riversedge
riversedge's JournalDonald Trump's night so far:
so, Pence put Mnuching in charge of responses. damn. I do not who is worse--they both suck.
Donald Trump's night so far:
- Thinks we're safe from coronavirus because he closed the "boarder"
- Pence puts Mnuchin in charge of virus response
- #TrumpVirus is trending
- Stock market collapse
- Trump's presidency in freefall
- Trump is going to prison
- It's still only 10pm
https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/1233226851251736576?s=20
https://twitter.com/BrokawTim/status/1233227199412609025?s=20
https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1233224550420303872?s=20
https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1233233000105758721?s=20
https://twitter.com/TweeterRabbit/status/1233227084979417089?s=20
https://twitter.com/christirnmom/status/1233223221245358082?s=20
Oil's Worst Week Since 2011 Puts Pressure on OPEC+ to Respond
Source: bloomberg
February 27, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Oil was on course for its biggest weekly loss since 2011 as the fast-spreading coronavirus roiled global markets, intensifying speculation that OPEC and its allies will strike a deal to support prices.
Futures in New York fell a sixth day after fears over the outbreak sent shares on Wall Street down by the most in almost a decade. With crude prices down around 14% this week, there are signs that OPEC and its allies could be nearing agreement on action to stem the rout before meeting in Vienna next week.
The group’s top official said the cartel and its allies are displaying a “renewed commitment” to reach an accord as the virus puts the world economy on course for its worst performance since 2009. Saudi Arabia has been pushing for deeper production cuts over the last few weeks, but Russia has so far taken a more cautious stance. One silver lining for markets is that prices are now at a level that may be uneconomic for U.S. shale producers.
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The kingdom is now pushing for collective OPEC+ production cuts of an additional 1 million barrels a day, which it would bear the brunt of, according to a report in the Financial Times. That’s more than the 600,000 barrels per day of reductions that were recommended earlier this month by an OPEC+ technical panel.
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-extends-biggest-weekly-loss-233425722.html
Donald Trump's night so far:
- Thinks we're safe from coronavirus because he closed the "boarder"
- Pence puts Mnuchin in charge of virus response
- #TrumpVirus is trending
- Stock market collapse
- Trump's presidency in freefall
- Trump is going to prison
- It's still only 10pm
https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/1233226851251736576?s=20
Coronavirus Updates: Italy Reports 650 Cases And 17 Deaths
Source: npr
February 27, 20201:36 PM ET
Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET
Italy's number of COVID-19 coronavirus cases spiked by more than 50% in just 24 hours and now stands at 650, the Italian Ministry of Health says, adding that 17 people have died from the respiratory virus. More than 400 of the cases are in the hard-hit Lombardy region, where some towns are under a lockdown.
Nearly 250 of the people who were infected are currently in the hospital, including 56 patients who are in intensive care, the Italian ministry says, citing a Thursday afternoon update from Angelo Borrelli, commissioner for the coronavirus emergency. Another 284 people who have been infected are in home isolation to try to stop the coronavirus from spreading further.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy led the U.S. State Department to add concerns about the virus to its travel advisory for Italy this week. The advisory stands at Level 2: "exercise increased caution" – one level short of "reconsider travel."
Alarmed by the virus's potential impact on its economy, Italy's government is urging foreign media to reassure people around the world that it's safe to visit Italy.
"Tourism is already taking a big hit, with a surge in hotel cancellations," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome, "and several American study-abroad programs have shut down.".........................
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/27/809984502/coronavirus-update-japan-is-closing-all-its-schools-for-a-month
These waiters must be bored silly.
Waiters stand by an empty restaurant in Venice's St. Mark's Square, which would normally be full of tourists, as a coronavirus outbreak grows in Italy.
Manuel Silvestri/Reuters
Democratic Primary Voters Increasingly Worried About Climate Change
Democratic Primary Voters Increasingly Worried About Climate Change
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/27/808238944/democratic-primary-voters-increasingly-worried-about-climate-change?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr
February 27, 202012:07 PM ET
As Super Tuesday approaches, Denver resident KSue Anderson can't stop thinking about climate change. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of Americans alarmed about climate change nearly tripled according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Denver resident KSue Anderson is a lifelong Democrat who has usually chosen candidates based on economic or social justice issues. But as Super Tuesday approaches this presidential election year, the 80-year-old undecided voter can't stop thinking about climate change.
"The winters are warmer than they used to be," she says. "We don't get as much snow as we used to. And when we get it, it comes in huge things."
Young people have gotten a lot of media attention for their climate activism. But they're just one face of a voting block that has grown more worried since the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and began rolling back environmental protections.
"I'm extremely concerned," Anderson says.
Polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada all showed climate change, along with health care, near the top of the list of concerns for primary and caucus voters.
Between 2014 and 2019, the number of Americans alarmed about climate change nearly tripled, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. The Pew Research Center notes a similar recent rise in concern, mostly among Democrats, but also Republican millennials and some independents.
"More than a decade ago, climate change seemed far away, and it seemed distant from Americans' everyday experience. That's not so much anymore," says Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew........................
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1233136243967393793?s=20
CDC Has Fixed Issue Delaying Coronavirus Testing In U.S., Health Officials Say
Source: npr
February 27, 202010:01 AM ET
Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET
Federal health officials say they have resolved a problem that has hindered wide testing for the new coronavirus in the United States, a crucial practice for fighting the spread of the dangerous new infection.
A problem with one ingredient in test kits that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed to labs around the country had created a frustrating bottleneck in testing, requiring most testing to occur at the CDC in Atlanta.
On Wednesday night, the CDC announced a new case of the COVID-19 disease in California that could represent the first U.S. case of the virus spreading within the general population. That diagnosis was delayed because testing wasn't done immediately.
But the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration informed state officials late Wednesday that the agencies have resolved the problem with the test kits.
"The FDA has authorized the use of those tests by using just the first and second step to provide a definitive diagnostic," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said during a congressional hearing Thursday........................
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/02/27/809936132/cdc-fixes-issue-delaying-coronavirus-testing-in-u-s
Rob Stein, photographed for NPR, 22 January 2020, in Washington DC.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, headquartered in Atlanta, announced on Wednesday a new case of the COVID-19 disease in California, a diagnosis that was delayed because testing wasn't done immediately.
Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
Trump faces credibility test as he plays down virus threat
We need a billion articles about trumps lack of credibility. yes. we. do.
Trump faces credibility test as he plays down virus threat
https://apnews.com/67a9a72531ca2e332bea9225cec2fda5
By AAMER MADHANI, JONATHAN LEMIRE and ZEKE MILLERFebruary 26, 2020
President Donald Trump with members of the president's coronavirus task force speaks during a news conference at the Brady press briefing room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump faces a critical personal challenge in grappling with the new coronavirus outbreak: asking Americans to believe him after he and some of his top advisers have contradicted federal scientists in playing down the threat.
Keenly aware of the stakes not just for public health but also his credibility, Trump conducted a lengthy press conference Wednesday evening aimed at reassuring everyone that he has the crisis well in hand.
Trump surrounded himself with his administration’s top health experts. And he encouraged Americans to be prepared for the virus’ potential spread.
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But he continued to minimize the risk, saying the outbreak “may get a little bigger; it may not get bigger at all.” And he continued to distance himself from the stated opinion of public health officials that it’s inevitable the virus will spread within the United States.
As businesses, schools and people in general think about preparing, the X-factor may be an unpredictable president who has clashed repeatedly with scientists in his own administration and tends to see any crisis through the lens of his own reelection chances.
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“I don’t think it’s inevitable,” Trump said at the news conference, where he announced Vice President Mike Pence would lead the administration’s response to the outbreak. “I think it has a chance that it could get worse. There is a chance you can get fairly substantially worse. But nothing’s inevitable.”
He also said he had recently learned that thousands die from the flu each year, contrasting that to the coronavirus.
After two days of the stock market tumbling, Trump took to Twitter Wednesday morning to blame the media and Democrats for causing undue alarm and harming American financial markets..................................
Iran Goes from Bad to Worse Hardliners win elections, thanks in part to Trump's treaty withdrawal.
Trump and his ego have to go!
Foreign Correspondent: Iran Goes from Bad to Worse
Hardliners win elections, thanks in part to Trump’s treaty withdrawal.
https://progressive.org/dispatches/iran-goes-from-bad-to-worse-erlich-200227/
by Reese Erlich February 27, 2020
TEHRAN—The parliamentary candidates had rented a large hall for a campaign rally, but only a few hundred supporters showed up. They came to see Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a leading hardliner and possible presidential candidate next year.
As warm-up speakers droned on, the audience responded with ritualistic chants but little enthusiasm. Many stared at their smartphones. Then the event ended abruptly. Ghalibaf never showed up.
The hardliners, known here as principalists, won a landslide victory in Iran’s February 21 parliamentary elections but without the kind of enthusiasm that marked previous campaigns.
The principalists won all thirty seats in Tehran and 220 of the 290 total parliament seats. But the nationwide turnout was just 42.5 percent, compared to almost 62 percent for the 2016 parliamentary elections, and was the lowest since the 1979 Revolution. In Tehran, only 25 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
The principalists defeated the reformists, who had previously dominated the parliament and supported President Hassan Rouhani.
A prominent journalist and reformist supporter predicted the principalist landslide. He told me that President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear accord in 2018 and the economic problems stemming from U.S. sanctions “humiliated the reformists. It was Trump’s gift to the hardliners.”.......................................
Trump upends controversial surveillance fight
Source: the hill.
By Jordain Carney - 02/27/20 05:04 PM EST
President Trump is threatening to blow up an extension of expiring intelligence programs as he backchannels with a cadre of top allies who want to use the bill to reform a shadowy surveillance court.
Congress has approximately 10 working days to reauthorize three expiring provisions of the USA Freedom Act, a 2015 bill that overhauled the country’s surveillance laws, with Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) backing a “clean” extension.
But Trump threw a grenade into those already fragile plans on Thursday, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters that the president supports his effort to include broader reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, Court as part of any reauthorization of the intelligence programs.
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Trump’s apparent support for including broader changes to the surveillance court comes as he’s railed repeatedly about his campaign being “spied” upon by the Obama-era FBI.
Progressives and libertarian-minded Republicans have long pushed to reform the FISA court, arguing enough privacy protections and transparency aren’t given to individuals targeted for government surveillance.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is also doing a deep dive on the FISA process, including closed-door depositions that he expects to start next week. Graham appeared caught off guard about Paul’s talk with the president, saying “I haven’t talked to him about it, [but] I’ll see him this weekend.”
Graham and Trump are campaigning in South Carolina together.........................
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Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/485045-trump-upends-controversial-surveillance-fight
I have always had this thought that the reason Trump did not go back to his trump towers in nyc is because he thinks it is bugged. Just my thought.. He is so paranoid--and cruel, and stupid and and and
Democrats spar with DeVos at hearing, say Trump budget would 'privatize education'
Source: the hill
By Justine Coleman - 02/27/20 02:29 PM EST
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House Democrats on an Appropriations subcommittee criticized the Education Department's spending request, with Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) calling it “unacceptable” and saying it would “risk exacerbating the financial challenges of under-resourced rural districts.”
“I just want to say to you, with all sincerity, this is not going to happen,” DeLauro told DeVos. “You are clearly again, in my view, seeking to privatize public education. I hope that we have been clear that we are not going to do that.”
DeVos defended the budget request, saying she is “not out to privatize anything about education.”
“I’m out to make sure every student is personalized, individualized for them, that they find the right fit to unlock their potential,” DeVos told members of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Democrats took issue with the Education Department's desire to consolidate different forms of grant programs into one block grant to the states. DeVos argued the move would provide states and schools more flexibility on how to split up grant money to address issues like school safety and mental health care............................
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/appropriations/484991-democrats-spar-with-devos-at-hearing-say-trump-budget-would
Warren introduces bill to redirect wall money to coronavirus
BEST idea I have seen in a LONG TIME! and I bet the old greedy Trump is seething!!
https://twitter.com/MoveOn/status/1233099171269402629?s=20
Warren introduces bill to redirect wall money to coronavirus
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/484933-warren-introduces-bill-to-redirect-wall-money-to-coronavirus
By Jordain Carney - 02/27/20 11:20 AM EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation on Thursday to redirect border wall funding to combating the coronavirus.
The bill, according to Warren’s office, would result in approximately $10 billion being shifted from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“Rather than use taxpayer dollars to pay for a monument to hate and division, my bill will help ensure that the federal government has the resources it needs to adequately respond to this emergency,” the 2020 Democratic hopeful said in a statement.
The White House has suggested $2.5 billion to combat the coronavirus, while Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is requesting $8.5 billion.
What number lawmakers will end up at as they negotiate on a supplemental bill remains unclear.
“The United States government must do more to address the spread of the deadly coronavirus in a smart, strategic, and serious way and we stand ready to work in a bipartisan fashion in Congress and with the administration to achieve this necessary goal,” Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday in a joint statement.
“Lives are at stake — this is not the time for name-calling or playing politics,” they added............................
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