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We are NOT in it all together.
First it was coined for the pandemic. Now for racism. Guess what...WE are not IN it together. The wealthy can afford to sit in their homes and shelter with their kid, spouse and live in help. The middle class can try to avoid others and social distance while working from home. The poor can huddle in their crowded flats and if lucky, go to their "essential" job which is providing for others.
I have seen days of protests. Do the people even have an idea what change they want. Interview some and get nothing but cops are bad and racism is bad and it needs to change. How?
The only thing I heard on TV was a solution is the way cops are fired. Make it so they can't arbitrate and get their job back. Or move to another station. Then you will hear the unions scream and protest.
I hear people on TV saying their are grieving, they are heartbroken over the man who was murdered by the cops. Baloney! I am not. He was just one of many who are killed, black, white, yellow, brown. I am angry that bad cops get away with committing a crime by wearing a badge.
So protests are going on around the country and even world. Racism has to stop. Then let it stop in ALL races. Stop hating others that are not of your niche in the world. The protests will gain nothing. You can't stop hatred.
The protesters go home and after dark come the looters, vandals, malcontents. They march in the man's name and defile what appears to have been a decent fellow. They smash and destroy and steal from stores owned by people who had nothing to do with the murder. They crap in their own beds. And perpetrate the stereo types and make people even more racist. It is not just blacks. It includes white young people who have been spoiled and think the world should be handed to them. Will that person who looted that big screen TV take it home and show it to their children. See what I got for free and didn't have to work for it. And teach their children to hate and take.
I wonder how much the white looters even care or just take the excuse to go rouge and steal Nike shoes.
They go home to their nice homes and leave the blacks behind to suffer the consequences.
I have seen days of protests. Do the people even have an idea what change they want. Interview some and get nothing but cops are bad and racism is bad and it needs to change. How?
The only thing I heard on TV was a solution is the way cops are fired. Make it so they can't arbitrate and get their job back. Or move to another station. Then you will hear the unions scream and protest.
I hear people on TV saying their are grieving, they are heartbroken over the man who was murdered by the cops. Baloney! I am not. He was just one of many who are killed, black, white, yellow, brown. I am angry that bad cops get away with committing a crime by wearing a badge.
So protests are going on around the country and even world. Racism has to stop. Then let it stop in ALL races. Stop hating others that are not of your niche in the world. The protests will gain nothing. You can't stop hatred.
The protesters go home and after dark come the looters, vandals, malcontents. They march in the man's name and defile what appears to have been a decent fellow. They smash and destroy and steal from stores owned by people who had nothing to do with the murder. They crap in their own beds. And perpetrate the stereo types and make people even more racist. It is not just blacks. It includes white young people who have been spoiled and think the world should be handed to them. Will that person who looted that big screen TV take it home and show it to their children. See what I got for free and didn't have to work for it. And teach their children to hate and take.
I wonder how much the white looters even care or just take the excuse to go rouge and steal Nike shoes.
They go home to their nice homes and leave the blacks behind to suffer the consequences.
A tear for USA
In the midst of the worst ever global depression which has seen unprecedented worldwide job losses, with the US alone notching over 40 million, a murder takes place in Minneapolis, Minnesota which triggered nationwide demonstrations, some riots, the deployment of the National Guard and curfews all bracketed by a deadly pandemic which calls for social distancing, no crowds or mass gatherings in the first instance.
But in America, racial injustice is boiling over once again. Had it ever been quelled?
Anger, frustration and pain following the tragic death of George Floyd – an African American who suffocated while in custody from having a police officer’s knee pressing on his neck. Floyd died pleading “don’t kill me” and “I cannot breathe”. The officer Derek Chauvin has since been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter, even as his wife is reportedly filing for a divorce.
Then we see the contrast to this ugliness with the elation created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which successfully launched at 20.10h GMT yesterday, putting two NASA astronauts and best friends – Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley – on their way to the International Space Station. A first by a private spaceship owned by a private company, watched by the world and by Donald Trump, who made the specific trip to the Kennedy Space Centre.
The US President needs a positive boost in this crucial election year given his handling of, and the misguiding tweets on, the coronavirus. But he's not helping himself with such tweets
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
· 17h
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
....got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard - didn’t know what hit them. The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would....
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
....have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and....
Not exactly a catalyst for unifying a USA looked upon as the leader of the free world. Political and commercial issues with several countries, the abandonment of the World Health Organisation during this unprecedented pandemic and the withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change are only some issues among others that has dropped Trump’s home and worldwide ratings to their lowest ever for a serving President.
The free world doesn’t need a narcissist for a leader, but one with empathy and extending a hand of friendship. Iron fists and power threats do not encourage anything but violence. Not for a 'united' States, not for a prosperous and peaceful people and certainly not for a global leadership’s role and an example. A pity.
Stay safe.
But in America, racial injustice is boiling over once again. Had it ever been quelled?
Anger, frustration and pain following the tragic death of George Floyd – an African American who suffocated while in custody from having a police officer’s knee pressing on his neck. Floyd died pleading “don’t kill me” and “I cannot breathe”. The officer Derek Chauvin has since been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter, even as his wife is reportedly filing for a divorce.
Then we see the contrast to this ugliness with the elation created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which successfully launched at 20.10h GMT yesterday, putting two NASA astronauts and best friends – Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley – on their way to the International Space Station. A first by a private spaceship owned by a private company, watched by the world and by Donald Trump, who made the specific trip to the Kennedy Space Centre.
The US President needs a positive boost in this crucial election year given his handling of, and the misguiding tweets on, the coronavirus. But he's not helping himself with such tweets
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
· 17h
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
....got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard - didn’t know what hit them. The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would....
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
....have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and....
Not exactly a catalyst for unifying a USA looked upon as the leader of the free world. Political and commercial issues with several countries, the abandonment of the World Health Organisation during this unprecedented pandemic and the withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change are only some issues among others that has dropped Trump’s home and worldwide ratings to their lowest ever for a serving President.
The free world doesn’t need a narcissist for a leader, but one with empathy and extending a hand of friendship. Iron fists and power threats do not encourage anything but violence. Not for a 'united' States, not for a prosperous and peaceful people and certainly not for a global leadership’s role and an example. A pity.
Stay safe.
Leadership
If We Had a Real Leader --Imagining Covid under a normal president.
By David Brooks Opinion Columnist
The conversation left me wondering what America’s experience of the pandemic would be like if we had a real leader in the White House.
If we had a real leader, he would have realized that tragedies like 100,000 Covid-19 deaths touch something deeper than politics: They touch our shared vulnerability and our profound and natural sympathy for one another.
In such moments, a real leader steps outside of his political role and reveals himself uncloaked and humbled, as someone who can draw on his own pains and simply be present with others as one sufferer among a common sea of sufferers.
If we had a real leader, she would speak of the dead not as a faceless mass but as individual persons, each seen in unique dignity. Such a leader would draw on the common sources of our civilization, the stores of wisdom that bring collective strength in hard times.
Lincoln went back to the old biblical cadences to comfort a nation. After the church shooting in Charleston, Barack Obama went to “Amazing Grace,” the old abolitionist anthem that has wafted down through the long history of African-American suffering and redemption.
In his impromptu remarks right after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy recalled the slaying of his own brother and quoted Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
If we had a real leader, he would be bracingly honest about how bad things are, like Churchill after the fall of Europe. He would have stored in his upbringing the understanding that hard times are the making of character, a revelation of character and a test of character. He would offer up the reality that to be an American is both a gift and a task. Every generation faces its own apocalypse, and, of course, we will live up to our moment just as our ancestors did theirs.
If we had a real leader, she would remind us of our common covenants and our common purposes. America is a diverse country joined more by a common future than by common pasts. In times of hardships real leaders re-articulate the purpose of America, why we endure these hardships and what good we will make out of them.
After the Challenger explosion, Reagan reminded us that we are a nation of explorers and that the explorations at the frontiers of science would go on, thanks in part to those who “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
At Gettysburg, Lincoln crisply described why the fallen had sacrificed their lives — to show that a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal” can long endure and also to bring about “a new birth of freedom” for all the world.
Of course, right now we don’t have a real leader. We have Donald Trump, a man who can’t fathom empathy or express empathy, who can’t laugh or cry, love or be loved — a damaged narcissist who is unable to see the true existence of other human beings except insofar as they are good or bad for himself.
But it’s too easy to offload all blame on Trump. Trump’s problem is not only that he’s emotionally damaged; it is that he is unlettered. He has no literary, spiritual or historical resources to draw upon in a crisis.
All the leaders I have quoted above were educated under a curriculum that put character formation at the absolute center of education. They were trained by people who assumed that life would throw up hard and unexpected tests, and it was the job of a school, as one headmaster put it, to produce young people who would be “acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.”
continued on next page
By David Brooks Opinion Columnist
The conversation left me wondering what America’s experience of the pandemic would be like if we had a real leader in the White House.
If we had a real leader, he would have realized that tragedies like 100,000 Covid-19 deaths touch something deeper than politics: They touch our shared vulnerability and our profound and natural sympathy for one another.
In such moments, a real leader steps outside of his political role and reveals himself uncloaked and humbled, as someone who can draw on his own pains and simply be present with others as one sufferer among a common sea of sufferers.
If we had a real leader, she would speak of the dead not as a faceless mass but as individual persons, each seen in unique dignity. Such a leader would draw on the common sources of our civilization, the stores of wisdom that bring collective strength in hard times.
Lincoln went back to the old biblical cadences to comfort a nation. After the church shooting in Charleston, Barack Obama went to “Amazing Grace,” the old abolitionist anthem that has wafted down through the long history of African-American suffering and redemption.
In his impromptu remarks right after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy recalled the slaying of his own brother and quoted Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
If we had a real leader, he would be bracingly honest about how bad things are, like Churchill after the fall of Europe. He would have stored in his upbringing the understanding that hard times are the making of character, a revelation of character and a test of character. He would offer up the reality that to be an American is both a gift and a task. Every generation faces its own apocalypse, and, of course, we will live up to our moment just as our ancestors did theirs.
If we had a real leader, she would remind us of our common covenants and our common purposes. America is a diverse country joined more by a common future than by common pasts. In times of hardships real leaders re-articulate the purpose of America, why we endure these hardships and what good we will make out of them.
After the Challenger explosion, Reagan reminded us that we are a nation of explorers and that the explorations at the frontiers of science would go on, thanks in part to those who “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
At Gettysburg, Lincoln crisply described why the fallen had sacrificed their lives — to show that a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal” can long endure and also to bring about “a new birth of freedom” for all the world.
Of course, right now we don’t have a real leader. We have Donald Trump, a man who can’t fathom empathy or express empathy, who can’t laugh or cry, love or be loved — a damaged narcissist who is unable to see the true existence of other human beings except insofar as they are good or bad for himself.
But it’s too easy to offload all blame on Trump. Trump’s problem is not only that he’s emotionally damaged; it is that he is unlettered. He has no literary, spiritual or historical resources to draw upon in a crisis.
All the leaders I have quoted above were educated under a curriculum that put character formation at the absolute center of education. They were trained by people who assumed that life would throw up hard and unexpected tests, and it was the job of a school, as one headmaster put it, to produce young people who would be “acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.”
continued on next page
No hope for an honest, good POTUS
I vote for the lesser of two evils. Haven't voted for anyone I really liked in decades. We the people are the sheep led to slaughter. The powers that be pick the people they feel comfortable with, make the deals with them and offer them up to be elected. They hate Trump because he bought his own way and doesn't kiss their hiney. Now they offer Obama 2.0..Creepy Joe.
Do we ever get a president who doesn't turn out in a decade as a crook, molester, lier, embezzler or just a plain imbecile?
I said get the incumbents out of office. And got what instead? Children with no concept of the real world, living in fantasy land.
Read books...the lies, the mistakes, the games. Read the ones that predicted things that actually came to pass. And watch the sheeples embrace them.
I don't think anything of any president since Ike. And then found out he had an affair with his secretary for years.
Are there any politicians out there that don't have feet of clay? Any intelligent ones except on how to cheat?
Any that read the constitution? And believe in it. Or their so called good books?
But, watch the news and guess the people get what they deserve. The rest of us just hang on til death, voting for the lesser evil.
Do we ever get a president who doesn't turn out in a decade as a crook, molester, lier, embezzler or just a plain imbecile?
I said get the incumbents out of office. And got what instead? Children with no concept of the real world, living in fantasy land.
Read books...the lies, the mistakes, the games. Read the ones that predicted things that actually came to pass. And watch the sheeples embrace them.
I don't think anything of any president since Ike. And then found out he had an affair with his secretary for years.
Are there any politicians out there that don't have feet of clay? Any intelligent ones except on how to cheat?
Any that read the constitution? And believe in it. Or their so called good books?
But, watch the news and guess the people get what they deserve. The rest of us just hang on til death, voting for the lesser evil.
Older voters turning their backs on Trump
In response to:
There are different “gaps” in American politics, but one that has consistently shown up in recent presidential elections is the age gap. That is, younger voters tend to vote more Democratic and older voters tend to vote more Republican.
In 2016, for instance, President Trump performed best among voters 65 years and older. He also won among those between the ages of 45 and 64. So looking ahead to November, you might expect Trump to once again do well with older voters. However, recent public polls — and the president’s own private polling — suggest that Trump may be doing worse among older voters against former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In national head-to-head polls conducted since April 1, Trump is barely breaking even with most older Americans — and in some age groups, he’s even trailing Biden by as much as 1.4 points (see 45- to 64-year-olds). (Pollsters don’t all use the same age brackets, so there is some overlap in the different age categories.)
The most startling shift, though, is among voters age 65 and older. Four years ago, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a survey of more than 60,000 voters organized by Harvard University and administered by YouGov. But now Biden narrowly leads Trump 48 percent to 47 percent, based on an average of 48 national polls that included that age group.1 If those figures hold until November, they would represent a seismic shift in the voting behavior of America’s oldest voters.
The last Democratic nominee who won voters 65 and older was Al Gore in 2000, according to national exit poll data. But at the time, that was the trend. Older Americans — those who came of age during the Great Depression and New Deal era, a period in which the Democratic Party was dominant — were disproportionately Democratic-leaning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And political science has found evidence that party loyalties developed at a young age can persist over the course of a person’s life.
But it’s not just among voters 65 and older where Trump is slipping. He’s also fallen almost as far among voters 55 and older. Trump is essentially tied with Biden among that age group, even after winning these voters by 10 points in 2016, 53 percent to 43 percent, according to the CCES. Trump’s numbers have also fallen with 45- to 64-year-olds, as well as 50- to 64-year-olds (an alternate category employed by many pollsters), but the last Democrat to win 45- to 64-year-olds was Barack Obama in 2008 — albeit barely, 50 percent to 49 percent.
We don’t have as much state-level polling to work with, but there’s evidence that Biden is also doing better with older voters in some key swing states. Take two recent surveys from Florida, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country. A Fox News poll from mid-April found Biden with a slim 3-point lead over Trump and running even among voters 45 and older, while a Quinnipiac University survey from the same period found Biden up 4 points overall in Florida and leading Trump 52 percent to 42 percent among voters 65 and older. If this holds, this would represent a big swing from 2016, when Trump won Florida voters 45 and older by 13 points, and those 65 and older by 22 points, according to the CCES.
There are different “gaps” in American politics, but one that has consistently shown up in recent presidential elections is the age gap. That is, younger voters tend to vote more Democratic and older voters tend to vote more Republican.
In 2016, for instance, President Trump performed best among voters 65 years and older. He also won among those between the ages of 45 and 64. So looking ahead to November, you might expect Trump to once again do well with older voters. However, recent public polls — and the president’s own private polling — suggest that Trump may be doing worse among older voters against former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In national head-to-head polls conducted since April 1, Trump is barely breaking even with most older Americans — and in some age groups, he’s even trailing Biden by as much as 1.4 points (see 45- to 64-year-olds). (Pollsters don’t all use the same age brackets, so there is some overlap in the different age categories.)
The most startling shift, though, is among voters age 65 and older. Four years ago, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a survey of more than 60,000 voters organized by Harvard University and administered by YouGov. But now Biden narrowly leads Trump 48 percent to 47 percent, based on an average of 48 national polls that included that age group.1 If those figures hold until November, they would represent a seismic shift in the voting behavior of America’s oldest voters.
The last Democratic nominee who won voters 65 and older was Al Gore in 2000, according to national exit poll data. But at the time, that was the trend. Older Americans — those who came of age during the Great Depression and New Deal era, a period in which the Democratic Party was dominant — were disproportionately Democratic-leaning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And political science has found evidence that party loyalties developed at a young age can persist over the course of a person’s life.
But it’s not just among voters 65 and older where Trump is slipping. He’s also fallen almost as far among voters 55 and older. Trump is essentially tied with Biden among that age group, even after winning these voters by 10 points in 2016, 53 percent to 43 percent, according to the CCES. Trump’s numbers have also fallen with 45- to 64-year-olds, as well as 50- to 64-year-olds (an alternate category employed by many pollsters), but the last Democrat to win 45- to 64-year-olds was Barack Obama in 2008 — albeit barely, 50 percent to 49 percent.
We don’t have as much state-level polling to work with, but there’s evidence that Biden is also doing better with older voters in some key swing states. Take two recent surveys from Florida, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country. A Fox News poll from mid-April found Biden with a slim 3-point lead over Trump and running even among voters 45 and older, while a Quinnipiac University survey from the same period found Biden up 4 points overall in Florida and leading Trump 52 percent to 42 percent among voters 65 and older. If this holds, this would represent a big swing from 2016, when Trump won Florida voters 45 and older by 13 points, and those 65 and older by 22 points, according to the CCES.
(continued in my first comment below)
Our Glorious President
The same language that was spoken in praise of such visionary leaders as Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao, seems to have been revived for the current President of the USA. When political figures become cult heroes, strange things happen.
One of the strangest of these things is what happens to truth. It seems to acquire a completely new definition. Instead of something that can be checked and verified, truth in a cult environment is whatever “Big Brother” says, regardless of how preposterous it is. It ceases to be something that can be questioned, and becomes something to be accepted without question.
Some would say this could never happen in a modern, Western society, as the electorate is too sophisticated to fall for such old fashioned trickery, but there are strong signs that that is not the case.
One of the strangest of these things is what happens to truth. It seems to acquire a completely new definition. Instead of something that can be checked and verified, truth in a cult environment is whatever “Big Brother” says, regardless of how preposterous it is. It ceases to be something that can be questioned, and becomes something to be accepted without question.
Some would say this could never happen in a modern, Western society, as the electorate is too sophisticated to fall for such old fashioned trickery, but there are strong signs that that is not the case.
online today!
Operation Warp Speed...
Operation Warp Speed...
I'm listening to a live stream dated May 15,2020 from USA TODAY and getting whiplash. It's 36 minutes and I'm replaying parts so I can fill in the blanks because something isn't fitting in the timeline.
4:02 minutes into the update: "Scientists from NIH began to developing the first vaccine candidate on January 11th, think of that... within hours, the viruses genetic code being posted online, so January 11, most people never even heard what was going on January 11th and we were out there trying to develop a vaccine, not even knowing what were up against..."
Lots of tidbits:
"We don't have the formula for a vaccine, but we're gearing up!"
"Our military is completely rebuilt."
"Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back."
Trump speaks for about 16 minutes and passes the podium to Dr. Moncef Slaoui who removes his mask and talks 6 inches from the same microphone as Trump. He steps back and General Gustave Perna with no mask steps up to the podium and speaks for 2 minutes. A secretary approaches the podium without a mask gives some accolades to the team and says "We started working on each of these areas in January and Congress has provided nearly ten billion dollars explicitly for this kind of research..."
January was mentioned several times they appeared to make a point this started in January.
I'm listening to a live stream dated May 15,2020 from USA TODAY and getting whiplash. It's 36 minutes and I'm replaying parts so I can fill in the blanks because something isn't fitting in the timeline.
4:02 minutes into the update: "Scientists from NIH began to developing the first vaccine candidate on January 11th, think of that... within hours, the viruses genetic code being posted online, so January 11, most people never even heard what was going on January 11th and we were out there trying to develop a vaccine, not even knowing what were up against..."
Lots of tidbits:
"We don't have the formula for a vaccine, but we're gearing up!"
"Our military is completely rebuilt."
"Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back."
Trump speaks for about 16 minutes and passes the podium to Dr. Moncef Slaoui who removes his mask and talks 6 inches from the same microphone as Trump. He steps back and General Gustave Perna with no mask steps up to the podium and speaks for 2 minutes. A secretary approaches the podium without a mask gives some accolades to the team and says "We started working on each of these areas in January and Congress has provided nearly ten billion dollars explicitly for this kind of research..."
January was mentioned several times they appeared to make a point this started in January.
McConnell finally admits he was wrong. The Obama administration did leave detailed pandemic guide.
Last night (7 hours ago) from CNN;
Hear it from Moscow Mitch's own mouth;
In response to:
McConnell admits he was wrong to say Obama administration failed to leave a pandemic playbook
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 9:05 PM ET, Thu May 14, 202
(CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded Thursday night that he was wrong to claim that the Obama administration had not left behind a plan to deal with a pandemic in the US.
"I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan, so I clearly made a mistake in that regard," McConnell said during an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier.
The concession comes days after he falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to leave the Trump administration "any kind of game plan" for something like the coronavirus pandemic during a Trump campaign online chat with Lara Trump, the President's daughter-in-law.
"They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell had said Monday.
In reality, former President Barrack Obama's White House National Security Council left the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic.
The document, whose existence was publicly revealed by Politico in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.
The playbook contains step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.
Additionally, outgoing senior Obama officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for senior incoming Trump officials in January 2017 -- as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed in 2016.
Last week, Obama described the Trump administration's coronavirus response as "an absolute chaotic disaster" during a private call with people who worked for him in the White House.
Still, McConnell added Thursday that "as to whether or not the plan was followed and who's the critic and all the rest, I don't have any observation about that because I don't know enough about the details of that to comment on it in any detail."
CNN's Daniel Dale contributed to this report.
McConnell admits he was wrong to say Obama administration failed to leave a pandemic playbook
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 9:05 PM ET, Thu May 14, 202
(CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded Thursday night that he was wrong to claim that the Obama administration had not left behind a plan to deal with a pandemic in the US.
"I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan, so I clearly made a mistake in that regard," McConnell said during an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier.
The concession comes days after he falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to leave the Trump administration "any kind of game plan" for something like the coronavirus pandemic during a Trump campaign online chat with Lara Trump, the President's daughter-in-law.
"They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell had said Monday.
In reality, former President Barrack Obama's White House National Security Council left the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic.
The document, whose existence was publicly revealed by Politico in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.
The playbook contains step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.
Additionally, outgoing senior Obama officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for senior incoming Trump officials in January 2017 -- as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed in 2016.
Last week, Obama described the Trump administration's coronavirus response as "an absolute chaotic disaster" during a private call with people who worked for him in the White House.
Still, McConnell added Thursday that "as to whether or not the plan was followed and who's the critic and all the rest, I don't have any observation about that because I don't know enough about the details of that to comment on it in any detail."
CNN's Daniel Dale contributed to this report.
Hear it from Moscow Mitch's own mouth;
Oval Office Meeting Attended By Obama and Biden Was Key To the Anti-Trump Plot
This will come up at the first Trump Biden debate. It will be 'must see' TV.
On January 5, 2017, a meeting was held in the Obama White House in the Oval Office. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden attended. This meeting, it turns out, was critical to the anti-Trump operation by the Obama administration, reports Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist. “It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration,” she wrote.
Also in attendance at this meeting was then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and other members of the national security council.
It was at this meeting that Barack Obama spoke with Yates and Comey about wiretapped conversations of Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition, indicating that President Obama was directly knowledgeable of the efforts to surveil the Trump campaign and undermine the incoming administration.
Susan Rice wrote herself a now-infamous email documenting the meeting, writing “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
After this meeting took place, “high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General [Jeff Sessions] was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump.”
Top Obama officials have since testified that they never had any empirical evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
As Hemingway notes, “explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.” Per Obama’s direction, information on Russia was “not fully shared with the incoming Trump team” and “the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security.”
President Trump has indicated that more damning evidence against Obama and Biden will see the light of day.
“There’s more to come, from what I understand. and they’re gonna be far greater than what you’ve seen so far—and what you’ve seen so far has been incredible—especially as it relates to President Obama because if anyone thinks that he and sleepy Joe Biden didn’t know what was going on, they have another thing coming.”
“It is clear that understanding what happened in that January 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the full scope and breadth of the corrupt operation against the Trump administration,” explained Hemingway.
It’s time to get some answers, especially from Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
On January 5, 2017, a meeting was held in the Obama White House in the Oval Office. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden attended. This meeting, it turns out, was critical to the anti-Trump operation by the Obama administration, reports Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist. “It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration,” she wrote.
Also in attendance at this meeting was then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and other members of the national security council.
It was at this meeting that Barack Obama spoke with Yates and Comey about wiretapped conversations of Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition, indicating that President Obama was directly knowledgeable of the efforts to surveil the Trump campaign and undermine the incoming administration.
Susan Rice wrote herself a now-infamous email documenting the meeting, writing “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
After this meeting took place, “high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General [Jeff Sessions] was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump.”
Top Obama officials have since testified that they never had any empirical evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
As Hemingway notes, “explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.” Per Obama’s direction, information on Russia was “not fully shared with the incoming Trump team” and “the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security.”
President Trump has indicated that more damning evidence against Obama and Biden will see the light of day.
“There’s more to come, from what I understand. and they’re gonna be far greater than what you’ve seen so far—and what you’ve seen so far has been incredible—especially as it relates to President Obama because if anyone thinks that he and sleepy Joe Biden didn’t know what was going on, they have another thing coming.”
“It is clear that understanding what happened in that January 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the full scope and breadth of the corrupt operation against the Trump administration,” explained Hemingway.
It’s time to get some answers, especially from Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
It is amazing and scary...sound the alarm!
all of this....it is so crazy...first of all I have had a pregnant daughter in law 5 months along having to work in a hospital in California...I mean come on now....early twenties and being pregnant and forced to work...had to give two weeks notice...finally that is done...also I have a son 4th year in med school working in the hospital in the college town till they ran out of protective gear for him....a temporary respite...things are so crazy to put a medical student and students to assist in this disaster...of course I asked my son what does he think of people who think this is all a hoax or a theory...he replied to me that yes people are dying and that it is disrespectful to think that people are not dying and quite a few thankfully not the numbers they were flippantly throwing out...who can foresee that?
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