesday declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic. More than 4,2000 have died from the virus globally, 38 of those deaths happening in the U.S, a majority in Washington state. Still, in an Oval Office address Wednesday evening, after banning travel from Europe for 30 days, Trump boasted that “the virus will not have a chance against us.” _____ | |
|
||
| 03-12-20 10:59am - 1747 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Variety.com March 12, 2020 9:59AM PT Kate Beckinsale Alleges Harvey Weinstein Berated Her After ‘Serendipity’ Premiere By Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent Kate Beckinsale Alleges Harvey Weinstein Berated Her After ‘Serendipity’ Premiere Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years in prison, and allegations of his abusive behavior continue to mount. Kate Beckinsale claims the now-convicted rapist once berated her for not dressing sexy enough to the premiere of “Serendipity” back in 2001, screaming and calling her a “c—.” Beckinsale’s infant daughter was present when the alleged incident occurred. “The minute the door closed he started screaming, ‘You stupid f—ing c—, you c— you ruined my premiere.’ I had no idea what he was talking about and started to shake,” Beckinsale wrote on Instagram, shortly after Weinstein was sentenced by a New York City judge. “He said, ‘If I am throwing a red carpet, you get in a tight dress, you shake your ass, you shake your t—, you do not go down looking like a f—ing lesbian you stupid f—ing c—.'” “The shock made me burst into tears,” Beckinsale wrote. A rep for Weinstein didn’t immediately return Variety‘s request for comment, in response to Beckinsale’s claims. “Serendipity,” starring Beckinsale and John Cusack, was distributed by Weinstein’s former company Miramax. “Serendipity” was released shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The New York City red carpet premiere for the film was set for Oct. 5 and Beckinsale says the cast refused to go “because holding a premiere mere weeks after 9/11 with the city still smoking felt like the most insensitive, tone deaf, disrespectful idea possible.” However, Weinstein insisted the premiere go on, according to Beckinsale, who says, “We flew into New York and somehow got through it.” The actress says, the morning after the red carpet premiere, Weinstein called her and asked if she would like to bring her daughter, who at the time, was less than two years old, over for a playdate with his young daughter. When Beckinsale showed up to Weinstein’s home, the then-powerful movie mogul began to scream, reprimanding her for her choice in clothing at the premiere the night before. “I turned up and he immediately called for his nanny to take the babies to another room to play. I went to go with them and he said, ‘No, you wait here,'” Beckinsale says. “The minute the door closed, he started screaming, ‘You stupid f—ing c—.'” “I tried to say, ‘Harvey, the city is on fire, people are still looking for their relatives, none of us even felt the premiere was appropriate, much less coming out dressed like it’s a bachelor party,'” Beckinsale writes. “He said, ‘I don’t care — it’s my f—ing premiere, and if I want p—- on the red carpet, that’s what I get.'” Beckinsale recalls Weinstein being “livid” as he screamed at her, and says she managed to leave his home with her daughter. The actress says this was not the only incident she ran into with Weinstein throughout the years. Beckinsale also says she told other people in the industry about the bad behavior she faced, but no action was ever taken. “That was one of many experiences I had that there was no recourse for, and falls under no felony,” Beckinsale writes. “But I was punished for it,” she says, “And for other instances where I said no to him for years, insidiously and seeming irreversibly.” Beckinsale shared her story on Instagram, explaining that she feels relief that Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, and she hopes his sentencing will be a deterrent for other bad behavior in the industry. “I hope and pray that we, as an industry, can start to actually outlaw all abuses of power and expose them and eliminate them, for all genders, forever,” she writes. Weinstein was sentenced on Wednesday to 23 years in prison, and was convicted on two charges of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. His defense team plans to appeal this summer. | |
|
||
| 03-12-20 10:50am - 1747 days | #1576 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real new: Trump is sending infected spies to Australia to spread the disease. Trump is hoping that if the rest of world struggles with the coronavirus, the US will stand tall and proud, and make money off of the virus. Trump has said the virus should disappear in April in the US. But now he is having second thoughts: Maybe the disease can continue to spread around the world, and help make America the greatest country on earth, which is its right place. All bow down to Trump, the most stable genius the US has ever know. Trump, president in 2020, President For Life in 2024. Ivanka, his favorite daughter, is waiting to be the next President For Life after her father makes America great again. What a woman. What a leader she will be. God bless the Trump family, our most holy leaders on earth. ----------------------- The Hollywood Reporter Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson Contracted Coronavirus in U.S., Australian Officials Say 12:50 AM PDT 3/12/2020 by Pip Bulbeck Now in isolation in a Queensland hospital, government officials say that people who have come in close contact with the couple will now need to self-isolate and quarantine. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are believed to have contracted the coronavirus in the U.S., or in transit from there, according to officials from Queensland Health, the Australian government department overseeing the outbreak of the disease in that state. On Thursday, a Queensland Health official, without specifically naming the couple, said that all new reported infections are non-contact cases and that the patients are believed to have “contracted the illness outside Australia and traveled to Queensland with the virus.” Hanks and Wilson, both 63, had been in Australia for at least a week prior to their diagnosis. Hanks is down under for the production of Baz Luhrmann’s as-yet-untitled Elvis Presley movie for Warner Bros., while Wilson was accompanying him there and also performing concerts of songs from her new album Halfway to Home. The married celebrity couple are two of seven new cases reported in Queensland on Thursday, among a total of over 130 cases across Australia. The pair are in isolation for 14 days in a hospital on the Gold Coast. Hanks first confirmed the positive test for the virus in an Instagram post. They are also assisting Queensland Health with contact tracing. Details of their movements outside Australia have not yet been made public. According to their sons Chet and Colin, Hanks and Wilson are doing well, but their quarantine period has forced production to shut down for at least two weeks on Luhrmann's Elvis biopic, in which Hanks was due to play Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker. It's unclear how many of the cast and crew have been in contact with Hanks since their return to Queensland from the U.S. recently, but all production personnel have been sent home and are awaiting instructions. Local news outlets report that Luhrmann issued a statement to cast and crew requesting they stay home and that “all work activity on the production is cancelled and will not resume until further notice”. Principal photography was due to start on the film, which has a release date of Oct. 2021, next Monday. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Thursday that "people who have come in close contact with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson will now need to self-isolate and quarantine." "I have been in contact with Baz Luhrmann quite often today and he has said to me that he wants to pass on to everyone that we stand with the people of Queensland in making sure we comply with any restrictions and of course that we want to see a speedy recovery," Palaszczuk added. "The filming has been going extremely well on the Gold Coast and of course there will be a halt to some of the filming at the moment whilst Tom and Rita get the very best care that they will get in our Queensland hospital," she said. Since Hanks and Wilson's arrival in Australia, Wilson has made several public appearances. She was a guest on the Nine Network’s Today Extra talk show in Sydney on March 9, and earlier performed at the Emporium Hotel in Brisbane on March 5 and at the Sydney Opera House on March 7. Today Extra show host David Campbell has self-isolated for 14 days following Wilson’s diagnosis. Channel Nine confirmed it had taken action "in line with our crisis response plan" after the Wilson visit. "Those who were in prolonged contact with her are self-isolating for 14 days," a statement from Nine said. "Our premises is currently being cleaned in all areas she visited," it added. The Elvis biopic is based at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast and is the only production working at the studios at present. A Village Roadshow spokesman told THR the studios and Village Roadshow theme parks adjacent to the studios are still operating and open as normal. The company said it is following Queensland Health and Australian government health guidelines. Several other international productions are currently shooting in Australia, including Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. So far, no other film shoots in the country are known to have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. | |
|
||
| 03-11-20 07:35am - 1748 days | #1575 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: The coronavirus is good news for the US. It encourages people to stay home and buy American. Which boosts the GNP. And increases Trump's chances of winning a second term. Trump is a stable genius, who sees the bright side of everything. He's the best man to lead our country, and make America great again. Also, Trump is confident the virus will go away as the weather warms up, probably sometime in April. Trump's uncle was a PHd at MIT, and that's where Trump gets his genius. What a president. What a genius. On a side note: the US has a problem with distributing test kits for the virus. But rest assured, Trump says that anyone who wants a test kit can get one. Trump, man of the people. Trump, man of the billionaires. -------------------------- Italy passes 10,000 infections as clusters spur worry in U.S. The Associated Press NICOLE WINFIELD and MATT SEDENSKY Mar 11th 2020 9:17AM ROME (AP) — Expanding clusters of the new coronavirus were eyed warily Wednesday as the outbreak upended daily life and reshaped everything from the United States presidential race to Pope Francis’ travel. In the U.S., the caseload passed 1,000, and outbreaks on both sides of the country were stirring alarm, while in Europe, an increasingly locked-down Italy counted more than 10,000 infections and recorded soaring deaths among its aging population. “Right now, the epicenter — the new China — is Europe,” said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rome’s usual boisterous hum was reduced to a whisper as Italy’s 62 million people were told to mostly stay home. Though shops, cafes and restaurants remained open, police around the country were enforcing rules that customers stay 1 meter (3 feet) apart and certain businesses shutter by 6 p.m. Authorities said 631 people have died of COVID-19 in Italy, with an increase of 168 fatalities recorded Tuesday. The health crisis was dealing a serious blow to the country’s economy — the third-largest of the 19 countries using the euro — and threatened instability worldwide. Markets across Asia dropped Wednesday despite Wall Street’s gains a day earlier. Investors seemed encouraged by promises by U.S. President Donald Trump of a relief package to cushion economic pain from the outbreak. Governments around Asia and elsewhere have also announced billions of dollars in stimulus funds, including packages revealed in Japan on Tuesday and Australia on Wednesday. “Investors are still worried that those fiscal stimulus packages may not be able to contain the virus outbreak as well as to mitigate the impact on the economy,” said Louis Wong of Philip Capital Management. For most, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for a few, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illnesses, including pneumonia. More than 119,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 4,200 have died. The virus has disrupted travel, closed schools and halted manufacturing in places around the globe. The Vatican’s representative to the half-island nation of East Timor said Wednesday that an expected visit by Pope Francis, though never made official, would not happen later this year. Francis' Wednesday audience — typically a boisterous affair that fills St. Peter's Square or the Vatican auditorium with tens of thousands — was instead held in the privacy of his library and shared by livestream. The square was empty, with Vatican City adopting Italy's lockdown measures. In the U.S., dozens of cases were being tied to a conference in Boston, and leaders in multiple states were announcing curbs on large events. Colleges around the country emptied their classrooms as they moved to online instruction and uncertainty surrounded the upcoming opening of the major league baseball season and college basketball’s championships. Even the famed buffets of Las Vegas were affected, with some of the Strip’s biggest being closed in a precautionary measure. “It’s terrifying,” said Silvana Gomez, a student at Harvard University, where undergraduates were told to leave campus by Sunday. “I’m definitely very scared right now about what the next couple days, the next couple weeks look like.” New York’s governor said National Guard troops would scrub public places and deliver food to a suburb where infections have spiked. In Washington state, where a Seattle-area nursing home was the center of an outbreak, officials said the virus had spread to at least 10 other long-term care facilities. In California, thousands of restless passengers remained stuck aboard a cruise ship, waiting for their turn to disembark to begin quarantines. Two men vying to take on Trump in the U.S. presidential election abruptly canceled rallies Tuesday and left open the possibility that future campaign events could be impacted, too. Trump's campaign insisted it would proceed as normal, though Vice President Mike Pence conceded future rallies would be evaluated “on a day to day basis.” It was all evidence of the continuing westward push of the virus. In China, where it first cropped up, officials said they’d counted only 24 new cases on Wednesday. In a reversal of positions, China is seeing new cases brought in from overseas. In Beijing, the capital, all the new cases of COVID-19 reported on Wednesday came from outside the country, five from Italy and one from the United States. “The epidemic situation is at a low level and the prevention and control are continuously going well," said Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission. The province at the center of China’s virus outbreak said Wednesday that manufacturers, food processors and other businesses deemed essential to the national economy or providing daily necessities can resume operation. The other major outbreak site in Asia, South Korea, continued to report improving numbers, too, with 242 new cases announced Wednesday. Still, a cluster of infections connected to a call center in one of the busiest areas of that country’s capital was raising alarms. ___ Sedensky reported from Bangkok. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers John Leicester in Paris; Joe McDonald and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea. | |
|
||
| 03-10-20 10:17pm - 1749 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
‘Avatar’ Franchise Villain Colonel Quaritch is Still Being Discovered and Evolving, Stephen Lang Says Posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2020 by Ethan Anderton At the end of James Cameron‘s sci-fi blockbuster Avatar, which was released all the way back in 2009, villain Colonel Miles Quaritch was apparently killed during the assault on the Tree of Souls. That’s why we were surprised when James Cameron announced that Stephen Lang would be returning in the same role for the forthcoming Avatar sequels. Weirdly enough, there were only three sequels planned when Stephen Lang’s return, but the actor has confirmed that he’s on board for all four, and that means there’s a lot more to learn about the character that seemed rather one-dimensional in the first movie. Stephen Lang recently spoke to The National (via CinemaBlend) about the return of Colonel Miles Quaritch. Obviously the actor couldn’t reveal any significant details about the story or how his character is involved with it, but he spoke in general about how the character is being approached as the Avatar sequels villain. Lang said: “I’m working now with a much broader canvas than I was with the first Avatar, and it keeps me in concert with James Cameron to really go to town and examine the character in detail. That, to me, is totally tremendously satisfying and challenging.” That makes is sound like Quaritch may not be simply classified as a villain throughout the Avatar sequels. That would line up with what Lang vaguely told /Film back at the end of 2018 when he said this: “Quaritch, his place in this particular universe has gotten more complicated. And that’s kind of the extent of his involvement in the world. The world begins to – the world of Pandora – begins to affect him quite deeply in ways that he either refused or it did not affect him. And it gets under his skin.” Lang somewhat echoed that sentiment in his conversation with The National when he added this: “He has evolved, definitely. We’re making four more films, so if he doesn’t evolve, we’re in some kind of trouble. And it’s not always a question of evolution, it’s about becoming more deeply entrenched. I’m still discovering it. That’s something I’ll be discovering as we continue to work because we’re by no means near finished with this process.” To me, that means Quaritch could end up working with the people he previously fought against. After all, what would make the situation more complicated for Quaritch than if he was forced to change sides. It would also be a challenge for the Na’vi and their allies if they were forced to trust Quaritch in order to help them survive. We still have almost zero idea what to expect from the Avatar sequels, but they’re still coming. Avatar 2 is slated to arrive in theaters on December 17, 2021, and Avatar 3 will follow on December 22, 2023. If those two movies are successful at the box office, then James Cameron will continue with Avatar 4 on December 19, 2025, and Avatar 5 will finish the franchise on December 17, 2027. | |
|
||
| 03-10-20 08:49am - 1749 days | #1574 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real fake news: Trump's camgaign chief is sending money to Trump's family. Trump does not want his children to be forced to live on food stamps and governmental assistance. So Trump is willing to give his family money. What a generous man. Trump, the most stable genius the US has ever known. ====== ====== Trump campaign chief is funneling pay to Eric Trump's wife, Don Jr.'s girlfriend: Report HuffPost US Mary Papenfuss Mar 10th 2020 10:29AM President Donald Trump’s campaign manager is quietly channeling money to Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, The New York Times reported Monday. The payments are hidden from public view because they’re made through campaign manager Paul Parscale’s private company, Parscale Strategy, based in San Antonio, sources told the Times. Typically, such payments would be part of public filings required by the Federal Election Commission so that donors can find out how their contributions are being used — in this case, to pay members of the president’s family. The family benefits are linked to a network of politically connected private companies — operating with the support and help of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — that have charged roughly $75 million since 2017 to the Trump reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee and other Republican clients, according to the Times. Guilfoyle last year angrily confronted Parscale about late checks owed to her, two witnesses told the Times. He reportedly promised that the situation would be rectified by his wife, Candice Parscale, who often handles his company accounts. One of Lara Trump’s most notorious contributions to her father-in-law’s campaign early this year was to mock rival Joe Biden’s stutter, which he has grappled with since he was a child. She was initially hired as a senior consultant in early 2017 by another Parscale company, digital vender Giles-Parscale, also based in San Antonio, The Associated Press reported. Lara Trump was to serve as a liaison between the company and Donald Trump’s campaign, headquartered in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, which is owned by the president’s Trump Organization. Parscale was named Trump’s reelection campaign manager the following year. The Trump campaign announced in January that Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality who stated dating Trump Jr. two years ago, would lead the joint fundraising drive between the campaign and the RNC. Guilfoyle left Fox News in 2018 following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior, including sexual misconduct, HuffPost reported at the time. An attorney for Guilfoyle denied all accusations as “unequivocally baseless.” HuffPost could not immediately reach Parscale for comment. Parscale declined to comment to the Times “in detail” on the article, the paper reported. He has, however, said in the past that private companies provide greater flexibility in a campaign, given campaign finance law requirements, noted the Times. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
|
||
| 03-07-20 11:49pm - 1752 days | #1573 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, declares a state of emergency due to the coronavirus. This is a mistake. President Trump has declared that the coronavirus is a Democratic hoax, and that the United States is safe and there is no reason to panic. As soon as the weather warms up, the virus will disappear, and Americans will be free to make America Free, White and Great again. Also, real news, President Trump has declared the virus is not our fault. (It's probably the fault of China and Democratic traitors.) ------ ------ New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declares a state of emergency and confirms 76 cases of coronavirus in the state Business Insider Sonam Sheth (ssheth@businessinsider.com) Mar 7th 2020 1:57PM New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday as the number of novel coronavirus cases surge across the US. Twenty more people in New York have tested positive for coronavirus, officials said Saturday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 76. Cuomo said there are 11 confirmed cases in New York City, 57 in Westchester County, two in Rockland County, four in Nassau County, and two in Saratoga County. The total number of confirmed cases across the US is 312, and there have been 17 deaths as of Saturday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday as the number of novel coronavirus cases surge across the US. Twenty more people in New York have tested positive for coronavirus, Cuomo said Saturday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 76. Cuomo said there are 11 confirmed cases in New York City, 57 in Westchester County, two in Rockland County, four in Nassau County, and two in Saratoga County. Officials have reported 312 cases of coronavirus and 17 deaths across the US as of Saturday. Florida reported the first death on the East Coast on Friday and a number of new cases along with Georgia on Saturday. Meanwhile, 21 people on board the Grand Princess, a cruise ship docked off the coast of California, have tested positive for the virus. In New York, according to The New York Times, a taxi or ride-hailing driver tested positive, resulting in more than 40 doctors and others at the hospital treating him to go into self-quarantine. Also on Saturday, Amtrak canceled its nonstop service between New York and Washington, DC, because of a lack of demand. The company said it would cancel service until May 26 and said in a statement, "We are making temporary adjustments to our schedule, such as removing train cars or canceling trains when there is a convenient alternative with a similar schedule that will have minimal impact to customers." The Trump administration, meanwhile, is facing intense scrutiny over its response to the coronavirus outbreak. President Donald Trump has largely downplayed the severity of the outbreak and placed officials with little to no background in managing public health crises or infectious diseases in charge of spearheading the White House's response. On Friday, the president drew sharp backlash when he told reporters that although scientific and medical experts had urged him to bring infected Americans off the cruise ship, he didn't want to do so because it would cause the number of reported cases to go up and it "wasn't our fault." | |
|
||
| 03-07-20 01:51pm - 1752 days | #1572 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: You have to admire Trump and his administration: They know how to act bravely and decisively. And when to ignore the advice of the "fake" medical experts. -------- -------- Trump Regime Overruled CDC, Flew Coronavirus-Infected Americans on Plane With Healthy People Matt Novak 2/21/20 7:00AM Filed to:coronavirus The U.S. State Department overruled the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), choosing to bring 14 Americans who were infected with the new coronavirus back from Japan, according to the Washington Post. The new report raises serious questions about the U.S. government’s decisions at a time when the coronavirus, which causes an illness called Covid-19, threatens to become a global pandemic. The American evacuees were passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise, which has been quarantined in Yokohama, Japan since February 5. Over 600 of the 3,700 passengers from the Diamond Princess have tested positive for the virus, and it was announced yesterday that two Japanese passengers in their 80s recently died. The U.S. chartered two Boeing 747 planes to bring Americans from the cruise ship to military bases in California and Texas where they’re being quarantined for 14 days. One of the U.S. State Department’s evacuation planes was loaded with 328 Americans on Monday when new lab results came back showing that 14 of the passengers had tested positive for the coronavirus. The CDC’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, recommended that the 14 passengers be taken off the plane and receive medical attention in Japan. But Trump officials like Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, disagreed with the CDC, according to the Washington Post. Kadlec, who previously worked as a special assistant to President George W. Bush and serves as a member of the Trump regime’s coronavirus task force, reportedly argued that the planes that had been chartered by the government contained seats which could be cordoned off for any infected passengers. This news wasn’t shared with the other healthy passengers on the flight, many of whom only learned about flying with infected passengers after they landed in the U.S. and saw news reports. Videos posted online by American passengers from the evacuation flights show potentially infected passengers being put in a special area of the plane. One health worker in a blue suit appears to instruct some passengers with his hands above his head. Gif: Ruptly/YouTube The U.S. State Department made the final decision to allow the infected passengers to fly, siding with Kadlec over the CDC. As a result, officials from the CDC asked that the Trump regime leave their names off the press release about the evacuation. “CDC did weigh in on this and explicitly recommended against it,” the CDC’s Schuchat wrote in an email to the Trump regime that was shared with the Washington Post. “We should not be mentioned as having been consulted as it begs the question of what was our advice.” The number of coronavirus cases outside China continues to climb, with South Korea and Iran reporting their first deaths from Covid-19 this week. And new cases of the disease are popping up daily in places like Italy. Cases in South Korea doubled overnight, bringing the total number of infected people in that country to 204, according to the Korea Times. And even within China, where the virus is thought to be slowing its spread, there are some frightening new reports. A 29-year-old doctor in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, died on Friday, a worrying sign in a region where at least 3,000 health care workers have been stricken with the virus. The doctor’s age has also alarmed some public health experts since the vast majority of fatalities from the virus had previously been in people over the age of 60. Prisons across China are also trying to control the virus, as Rencheng Prison in the Chinese province of Shandong has reported over 200 cases of the new coronavirus in prisoners on Thursday, with seven guards also contracting the disease. An additional 230 cases were reported at Wuhan Women’s Prison on Friday, according to the South China Morning Post. Meanwhile, allies of President Donald Trump, like anti-China commentator Gordon Chang, have become darkly boastful that the Covid-19 has been hitting China incredibly hard. Chang appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show this week and tweeted about how China will decline on the world stage in the wake of the virus. “Many smart people, knowing that China would dominate the world, thought they should try to manage America’s decline,” Chang tweeted on Thursday. “Look who’s declining now. It ain’t America. Funny what a tiny microbe can do.” Aside from being a disgusting thing to say on a human level, it’s way too early for anyone outside China to assume that they won’t see the virus impact their country soon. “Yes, the U.S. is already being affected, and it will get worse,” Chang conceded in a follow-up tweet. “Our society will not, however, be afflicted to the same degree.” We’ll certainly see about that. With Trump at the wheel, I wouldn’t get too cocky. | |
|
||
| 03-07-20 01:07pm - 1752 days | #1571 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The truth is slowly coming out. President Trump, the most stable genius the US has ever had, had an uncle who was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. This is where President Trump gained his deep understanding of science and ethics. And this far-reaching knowledge is what allows President Trump to ignore the false theories of medical experts on the coronavirus: Trump is the Man, the one who knows how the virus will be defeated. Don't listen to the enemies of the US who are trying to drag us down: Instead, listen to President Trump, who will save American lives and destroy the coronavirus. President Trump reveals the truth: When talking about Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, Trump called Inslee a "snake". Does this mean that Inslee cannot be trusted to help the people in Washington state who are facing the coronavirus? Trump has a duty to the America people: lock up the Democrats, who are helping spread the coronavirus Democratic hoax. And help the America people against the virus, which is spreading throughout our great land. God bless Donald Trump, the finest, most stablest genius the US has ever had. --------------- --------------- Pence gently tries to correct Trump's false coronavirus testing claims Yahoo News Alexander Nazaryan Mar 7th 2020 10:57AM WASHINGTON — Friday evening found Vice President Pence in an uncommon and uncomfortable position: Having to downplay and contradict assertions made by his boss. It proved a delicate act for Pence, who has become the face of the administration’s coronavirus response, and who has sought to project an aura of steely confidence. Trump can sometimes frustrate those efforts, as he did during visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday afternoon. Wearing a red “Keep America Great” baseball cap, the president used the occasion to offer his freewheeling thoughts on everything ranging from Fox News ratings to the educational pedigree of his uncle John Trump, who was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. But there were also blatantly incorrect claims, too, as when Trump said that “anybody that needs a test gets a test” for coronavirus. In fact, the CDC has badly lagged in preparing a nationwide testing regime, and only a minuscule percentage of Americans can currently be tested. That percentage will grow in the coming days, but not nearly as quickly as public health experts believe is necessary to contain the disease, which has infected at least 280 people and killed 15 in the U.S.. Trump also said during his CDC tour that the tests are “all perfect,” comparing it to his “perfect” phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That phone call served as the basis for the impeachment inquiry that culminated in Trump’s acquittal last month. In fact, an initial CDC test was flawed, which delayed its implementation by about two weeks, during a critical period in February when the virus was spreading in Washington state and elsewhere. Trump added that he would rather not allow infected Americans to disembark the Grand Princess cruise ship that has been floating off the coast of Northern California. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship,” Trump complained as his secretary of Health and Human Services and the director of the CDC looked on. The White House briefing of the coronavirus task force began almost as soon as Trump’s remarks in Atlanta ended, which all but assured that Pence — who Trump appointed to head the task force — would be forced to account for the president’s statements. Pence tried to do so cautiously, aware that Trump is sensitive to any efforts to upstage or contradict him. Speaking of the coronavirus testing regime, which has been mired in confusion, Pence admitted that “we have a ways to go yet.” About 2,500 kits have been shipped out to laboratories. That means that 1.5 million tests are available. Because of testing protocols, however, those tests can be administered to only about 500,000 people. In an implicit rebuke to Trump, Pence said it would be a “matter of weeks” before the tests would be “broadly available.” Pence also addressed the issue of the Grand Princess. He said that 21 people on board the cruise ship have been infected with the coronavirus. Ignoring Trump’s complaints about infection statistics, Pence said he and California Gov. Gavin Newsom had “developed a plan” to have the ship dock at a “noncommercial” port. “Those that need to be quarantined will be quarantined, those that require additional medical attention will receive it,” Pence said. Food and Drug Administration Director Stephen Hahn added that test would “available significantly” by the end of next week. On Thursday, Pence visited with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, whose leadership he has praised since the state became an epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, despite Inslee being a Democrat often critical of the Trump administration. In his remarks in Atlanta, Trump offered his own thoughts on Inslee, calling him a “snake.” Pence was later confronted with that statement at the White House briefing, but the vice president ignored the question. In the course of the briefing, Pence also effusively praised Newsom, the California governor, who is another Trump nemesis. | |
|
||
| 03-07-20 12:42pm - 1752 days | #1570 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real fake news: A Chinese hotel used to observe virus collapses. Trump orders the hotel to be destroyed in a nuclear strike. Although Trump is a beloved friend of China, Trump, with regret, orders a nuclear strike to destroy the hotel. The hotel, built in 2018, was a direct competitor of Trump Hotels Worlwide. So the destruction of the hotel has great rewards: -It shows that Trump Hotels are the best in the world. -It increases the likelihood more people will stay in Trump properties, instead of competing properties. -It increases the profits of Trump properties, which flow monies into Trump's pockets. --------- --------- Chinese hotel used to observe virus contacts collapses The Associated Press Mar 7th 2020 2:02PM BEIJING (AP) — A hotel used for medical observation of people who had contact with coronavirus patients collapsed in southeastern China on Saturday, trapping some 70 people, state media reported. There were no immediate reports of deaths. At least 33 people were rescued from the wreckage of the Xinjia Express Hotel in Quanzhou, a city in Fujian province, the Xinhua News Agency, the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily and other outlets reported. The 80-room hotel had been converted by the city government for observation of people who had contact with virus patients, according to People’s Daily. The hotel collapsed at about 7:30 p.m., news reports said, citing the city government. Photos on news websites showed rescue workers with flashlights climbing over the debris. Rubble was piled on cars in front of the building. The hotel opened in June 2018, with rooms on the fourth to seventh floors of the building, the newspaper Beijing Youth Daily said. An unidentified hotel employee cited by the Beijing Youth Daily said the owner carried out ”foundation-related construction" before the disaster. It gave no details. China, where the virus first emerged in December, has confirmed more than 80,000 cases, by far the most in the world. It reported 99 new cases on Saturday, its first daily increase of less than 100 since Jan. 20. The government also reported 28 new fatalities, raising the mainland's death toll to 3,070. | |
|
||
| 03-07-20 07:38am - 1752 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: The New York Attorney General is a faithless man. Who doesn't know a lot of vital information. He has issued a warning to Jim Bakker, the man of God and televangelist who spent 5 years in prison for fraud. Bakker is selling a cure for the coronavirus. The cure is basically colloidal silver. The National Institutes of Health said colloidal silver has no known function or benefits, which is why the New York attorney general sent Bakker the order. But the National Instututes of Health is behind the times: Everyone, or almost everyone, knows that silver is an effective weapon against werewolves, the creatures of dark forces. So maybe silver can be used against a virus. Stay tuned, for the fight between law and order and the forces of God himself. Bakker himself is now not only a man of God, but also a lawyer. So Bakker has first-hand knowledge of how man can transgress against God and the rules of man. ----------- ----------- NY AG orders televangelist Jim Bakker to stop advertising unproven coronavirus cure By: Cox Media Group National Content Desk Updated: March 6, 2020 - 8:25 PM CHARLOTTE — Charlotte, North Carolina, televangelist Jim Bakker served five years in prison for fraud in the early 1990s, and now, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, he is once again garnering attention. A guest on his new show was pushing a natural product that she claimed could kill the coronavirus. Sherrill Sellman said Silver Solution is effective against the virus. The New York attorney general took notice and sent Bakker a cease-and-desist order. Bakker sells a lot of items on the website for his ministry in Missouri, including the pricey Silver Solution. Bakker made the pitch during a show in February when he spoke with Sellman about the product, which is basically colloidal silver. The National Institutes of Health said colloidal silver has no known function or benefits, which is why the New York attorney general sent Bakker the order. Any representation that Silver Solution is effective at combating or treating the current strain of coronavirus violates New York state law, according to the cease-and-desist order. In the mid-'80s, Bakker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, were on TV raising money for their PTL ministry in Fort Mill until he went to prison on mail and wire fraud charges. “Well, it’s certainly reminiscent of the past, and the past here in Charlotte,” attorney James Wyatt said. Bakker has been practicing law since the PTL days and has represented several clients charged with white-collar crimes. Wyatt said if Bakker keeps selling Silver Solution as a cure for the coronavirus, he may find himself in trouble again. “He could be facing civil lawsuits seeking to stop him from doing that,” Wyatt said. “He could, if it persists and if it’s egregious enough, face other things such as potential criminal charges.”  2020 2020 Cox Media Group | |
|
||
| 03-05-20 06:21pm - 1754 days | #1569 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Are federal officials required to tell the truth? Of course not. They can lie and spin the news to support their agenda. Nothing new. But under Trump, lying seems to become a daily event. -------- -------- Judge blasts William Barr for distorting Mueller report HuffPost US Ryan J. Reilly Mar 5th 2020 6:34PM A federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush laid into Attorney General William Barr’s “lack of candor” in a court opinion on Thursday, accusing the nation’s chief law enforcement official of producing a “distorted” summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, in an opinion issued in the course of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed, questioned whether Barr intended to create a “one-sided narrative” that would benefit President Donald Trump. “The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report — a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote. Barr released a summary of the Mueller report before its public release that mischaracterized the report’s findings in a manner that helped Trump. Mueller complained to Barr that his summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s full report, but the report shaped public opinion on the findings of the Mueller investigation for weeks. Walton also criticized Barr for holding a press conference ahead of the report’s release last April, saying he could not “reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings” of the Mueller report: The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary. Walton said that Barr’s credibility issues led him to the conclusion that he needed to review the unredacted report himself to provide “independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr’s conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report.” This is a developing story and will be updated. | |
|
||
| 03-05-20 06:12pm - 1754 days | #1568 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump says the coronavirus is under control, and is safe for Americans. However, the nurses responding to the outbreak say the federal government is full of shit. Nurses are saying they have been poorly equipped to care for patients and protect themselves against the virus. Is it possible that Trump doesn't know what is happening? Or is it his job to calm our fears, and spread fake news and lies which is his area of expertise? --------- --------- Nurses blast government and hospital responses to coronavirus HuffPost US Dave Jamieson Mar 5th 2020 4:35PM Nurses fighting the spread of coronavirus unleashed a flood of criticism on the federal government and their employers Thursday, saying they have been left poorly equipped to care for their patients and protect themselves amid the outbreak. Members of the union National Nurses United said they have faced shifting guidelines and a shortage of supplies as the tally of known infections has increased. They called on the Centers for Disease Control to quickly increase testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and demanded that federal officials implement emergency standards for hospitals and clinics around the country. “The CDC has been behind the ball at almost every step of the way,” said Jane Thomason, an industrial hygienist for the union. Bonnie Castillo, a registered nurse and the union’s executive director, said nurses were confident they could help contain the spread of the virus, but only if “we are given the protections and resources we need to do our jobs.” More than 80 of the union’s nurses have been quarantined due to possible contact with infected patients, and Castillo said many facilities still lack the personal protective equipment that workers need to handle the outbreak. “It is not a successful strategy to leave nurses and other health care workers unprotected,” Castillo said at a press conference in Oakland on Thursday. “When we are quarantined, we are not only prevented from caring for COVID-19 patients, but we are taken away from caring for cancer patients, cardiac patients and premature babies.” The union released the results of a recent survey it conducted of 6,500 members around the country on the question of COVID-19 preparedness. Among the findings: Only 44 percent said their employer had given them information about the virus. Only 63 percent said they have access to N95 respirators. (These are recommended for health care workers handling potentially infected patients, but not the general public.) A little less than two-thirds say they have been trained in how to put on and take off the appropriate protective gear. Only 30 percent said they believe their facility has enough protective gear onhand. Nearly a quarter said they don’t know if their facility has a plan to isolate infected patients. Not only is the protective equipment hard to come by, union officials said many nurses still have not been trained in how to appropriately put it on and remove it in a way to avoid contamination. “Nurses need this hands-on training now,” said Cathy Kennedy, a registered nurse and vice president with the union. “Management has told us the training is coming. Well, it’s been several weeks and the training is slowly evolving.” After initially laying out tight guidelines on who can be tested, the CDC has loosened them so that anyone with symptoms can undergo a test with a doctor’s approval. But the test kits are still in short supply, and local health agencies say they are being overwhelmed by the demand. The CDC has been behind the ball at almost every step of the way.Jane Thomason, National Nurses United At its press conference, the union shared the statement of an unnamed member who works at a Kaiser Permanente facility and was required to self-quarantine for 14 days after contact with a COVID-19 patient. The nurse has not been able to undergo a test despite exhibiting symptoms, according to the statement. “I’m appalled at the level of bureaucracy that’s preventing nurses from getting tested,” the member said. California and Washington state declared emergencies due to the virus on Wednesday, the same day U.S. officials confirmed the 11th COVID-19 death and at least 150 cases in 18 states. More than 3,000 have died in China, where the number of cases has begun to ebb. South Korea and Italy have also been hit hard. The House and Senate have approved an $8 billion spending package to address the outbreak, sending the legislation to the White House Thursday for President Donald Trump’s signature. Trump has continued to minimize the seriousness of the virus, telling Sean Hannity in an interview Wednesday that he believes the death rate to be much lower than what health officials have said. National Nurses United and other unions have been calling on the Trump administration to issue an emergency standard for infectious disease through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, so that hospitals and other employers have safety guidelines for coronavirus that they are legally required to follow. There is no such standard currently on the books. “This is not the time to relax our approach,” Castillo said. “This is the time to step it up.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
|
||
| 03-05-20 09:46am - 1754 days | #1567 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
President Trump went to college, where he demonstrated his stable genius. The World Health Organization is spreading fake news. Listen to President Trump, who will tell you the truth. People in the US can get better, just by sitting at home or even by going to work. Don't worry about the Democratic coronavirus hoax: if you are an American, you are safe from the coronavirus. The people of the United States need to march to Washington DC, where President Trump can lay his hands on them and cure them of all mental and physical problems. Trump has the hands of Jesus. He was anointed by God to serve as God's representative on Earth. ----------- ----------- Trump claims 3.4% death rate from coronavirus is 'false,' contradicting World Health Organization Business Insider Sarah Al-Arshani Mar 5th 2020 4:17AM President Donald Trump claimed 3.4% coronavirus death rate is "false" in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. "Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number," Trump said. "Now, this is just my hunch but based on a lot of conversation with a lot of people who do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor." coronavirus recently reported the global death rate from coronavirus stands at 3.4%, an increase from previous estimate of 2%. However, as Business Insider previously reported, "The death rate is likely to change further as more cases are confirmed, though experts predict that the percentage of deaths will decrease in the longer term since milder cases of COVID-19 are probably going undiagnosed." The US has had 11 deaths so far — 10 in Washington state and one in California — with more than 150 reported cases. President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed the death rate from the novel coronavirus was not 3.4%, contradicting the number that the World Health Organization gave on Tuesday. The president appeared in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday, saying he thinks the true death rate is a "fraction of 1%." "Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number," Trump said. "Now, this is just my hunch but based on a lot of conversation with a lot of people who do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor." The World Health Organization recently reported the global death rate from coronavirus stands at 3.4%, an increase from previous estimate of 2%. "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died," the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Tuesday. The number 3.4% is based on the current data, and experts do believe the number could change. As Business Insider previously reported, "experts predict that the percentage of deaths will decrease in the longer term since milder cases of COVID-19 are probably going undiagnosed." As of Wednesday, the global death toll from the coronavirus neared 3,300, with over 95,000 confirmed cases around the world. The US has had 11 deaths so far — 10 in Washington state and one in California — with more than 150 reported cases. However, due to a shortage of coronavirus testing kits, the US has not been testing a significant amount of people for the virus. Trump later claimed in the interview that "hundred-of-thousands" of people get better from the virus, even though there have been less than 100,000 cases confirmed in the world. A representative from the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. | |
|
||
| 03-05-20 05:02am - 1755 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
‘No Time To Die’ Release Date Moving To Fall In Hopes Global Theater Biz Back At Full Strength By Anthony D'Alessandro, Nancy Tartaglione March 4, 2020 9:00am EXCLUSIVE: With the coronavirus socking it to the Asian box office, Deadline has learned that MGM, Eon and Universal are postponing the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die from its UK and international release date of April 2 and its U.S. Easter weekend global day-and-date of April 10, and moving the 25th 007 movie to Nov. 25, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. MGM “MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of No Time to Die will be postponed until November 2020. The film will be released in the U.K. on November 12, 2020 with worldwide release dates to follow, including the U.S. launch on November 25, 2020,” said a statement given exclusively to Deadline by the three studios. That date brings Bond back to November, which is a season he’s launched from largely going back to 1995’s Goldeneye (except for Tomorrow Never Dies which opened in the U.S/Canada on Dec. 19, 1997). No Time to Die will now face off on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with Warner Bros. Will Smith King Richard, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, and Sony’s comedy The Happiest Season. This is purely an economic decision we understand, and not one based on growing fears over the coronavirus. Bond is a day-and-date worldwide release, and with the franchise back in the hands of MGM fully post Sony’s distribution of the last four Daniel Craig movies, along with Universal, all parties involved need to have all foreign territories working at their maximum in order for the latest Bond to be a continued box office success. For a tentpole of this size and scope, that kind of decrease in business would have a significant and detrimental impact on the film’s ultimate global take. I’ve heard that the move for No Time to Die should not be perceived as a concern about the safety of theaters outside of areas where public health officials have restricted or recommended against attending public events. All together, the last four Craig 007 movies – Spectre, Skyfall, Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale — have grossed $3.2B in the overall near $7B franchise, with Skyfall being the highest grossing pic of all-time in the 58-year-old series at a whopping $1.1B. Failing at the box office is not an option for Mr. Bond, and for the studios to stick to their original release plan would be a disservice to their partners in exhibition. Get ready for a big domino effect when it comes to rival studios following MGM/Eon/Universal’s example in re-scheduling their day-and-date event pics. It’s best to wait out the resurgence of key Asian offshore territories, if you have a major event pic on your schedule. No Time to Die, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, leaves behind a very lucrative Easter weekend period that’s up for grabs. How much does Easter weekend stand to make? The 2015 and 2016 holidays delivered back-to-back record openings with Uni’s Furious 7 ($161.2M) and Warner Bros.’ Batman v Superman ($181M) driving respective weekend grosses for all titles to $247.1M and an all-time Easter high of $278.5M Stateside. However, ever since China shuttered its exhibition structure due to the coronavirus outbreak, MGM, Eon and Uni have been in a wait and see mode. With theaters closing across Korea, Japan, Italy and France, there was a clear need to push the release of No Time to Die. The studios have been closely monitoring the coronavirus outbreak like many other companies, and have seen a significant impact on the global market with all industries facing difficult decisions during these uncertain times. China alone is poised to lose more than $2 billion since shutting 70K theaters this year. The release dates for Universal’s Dolittle and 1917, Searchlight Pictures’ Jojo Rabbit, Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pixar’s Onward have all been postponed indefinitely. For the period of Jan. 1-March 3, Comscore reports that South Korea’s box office is -60%, Italy’s is off 70-75% with roughly half of its cinemas closed (through we’ve heard that’s bound to improve by this weekend), Taiwan is down 30% year on year, along with Singapore (-35%), Philippines (-35%) and Hong Kong (-55%). In total, the global box office is expected to see at least a $5B hit in 2020. Recent Bond movies have typically had their openings staggered around the globe over two weekends, with initial debut in the UK and select territories, followed by the U.S. and other offshore markets. For example, when 2015’s Spectre opened in the U.S. to $70.4M, it added 71 markets in its second foreign weekend for a take of $117.38M, bringing its overseas cume to $219.22M and WW haul to $289.6M. When Skyfall opened to a franchise domestic record of $88.3M in Nov. 2012, the pic’s running overseas tally was at $428.6M, bringing its global take to $516.9M (all numbers unadjusted for inflation). Uni has No Time to Die all over the world sans some legacy MGM markets, i.e Nordic territories and the Middle East which are being sub-distributed. A UK world premiere was scheduled for Monday, March 30. Originally No Time to Die was to go April 2 and 3 in UK & Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia, India, South Africa, and Turkey. Then in sync with U.S, the following overseas markets were to open on April 8-10: Australia & NZ, Belgium, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Baltics, Indonesia, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and All of Latin America The decision to movie No Time to Die, we hear, was fully supported by everyone involved with the movie. | |
|
||
| 03-04-20 10:22am - 1755 days | #1566 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Extraordinary news: President Donald Trump gloats after his former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, fails to win the Alabama GOP Senate primary outright. President Trump knows a loser when he sees one. ---- ---- Trump gloated after his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions failed to win the Alabama GOP Senate primary outright Business Insider Sinéad Baker (sbaker@businessinsider.com) Mar 4th 2020 12:10PM President Donald Trump gloated after his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced into a runoff in the Alabama Senate primary after Tuesday's vote. Neither Sessions nor any of his opponents got enough vote to win outright, and Sessions will now face Tommy Tuberville in a runoff to challenge Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. In a Wednesday tweet, Trump suggested Sessions' poor performance was because he recused himself from the Russia investigation as Attorney General, which had led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment. Trump had previously mocked Sessions for recusing himself and said he never would have appointed him as Attorney General if he knew Sessions would make that decision. Sessions resigned as Attorney General in November 2018 at Trump's request. President Donald Trump mocked his former attorney general Jeff Sessions for failing to win outright in the Alabama Senate primary after Tuesday's vote. Trump revived his old frustrations about Sessions' handling of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Wednesday morning, after Sessions was forced into a runoff to reclaim his old seat. Sessions finished slightly behind Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach. As of 7:45 a.m. ET Wednesday, with 96.93% of precincts reporting, Tuberville had 32.2% of the compared to Sessions' 31.1%, Politico reported. The two candidates will now face off in another election, with other candidates removed, in a race to see who will get to challenge Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in the state Senate election in November. Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning: "This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn't have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt." "Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins!" Trump's tweet suggested that the way Sessions handled the probe had harmed his electoral chances in the largely pro-Trump state. Sessions was once one of Trump's most loyal allies — he was the first senator to endorse Trump in 2016. But in March 2017, he recused himself from the Russia probe when it was being headed by then-FBI Director James Comey under the supervision of the Justice Department. Sessions decision to recuse himself ultimately led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation. Trump later told The New York Times he never would have appointed Sessions as Attorney General had he know that Sessions would recuse himself, calling the decision "very unfair to the president." Trump mounted several public attacks on Sessions while he was still in the role, including calling him "weak" on Twitter. Sessions has also defended his decision. Sessions resigned as attorney general at Trump's request in November 2018. The runoff between Sessions and Tuberville will take place on March 31, according to CBS News. | |
|
||
| 03-04-20 08:44am - 1755 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Redbox has raised rental prices again. They started off with $1.00 rentals. It's now $1.80, plus tax, in California. Which comes out to $1.98. So it's almost doubled in price. Still cheaper than going to see a movie in a theater. But still----- How many movies are there that are worth paying for? Or even spending the time to watch, for free? | |
|
||
| 03-04-20 05:59am - 1755 days | #1565 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: White House enters secrecy mode: Filming or recording of the Vice President Mike Pence press briefing on the coronavirus were banned. Only the White House and senior officials are allowed to speak or write about the deadly disease. The public does not have the right to hear malicious gossip: Only the true, golden words on the disease, spoken directly from the President or Vice President, will be allowed. Do not be afraid: Trump is honest, and will calm the fears of the public with the words of the most stable genius the White House has ever known. Do not fear the Democratic Hoax of the coronavirus: Stay calm, while our courageous President leads the way to a greater America that is Free, White and Safe from Mexicans, People With Dark Colors, Non-Christian Evil Doers, and other Scum trying to destroy our great American dream. Last week the administration vowed to be aggressively transparent with the public. But that does not include the words or actions of the US government. The US government enjoys and employs stealth mode to run the country, for the betterment of all. ------------ ------------ White House bans filming at Coronavirus briefing, triggering backlash HuffPost US Lee Moran Mar 4th 2020 5:37AM The Trump White House faced widespread criticism on Tuesday after Vice President Mike Pence conducted a press briefing on the coronavirus outbreak, but members of the media were not allowed to film or record audio of the proceedings. The administration ― which only last week vowed to be “aggressively transparent” with the public about the spread of the virus that has now killed nine people in the U.S. ― only allowed still photographs to be taken, CNN’s Jim Acosta and other journalists in attendance tweeted. “I asked Pence why the Coronavirus briefing is off camera today. He said he believes the briefing will be back on cam tomorrow,” Acosta later posted, noting “the closest thing to an explanation we got” was “when Pence said Trump was on camera a bunch today.” Obama era White House chief photographer Pete Souza said he “can’t ever remember a time when a VP or POTUS spoke in the White House press briefing room and video/audio was prohibited.” “It’s like they’re imploding,” added Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
|
||
| 03-02-20 08:21pm - 1757 days | #1564 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
President Trump, the most stable genius president the US has ever had. He is also a medical expert, who proclaims his campaign rallies are safe from the cornovirus, in spite of the Democratic party coronavirus hoax. Vote Trump for president in 2020, and make America great again, and safe from the Democratic coronvirus. Also, don't believe the medical experts that say the number of cases of the coronavirus in the US is rising. Listen to Trump, who assures us that the number of cases of the cononavirus is really going down. The medical experts are tools of the Democrats, who are flooding the US with fake news: Trump is telling us the real news: We are safe from the coronavirus, which will disappear in the spring, when warmer weather will destroy the coronavirus. God save America. God save Donald Trump, the finest, most stablest genius the US has ever known. --------- --------- Trump proclaims his campaign rallies 'very safe' from coronavirus Yahoo News David Knowles Mar 2nd 2020 6:13PM President Trump said Monday that campaign rallies like the one he had planned for later that evening in Charlotte, N.C., are “very safe.” “Well, these were set up a long time ago and others are,” Trump told reporters. “You could ask that to the Democrats because they’re having a lot of rallies. They’re all having rallies. That’s what they’re doing. They’re campaigning.” Asked whether he was worried about whether large gatherings were safe, the president replied: “I think it’s very safe.” Despite Trump’s assurances at a White House news conference on Feb. 27 that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States was “going very substantially down, not up,” the tally of those infected has continued to rise. As of Monday morning, 87 U.S. citizens had been diagnosed with the coronavirus and six people had died from it, all in Washington state. “The risk that all of us will become infected is increasing,” Jeffrey Duchin, MD, Seattle and King County health officer for public health, said at a Monday news conference. While Duchin said that his office was “not recommending widespread cancellation of large gatherings,” he noted that those at higher risk “should avoid” them. Health experts warn that the highly contagious virus can be spread through droplets in the air when an infected person sneezes or coughs. With the presidential race nearing Super Tuesday, candidates have fanned out across the country, shaking hands and holding rallies with thousands of supporters. As the virus has spread to more than 60 countries around the world, infecting nearly 90,000 and killing over 3,000, dozens of large events have been canceled. In the United States, Facebook scrapped plans to hold a developer’s conference in San Jose, Calif., May 5-6. The Game Developers Conference canceled its San Francisco show March 16-20. The American Physical Society canceled its annual meeting in Denver just two days before it was supposed to begin this week — after many of the more than 10,000 scientists expected to attend had already arrived in the city. The Trump administration itself has put off a March 14 meeting in Las Vegas of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. While China has seen a significant drop in the number of new cases of the coronavirus since putting tens of millions of residents on lockdown, the virus has spread quickly in Europe. Last week France announced that it was banning all indoor gatherings of more than 5,000 people. Bernie Sanders drew approximately 20,000 people to a campaign rally Sunday in Los Angeles, and Trump routinely fills arenas with more than 10,000 seats — and, as he boasts, many fans waiting outside. Proximity to strangers at large political rallies is all but unavoidable, and health officials have advised avoiding shaking hands or greeting others with a kiss. | |
|
||
| 03-02-20 10:01am - 1757 days | #1563 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
President Trump, our finest, most stable genius president we've ever had, is attacked by a federal judge. The president must throw this traitor in jail. And then call for volunteers for a firing squad to execute this traitor as soon as the president is able to tweet this traitor guilty. Vote for President Trump in 2020, make him President for Life, and also vote for Ivanka Trump as Donald's successor, the finest, most gorgeous President of the US will ever have. God bless America and the Trump family. ------- ------- Judge rules head of immigration agency was unlawfully named The Associated Press ELLIOT SPAGAT Mar 2nd 2020 10:43AM SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to lead the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and, as a result, lacked authority to give asylum seekers less time to prepare for initial screening interviews. Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and an immigration hardliner, was named to a new position of “principal deputy director” in June, which immediately made him acting director because Lee Francis Cissna had just resigned. The agency grants green cards and other visas and also oversees asylum officers. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington found Cuccinelli's appointment violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a 1998 law governing who is eligible to lead federal agencies in an acting capacity. Cuccinelli, in an interview with Fox News Channel on Monday, said that President Donald Trump's administration would appeal the ruling and that his agency would take steps to try to prevent the invalidation of other decisions made under his tenure. The ruling, issued Sunday, was at odds with Trump's penchant for temporary appointments. At Homeland Security, Chad Wolf is acting secretary, and the heads of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services are also in acting roles. The judge wrote that Cuccinelli didn't qualify for exceptions for officials who won Senate approval for other positions or spent 90 days in the previous year at the agency. The administration's reading of the law “would decimate this carefully crafted framework,” Moss wrote in his 55—page ruling. “The President would be relieved of responsibility and accountability for selecting acting officials, and the universe of those eligible to serve in an acting capacity would be vastly expanded.” Moss, an appointee of President Barack Obama, set aside a Cuccinelli directive to give asylum seekers less time to consult attorneys before an initial screening interview, but his decision applies only to the five Hondurans who sued. He did not address other Cuccinelli actions. The asylum directive gives asylum seekers at least one calendar day to prepare for the screening interview, instead of 72 hours for families and generally 48 hours for single adults. Extensions are granted only “in the most extraordinary circumstances,” such as a serious illness or mental or physical disability. The directive is a foundation for new policies aimed at quickly completing the screening, known as a “credible fear interview,” without leaving Customs and Border Protection custody. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Heather Swift said, “We obviously disagree with the court's opinion and are looking more closely at it.” Cuccinelli is now acting deputy Homeland Security secretary, the department's No. 2 position. Joseph Edlow, a longtime congressional aide who joined Citizenship and Immigration Services in July, was named last month to run the agency's day-to-day operations. | |
|
||
| 03-02-20 08:50am - 1757 days | #2 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Great idea. Sweep out the old, start fresh with a new thread. Hoping that new site requests will get a faster approval than the old thread did. And appreciate the update on missing listings. | |
|
||
| 03-02-20 03:14am - 1758 days | #116 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Jamie-Young.com Assume it's a paysite featuring Jamie Young. Cute teen or early twenties female model. | |
|
||
| 02-29-20 02:47pm - 1759 days | #1562 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
There's no reason for panic. But the US is banning travel to Iran. Also, travel to Italy and South Korea are warned against. Only one person in the US has died from the coronavirus. And a few others are very ill from the virus. But the US has millions of people, so people don't need to worry or panic. Vote for Trump, the most stable genius President we've ever had. And know that the coronavirus is a hoax by the Democratic party. Was the coronavirus a hoax released by a Chinaman to bring down Donald Trump? Be brave, fellow Americans. We must unite behind our courageous leaders! -------- -------- U.S. ups travel restrictions as Trump says more cases 'likely' The Associated Press DARLENE SUPERVILLE and ZEKE MILLER Feb 29th 2020 3:43PM WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is banning travel to Iran in response to the outbreak of the new coronavirus and elevating travel warnings to regions of Italy and South Korea. Vice President Mike Pence announced the new restrictions and warnings as President Donald Trump said 22 people in the U.S. have been stricken by the new coronavirus, of whom one has died and four are deemed “very ill,” and that additional cases are “likely.” Trump added that he was considering additional restrictions, including closing the U.S. border with Mexico in response to the virus' spread — though he added: "This is not a border that seems to be much of a problem right now. “We’re thinking about all borders," Trump said. Travel to Iran is already quite limited, though some families are allowed to travel there on a visa. It is one of the seven initial countries on Trump’s travel ban list, which means travel from Iran also is already severely restricted. Trump provided an update on the virus from the White House press briefing room for the second time this week after the first reported U.S. death Saturday, of someone he described as having a high medical risk before contracting the virus. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there was “no evidence of link to travel” in the case of the person who died. On Friday, health officials confirmed a second case of coronavirus in the U.S. in a person who didn't travel internationally or have close contact with anyone who had the virus. The U.S. has a total of about 60 confirmed cases. Trump's tally appeared to exclude cases of Americans repatriated from China or evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Trump said healthy Americans should be able to recover if they contract the new virus, as he tried to reassure Americans and global markets spooked by the virus threat. He encouraged Americans not to alter their daily routines, saying the country is “super prepared” for a wider outbreak, adding “there’s no reason to panic at all.” He added he wasn't altering his routine either. “You’re talking about 22 people right now in this whole very vast country. I think we’ll be in very good shape.” Trump spoke a day after he denounced criticism of his response to the threat as a “hoax" cooked up by his political enemies. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina he accused Democrats of “politicizing” the coronavirus threat and boasted about preventive steps he's ordered in an attempt to keep the virus that originated in China from spreading across the United States. Those steps include barring entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China. “They tried the impeachment hoax. ... This is their new hoax,” Trump said of Democratic denunciations of his administration's coronavirus response. Trump said Saturday he was not trying to minimize the threat of the virus. “Again, the hoax was used in respect to Democrats and what they were saying," he said. Some Democrats have said Trump could have acted sooner to bolster the U.S. response to the virus. Democratic and Republican lawmakers also have said his request for an additional $2.5 billion to defend against the virus isn't enough. They've signaled they will provide substantially more funding. Trump said Democrats want him to fail and argued that steps he's taken so far have kept cases to a minimum and prevented virus deaths in the U.S. As global markets plunged this week, Trump predicted they will come back, and encouraged the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. “The markets will all come back," he said. "I think the Fed has a very important role, especially psychological. If you look at it, the Fed has a massive impact.” | |
|
||
| 02-29-20 10:50am - 1759 days | #9 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Does Tom have an avatar where we can see his face? It feels funny to talk to a person who won't look you in the eyes. Also, what's the message on the back of his head. My eyesight is poor, and I can't read it. What is the message, and what does it mean? I think I can read it, maybe.  PU?I du! Tom must have learned to spell from our great stable genius. LOL. | |
|
||
| 02-29-20 10:39am - 1759 days | #115 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
I agree that it would be much simpler if they had fewer sites. And much less expensive. But they are quality porn, and the vids and photos are excellent. And the girls are freaking lovely. Agree that Sofi Smile was lovely before her boob job. But there must be tremendous pressure on these girls to have them up-size their boobs. As far as I can tell, Sofi didn't go overboard, and order the huge, over-sized boobs that some girls go for. So that's something to be thankful for. | |
|
||
| 02-28-20 09:40am - 1760 days | #1561 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
President Trump, protecting the rights of federal workers. A whistleblower reported that some federal workers did not have necessary protective gear or training when they were sent to help Americans evacuate from China during the coronavirus outbreak. But since President Trump said the coronavirus was no worse than the common cold, why should the whistleblower be paid attention. Stop wasting time and money on whistleblowers. They should be outed and fired. Trump for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Re-elect the most stable genius President the US has ever had. -------- -------- Whistleblower: Feds helping evacuees lacked virus protection The Associated Press RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Feb 28th 2020 9:22AM WASHINGTON (AP) — A government whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some federal workers did not have the necessary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak. The complaint deals with Department of Health and Human Services employees sent to Travis and March Air Force bases in California to assist the quarantined evacuees. The Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates personnel issues, confirmed on Thursday that it had received the unnamed whistleblower's complaint and had opened a case. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., said the whistleblower recently contacted his office, also alleging retaliation by higher-ups for having flagged safety issues. “My concern from the moment I heard it is that individuals at HHS are not taking the complaints of HHS employees seriously," Gomez said in an interview. “Their superiors are not supposed to brush them off. By retaliating against people if they do call out a problem, that only discourages other people from ever reporting violations.” HHS said it was “evaluating the complaint.” “We take all whistleblower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act," HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in a statement. Gomez's office said the complaint was filed by a high-ranking official at the Administration for Children and Families, an HHS social service agency. The whistleblower was among a team of about a dozen employees from the agency who had been deployed to help connect the evacuees with government assistance that they might qualify for to ease their return. The team was there from mid-January until earlier this month. Although team members had gloves at times and masks at other times, they lacked full protective gear and received no training on how to protect themselves in a viral hot zone, according to a description provided by the congressional office. They had no respirators. While helping the evacuees, team members noticed that workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were in full gear to protect them from getting sick. Gomez's office said the high-ranking whistleblower complained to superiors and was given the choice of being reassigned or being fired. Gomez said as far as he knows none of the workers from the agency has become infected with the virus. The COVID-19 illness caused by a new coronavirus that emerged in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan has stretched well beyond Asia. The global count of those infected as of Friday exceeds 83,000, with China still by far the hardest-hit country. Dozens of cases but no deaths have been confirmed in the United States. Without referring directly to the whistleblower's complaint, Gomez questioned HHS Secretary Alex Azar about the situation during a congressional hearing Thursday. “Were any of these ACF employees exposed to high-risk evacuees?” asked Gomez, adding it was his understanding that "it was kind of chaotic on the ground" when the team was sent to California. Azar responded that he was not aware of any violation of protective practices. “Urgency does not compensate for violating isolation and quarantine protocols,” he said. “I'd want to know the full facts and would take appropriate remedial measures,” Azar added. If one of the HHS workers had become infected, that person could then have unwittingly infected others, Gomez said. Lawyer Ari Wilkenfeld, representing the unidentified whistleblower, said in a statement: “This matter concerns HHS’ response to the coronavirus, and its failure to protect its employees and potentially the public. The retaliatory efforts to intimidate and silence our client must be opposed.” Oakley, the HHS spokeswoman, said the department had "nothing further to add at this time.” The whistleblower complaint was first reported by The Washington Post. ___ Associated Press writer Carole Feldman contributed to this report. | |
|
||
| 02-26-20 09:45pm - 1762 days | #1560 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
President Trump says the risk of the coronavirus is very low for Americans. Recently, he also said that spring will bring warmer weather, and that the virus will disappear. The Centers for Disease Control warns that Americans should prepare for disruptions of their normal lives due to the virus. Trump says that whatever happens, we're totally prepared. So don't worry, Americans. Trump will keep us safe. Trump also said, earlier, that an American vaccine is very close. However, health experts have estimated that an American vaccine is probably 12 to 18 months away. And then there is the question of how much the vaccine will cost, when the vaccine is available to the general public. But don't worry, Americans. There is enough money to pay for the vaccine for President Trump and his family. That is a matter of national security. ------- ------- Trump pushes message of confidence as health officials say coronavirus spread is inevitable By Kathryn Watson Updated on: February 26, 2020 / 8:24 PM / CBS News President Trump announced in a Wednesday night press conference he's placing Vice President Mike Pence in charge of efforts to tackle the coronavirus, as the administration seeks to reassure the public and the markets amid the global coronavirus outbreak. The president, speaking for only the second time from the White House press briefing room, tried to instill confidence that his administration is on top of the health epidemic. Speaking to reporters while flanked by Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other officials on his coronavirus task force, the president said the risk to Americans from the virus is "very low," even as the Centers for Disease Control warns Americans to prepare for disruptions of their normal lives and the spread of the virus is a matter of if, not when. Mr. Trump appeared to disagree with that assessment. "I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared," the president told reporters. Minutes after the president ended his press conference, the CDC announced a confirmed case of the virus in California in someone "who reportedly did not have relevant history or exposure to another known patient with COVID-19," the official name for the virus that experts believe originated in China. Azar is remaining the head of the president's coronavirus task force, but Pence said the administration will add personnel to the White House to address the outbreak, and work closely with Congress to address the situation. Democrats and some Republicans are suggesting the $2.5 billion in funding the president has requested from Congress isn't enough. Mr. Trump, who said $2.5 billion is a "lot," said his administration is willing to spend "whatever's appropriate" to address the outbreak. Part of that funding is going towards developing a vaccine, which is still at least 12 to 18 months away, National Institutes of Health Director Andrew Fauci told reporters. Senators had offered similar estimates after a briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. "We can't rely on a vaccine over the next several months to a year," Fauci said. Earlier in the day, Azar said in a congressional briefing that he couldn't guarantee price controls when a vaccine is developed, sparking concerns about affordability even when a vaccine is available to the general public. The president, when asked, said schools should be preparing for the virus to spread. Mr. Trump has blamed news outlets and Democrats of stoking panic, as stocks suffered three days of steep losses on fears about the virus' impact. Pelosi criticized the president's response to the virus as underwhelming, and Mr. Trump took the opportunity Wednesday night to hit back at the speaker, calling her incompetent and suggesting she isn't capable of managing her own district. "She's trying to create a panic, and there's no reason to panic," Mr. Trump said. Mr. Trump appeared to express confidence in Chinese President Xi, saying the Chinese leader is working "very hard" to combat the outbreak. The president's own top officials, like economic adviser Larry Kudlow, have expressed they don't think China is being transparent enough with its information, and is blocking U.S. health officials from entering the country. The president highlighted his administration's efforts to screen people coming from high-risk areas, and temporary ban on non-citizens coming to the U.S. from China. That action, Mr. Trump said, is critical. "Had I not made a decision very early on not to take people from a certain area, we wouldn't be talking this way," Mr. Trump said. "We'd be talking about many more people being infected. I took a lot of heat. Some people called me racist because I made a decision so early. And we had never done that as a country before, let alone early. So, it was a bold decision. Turned out to be a good decision." The administration has been inconsistent in its statements about the virus, which started last last year in China. There are now tens of thousands of cases worldwide and a handful in the United States. The pieces of information about the virus coming from the administration have, at times, been inconsistent. Kudlow asserted Tuesday on CNBC that "we have contained this... I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight." And Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, was caught making inaccurate statements about the coronavirus during a hearing Tuesday. On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed frustration with administration officials about inconsistencies in the information they're providing. GOP Senator John Kennedy grew testy with Wolf, who incorrectly stated what the coronavirus mortality rate is, compared to the flu virus. Wolf also testified that the U.S. is "several months" away from a vaccine for the coronavirus, but the CDC said the timeline is closer to 12 to 18 months. "You're head of Homeland Security, sir. Your job is to keep us safe," Kennedy told Wolf after he couldn't answer how many coronavirus cases are expected in the United States. First published on February 26, 2020 / 10:57 AM 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.Kathryn Watson | |
|
||
| 02-26-20 03:43pm - 1762 days | #1559 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump stands for truth and honesty. And also stands for the right of free speech. In 2016, Donald Trump tweeted the following: “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!” Re-elect Donald Trump, the bestest, most honestest, stablest genius President of the United States we have ever had. -------- -------- Trump campaign files libel suit against New York Times over Russia story Thomson Reuters Feb 26th 2020 4:17PM WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's re-election campaign said on Wednesday it filed a libel lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing the newspaper of intentionally publishing a false story last year related to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. In an escalation of the Republican president's long-running battle with the news media, campaign officials said the lawsuit was being filed in the New York State Supreme Court, the state's trial-level court. A statement from the campaign said the aim of the litigation was to "hold the news organization accountable for intentionally publishing false statements against President Trump's campaign." The lawsuit relates to a March 27, 2019, article published by the Times. The lawsuit originated with the Trump re-election campaign, but Trump has contended the Times has at times been biased against him. Trump, seeking re-election on Nov. 3, often refers to various news media outlets as "fake news" and has called elements of the U.S. news media "the enemy of the American people." Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation documented Moscow's campaign of hacking and social media propaganda to boost Trump's 2016 candidacy and harm his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. It documented numerous contacts between people associated his Trump's campaign and Russians. Mueller found insufficient evidence to show a criminal conspiracy between Trump's team but Russia and did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice related to the investigation. "Today the President's re-election campaign filed suit against the New York Times for falsely stating the Campaign had an 'overarching deal' with 'Vladimir Putin's oligarchy' to 'help the campaign against Hillary Clinton' in exchange for 'a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from ... economic sanctions,'" said Jenna Ellis, senior legal to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. "The statements were and are 100 percent false and defamatory. The complaint alleges The Times was aware of the falsity at the time it published them, but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process," Ellis said. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Will Dunham) | |
|
||
| 02-26-20 08:51am - 1762 days | Original Post - #1 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Support your local police. They are the only defense against bullies, thieves, and murderers. If you don't support them, you will be open to criminals who will hurt and rob you. Although misdemeanor battery charges against the 6-year-old girl are being dismissed, the state needs to keep a record of her illegal behavior, if she ever commits another crime. Remember, the three strikes you're out rule. ------- ------- Body cam captures 6-year-old's tearful pleas during arrest The Associated Press Associated Press Feb 26th 2020 8:26AM ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A police officer's body camera shows a 6-year-old Florida girl crying and begging officers not to arrest her as one fastens zip ties around her wrists at a charter school. The video that Kaia Rolle's family shared with the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets Monday shows the girl being arrested in September for kicking and punching staff members at her Orlando charter school. “What are those for?” Kaia asks about the zip ties in the video. “They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner says before another officer tightens them around her wrists and Kaia begins weeping. Turner was fired shortly after the arrest. Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said at the time that Turner, a reserve officer, didn't follow department policy of getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12. “Help me. Help me, please!” Kaia pleads through tears. As she is being walked to the vehicle, she cries, “I don’t want to go in a police car.” The second officer, who has not been identified, responds, “You don’t want to? ... You have to.” “Please, give me a second chance,” Kaia says. The video shows the officer lifting the sobbing girl into the back seat of the police vehicle and putting a seat belt around her. A short time later, Turner returns to the office to talk to Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy administrators, who appear dismayed by what they have witnessed in the school office. The officer tells them that the juvenile detention center where Kaia was headed is “not like you think.” Turner tells the administrators he has made 6,000 arrests, including a 7-year-old. When school employees tell the officer that Kaia is 6, not 8 like he thought, he replies, “Now she has broken the record." Turner had worked in the police agency's reserve unit, which is mostly made up of retired officers who pick up extra-duty jobs for pay. Because he was a reserve officer, he was not a member of the collective bargaining unit, and the police union didn't represent him, Shawn Dunlap of the Fraternal Order of Police Orlando Lodge 25, said in an email Tuesday. School resource officers came under close scrutiny in Florida after former Broward Deputy Scot Peterson failed to engage a shooter at a Parkland high school in 2018. He was charged last year with child neglect, culpable negligence, and perjury. That case is ongoing. The Orlando case drew yet more attention to the role of police in schools. Jeff Kaye, president of California-based School Safety Operations Inc., said in an email that the officer would not only have been fired in some other states but possibly charged with a crime, such as oppression under color of authority. School administrators might have been better served by contacting the child's parents and working with a counselor, rather than calling police, Kaye said. “As long as everyone is safe, take a deep breath, slow things down, and make good commonsense decisions," Kaye said. “I can't think of any reason to ever arrest a 6-year-old child, but I say that based on my training and experience and not that of others." Kaye said he's had several school districts contact him since the video's release saying they want to re-examine their school resource officer programs because they don't want something similar to happen in their schools. Officials have said that Turner also arrested a 6-year-old boy at another school on the same day as Kaia's arrest for misdemeanor battery in an unrelated incident. However, the boy’s arrest was halted by superiors before the child made it through the full arrest process. State Attorney Aramis Ayala said last September that she was dismissing misdemeanor battery charges against both children. Edited on Feb 26, 2020, 03:46pm | |
|
||
| 02-26-20 07:56am - 1762 days | #1558 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Trump is giving young people a chance in running the government. He's hired a 23-year-old college student to fill one of the top positions in the Presidential Personnel Office. The person he is replacing is Katja Bullock, a veteran of the office in her mid-70s who worked under both the Reagan and Bush administrations. Her annual salary was $145,000, according to the 2019 White House annual personnel report. -------- -------- White House hires college student for senior job amid disloyalty purge: Reports HuffPost US Hayley Miller Feb 26th 2020 10:19AM The White House has hired a college student to fill one of its top positions in the Presidential Personnel Office, Politico and CNN reported. James Bacon, a 23-year-old senior at George Washington University, will reportedly help vet presidential appointees and oversee paperwork as the office’s director of operations. Bacon, a loyalist to President Donald Trump who worked on his 2016 campaign, will transition to the White House from the Department of Transportation, where he focused on policy, according to Politico. Previously, he served as a White House liaison at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Bacon’s new role reportedly comes amid a far-reaching campaign by Trump to purge staffers who are disloyal. Bacon will work under 29-year-old James McEntee, who was recently rehired to replace Sean Doocey as head of the personnel office. Then-chief of staff John Kelly fired McEntee, who was working as Trump’s personal assistant, in 2018 over concerns about a gambling problem and tax issues, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Though Doocey had reported to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s deputy, McEntee now reports directly to Trump, reported The Washington Post. Doocey was pushed out to a new role in the State Department after a coalition of prominent conservatives accused him of obstructionism and called for his firing, per Axios. Bacon will replace Katja Bullock, a veteran of the office in her mid-70s who worked under both the Reagan and Bush administrations. Her annual salary was $145,000, according to the 2019 White House annual personnel report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
|
||
| 02-25-20 06:35pm - 1763 days | #1557 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Rush Limbaugh tells the truth. The coronavirus is being used by Democrats to take down President Donald Trump. The virus is a common cold. Nothing to be scared about. -------- -------- Rush Limbaugh claims the 'common cold' coronavirus is an effort to ‘get Trump’ HuffPost US Josephine Harvey Feb 25th 2020 9:21AM Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed on his show Monday that the potentially lethal coronavirus afflicting several countries is nothing more than a “common cold” blown out of proportion by the media to take down President Donald Trump ― even as he also asserted it was a “bioweapon” created by China in a laboratory. “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said at the start of his lengthy, misinformation-filled rant. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. ... I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” Coronaviruses comprise a large family of many viruses, ranging in severity from the common cold to more severe illnesses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an epidemic that infected more than 8,000 people in 2003. A novel coronavirus, such as the current COVID-19 outbreak, is a new strain of the virus that has previously not been identified in humans, the World Health Organization clearly explains on its site. Limbaugh, though, chose to go off on his own tangent. “The drive-by media hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as, ‘Oh, my God. If you get it, you’re dead...’ I think the survival rate is 98%,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent of people who get the coronavirus survive. It’s a respiratory system virus.” The mortality rate is not yet known, according to WHO. The organization’s latest situation report confirms 79,331 infections globally and 2,618 deaths, both widely reported figures. Citing a debunked conspiracy theory, Limbaugh then claimed the disease was probably a “laboratory experiment” conducted by Chinese officials that is “in the process of being weaponized.” Experts have repeatedly said that this theory, pushed in conservative circles, has no scientific basis. “There’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post. “The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded.” Limbaugh insisted that the disease is being “weaponized by virtue of the media” in an “effort to bring down Trump,” doing so by scaring investors into cashing out of the stock market. (Global markets fell sharply on Monday after the novel coronavirus surged in countries outside of China, raising concerns about the threat the outbreak poses to the global economy). To wrap up his monologue, Limbaugh declared the coverage of the outbreak represents an effort by the media to show that “Trump and capitalism are destroying America and destroying the world.” He also worked in a reference to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during his diatribe, saying the Democratic presidential candidate wants to transform the U.S. into a “mirror image of” the country in which the novel coronavirus was first detected in humans ― China. “It didn’t come from an American lab,” Limbaugh said. “It didn’t escape from an American research lab. It hasn’t been spread by Americans. It starts out in a communist country. Its tentacles spread all across the world in numbers that are not big and not huge, but they’re being reported as just the opposite.” Earlier this month, Limbaugh revealed that he had advanced lung cancer. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Trump during the president’s State of the Union address the following day. | |
|
||
| 02-25-20 10:46am - 1763 days | #1556 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
US Supreme Court protecting the rights of dead Mexicans. Boy, am I glad we have Republican judges who will protect the rights of dead Mexicans. The only good Mexican is a dead Mexican. The US, where free, white and color-blind Republicans rule. -------- -------- Court closes courthouse door on slain Mexican teen's family The Associated Press MARK SHERMAN Feb 25th 2020 11:52AM WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to close the courthouse door on the parents of a Mexican teenager who was shot dead over the border by an American agent. The court's five conservative justices held that the parents could not use American courts to sue Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr., who killed their unarmed 15-year-old son in 2010. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that the case is tragic, but that strong border security and international relations issues led to the ruling against the parents of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca. “Since regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably has national security implications, the risk of undermining border security provides reasons to hesitate" about allowing the parents to sue in American courts, Alito wrote. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for her liberal colleagues, disagreed, saying the parents' lawsuit does not endanger border security or U.S. foreign policy. Tuesday's outcome also is certain to doom a lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenager killed in Nogales, Mexico, from gunshots fired across the border by a U.S. agent. That case has been on hold. The case tested a half-century-old Supreme Court decision that allows people to sue federal officials for constitutional violations. Over the years, the courts have made it harder to bring claims, known as Bivens actions after the name of the high court case. Ginsburg wrote that “it is all too apparent that to redress injuries like the one suffered here, it is Bivens or nothing. I resist the conclusion that ‘nothing’ is the answer required in this case." Justice Clarence Thomas, who was part of the court majority, said he would get rid of Bivens lawsuits altogether. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas' separate opinion. Alito noted that the Justice Department and the parents disagreed about the sequence of events that led to Sergio's death. But there is no question that Mesa was standing on the U.S. side of the border when he fired into Mexico and killed him with a gunshot wound to the face. The family said Sergio was playing a game with friends on a June evening, running through a culvert and over the border, touching it, and running back. Mesa rode up on a bicycle, took Sergio's friend into custody, then fired across the border. The Justice Department said Mesa was trying to stop "smugglers attempting an illegal border crossing" and fired his gun after he came under a barrage of rocks. Mesa said in court filings that Sergio was among the rock throwers. Video footage of the incident seems to dispute that. U.S. officials chose not to prosecute Mesa, and the Obama administration refused a request to extradite him so that he could face criminal charges in Mexico. When the parents of the boy tried to sue Mesa, federal judges dismissed their claims. The Border Patrol drastically changed its use of force policies in the years after the shooting, following several complaints of excessive force. There were 15 instances where officers and agents used firearms during the budget year 2018, down from a high of 55 reported during the 2012 budget year. | |
|
||
| 02-24-20 11:11am - 1764 days | #4 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Simple matter: If you want confirmation emails, check the box for them. And then, you should get them for reviews, comments, whatever. | |
|
||
| 02-24-20 08:06am - 1764 days | #2 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
If you kept the confirmation emails that were sent for each review (both accepted and declined), you could read each email for the review covered, and the number of points it earned. Two problems with that approach: -I doubt most members have kept the confirmation emails for each review accepted/declined. -Even if you kept the confirmation emails, that would involve a lot of work to check each individual email for the points earned. Your point total is 63. You've submitted 38 reviews. Almost all of the reviews were good to excellent. A few of the early reviews were short. Under Khan's regime, the requirements for points were far stricter than under the current management. A short review, or a short bottom line, probably earned 1 point or less. But that's ancient history. As far as current reviews are concerned. | |
|
||
| 02-24-20 03:23am - 1765 days | #1555 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: President Trump, the most honest and truthful president the US has ever had, reveals that scum-bag Democrats are traitors to our nation, and leaking secrets to the public. Shame on the Democrats. Stand with Trump in locking up these traitors to the fight of making America great again. As Commander-in-Chief, can Trump have the Democrats arrested, and shot for treason? Enquiring minds want to know. ----------- ----------- Trump accuses Schiff of leaking intelligence about Russia to hurt Sanders Thomson Reuters Feb 23rd 2020 12:45PM President Donald Trump on Sunday accused Representative Adam Schiff of leaking classified information on Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. election to hurt Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders. Speaking to reporters as he left the White House for a trip to India, Trump said he had not been briefed on intelligence that Russia was aiming to boost the campaign of Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, and he called for a probe into Schiff for the leak. Schiff, a Democrat, denied the allegation. A congressional source told Reuters on Friday that intelligence officials had told lawmakers Russia appears to be engaging in disinformation and propaganda campaigns to help both Sanders and Trump, who is seeking re-election. "I read where Russia is helping Bernie Sanders. Nobody said it to me at all. Nobody briefed me about that at all," Trump said. "They leaked it, Adam Schiff and his group. They leaked it to the papers and - as usual - they ought to investigate Adam Schiff for leaking that information," Trump said, without providing any evidence to back up his claims. Schiff, who served as the lead prosecutor in Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate, said Trump was seeking to turn attention away from his own actions with the comments. "Nice deflection, Mr. President. But your false claims fool no one," he wrote in a tweet. "You welcomed Russian help in 2016, tried to coerce Ukraine’s help in 2019, and won’t protect our elections in 2020. Now you fired your intel chief for briefing Congress about it. You’ve betrayed America. Again." Trump changed out his acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire and replaced him with U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week, reportedly after being annoyed by the briefing to lawmakers about Russian interference. The president has repeatedly cast doubt on U.S. intelligence findings that Russia intervened to help him in the 2016 presidential election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. By raising questions about the latest findings, Trump appears to be seeking to boost Sanders, who is now the front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. As a self-described democratic socialist, Sanders is a candidate Trump would like to take on in a general election to bolster his argument that Democrats are pushing a socialist agenda. Trump has long argued that the Democratic Party favored Clinton unfairly over Sanders in the 2016 primary race, an issue that still divides the Democratic base. "I think what it could be is, you know, the Democrats are treating Bernie Sanders very unfairly and it sounds to me like a leak from Adam Schiff because they don't want Bernie Sanders to represent them. It sounds like it's (2016) all over again for Bernie Sanders," Trump said. Other administration officials have cast doubt on reports that Russia was trying to help Trump again this year. "I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump re-elected," White House National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told ABC's "This Week." | |
|
||
| 02-23-20 04:59pm - 1765 days | #1554 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Fake news: Trump has offered to paint the White House pink if Putin helps re-elect Trump as president. And has offered to give Putin a special discount when Putin visits America, if Putin stays at Trump properties. Trump is a fabulous business. He knows how to reward his friends. --------- --------- National Security Trump angry after House briefed on 2020 Russia election meddling on his behalf The briefing cost the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, a shot at the permanent DNI job, current and former officials said. Feb. 20, 2020, 1:35 PM PST / Updated Feb. 21, 2020, 9:15 AM PST By Ken Dilanian, Andrea Mitchell and Katy Tur WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed aside his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, because he was angry about a briefing to lawmakers that said Russia is interfering in the 2020 election to aid his re-election, current and former intelligence officials briefed on the matter told NBC News. At issue was an election briefing to House members last week by Shelby Pierson, the DNI's election security czar. The news was first reported by The New York Times. The fast-moving developments have caused serious concern among intelligence officials. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence "is nearing a meltdown," one former official said after news broke about Maguire being forced out over the Russia briefing. Trump is mad Dems know Russia is meddling to get him re-elected Current and former officials previously confirmed to NBC News that Maguire, who was under consideration to be permanent DNI, will not get that job and will soon leave his post. The top lieutenant at the ODNI, CIA officer Andrew Hallman, is also leaving, a former official said, a departure that "is very distressing to intelligence professionals." "It is clear that the recent decisions by the president have caused a lot of consternation in the intelligence community," another former official said. "I'm not aware of any kind of planned response, but a lot of people are concerned about the role of the oversight committees going forward in this situation." Maguire was due to leave by March 12 but the election briefing precipitated his departure. Trump announced that he would name Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, to the post, but on Thursday night, officials said the president would put forward a different name within days to fill the job permanently. Last Thursday, Pierson gave a classified briefing to the House Intelligence Committee on 2020 election security. Current and former intelligence officials said she told lawmakers that Russia had exhibited a preference for Trump, and was seeking to interfere in the 2020 election to help the president. One current official familiar with the matter told NBC News that Pierson overstated the extent to which there is intelligence showing a Russian preference for Trump. When lawmakers from both parties asked for examples, she could not provide any, this official said, adding that the Russian priority is sowing chaos, not electing any particular candidate. A second current official said Democrats at the briefing asked pointed questions designed to make the intelligence look as damaging to Trump as possible, while Republicans questioned whether the Russians would prefer Trump. A spokeswoman for Pierson declined to comment. Regardless of what the intelligence shows, what happened after the briefing has deeply unsettled many intelligence officials, current and former officials tell NBC News. The next day, Trump erupted at Maguire in the Oval Office, demanding to know why lawmakers were briefed on the Russia intelligence, current and former officials said, adding that Trump was concerned the Democrats would use the information against him. Trump names controversial Richard Grenell as acting intelligence director Feb. 20, 202001:16 Trump's anger over the briefing led him to push Maguire out, current and former officials told NBC News. The episode has raised the specter that Trump is punishing intelligence officials for providing accurate intelligence to members of Congress who are cleared to receive it. Pierson, a veteran intelligence official, is coordinating the intelligence gathering — and response — to foreign election threats. While the U.S. government is working to secure the 2020 election from hackers and disinformation, Trump has avoided publicly commenting or holding meetings about the subject because he believes the issue reflects badly on his 2016 victory in an election beset by Russian interference, officials have told NBC News. | |
|
||
| 02-23-20 08:03am - 1765 days | #1553 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Although the Senate acquitted Donald Trump, Clint Eastwood, a long-time Republican, no longer supports Trump as president. Can Trump be re-elected, if he loses the support of important Republicans? Even more important, if Trump loses the support of Russia, can Trump win re-election? -------- -------- Clint Eastwood ditches Donald Trump for Mike Bloomberg in 2020 election Variety Jordan Moreau Feb 22nd 2020 4:25PM Longtime Republican Clint Eastwood is pulling support from Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the actor-director signaled that he thinks a different candidate would be the better choice. “The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there,” he said. After endorsing Mitt Romney and famously delivering a speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention to an empty chair that represented Barack Obama, Eastwood never officially backed Trump. In a 2016 interview, he expressed displeasure with Trump and Hillary Clinton, saying there’s “much funny business on both sides of the aisle.” He praised Trump at the time because he was “onto something” and “secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up.” “We’re really in a p—y generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist,” he said. Now, he’s changed his tune a bit on Trump. While he approves of “certain things” the president has done, he wishes that he would act “in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level,” he said. Eastwood also touched on the controversy surrounding Olivia Wilde’s character, Kathy Scruggs, in his 2019 film “Richard Jewell.” He showed Scruggs, the real-life reporter who alleged Jewell planted a bomb at the 1996 Olympics, sleeping with an FBI source to get information. Lawyers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newspaper at which Scruggs worked, called the portrayal “entirely false and malicious, and…extremely defamatory and damaging.” The film was Clintwood’s worst opening in 40 years. The director defended his right to cinematic freedom and said the newspaper was trying to shroud its “guilt” over a “reckless story.” “Well, she hung out at a little bar in town, where mostly police officers went,” he said. “She had a boyfriend that was a police officer. Well, we just changed it in the story. We made it a federal police officer instead of a local,” he said. Even though “Richard Jewell” was involved in a #MeToo-like controversy, Eastwood said he appreciates that the movement has empowered women to stand up “against people who are trying to shake [them] down for sexual favors.” However, he believes that “presumption of innocence, not only in law, but in philosophy” has been lost in the increase of accusations of sexual misbehavior. | |
|
||
| 02-23-20 07:46am - 1765 days | #1552 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Trump and Sanders are the current candidates of choice for Russia. Will Trump try to distance himself from Russia, because he believes he should be the only one getting help from Russia? Will Trump blow a fuse, and send guided missiles or drones to take out Putin, his former ally? Will Trump start World War 3 because he's lost Putin's favor? Enquiring minds want to know: how many Americans want Trump as President-For-Life? ------- ------- Trump tells 'Crazy Bernie' Sanders: 'Don't let them take it away from you!' NBC News Lauren Egan Feb 23rd 2020 8:22AM LAS VEGAS — President Donald Trump tuned into the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday, tweeting that "Crazy Bernie" was doing well and telling the Vermont senator, "Don't let them take it away from you!" "Looks like Crazy Bernie is doing well in the Great State of Nevada. Biden & the rest look weak, & no way Mini Mike can restart his campaign after the worst debate performance in the history of Presidential Debates," Trump tweeted, short before NBC News projected Sanders would win. "Congratulations Bernie, & don't let them take it away from you!" Since the 2016 primary, Trump has frequently suggested that the Democratic National Committee is working against Sanders to keep him from winning the party's nomination. A scenario receiving increased attention involves Sanders arriving at the Democratic National Convention this summer having won more delegates than any other candidate but not enough for the nomination and then being outmaneuvered by Democratic deal making to give the nomination to someone else because they believe the democratic socialist and self-proclaimed revolutionary can't beat Trump. Many Sanders supporters felt that the DNC favored Hillary Clinton in 2016 and again prefers a more centrist candidate this time around as the nominee — a chasm in the Democratic Party that Trump frequently likes to capitalize on. "The Kremlin is reportedly backing Bernie Sanders bid to win the White House," Trump tweeted. "Why didn't somebody tell me this?" On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Russia was attempting to help Sanders' campaign. Sanders and Trump, along with other lawmakers, had been briefed on Russia's efforts. Intelligence reports have also shown that Russia is interfering in the election to benefit Trump. "Democrats in the Great State of Nevada (Which, because of the Economy, Jobs, the Military & Vets, I will win in November), be careful of Russia, Russia, Russia," Trump tweeted earlier Saturday morning. "According to Corrupt politician Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, they are pushing for Crazy Bernie Sanders to win. Vote!" Although there are no Republican nominating contests being held in Nevada this weekend, Trump held a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Friday. Trump lost Nevada to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by roughly 2.4 percentage points. | |
|
||
| 02-22-20 11:09am - 1766 days | #1551 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news: Trump is a man of the people. He's fighting to save taxpayers millions of dollars, and fighting to close the deficit. What a man. What a hero. --------- --------- Trump’s New Budget Proposal Slashes Medicaid, Medicare, Pesky CDC Funding By Bess Levin February 10, 2020 On Monday, Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal for 2021, a submission that is less an order than it is a window into the president’s fantasies, given that it must be approved by Congress, which has historically rejected the White House’s budgets. Still, it’s a great opportunity for Americans, particularly those who may run against the president for office this fall, to see what sort of cuts he would put in place if there were nothing to stop him from acting on his basest instincts. And if you guessed that when left entirely to his own devices, the president would gut spending for the most vulnerable members of the nation, you guessed right! The Washington Post reports that Trump has proposed a $4.8 trillion budget that would take a hacksaw to the social safety net and vital domestic programs while requesting $2 billion in homeland security spending for his border wall and a 12% budget increase for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because he wants to go to Mars. Among the programs taking the biggest hit are Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which would lose billions, and food stamp funding, which would be reduced by $181 billion over a decade. (Trump has long made it clear that he believes the poor have gotten way too greedy about eating.) According to the Post, despite Trump claiming that Medicare is safe, the proposal would “also wring savings from Medicare,” so there’s that. The Education Department would see a cut of 8%, the Interior Department would lose 13.4%, and the State Department—that pesky little thing—would be cut by 22%. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency—which under Trump has proposed measures expected to kill up to 1,400 Americans per year—would see its budget slashed by 26.5% over the next year alone, while the budget for the Health and Human Services Department would be lopped off by 9%. Crucially, HHS includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latter of which we’re hoping will help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 910 people, a stat the World Health Organization has warned may just be the “tip of the iceberg.” (Officials have claimed that funding aimed at combating the virus would be protected, but Trump has said a lot of things in the past that turned out to be lies.) Oh, and if you were wondering if these cuts would help the president make good on his bold claims of reducing the deficit, it turns out that no, they’re mostly just for cruelty’s sake. Even with all the proposed spending cuts, the budget would fail to eliminate the federal deficit over the next 10 years, missing a longtime GOP fiscal target. Instead White House officials plan to say their budget proposal would close the deficit by 2035. But it would only achieve this if the economy grows at an unprecedented, sustained 3% clip through 2025, levels the administration has failed to achieve for even one year so far. The U.S. economy grew 2.3% in 2019, the weakest level since Trump took office. During Trump’s first year in office, his advisers said their budget plan would eliminate the deficit by around 2028. This new budget will mark the third consecutive time that they abandon that 10-year goal and instead suggest a 15-year target.... As a presidential candidate, Trump said he would eliminate not just the annual federal deficit but all debt held by the United States after eight years in office. During the last year President Barack Obama was in office, the deficit was less than $600 billion, but it has grown significantly since then. The 2017 GOP tax cuts and new domestic spending approved by bipartisan majorities in Congress have widened this gap markedly. However, the Trump administration’s new budget summary contains the line: “All administration policies will pay for themselves, including extending tax cut provisions expiring in 2025.” Without action by Congress and the administration, tax cuts for families and individuals would expire at the end of 2025. Budget experts have projected that extending those tax cuts would reduce revenue by roughly $1 trillion. Not surprisingly, Democrats like Rep. John Yarmuth, chairman of the House Budget Committee, are less than enthused by the proposal, which Yarmuth said includes “destructive changes...while extending [Trump’s] tax cuts for millionaires and wealthy corporations.” The president’s plan is highly unlikely to be approved, but to sate his appetite for slashing funding that millions of Americans depend on, he’s apparently looking into alternate avenues for cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and other “entitlements,” which he’s long promised—as recently as this weekend!—to keep his mitts off of. | |
|
||
| 02-22-20 08:11am - 1766 days | #1550 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real news, not fake: President Trump is a prisoner. The Secret Service tells Trump what to do, and he follows their orders. Which is costing taxpayers millions of extra dollars, because the Secret Service is forcing to Trump to stay at properties Trump owns, and forcing Trump to accept millions of dollars from the US government. Trump is a wonderful man. A good man. And a good business man. So if a few extra millions of dollars are forced into Trump's businesses, that benefits Trump and the US, because a happy Trump is good for the US. ----------- ----------- Trump costing taxpayers and putting money in his pocket with stay at his own hotel HuffPost US S.V. Date Feb 21st 2020 12:32PM LAS VEGAS ― President Donald Trump’s choice to stay at his own Las Vegas hotel each night during the western states swing that wraps up Friday likely cost taxpayers a million extra dollars as well as diverted thousands of them into his own cash registers. Previous presidents on extended trips away from the White House typically stayed in the city of each day’s final event, or traveled to the city of the following day’s first event. Trump, instead, traveled back to Las Vegas each night from California, Arizona and Colorado to overnight at his Trump International Hotel ― requiring several extra hours’ flying time on Air Force One, a plane that costs taxpayers about a quarter-million dollars per hour in the air. “At this point in his presidency, there’s no way to look at it other than Donald Trump is using his position and taxpayer dollars to make money for his businesses,” said Jordan Libowitz with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “This is beyond a conflict of interest. This is corruption, plain and simple.” When Trump was asked about his decision to return to Las Vegas each night just before he left for California, he claimed he had nothing to do with it. “Largely, the schedule is set by the Secret Service. We do what they want us to,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews just before the plane’s departure. “I don’t set the schedule. I have nothing to do with it.” It’s unclear, however, what Trump meant. Previous presidents visited the same western states numerous times, for example, and never once stayed in a Trump property. A Secret Service spokesperson told HuffPost: “The U.S. Secret Service works in conjunction with the administration on all presidential and First Family visits as our primary concern is the safety and security of those that we protect.” Trump’s White House did not try to defend the accuracy of Trump’s claim, and instead argued that the decision to use Trump International Hotel Las Vegas as a base actually saved taxpayers’ money. President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives at McCarran International Airport on Feb. 18 in Las Vegas. “If the president had stayed in three different cities over three different nights that would mean three different advance teams traveling out ahead, three different USSS teams traveling ahead, it would mean impacting traffic with road closures in three different cities, taking rooms for security and communications at three different hotels, and various other necessities for presidential travel in three different cities,” said a senior White House official on condition of anonymity. “The hotel the president is in is well known to USSS in terms of security and the footprint needed. In short, doing it the way we’re doing it saved money for the government and Las Vegas is most central to all the stops. Only a small contingent of required staff with specific roles stay at the hotel with the president. The majority of staff stay at a different hotel. All hotel stays are at the government rate.” That analysis, though, ignores the single biggest driver of presidential costs: the use of Air Force One. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office last year, the Air Force unit that operates the modified Boeing 747 normally used as the presidential aircraft spent $4.4 million for four round trips from Andrews to Palm Beach in early 2017 ― which works out to $273,063 for each hour of flight time. Had Trump held the same events but done so in a geographically logical order ― starting in Beverly Hills and finishing in Colorado Springs, but overnighting each day in the city where he would begin the following morning ― Trump would have spent four fewer hours aboard Air Force One, thereby saving taxpayers about $1.1 million. The anonymous White House official’s claim that more motorcades would have been required also does not tell the whole story. A full motorcade ― including the presidential limousine, staff vans and various specialized trucks ― is needed in any city where Trump is traveling, regardless of whether it will be used to move him from an airport to an event site and back, or to an overnight hotel and then to the event site the next day. What’s more, advance teams scout out a city and motorcade routes are closed to traffic on any presidential visit, regardless of whether it is for a brief visit or an overnight stay. Indeed, the repeated overnight trips to Las Vegas may have forced the Secret Service and other support personnel to keep a motorcade there for a full four days, rather than move it to the site of an upcoming presidential trip. This week is not the first time Trump used presidential trips to spend time at his own properties, even though it added considerable travel and security costs for taxpayers. In 2018, for example, he spent two days between official meetings in London and a Helsinki summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at his own resort in Scotland, rather than waiting in London. And last summer, he insisted on staying at his resort on the west coast of Ireland on the days surrounding his visit to Normandy, France, even though it required several additional hours on Air Force One. Precisely how many taxpayer dollars wind up in Trump’s pocket from these stays cannot be determined. The White House, despite numerous queries from HuffPost over a period of months, refuses to disclose how many executive branch employees stay with Trump when he visits his own properties and how much it is costing taxpayers. And how much of that revenue winds up as profit flowing to Trump also is not known because Trump reneged on a campaign promise ― and decades of precedent ― by refusing to disclose his tax returns. According to The Washington Post, Trump’s business charged Secret Service agents as much as $650 a night for rooms at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump’s golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on these and other invoices obtained by various groups using lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act, Trump has likely funneled at least several million dollars of taxpayer dollars into his own cash registers in his first three years in office. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
|
||
| 02-21-20 06:02am - 1767 days | #1549 | |
|
LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Real fake news: God save the Republic. Have faith in the honesty and moral courage of our Senators. They have a direct line to God, and speak with honesty, courage, and clarity. I have heard Senator Lindsey Graham of the Great State of South Carolina. I believe in the Lord. I believe in Senator Linsey Graham. Next to Donald Trump, probably the most honest and God-fearing man in the US Government. Republicans have long used God and religion as a justification for their decisions. Rick Perry, then the secretary of energy, said last year that Trump was God's "chosen one" to lead the United States, while Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas regularly mentions God in his political decisions. Trump is God's chosen leader on Earth. He knows that Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are lying when they say they are praying for Trump. Trump talks with God about God's enemies, and God has informed Trump that He's heard no prayers from Romney and Pelosi. --------------- Lindsey Graham says God won't ask him about Trump's acquittal when he dies Kelly McLaughlin Feb 7, 2020, 8:28 AM Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News Radio's "Brian Kilmeade Show" that he didn't think he would be judged by God for voting to acquit President Donald Trump. "When I go to meet God at the pearly gates, I don't think he's going to ask me, 'Why didn't you convict Trump?'" he said. "I may be wrong, but I don't think that's going to be at the top of the list." Graham called in to Fox News Radio's "Brian Kilmeade Show" to discuss the Senate vote that acquitted Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in his impeachment trial, and he discussed Sen. Mitt Romney's decision to break from the Republican Party to vote that Trump was guilty. The senator from South Carolina said voting to acquit Trump was the "easiest decision I've ever had to make." "All I can tell you is that God gave us free will and common sense — I used the common sense God gave me to understand this was a bunch of BS," he said, adding that Democrats "hate Trump, they were going to impeach him the day he got elected, and if you can't see through this, your religion is clouding your thinking here." Romney, who has faced backlash from the GOP over his impeachment vote, mentioned God in his decision to vote the president guilty of abuse of power. "I am a profoundly religious person," he said in a speech announcing his decision. "I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced." Graham criticized Romney's statement and his comment that an "oath before God" led him to his decision. "When I go to meet God at the pearly gates, I don't think he's going to ask me, 'Why didn't you convict Trump?'" Graham said. "I may be wrong, but I don't think that's going to be at the top of the list." Republicans have long used God and religion as a justification for their decisions. Rick Perry, then the secretary of energy, said last year that Trump was God's "chosen one" to lead the United States, while Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas regularly mentions God in his political decisions. Trump also directly addressed the issue of faith during a rambling speech Thursday on his acquittal. "I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong, nor do I like people who say, 'I pray for you,' when they know that that's not so," he said of Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. | |
|
||
| 1301-1350 of 1583 Posts | < Previous Page | 1 | 2 | 7 | 12 | 17 | 26 | Page 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | Next Page > |
|
