monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

A new Senate report undercuts claims by President Trump and his allies that Obama-era officials sought to undermine him while investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling.

hahahahahahaha

President Trump Wins On PPP Funding, Pelosi And Schumer Lose Again

Why Pelosi and Schumer embarked on this doomed legislative course of meaningless delay is anyone’s guess, as this was almost exactly the same outcome as happened mere weeks ago when they lost the first coronavirus funding battle. The dance goes like this: The White House proposes a reasonable plan, Democrats call the president insane, constituents and businesses start to lobby Congress to accept the plan, Democrats say they will never accept the plan, the White House opens negotiations, Democrats call the president a racist and vow they will never surrender, the Democrats surrender.

Protests from coast to coast on Tuesday no doubt brought pressure on Democrats to bend a knee and give in. Protesting voters want state governments to reopen businesses, schools, and pave the way for a return to normal lifestyles. But that can’t happen if businesses close forever before they get PPP funding. Now they will get the funding over the bulldozed political bodies of the Democrats. America wins.

The Real COVID-19 Mortality Rate Is 25-60x Less Than Governments, Media Claim

Conclusions

In this survey, we demonstrated the researches and approaches of about 100 eminent scientists from around the world. In general, they agree that the current statistical data does not reflect the actual state of affairs, and the publicly distributed media estimates of the mortality rate are at least incorrect, and do not correspond to the actual picture.

The actual number of people with SARS-CoV-2 infection or people that already passed through COVID-19 early-stage or without symptoms is several dozen times higher than the public numbers show.

This is primarily due to the approaches and scope of testing. The public numbers have little to do with science. This is, to a greater extent, either media or politically motivated data. You should also consider the factor of a special picture of the course of the disease, which affects medical statistics (RKI Epidemiological bulletins).

Accordingly, the real mortality rate from SARS-CoV-2 is 25-60 times less than the figures presented to us by MSM and a number of governments.

The number of people with SARS-CoV-2 virus, but without the COVID-19 disease or with a mild form of the disease, according to various estimates, ranges from 85% to 95%. This group, as a rule, does not fall into official statistics, as it is not tested, not hospitalized, and does not seek medical help.

The negative consequences for life and health of people from ill-conceived social measures can at times surpass the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2. There has been a significant increase in the mortality from diseases unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 already.

Countries, whose leadership works closely with scientists, consistently and quickly responds to changes in the situation and the emergence of new data, will receive a huge advantage in the post-COVID-19 world.

The current actions of politicians in a number of countries are difficult to explain with anything other than incompetence or deliberate actions to achieve their personal/clan political ambitions or promote interests of external actors.

Try it. Knowledge is power.

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With the government doling out trillions of dollars to blunt the economic pain of the coronavirus pandemic, these are good times for thieves and dangerous times for those who actually need the money.

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In recent weeks, criminals have used people’s Social Security numbers, home addresses and other personal information — much of which was available online from past data breaches — to assume their identities and bilk them out of their stimulus checks and unemployment benefits. As a result, calls to Ms. Velasquez’s organization were 850 percent higher in March than a year earlier, she said, and are still soaring.

The scale of the fraud has been enormous, fueled by the economic crisis and the confusion surrounding the $2 trillion stabilization plan that President Trump unveiled last month. That has been compounded by the government’s own lack of security measures for people claiming stimulus payments, with those going through the I.R.S. website to get their checks needing to input just a few pieces of information that scammers can readily obtain.

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The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that it had gotten four times as many complaints about identity fraud in the first few weeks of April as it had received in the previous three months combined. And law enforcement agencies have issued warnings about the daunting array of ways that criminals are exploiting the coronavirus.

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Over the last month, 4,305 malicious website domains were set up to take advantage of people looking for new forms of government support, according to the security firm Check Point. The fake sites, with names like whereismystimulus and 2020reliefprogram, generally ask people to input their personal data with the promise that they can get information about their checks. But hackers then use the data against those who fall for the trick.

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Jonathan Martin
@jmartNYT
12m
The news in that Fla. poll:

Biden is up 52-42 among 65+ year old voters.

2016 exits had Trump 57-40 over Hillary with 65+ Fla voters

Fake karma?

When Donald Trump came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited.

The new president was impetuous, bottomlessly ignorant, almost chemically inattentive, while the bureaucrats were seasoned, shrewd, protective of themselves and their institutions. They knew where the levers of power lay and how to use them or prevent the president from doing so. Trump’s White House was chaotic and vicious, unlike anything in American history, but it didn’t really matter as long as “the adults” were there to wait out the president’s impulses and deflect his worst ideas and discreetly pocket destructive orders lying around on his desk.

After three years, the adults have all left the room—saying just about nothing on their way out to alert the country to the peril—while Trump is still there.

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When Trump came to power, he believed that the regime was his, property he’d rightfully acquired, and that the 2 million civilians working under him, most of them in obscurity, owed him their total loyalty. He harbored a deep suspicion that some of them were plotting in secret to destroy him. He had to bring them to heel before he could be secure in his power. This wouldn’t be easy—the permanent government had defied other leaders and outlasted them. In his inexperience and rashness—the very qualities his supporters loved—he made early mistakes. He placed unreliable or inept commissars in charge of the bureaucracy, and it kept running on its own.

But a simple intuition had propelled Trump throughout his life: Human beings are weak. They have their illusions, appetites, vanities, fears. They can be cowed, corrupted, or crushed. A government is composed of human beings. This was the flaw in the brilliant design of the Framers, and Trump learned how to exploit it. The wreckage began to pile up. He needed only a few years to warp his administration into a tool for his own benefit. If he’s given a few more years, the damage to American democracy will be irreversible.