| Ted Cruz is 'just a coward' for backing Trump, former aide Rick Tyler says Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:23 PM PDT  Rick Tyler, a leading Republican analyst and so-called Never Trumper, told Yahoo News on Monday that his former boss Sen. Ted Cruz is "just a coward" for publicly supporting Trump even though he knows he's a bad president.
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| Louisiana protesters call for Lafayette mayor-president to resign after police shooting Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:09 AM PDT  Protesters gathered for the second night after Trayford Pellerin's death, first in front of Lafayette City Hall and later with several demonstrations.
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| ‘How can one person screw this up in just a few weeks’: Postmaster General DeJoy faces grilling from enraged Democrats ahead of 2020 election Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:32 AM PDT  Postmaster General Louis DeJoy faced hours of an intense grilling by Democratic lawmakers on Monday who sought answers on why the US Postal Service underwent operational changes in recent weeks that have led to significant delays in delivery."After 240 years of patriotic service, how can one person screw this up in just a few weeks? I understand you bring private sector expertise. I guess we couldn't find a government worker who could screw it up this fast. It would take them a while," said House Oversight Committee Democrat Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts.
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| Rumors about Kim Jong Un dying are going viral again, but experts say not to believe them Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:04 AM PDT  A former South Korean minister claimed that Kim was in a coma, triggering a wave of social media posts speculating on his death.
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| Families confront New Zealand mosque shooter at sentencing Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:21 PM PDT  Families and survivors had their first chance to confront the white supremacist who slaughtered 51 worshippers in a mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques as his four-day sentencing hearing began Monday. The gunman, 29-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, pleaded guilty in March to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of terrorism — the first terrorism conviction in New Zealand's history. Tarrant was brought into the Christchurch High Court shackled and wearing a gray prison outfit.
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| Weakening Marco makes landfall, as Gulf Coast eyes threat from Laura Posted: 24 Aug 2020 05:28 PM PDT  Ahead of Laura, hurricane and storm surge watches were issued for parts of the Gulf Coast. Marco made landfall but was expected to weaken further.
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| NBA star LeBron James' group plans effort to recruit poll workers for November Posted: 24 Aug 2020 02:45 PM PDT  More Than a Vote, a group of prominent athletes fighting voter suppression, will collaborate with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on the program in a dozen states, including battlegrounds such as Georgia, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin, where disenfranchisement affects Black voters, the source said. The New York Times first reported the effort, which will recruit young people as poll workers and include a paid advertising program and corporate partnership to encourage employees to volunteer as poll workers.
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| Iowa State University forced a professor to change his syllabus after he threatened to kick students out of class if they participate in racism, sexism, or homophobia Posted: 24 Aug 2020 12:50 PM PDT  The syllabus said "arguments against gay marriage, abortion, Black Lives Matter" will be "grounds for dismissal from the classroom."
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| Israeli teens find 1,000-year-old gold coins Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:06 AM PDT  Hundreds of gold coins that are more than 1,000 years old have been unearthed in Israel.
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| White House attacks Trump's sister, niece over leaked audio tapes Posted: 23 Aug 2020 07:50 AM PDT  White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sharply criticized President Trump's sister and niece on Sunday, a day after the Washington Post published leaked audio recordings of conversations of the two Trump relatives insulting the president.
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| Democratic convention fell flat with viewers. Republican convention may do the same Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:40 AM PDT  The Democratic National Convention failed to draw many viewers this year making things look worse for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris than expected.
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| Stolen branch on Yellowstone visitor’s SUV leads ranger to more illegal cargo, feds say Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:10 PM PDT  The driver had already visited multiple national parks in several states, court documents said.
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| Wife of ex-California congressman sentenced for corruption Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:57 AM PDT  The wife of former California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter was sentenced Monday in U.S. court to eight months of home confinement after pleading guilty to misusing more than $150,000 in campaign funds in a corruption case that ended her husband's career. Government attorneys noted Margaret Hunter's cooperation with the prosecution of her husband in arguing against putting her behind bars and for allowing her to serve the sentence at home.
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| 10 Best Drones for Kids, According to Engineers Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:26 AM PDT |
| A 23-year-old Fort Hood soldier who has been missing for a week had reported sexual abuse before his disappearance Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:28 AM PDT  Sgt. Elder Fernandes, 23, was last seen on August 17 when his staff sergeant dropped him off at his home in Killeen, Texas.
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| Melania Trump: Ex-NYT reporter apologises for ‘xenophobic’ attack on first lady over Rose Garden redesign Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:21 AM PDT  A former New York Times reporter has been forced to apologise after launching a "xenophobic" attack on Melania Trump after the first lady unveiled the newly designed Rose Garden at the White House.In tweets that have since been deleted, Kurt Eichenwald branded the president's wife – who obtained US citizenship some 14 years ago – a "foreigner" who has "no right to wreck our history".
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| These states require travelers to self-quarantine or present negative COVID-19 test Posted: 24 Aug 2020 06:36 AM PDT  States are opening back up, but some still require or recommend visitors self-quarantine for two weeks. Find out where.
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| 'Absolutely repugnant': Biden's campaign forcefully disavows an endorsement from neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Posted: 24 Aug 2020 12:38 PM PDT  A Biden campaign staffer tweeted that what Spencer stands for is "absolutely repugnant," adding, "Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here."
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| Canada demands answers from Iran after Ukraine jet downing report Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:32 AM PDT  Canada said it was demanding answers from Iran over the mistaken downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet after Tehran's "limited" initial report failed to explain why it fired missiles at the plane.
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| Professor, NASA researcher accused of concealing China ties Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:00 AM PDT |
| Kenosha shooting: Protests erupt after US police shoot black man Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:26 AM PDT  An overnight curfew is imposed on the US state's Kenosha county, after the man is seriously injured.
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| Sinabung volcano spews new burst of hot ash Posted: 23 Aug 2020 01:18 AM PDT  Villagers advised to stay three miles from the crater's mouth and be aware of lava.
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| Scott Peterson's death sentence overturned by California supreme court Posted: 24 Aug 2020 01:22 PM PDT  The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld the conviction but overturned the 2005 death sentence for Scott Peterson in the slaying of his pregnant wife, and said prosecutors may try again for the same sentence if they wish in the case that attracted worldwide attention.
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| Fact check: Over 8,000 US trafficking arrests since 2017 have not included members of Congress Posted: 24 Aug 2020 12:54 PM PDT  Claims online of 3,100 arrests for human trafficking in the U.S. since 2017, including 38 members of Congress, are false.
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| Political consultants could be best hope for defeating Trumpism in the Republican Party Posted: 23 Aug 2020 02:00 AM PDT  History suggests Republicans may have to lose five presidential elections in a row before the forces of moderation, revisionism and pragmatism prevail.
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| Libya strongman labels GNA ceasefire announcement a stunt Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:26 AM PDT  A spokesman for eastern Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar has slammed a ceasefire announcement by the rival Government of National Accord (GNA) as a media stunt, accusing it of preparing a new offensive.
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| 56 people got the coronavirus at a Starbucks in South Korea. The only people who didn’t were employees wearing masks. Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:06 AM PDT  A Starbucks in South Korea has reported a coronavirus outbreak after an infected person sat near an air conditioner. Employees wearing masks were safe
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| UPS driver randomly shot at vehicles along interstate in Oregon, police say Posted: 24 Aug 2020 08:00 AM PDT  The man is being held on $1 million bail.
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| Northern California firefighters dig in ahead of high winds Posted: 22 Aug 2020 09:33 PM PDT  Three massive wildfires chewed through parched Northern California landscape Sunday as firefighters raced to dig breaks and make other preparations ahead of a frightening weather system. At the CZU Lightning Complex fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains, south of San Francisco, authorities said their effort was hindered by people who refused to heed evacuation orders and those who were using the chaos to steal.
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| Long delays at U.S.-Mexico border crossings after new travel restrictions Posted: 24 Aug 2020 02:12 PM PDT  Americans who regularly cross the border from Mexico reported long wait times to re-enter the United States on Monday after U.S. officials imposed new COVID-19-related restrictions on cross-border travel by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The government closed lanes at select ports of entry on the border and began conducting more secondary checks to limit non-essential travel and slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) representative said on Friday. According to CBP data, wait times at some border crossings have doubled or tripled.
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| 'First of Many:' Air Force Leaders Watch Flying Car Demo Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:02 AM PDT  The Hexa is an eVTOL platform that consists of an open cockpit seat surrounded by a honeycomb of small rotors.
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| A long history of militant activism keeps protests alive in Portland Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:00 AM PDT  The protesters defend the nightly taunting of police, along with vandalism and destruction of property, as a strategy to draw officers into clashes and expose them as fascists.
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| Pro-Trump ad faces ridicule after it claims he is the most ‘pro-gay president in American history’ Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:58 AM PDT  A Donald Trump election ad has faced ridicule after it claimed he was the "most pro-gay president in American history".The claim was made by Robert Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence, in an ad released by the Log Cabin Republicans.
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| Army awards Air-Launched Effects contracts for future helicopters Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:16 PM PDT  Ten companies will provide air vehicles, payloads and mission systems to the Army that will make up prototypes intended to launch from current and future vertical lift platforms to perform a wide variety of missions.
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| Clinesmith’s Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:30 AM PDT  Author's Note: This is the first of a three-part series.To answer the question posed in last Tuesday's column, Yes, Kevin Clinesmith did plead guilty Wednesday. Sort of.Well, maybe it was a smidge better than "sort of." After all, it did happen in a federal-district-court proceeding (via videoconference) on Wednesday. And Judge James Boasberg did accept the plea after eliciting it in accordance with settled criminal-law rules. Sentencing is scheduled for December 10. So it's official.But I'm sticking with "sort of." If Clinesmith's guilty plea is legally adequate, it is barely so. And neither a judge nor a prosecutor is required to accept an allocution sliced so fine. In "admitting" guilt, Clinesmith ended up taking the position that I hoped the judge, and especially the Justice Department, would not abide, in essence: Okay, maybe I committed the crime of making a false statement, but to be clear, I thought the statement was true when I made it, and I certainly never intended to deceive anyone.Huh?I don't mean to make you dizzy, but in my view, Clinesmith is lying about lying. His strategy is worth close study because it encapsulates the mendaciousness and malevolence of both "Crossfire Hurricane" (the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation) and the "collusion" never-enders who continue to defend it. A defendant's lying about lying does not necessarily make a false-statement guilty plea infirm as a matter of law. The bar is not high. Still, his story is ridiculous, in a way that is easy to grasp once it's placed in context.So let's place it in context.'Page Is a Russian Spy' — the FBI Plants Its Feet on a Fantasy Our point of reference is spring 2017.While indignantly denying news stories portraying him as a clandestine agent of Russian, Carter Page asserts that, actually, he's been an informant for a U.S. intelligence agency. FBI officials should know that Page is telling the truth. They have already heard the same thing from the CIA and from Page himself.The CIA told the bureau ten months earlier, in a memo dated August 17, 2016 (i.e., two months before the FBI sought the first FISA warrant against Page). Page had been a CIA source who provided information about Russians. Page told the bureau about at least some of this work during voluntary interviews in 2009 and 2013, during the period when the CIA had authorized Page for "operational contact" with Russians. The FBI, meanwhile, actually used information from Page in a prosecution of Russian spies. (See my 2018 column, discussing of United States v. Buryakov.)And it's not as if the CIA's acknowledgment of Page's informant status was the only exculpatory fact the FBI knew. Not by a long shot. Page was pleading with the FBI director to sit down with the bureau and explain himself, as he had done on other occasions over the years. More to the point, in August 2016 (again, two months before the first FISA warrant to permit spying on Page), Page had credibly insisted to a covert FBI informant, Stefan Halper, that key allegations about Page (derived from the bogus Steele dosser) were false: Page did not even know Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, let alone act as Manafort's intermediary in a Trump–Russia espionage conspiracy; and Page had not recently met in Moscow with Putin-regime heavyweights Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin.Thus, (a) Page had not done the very things that led the FBI to accuse him of being an active anti-American spy, and (b) Page's prior contacts with Russians, on which the bureau further rationalized its overwrought suspicions, overlapped with Page's years as a CIA operative. Weeks before the FBI and the Obama Justice Department first applied for a FISA warrant on the theory that Page was a spy for the Kremlin, the FBI team conducting the investigation had information showing the theory was untenable.Yet the bureau chose to plant its feet on the daft theory anyway. Apologists for the bureau and the Obama administration would now have you believe that this is because a single one of the FBI's crack counterintelligence agents, Stephen Somma, dropped the ball -- that he alone knew Page was a CIA informant, but held out on his chain-of-command. Really? If they dropped as many balls in Times Square as Somma did -- purportedly without anyone noticing, in one the most significant investigations in the FBI's history -- we'd have New Year's once a week.The fact is, top officials were drinking the "Donald Trump must be colluding with Russia" Kool-Aid, so the story was too good to check. And once the farcical Steele dossier grabbed the investigators' attention in late summer 2016, the bureau was off to the races, framing Page as a key cog in the Trump campaign's "conspiracy of cooperation" with the Kremlin.But that was autumn 2016. Now, remember, we're in late spring of 2017. At this point, the FBI has been monitoring Page for over eight months. The Page-is-a-Russian-spy theory is in tatters. The surveillance turns up nothing. Halper has nothing. Steele's dossier, a shoddy product on its face, is now a hot, steaming mess. Not only is it uncorroborated and unverifiable; Steele himself is dismissing it as "raw" information that needed to be investigated, and his "primary subsource," Igor Danchenko, has discredited it as fiction and rumormongering.But alas, the FBI is dug in. This was not just office banter. The bureau had taken the claim that Page was a spy to court. It was the linchpin of the hypothesis that the Trump campaign was a Kremlin influence operation. This theory, bereft of supporting evidence and resistant to exculpatory evidence, had the imprimatur of FBI headquarters. By June 2017, in conjunction with the Justice Department, the FBI had made this claim under oath to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), three times: a first application in October 2016, and renewal applications in January and April 2017. Each time, based on the FBI's representations, the FISC issued a 90-day surveillance warrant against Page.Disclosure Would Mean Epic Humiliation The warrant issued by the FISC on April 7 was due to expire in early July. By mid June, then, the bureau was well into its preparations to submit yet another renewal application.This is the salient time frame for Clinesmith's case. His defense counsel and apologists would have you look at it as a snapshot. But it wasn't just a moment in time. It was a moment shaped by the preceding ten months, since the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation (i.e., the Trump-Russia probe) was formally opened on July 31, 2016.By June 2017, it would have occasioned epic humiliation for the FBI to admit that it had on three occasions made false assertions under oath in order to persuade federal judges to issue classified surveillance warrants against an American citizen. Not just humiliation. FBI leadership had publicized the existence of the Trump–Russia probe, consciously promoting the media-Democratic political narrative that the president was beholden to the Kremlin. An admission that court warrants had been sought on false premises would have led to certain administrative discipline and potential criminal inquiries.This was not at the back of the bureau's mind. It was front and center. Just read the FISA warrants. Read the in-the-interest-of-full-disclosure footnotes massaged into gibberish as the case was collapsing. And bear in mind: These laborious rationalizations did not come close to revealing the mounds of exculpatory information that the FBI was withholding.To hear FBI and Justice Department officials tell it, the FISA process is so well designed and diligently executed that, at all times, they are profoundly aware of their heightened duty of candor, of their obligations to submit only verified warrant applications. Of their duty to alert the FISC promptly if they discover that something they've represented to the court is inaccurate. They know, they tell us, about the imperative to be transparent regarding exculpatory information. And even if officials were ever to lose sight of these weighty responsibilities, even for a moment, we're to take comfort that their recollection would quickly be refreshed by the multiple, high-level FBI and DOJ approvals the FISA statute mandates. These have spawned an infrastructure of lawyers, analysts, and verification procedures to ensure that the bosses don't embarrass themselves by signing off on FISA warrant applications that are fraudulent, or at least recklessly irresponsible.That's how it's supposed to work . . . on the drawing board.Down here on Planet Earth, though, in all of government's sprawl, there is no institution more self-conscious about its image, more energetic in promoting its pristine reputation, than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And thus there is none more resistant to damaging disclosures.At the bureau, officials are keenly aware that, when a misrepresentation is discovered, it is often just the visible part of what, on inspection, turns out to be a train of errors, oversights, poor judgments, and, occasionally, misconduct. The disclosure of a single glaring inaccuracy elucidates that investigators, analysts, or lawyers -- or all of them -- were aware of information that should have set off alarm bells, yet they all turned a deaf ear. Alarm bells, after all, signal underlying misfeasance . . . and sometimes malfeasance. If a judge gets spun up by one embarrassing disclosure, it can soon become two . . . then four . . . And then, next thing you know, a case is unraveling as a scandal unfolds.Clinesmith's Motives Mirror His Superiors' MotivesIn June 2017, on the thin line between business as usual and epic embarrassment, stood Kevin Clinesmith.He was then a 30-something assistant general counsel in the bureau's National Security and Cyber Law Branch. It is part of the FBI's Office of General Counsel (OGC), then led by James Baker.Among the branch's responsibilities, it reviews FISA warrant applications. The Carter Page applications, however, were handled in an unusual way. Details of the applications were scrutinized at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department, to the point that the National Security branch's once-over became superfluous.For example, Trisha Anderson, the OGC's former deputy general counsel, told the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 testimony that, though she normally reviewed FISA warrant applications before they went to the upper ranks for statutorily required sign-offs, she did not do that with the October 2016 Page application. By the time it landed on her desk, it had already been reviewed "line by line" by such superiors as the FBI's then–deputy director Andrew McCabe, as well as by then–deputy attorney general Sally Yates at Main Justice. It had even been perused by Anderson's OGC superior, General Counsel Baker. Baker conceded to the committee that it was unusual for him to review a FISA warrant application, particularly at an early stage, as he did with the Page application.In the chain of command, Clinesmith ranked a few notches lower than Anderson: He reported to the National Security branch chief, who reported to Anderson, after which the chain ascended to Baker, McCabe, and ultimately Director James Comey. That is, Clinesmith was a junior officer -- support personnel. The decision to represent to the FISC that Page was a Russian spy had been made way above his pay grade. The bosses were so invested in it, they were relying on it to investigate the sitting president of the United States. And just a few weeks earlier, when the president fired Comey in May 2017, a special counsel had been appointed to take over the investigation. The Mueller team's mandate from the deputy attorney general was to get to the bottom of links between the Russian regime and former Trump-campaign advisers, such as Page.This was not a train Clinesmith could have started or stopped on his own. Nevertheless, he was all in.We learn from the Inspector General's report on the FBI's FISA abuse that, from the very beginning, Clinesmith was in on OGC deliberations about seeking FISA surveillance of Page. Even before September 2016, when he first learned about Steele's reporting, he told the IG he believed that there was a "50/50" chance of establishing probable cause that Page was a clandestine agent for Russia. For that assessment, he relied on "Page's historical contacts with Russian intelligence officers." At that point, he says he did not know that the CIA had told the FBI that Page was a CIA informant when these contacts took place. So, when the first FISA warrant was sought in October 2016 (and the second in January, and the third in April), he agreed that the probable-cause standard was easily satisfied by these contacts, weighed in combination with Steele's (uncorroborated) claims about Page, as well as Page's statements to Halper (as bowdlerized by the bureau).Echoing his bosses, then, Clinesmith adopted the "Page is a Russian spy" fantasy from the get-go. If subsequent developments ever called for scrutinizing the kamikaze portrayal of Page as a spy, Clinesmith was sure to be on the hook. And while the higher-ups would take most of the heat if the bureau proved to be embarrassingly wrong, it is always the underlings like Clinesmith who get hung out to dry for misinforming their superiors. That is how Washington works. Clinesmith, a Washington creature, realized this only too well.'The Predication of Our Entire Investigation' Is at RiskOf course, Clinesmith was not putting himself personally on the line with the FISC. That was to be the responsibility of the affiant, the FBI agent assigned to swear to the truth of the warrant application. This difference in the duties of that agent and Clinesmith, along with an obvious integrity disparity, explains the very different way they approached the matter.This affiant-agent is identified only as "SSA" in the criminal information filed against Clinesmith. (This affiant-agent is "SSA 2" in the IG report, one of several unidentified "supervisory special agents" who appear therein). Though nominally a supervising agent, the SSA operated at some remove from the rubber-meets-the-road investigating. In the bureau, the agent who signs a FISA warrant is not the supervisor of agents investigating the case; he is a headquarters "program manager." Furthermore, the SSA was not assigned to Crossfire Hurricane until late December 2016. That is, he was not involved in the initial deliberations over whether Page was a Russian spy and whether to seek FISA surveillance on that theory.Having inherited sign-off responsibility in an ongoing surveillance that his superiors had already green-lighted, the SSA went with the flow, at least at the beginning. The IG report indicates that, in signing the first and second renewal applications (in January and April 2017), the SSA performed only a cursory review of the file. He assumed that other agents had done their work properly.It was only in June 2017, as the third renewal application was being prepared, that he became concerned. It was around that time that the SSA heard about Page's vehement public denials that he was a Russian spy and claims that he had engaged Russians on behalf of an American intelligence service. It dawned on the SSA that he would be expected to swear, under penalty of perjury, that he believed there was probable cause to conclude that Page was a clandestine agent of Russia, working against the United States. Page's public protestations gave him pause. They also created a potentially catastrophic problem for the bureau, which the SSA later summarized for the IG (I'd italicize -- but I'd have to italicize every word):> [If Page] was being tasked by another agency, especially if he was being tasked to engage Russians, then it would absolutely be relevant for the Court to know . . . [and] could also seriously impact the predication of our entire investigation, which focused on [Page's] close and continuous contact with Russian/Russia-linked individuals.If Page had been a CIA operative during meetings with Russians — meetings that the FBI had sworn to the court showed Page was a traitorous spy — then the FBI would have some serious explaining to do. And if it turned out that, before applying under oath for the warrants, the FBI had been informed by the CIA that Page was a CIA operative, then the FBI would be humiliated.Bear in mind: The incumbent Democratic administration had opened an election-year investigation of its Republican opposition, and the FBI had heavily relied on bogus evidence generated by the Democratic campaign to claim that Page was a spy for Russia. With that as background, there would be only two possible explanations for the FBI's failure to inform the court that Page was working for the CIA when the bureau had claimed he was working for the Kremlin: willful abuse of power or monstrous incompetence.End of Part 1.
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| Jeremy Corbyn failed to empathise with British Jews because they are 'prosperous' Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:22 AM PDT  Jeremy Corbyn failed to empathise with British Jews because they are "prosperous", a former ally has said in a new anti-Semitism row. Andrew Murray, who was a senior adviser to the former Labour leader, insisted Mr Corbyn was "empathetic", but with those in society who are "at the bottom of the heap". According to the new book Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour under Corbyn, Mr Murray said: "He is very empathetic, Jeremy, but he's empathetic with the poor, the disadvantaged, the migrant, the marginalised, the people at the bottom of the heap."
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| Historic fire burns more than 1 million acres in California Posted: 23 Aug 2020 04:33 PM PDT  California is expecting more dangerous weather that could spark new wildfires. The fires, which include the largest fire in state history, are expected to grow as a result of thunderstorms and lightning. Jonathan Vigliotti has the latest.
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| U.S. Gulf battens down amid fears Tropical Storm Laura to land as severe hurricane Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:48 AM PDT  Anticipating deadly winds, rains and storm surges, the governor of Louisiana told citizens that Laura could rival 2005's Hurricane Rita, one of the fiercest recorded in the Gulf. Laura comes on the heels of Tropical Storm Marco, which weakened sooner than expected and made landfall on Monday in Louisiana.
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| How the Republican National Convention became CPAC Posted: 24 Aug 2020 02:55 AM PDT  The event that will be broadcast by the Republican Party this week is not, historically speaking, a convention. It is not the site of actual politicking. It will determine nothing about who the party runs for president or what policies it pursues for the next four years. It's a PR stunt, a pseudo-event — an "artificial happening ... manufactured expressly for the purpose of getting the press to cover it" — a program of political infotainment. It is an awful lot like CPAC.CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering in Washington that offers an incredible amalgam of campaigning, performance art, happy hour, education, and grift. CPAC holds a presidential straw poll each year which is both a lot of fun and deeply meaningless, but then, everything at CPAC has this same feel of hyped unreality.People in Founding Fathers cosplay mix with eager Young Republicans in their first grown-up suits, vying for an internship at their favorite think tank. There are D-list celebrities and cringey attempts to be hip to what the kids think is groovy. While smaller panels may feature serious scholars and break-out sessions offer training in get-out-the-vote techniques, the televised main stage tends toward the titillating and gimmicky. Speakers allege the Democrats are going to "take away your hamburgers," declare their "pronouns are U-S-A," and coordinate boos of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Trump, who first got a speaking slot in 2011, fits right in. It's where he hugged that flag, which honestly makes a lot of sense in CPAC logic. The press certainly covered it.In 2020, the Republican National Convention is running on CPAC logic, too. The convention has been moving in this direction for decades, but the pandemic-forced format change makes that evolution far more obvious than in years past.For Republicans and Democrats alike, party conventions are not what they used to be. From their inception in the 1830s through the mid-20th century, the conventions were a place for practical politics — bargaining over planks in the platform and literal smoke-filled rooms. At the Republican convention of 1880, delegates went through 36 ballots before they decided on a presidential nominee: Ohio Rep. James Garfield, who was not running for president and indeed only came to the delegates' attention when he gave a speech in another candidate's favor.That could not happen today. Political and technological changes over the last 100 years — the use of primaries to determine presidential nominees, the broadcast of convention speeches to the general public via radio and television, and the ability to easily workshop platform content remotely — have combined to transform the conventions into little more than long-form infomercials.All the process on display is pro-forma. The platform is drafted in advance. The nominee is selected in advance. Very rarely does anything unscripted happen, certainly not on the convention floor. (If you're looking for what's left of real convention drama, whether among Democrats or Republicans, I direct your attention to the rules committees.)COVID-19's elimination of most of the usual convention elements has accelerated and highlighted this transformation. This year, the Republicans have no platform committee at all. Party leadership has rather decided to simply recycle the 2016 platform, with now-awkward derogatory references to the abuses of "the current president" left intact."This is the first time since I began attending Republican National Conventions in 1964 that I have seen a convention where finalizing the party platform has not occurred," Morton Blackwell, a 32-year Republican National Committee member (and, full disclosure, my first boss after college), told me in an interview by email. Blackwell, a longtime Virginia Republican leader, has attended every GOP convention since becoming Barry Goldwater's youngest delegate 56 years ago. The nomination has been a foregone conclusion each time, 1976 excluded, he recalled — but nixing the platform committee is new. "Both major party national conventions this year are seen by their respective party leaders as almost entirely marketing opportunities," Blackwell said.That doesn't necessarily strike him as a bad thing — nor do the increasingly CPAC-style guest speaker selections chosen with that end in mind. The Republican convention is no stranger to speakers from outside party hierarchy (who could forget actor Clint Eastwood and his speech to an empty chair?), which otherwise dominates the schedule. But two selections for this year stand out: First, Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student whose behavior in an apparent confrontation at the 2019 March for Life (and its media coverage, over which Sandmann has since won a defamation lawsuit) became the subject of national controversy when a brief video went viral. And second, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, better known as the "St. Louis gun couple" after photos showed them inexpertly pointing weapons at protesters in their front yard.Sandmann and the McCloskeys would be no surprise at CPAC, which loves a teenage pundit and a divisive, viral moment. But they would be out of place as speakers at Republican National Conventions past. The speaker schedules I've found for the last five conventions show a few comparable guests in 2016 (in a clearly Trump-inflected phrase, one group of speakers was billed simply as "victims of illegal immigrants") but nothing similar in 2012, 2008, 2004, or 2000 (a 2004 tribute to the victims of 9/11 certainly had an electoral agenda but was markedly more somber in tone). The Republican National Convention didn't used to share memes."I do think this is a different approach than we have seen before from Republicans, reflecting that it is now entirely the party of Trump," Dr. Norman Ornstein, a widely published election analyst and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview. "There are two elements here," Ornstein told me, "one is that the [convention] focus is not the country or the electorate as a whole, but the base, especially those white non-college educated voters" whom Trump tends to court. "The second," he continued, "is that the politics of grievance and resentment are dominant, even if there are some gestures towards hopefulness." The decisions to include Sandmann and the McCloskeys "reflect both of these strands," Ornstein concluded. "Much closer to CPAC than to the old GOP."Blackwell hadn't heard of these speaker picks, but he received the news approvingly. "The nation would benefit from a fresh reminder that the media that tried to crucify that Covington student are the same as those who viciously distort the news against President Trump," he said. "And the appearance of that couple from Missouri would bring home afresh to many that it's the Democrat[ic] local government officials who have so often ordered the police to stand down while leftist guerillas rampage through streets to loot stores, burn buildings, and injure innocent people." Blackwell described "safety" as the core issue of this year's race — which I'd say is correct, albeit not unique to the Republican side — and he deemed such "interesting speakers" a valuable weapon in this fight.I'm not the target audience for the CPAC-ification of the Republican National Convention, and "interesting" isn't the word I'd choose here. The McCloskeys strike me as primarily emblematic of poor judgment, and were Sandmann my child, I wouldn't allow his name and face to be used once again by political activists with priorities other than my son.But I suspect Blackwell may be right about the strategy here, and I expect we'll see the Republican National Convention continue to trend toward CPAC's raucous style in pandemic-free years to come.After all, if the convention isn't real politics anymore, you've gotta use it for something.More stories from theweek.com Melania Trump reportedly taped making 'disparaging' remarks about president and his children Florida judge blocks state's school reopening order, saying it 'disregards safety' Jerry Falwell Jr. says his wife had an affair with the Florida 'pool boy,' claims they were being blackmailed
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| Detroit police arrest 42 people as protesters, authorities clash after weeks of calm Posted: 23 Aug 2020 04:17 PM PDT  Protesters have been assembling and marching through Detroit since shortly after George Floyd's death on May 25.
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| Democrats' doom-and-gloom convention no match for President Trump's forward-looking vision: GOP chair Posted: 23 Aug 2020 01:24 PM PDT  Opposing View: Fortunately for Americans who don't want socialism, they will hear about another choice when the Republican convention kicks off.
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| Approval of a coronavirus vaccine would be just the beginning – huge production challenges could cause long delays Posted: 24 Aug 2020 12:17 PM PDT  The race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is well underway. It's tempting to assume that once the first vaccine is approved for human use, all the problems of this pandemic will be immediately solved. Unfortunately, that is not exactly the case.Developing a new vaccine is only the first part of the complex journey that's supposed to end with a return to some sort of normal life. Producing hundreds of millions of vaccines for the U.S. – and billions for the world as a whole – will be no small feat. There are many technical and economic challenges that will need to be overcome somehow to produce millions of vaccines as fast as possible.I am a professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and have been working in and studying the worlds of vaccine development, production and distribution for over two decades. The issues the world is facing today regarding the coronavirus vaccine are not new, but the stakes are perhaps higher than ever before.There are four main challenges that must be addressed as soon as possible if a vaccine is to be produced quickly and at a large scale. Existing manufacturing capacity is limitedThe shrinking and outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing capacity has reached into all sectors. Vaccines are no exception.The number of U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies involved in vaccines development and production has fallen from 26 in 1967 to just five in 2004. There are many causes – relatively low profit margins, smaller markets compared to those of other medications, corporate mergers, liability risks and the anti-vaccination movement – but the result is that in some years, companies have struggled to meet need even for existing vaccines. Just take a look at the flu vaccine shortages of 2003-2005 and the childhood vaccine shortages of the early 2000s. When a coronavirus vaccine is approved, production of other vaccines will need to continue as well. With the flu season each year and children being born every day, you can't simply reallocate all existing vaccine manufacturing capacity to COVID-19 vaccine production. New additional capacity will be needed. The type of vaccine is still unknownWhile there are a few frontrunners at the moment, it is still unknown which of the more than 160 vaccines in development will get approval first, and therefore, what kind of manufacturing needs to be put in place. Producing a COVID-19 vaccine will not be the same as adding a new strain to an existing flu vaccine or simply tweaking how other existing vaccine are made. Most existing vaccines, like those for flu and measles, use either inactivated or weakened forms of those specific viruses to generate immunity, but researchers can't simply swap the flu virus for SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine may not even use inactivated or weakened virus, but instead could incorporate a protein or genetic material from the coronavirus. Manufacturing such pieces of the virus in large amounts may require new processes that never been tried before, since the Food and Drug Administration hasn't ever approved any DNA vaccines for human use.Some companies are developing mRNA or DNA vaccines. Others are working with inactivated SARS-CoV-2 or even other types of viruses like the chimp adenovirus. Then there are those targeting different protein subunits of the virus. Each vaccine may have very different manufacturing requirements and it is impossible to know which of these candidates will reach the market and when. Governments and other funders face a difficult choice. If they gamble and provide funding to scale up manufacturing for a particular vaccine now, they could save time and thus lives. Picking wrong, though, could end up costing much more in money, suffering and lives. Ultimately, manufacturers will seek financial assurances – like upfront payments or commitments to buy the vaccine when it is available – from governments and funders to make sure that the time, effort and resources dedicated to vaccine development and manufacturing will not be wasted. For example, the U.S. government's US$2.1 billion deal with Sanofi and GSK will include scaling up of manufacturing capacity and the purchase of 100 million doses of the vaccine. The size of the problem is unprecedentedAs the saying goes, knowing is not the same as doing. Producing a completely new vaccine at such a large scale so quickly is unprecedented. Numerous delays occurred in the production of the H1N1 flu vaccine in 2009. Consider what may happen with a novel vaccine that could require new reagents, production processes, equipment and containers, among other things. Rollouts of the smallpox and polio vaccines occurred decades ago with less urgency and when populations were significantly smaller. Today, assuming that the herd immunity threshold is at least 70%, manufacturers would need to produce at least 230 million doses to cover the U.S. population and over 5.25 billion doses to cover world's population. And that's if only one dose is required. Requiring two doses per person would double the doses needed.Never before has humanity tried to produce something for every person on Earth as quickly as possible. There are going to be problems. Economic poker gameUltimately, most potential vaccine manufacturers are businesses, seeking to minimize costs and maximize revenue where possible. They will want incentives to forego other more lucrative opportunities, such as continuing to develop or produce medications that have higher profit margins. For example, companies may not readily reveal current and potential manufacturing capacity. After all, these can be major bargaining chips in negotiating contracts with governments and other possible funders. Revealing that you have too little capacity right now may jeopardize confidence in your ability to make the vaccine. Revealing that you already have enough capacity can hinder your bargaining for more funding and resources.During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic while I was working within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we had to continuously deal with changing vaccine production schedules as manufacturers continued to renegotiate the terms with the government. Moreover, the extent of the pandemic brings this poker game to the world stage. Different countries may be negotiating with or even against each other and manufacturers. For example, high-income countries may be angling to get ahead of other countries seeking to receive vaccines. A plan and a systems approachUltimately, vaccine production is only one part of a complex, interconnected system whose ultimate goal is to prevent people from getting a disease. [Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]The type of vaccine developed, size and location of the initial target populations, the way the vaccine is administered, the number of doses and the storage requirements for the vaccine are all interconnected and just some of the factors that affect the production requirements. For example, work done by my team at the City University of New York has shown that that the number of vaccine doses that you put in a single vial can have a variety of cascading effects on vaccination and disease control programs.People's lives, and life as we know it, are on the line. All of the complexities of producing a vaccine need to be addressed through open worldwide discussions and extensive mapping and modeling of these scenarios. Without proper planning and preparation, society may be left in a situation where production cannot meet demand or vaccines are shoddily produced. And even when enough vaccines are manufactured, there's still the challenge of actually getting them into hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and billions around the world. There are worries that there won't be enough glass vials to store the vaccines or syringes to administer them, as well as concerns about the temperature controlled supply chain. These challenges of production and distribution, though large, are not insurmountable. The more planning governments and businesses do now, the better they will be able to deliver the vaccines the world so desperately needs.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Getting a flu shot this year is more important than ever because of COVID-19 * Labs are experimenting with new – but unproven – methods to create a coronavirus vaccine fastBruce Y. Lee receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He has also received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and various vaccine manufacturers to use computational modeling to find ways to improve vaccine development, production, delivery, implementation, and administration.
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| US blasts WTO ruling in decades-old Canada lumber dispute Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:34 AM PDT  The United States slammed a World Trade Organization ruling Monday that favored Canada in a longstanding battle over lumber imports, holding the case up as further justification for Washington's campaign to drastically reform the global trade body.
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