I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Sinister and creepy.
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TRUMP AD TOUTING DT'S NOMINATION FOR NOBEL PRIZE.....
I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING......
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Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19
The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC's scientific reports to health professionals.
Former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
By DAN DIAMOND
09/11/2020 10:25 PM EST
The health department's politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports' authors and water down their communications to health professionals.
In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency's reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.
CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides' efforts to change the language in the CDC's reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.
The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.
But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.
Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.
Emails show HHS official trying to muzzle Fauci
Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo's team raised questions about its authors' political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."
In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.
"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."
Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at Toronto's McMaster University whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.
"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"
CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC's interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.
Paul Alexander uses red type to call for inserting text and accuses CDC officials of trying to use the reports to undermine President Donald Trump. | Screenshot
Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview.
|Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.
Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. "Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.
Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expertAnthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.
But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic.
"It's the go-to place for the public health community to get information that's scientifically vetted," said Jennifer Kates, who leads the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health work. In an interview with POLITICO, Kates rattled off nearly a dozen examples of MMWR reports that she and other researchers have relied on to determine how Covid-19 has spread and who's at highest risk, including reports on how the virus has been transmitted in nursing homes, at churches and among children.
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Success is getting and achieving what you want.
Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.
- Bernard Meltzer0 -
If the goal of the government we have now is to create doubt than they have done a great job. I find it hard to trust government at all, although CDC is considered independent - but in previous administrations we could feel that we were getting truth and accuracy. Now who knows. I'll be so glad when we can get rid of the orange menace and start working towards ( no matter how long it takes ) being able to trust. Well, at my age we likely won't get all the way there, but just a good start would make me happy.
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That one I might have to post on Facebook!
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I have to put the downplaying of the virus meme on Facebook too as it is absolutely true and absolutely unforgivable.
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I absolutely HATE this "deep state" bullshit. What Trumpies call the "deep state" is simply the Federal Civil Service, whose career employees were hired on test scores &/or merit and owe political allegiance to NOBODY. This, to Trump, translates to "lack of loyalty" to him, which he has often called "treason." He is so ignorant that he doesn't know the definition of "treason" is to give aid & comfort to the nation's enemies--which are NOT the same as "the President's opponents." He doesn't know that HE is the "traitor." I would say that he is modeling himself on "The Sun King" ("l'état, c'est moi") but I doubt he has ever heard of Louis XIV (except as a style of furniture); and that the only "French" he knows is either tongue-kissing or yellow mustard on his hamberders.
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Kayleigh McEnany has crossed a line
Opinion by Joe Lockhart
>Joe Lockhart is a CNN political analyst. He was the White House press secretary from 1998-2000 in President Bill Clinton's administration. He co-hosts the podcast "Words Matter." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.<
Every single White House press secretary faces his or her own moment of truth on the job. Jerald terHorst, for example, resigned after just one month because he could not live with President Gerald Ford's decision to pardon his predecessor, President Richard Nixon.
Choosing when to take a stand, and what to reveal to the public are not always straightforward decisions. There are, for example, times when releasing the operational details of the military puts lives at risk. It begs the question: What's more important, telling the truth or protecting lives? Jody Powell faced that decision under Jimmy Carter and decided saving lives trumped telling the press the truth during the Iranian hostage crisis.
I faced my own test early in my tenure as press secretary. As the House opened impeachment hearings on then-President Bill Clinton based on the Starr report, I was faced with the daily decision of how to answer questions about the President's behavior.
Not knowing the full extent of what had happened, I chose not to contest the details in the report from the podium even though for many that seemed to be a confirmation of the allegations.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany faced her moment of reckoning in the briefing room on Wednesday, when reporters confronted her about the recordings, released by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, in which President Trump acknowledged in early February that the coronavirus was airborne and deadlier than the flu, even as he publicly dismissed concerns about the virus and called it the Democrats' "new hoax." In March, Trump told Woodward that he intentionally downplayed the dangers of the virus, saying, "I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."
McEnany failed on an epic scale in her response. She did not provide context for Trump's statements. Instead, she perpetuated the lies even the President himself admitted to Woodward on tape.
She also tried to pass off Trump's comments as a sign of good leadership, saying, "So this President does what leaders do ... stay calm and resolute at a time when you face an unsurmountable challenge." But real leadership is telling the truth and taking responsibility for it. Only then can the American public trust that the President is looking out for their interests, not just his own.
When asked directly if the President had lied to the American public, McEnany had the gall to say, "The President has never lied to the American public on Covid."
That is patently false. The President has lied to the American people and the government's handling of the pandemic. He is now lying about lying. By claiming otherwise, McEnany reneged on the promise she made to reporters on her first day as press secretary when she said she would never lie to them
In doing so, McEnany has destroyed her own personal credibility and fatally injured her ability to speak for the President, and more importantly, for the United States of America. Given her track record, foreign allies can't rely on what she says at the White House podium. This poses a national security risk to the United States.
To be fair, McEnany was caught between a rock and a hard place. But the press secretary works for both the President and the American people, providing a vital link between the two. The only appropriate response in this case, was to say, "The President's word speaks for itself. I am not going to parse them or interpret them for you." That's one way to maintain credibility while sending a clear signal the President is not telling the truth.
McEnany, however, has shown she is more interested in defending the President than informing the public, and her only recourse now is to resign.
The public has a right to question whether the President is trustworthy and honest. And while the press secretary is not an elected official, whoever inhabits the role should be careful to protect his or her own credibility. Without it, the press secretary becomes nothing more than a propagandist instead of a public servant.
By saying the President has never lied to the American public, her tenure as Press Secretary has effectively come to an end -- and her role as a state propagandist has been confirmed.
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She has been lying for months and now he proposes she is accountable for this? Sorry Joe, that horse has been long gone from that barn. Yes, she should resign but I would not put money on that since I am sure trump is more interested in her looks than her brains. It would be easier to identify the non-propagandists at this point.
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ruth, love the “I secretly think you’re a moron” meme. True, that!
And Serenity, the sponsor an American for $6 a day meme with a shout out from Sarah McLachlan: mind blown!
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"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
-- Marcel Proust0 -
So loved the Trump smoke detectors. Trump will never see how stupid he is because of his insanity/dementia. Also, lately I think he may be a man full of fear. Some things do get through to him -- at least it seems the truth that he would not tell about covid did -- so he has good reason to be scared. Maybe that will foster an extra cheeseburger to two. Maybe I should be cheering on the diet coke. Heard for a long time how that can affect your health and a lot of that coming under mental health.
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The weekend Trump car parades continue in my area and it sounds like they will be a thing until election. On top of that, yesterday, along a section of main street on the city line of two nearby towns, Trumpers stood along the road with huge flags, including Confederate ones, and some dressed bizarrely shouting and screaming all kinds of horrific things. I didn’t go past but a friend whose sister has a business in the area took photos and video.
I wonder if this is swaying people to vote for Don?
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Ima have to add some Cher songs to my Spotify playlist and iTunes....
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One main point of contention with area Trumpers is Obamacare. I could only stomach reading a few comments on social media about the rally, but some Trumpers were bitching about how Obama made them buy health care and Trump never made them do anything. What a bunch of moronic effing spoiled brats! Plus population in this area of Ohio has horrific health issues. But I guess they want their money to go to tattoos and lift kits for their pickups and jeeps and if they get sick, so what.
My very successful realtor friend is also pissed about Obamacare.
It doesn't matter apparently, that Trump never repealed it like he said he was going to.
Also, yesterday, while dh was outside powerwashing the front porch, some tough looking woman wheeled up in a Hummer with a younger fellow, maybe a teenager, got out and asked dh who he was planning to vote for. He said something like, that's my business and no one else's. She asked him if his wife felt the same way and he said yes. They went to a few other houses but not every one on the street. I did manage to get him to ask her before she left who she was polling for and she said the GOP.
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Love the quote from Cher! She speaks for me!
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This is a magnet I had on the back of my car for months. Was a gift. Last week I realized it was gone. Friend said was from Amazon, so ordered a pack of 5. Will tape to the inside of the hatch window now0 -
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