WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has urged residents in the critical political battleground of North Carolina to try to vote twice in the Nov. 3 election, once by mail and once in person, igniting a furor for appearing to urge a potential act of voter fraud.
“Let them send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said in an interview on Wednesday with WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina. “And if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.
Trump has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that mail-in voting – expanded by some states because of the coronavirus pandemic – would increase fraud and disrupt the November election, although experts say voter fraud of any kind is extremely rare in the United States. At a rally on Thursday night, Trump repeated his call for voters to go the polls even if they have mailed in their ballot, and he suggested Democrats would try to steal the election by manipulating the mail-in vote. Nick Note: Trump is way behind in the polls. They may be “wrong” but i can tell you Trump is concerned…. And he has a plan. I have a bad felling about this. I believe Trump has a screw lose or two. And i could see a constitutional crises if he losses. If he wants to stay in office I suggest he put up walls and a moat around the White House. He can tell his sources its to keep illegals IN!
There are chilling moments in this presidency that tell us everything we need to know, but they are somehow lost in the fog. One occurred just a few days ago, when General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to reaffirm for Congress that there would be no role for the United States military in the election this year. For any other presidency, such a statement would be regarded as entirely unnecessary. But in this administration, where anything goes, it was absolutely critical.
His statement came in the remarkable exchange during questions for the record posed by two members of the House Armed Services Committee. Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan served as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst and a Defense Department official, while Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey is a former Navy helicopter pilot.
Slotkin and Sherrill have three concerns. First, a “Wag the Dog” moment where Donald Trump orders military action to distract the public instead of protect the country. Second, the deployment of some armed forces to intervene with the election, including stationing military members at the polls. Third, the potential that Trump will claim he is still the commander in chief come January even if the results say otherwise.
These concerns may seem unusual, but they are legitimate with a White House that seems to believe the military serves as a useful tool to secure partisan ambitions. Trump raided the Pentagon budget to build a border wall that Congress opposed, withdrew soldiers meant to protect Kurdish allies and sent them to guard Syrian oil fields, threatened to deploy active duty military to our cities against the wishes of mayors, sent the National Guard to Lafayette Park to move unarmed protesters so he could stage a picture at Saint John Church, and directed the Navy to keep a destroyer hidden during a Memorial Day visit to Japan last year.
Over the question of refusing any executive order to commence military action for partisan gain, Milley answered, “I believe deeply in an apolitical military. I and every member of the armed forces take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and to follow the lawful orders of the chain of command. I will not follow an unlawful order.” But how does he interpret an unlawful from a lawful order?
Slotkin asked him whether he would refuse any order to send active duty military to the polls during the election. Milley replied, “We are a nation of laws. We must follow the rule of law and have done so with regard to past elections, and will continue to do so in the future. I do not see the military as part of this process. This is the responsibility of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the components of the executive branch.”
So how would Milley respond to a potential worst case scenario in which Trump will dispute the outcome of the election this fall? He answered, “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the election, by law, the courts and Congress are required to resolve any disputes, and not the military. I foresee no role for the armed forces during this process. We will not turn our backs on the Constitution of the United States.”
The fact that such questions must be asked is a remarkable sign of our times. But there is a measure of reassurance in the responses by Milley and a survey of active duty voters in the Military Times. Joe Biden leads Trump by over five points, and while the latter claims he has support of active duty voters, nearly half have an unfavorable view of him.
I am not surprised. As a former member with the House Armed Services Committee, I was considered fairly hawkish on national security issues. I visited our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a dozen times. On each trip, I understood the solemnity with which they take their oath, not to any politician but to the Constitution. It is not to protect an ideological agenda, but to preserve democracy and its norms. God bless our troops, and protect them, and our country, from assaults on democracy.
Steve Israel represented New York in the House over eight terms and was chairman with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now the director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average index dropped over 750 points on Thursday as the stock market selloff continued. Tech companies pulled all three major Wall Street indexes down, with Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, AMD and Zoom all losing over 5%. Stocks tumbled just one day after hitting a record high. The Nasdaq had climbed above 12,000 points for the first time in history Wednesday.
So what’s happening? Well for one, the Nasdaq has been outperforming the other two major stock indexes — the Dow and the S&P 500 — for months, so investors might just be taking making some adjustments after Wednesday’s record highs. The Nasdaq remains up nearly 30% in 2020, far outpacing its counterparts.
But there are also technical reasons for Thursday’s decline. As US-China relations sour, investors are moving money out of tech, which could get hit the hardest from a potential increase in tariffs.
The Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, all of which are part of the Nasdaq, have become the safe-haven investment of the summer. But investors have beginning to wonder when the rally will run out of steam, either because of increased regulation or because the economy as a whole picks up enough to void the need for safety picks altogether.
The coronavirus pandemic is bringing on a wave of bankruptcies in 2020. And it’s not just the retail sector that’s suffering. Automotive, aviation, telecom, and oil and gas companies are all feeling the pain as consumer demand dries up. Despite the billions of government support and loans, it might be too late for a lot of companies. Experts say we’re on track to mirror the number of commercial bankruptcies seen during the Great Recession. So what do all of these bankruptcies mean for the economy moving forward? And how do big brands bounce back successfully after they’ve filed for bankruptcy? CNBC explores bankruptcies and the impact it can have on consumers, businesses, and the economy as the race for a vaccine continues.n Nick Note: You will see bankruptcies as an avalanche. Nothing in history will rival the failure that are coming next year!
A fierce debate has erupted over whether the Food and Drug Administration should use its emergency authority to clear a coronavirus vaccine before it is formally approved — a move opponents warn could pose safety dangers and inflame anti-vaccination sentiment but others say could save thousands of lives by speeding protection from the virus. With concerns growing about the politicization of the FDA amid a botched White House rollout of the agency’s emergency authorization of convalescent plasma and sharply criticized comments by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, some scientists and bioethicists are demanding the agency forgo use of its emergency authority for a vaccine. They worry its very flexibility, which gives FDA officials broad latitude, could make it easier for the White House to pressure the agency into clearing an unproven vaccine before Election Day, Nov. 3. Trump’s repeated promise to deliver a safe and effective vaccine this year, “or maybe even sooner,” has become central to his reelection campaign and has sparked concerns in the scientific community in particular that the White House could pressure regulators to cut corners.Those concerns come against the backdrop of an accelerating race to develop a coronavirus vaccine as three vaccine makers — pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, biotechnology firm Moderna and drugmaker AstraZeneca — conduct Phase 3 clinical trials, the last before seeking a green light from regulators. A recent report by Morgan Stanley said the most likely timing for data from one or more of the trials is November. But others say it’s possible some results might be available in October if the vaccines prove spectacularly effective and there are enough viral infections in the community to prove the shots are protecting patients who receive them. The CDC has told state and local health officials to be ready to distribute a vaccine to health-care workers and other high-risk groups as early as Nov. 1 — part of an elaborate planning process happening while clinical trials are underway that has spurred anxieties in some quarters.“I think it’s extremely critical that we have rigorous evidence of safety and effectiveness supporting a vaccine before the FDA gives its okay,” said Patricia Zettler, a former FDA associate chief counsel who is a law professor at Ohio State University. Because vaccines, unlike treatments, are given to healthy people, she and others said, they should be held to a higher standard and go through the full approval process, which can take several months. In a letter dated Aug. 26, the nation’s infectious-disease doctors demanded that vaccine safety and effectiveness data be “reviewed by internal, as well as independent experts,” if the agency uses an emergency use authorization process. The FDA’s emergency use authorization is a temporary approval used to accelerate the availability of medical products during a public health emergency. Since February, the FDA used the power to authorize hundreds of coronavirus tests and a few treatments; it has authorized a vaccine that way only once in its history, in 2005, against anthrax. For months, the agency has said it may use the authority for a coronavirus vaccine if it is safe and sufficiently effective. Amid a pandemic that has already claimed more than 180,000 lives in the United States, some are adamant that emergency use authorization is a lifesaving tool if deployed correctly, since it would be much quicker than the cumbersome full approval process. Nick Note: A vaccine that is unproven and a new type RNA (as verses a tried and true protein based vaccine) should be rushed through without proper tests because it is a matter of life and death for the Trump presidency.
Oil prices has fallen for 2 days on oversupply concerns as OPEC and its allies wind back production cuts and a rise in worldwide COVID19 cases points to a slower pickup in fuel demand.
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Oil prices were little changed in early trade on Thursday, sitting near multi-week lows hit overnight on worries about fuel demand due to a patchy U.S. economic recovery. Both benchmark contracts fell more than 2% on Wednesday, with WTI sliding to its lowest close in nearly four weeks and Brent at its lowest since Aug. 21, after a U.S. Federal Reserve survey showed the economic recovery was mixed. At the same time, data showed jobs growth was slower than expected in August, while factory orders in July were higher than expected. In further signs of a limited recovery, U.S. gasoline demand dropped in the week to Aug. 28 to 8.78 million barrels per day from 9.16 million bpd a week earlier, the Energy Information Administration said. “All in all, we think there is enough spare oil capacity and enough pressure on demand growth to justify only a gradual increase in oil prices over the next 12 months,” Commonwealth Bank (CBA) commodities analyst Vivek Dhar said in a note. U.S. refinery run rates fell to 76.5% of total capacity last week. While that was due to shutdowns ahead of Hurricane Laura, analysts said the upcoming refinery maintenance and the end of summer driving season would limit crude demand. “These factors suggest a seasonal drop off in refinery runs and higher oil inventory levels as we advance through September,” said AxiCorp market strategist Stephen Innes. “We see downside risks to our outlook linked to the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19,” Dhar said in the note. Nick Note: their is no real increase in demand… and it will get worse and prices will crash in oil……
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil fell more than 2% on Wednesday, reversing early gains after a report showed gasoline demand fell in the United States in the latest week. Futures prices turned negative after weekly government data from showed lower gasoline demand from a week earlier, prompting traders to shrug off bullish U.S. crude inventory data. [EIA/S] Crude inventories USOILC=ECI fell by 9.4 million barrels in the last week to 498.4 million barrels, a far steeper dive than the 1.9 million-barrel drop that analysts expected in a Reuters poll. [EIA/S] The data reflects a period during which Hurricane Laura shut output and refining facilities. Gasoline demand in the week dropped to 8.78 million barrels per day from 9.16 million bpd a week earlier, according to the report. Brent crude LCOc1, the global benchmark, fell $1.15, or 2.5%, to settle at $44.43 a barrel, after two days of price gains. U.S. West Texas Intermediate CLc1 settled lower by $1.25, or 2.9%, to $41.51 a barrel. Other data also fed fears that economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic was lagging. U.S. private employers hired fewer workers than expected for a second straight month in August, suggesting the labor market recovery was slowing as the COVID-19 pandemic persists and government support for workers and employers dries up. Oil has recovered from historic lows hit in April, when Brent slumped to a 21-year low below $16 and U.S. crude ended one session in negative territory. A record supply cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a grouping known as OPEC+, has supported prices. The producers have begun to return some crude to the market as demand partially recovers and OPEC in August raised output by about 1 million barrels per day (bpd), a Reuters survey found on Tuesday. [OPEC/O] Nick Note: This is a lesson for those of you who live and die on the JOKE weekly crude oil draw. As i have TRIED to point out to you over and over again. NO ONE uses crude. The key to this game is FUCK the crude inventories. Look at what the black shit is turned into. AND that is 80% JET FUEL AND MOST OF THE REST GASOLINE. DESIPTE THE BULLSHIT EVEN THE STUPID MONEY IS starting TO FIGURE OUT YOU FLY YOU DIE. People are NOT flying…. the airports are empty! Pretty simple as we told you for years. the modern Jet liner is a disease infection tube. Its not jet lag its respiratory infections. Sitting in a pressurized tube asshole to elbow with 50% recirculated air with filtration incapable of filtering out aerosolized viruses. Their systems in fact helps pass diseases… End of story. You have scratched you ass and figured out coffee paper filters and toilet paper masks DO NOT PROTECT YOU. And you figured out, excuse the pun, avoid people like the plague. I am sure you understand airplanes spread this cloud of death the world over. And their have been no design changes, which means they are STILL disease incubation tubes of death! Do you really think they are admitting the truth NOW? They are telling you blood plasma is a cure….. NOT! They are getting ready to distribute massive quantities of a not proven or even properly tested vaccine. How many millions will that eventually kill? They are telling people (including Doctors, nurses and other highly exposed health care workers, who they are killing in mass ) to use and get this REUSE the afore mentioned paper masks…. That they KNOW FOR A FACT do not work… Do you really think they are going to admit (or reveal their top secret studies) to you the 3 trillion dollar in capitalization 5% of world GDP and employing 10 million people aviation industry that a jetliner is a disease spreading tube of death? And their is no way to make it safe? DID the tobacco industry reveal the truth? Think about this as you rush out to kill the cats!
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told states to prepare for a Covid-19 vaccine to be ready by Nov. 1 and asked them to remove obstacles that would prevent distribution sites from opening. The date suggests the federal government anticipates a vaccine will become available just days before President Donald Trump stands for reelection Nov. 3, an aggressive goal that would depend on shots being tested and reviewed by then. Trump’s political future hinges on the response to the virus that has killed almost 185,000 Americans. The CDC in early August told states to assume that “limited doses” of a vaccine could be available in fall. The new letter said the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC “are rapidly making preparations to implement large-scale distribution of Covid-19 vaccines in the fall of 2020,” according to a copy provided to Bloomberg. The CDC declined to comment on the letter, the contents of which were reported earlier by the news organization McClatchy. Trump has previously said that he thinks a vaccine will be ready by Election Day or soon before. He’s also accused staff at the Food and Drug Administration of slowing vaccine work to hurt him politically. The claims have raised questions about political interference in vaccine reviews; FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has promised repeatedly that science will guide any decisions. Nick Note: Did you hear about the new vaccine? Its called get The Get Trump Re-Elected Vaccine or else! The markets were headed south today. Economic report showed a economy softening again. And then this report hit the wires and we got a pop. We shall see what we shall see. So its barely September Phase III studies have barely got started. And they are mobilizing resources to give what i am told is a two Shot Vaccine. The Monkey vaccine. A never tried much lesson proven RNA vaccine that uses monkey DNA………… I wonder if banana sales will skyrocket?
If one place underscores just how dire America’s hunger problem has become during the pandemic, it is here—in the middle of the breadbasket that supplies food from coast to coast. The ranks of Americans fighting hunger are projected to swell some 45% this year to more than 50 million. . Hundreds of Minnesotans waited in line for hours.
“It’s been hard,” she said. “We’ve had to dramatically change how we eat.” About one-third of those relying on food shelves, large-scale and emergency food distributions now are doing so for the first time, according to Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization. In parts of Minnesota, that number is closer to 70%. With the nation pitched in a fierce debate over entrenched and systemic inequalities, the most basic divide—who eats well and who goes hungry—is becoming more acute every day. Even before the pandemic, the U.S. already had the highest number of people who couldn’t afford a basic energy-efficient diet among the world’s 63 high-income countries. “We are no longer projecting a surge—we are experiencing a surge in food insecurity,” said Allison O’Toole, the chief executive officer of Second Harvest Heartland, provides truckloads of food to distributions like the one in Mankato. During the pandemic, about a 10th of American households reported they haven’t had enough food in a given week. That’s a shocking figure for the world’s richest country. It’s more than double pre-Covid figures and the highest since comparable government data starts in 1995. In contrast to the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression or the rationing of World War II, the crisis has nothing to do with food supplies. The U.S. is in a time of historic abundance, with plentiful grains, meat and dairy, so much so that farmers have been plowing over excess crops and dumping milk. But lockdowns have snarled supply chains, and food inflation is projected to rise at the fastest pace in almost a decade. Meanwhile, unemployment, low wages and reduced working hours are diminishing purchasing power—all of which are disproportionately impacting women and minorities, as is food insecurity. Demand at Minnesota’s food banks is up 65% this year, and groups like Second Harvest Heartland say the peak has yet to come. The federal government’s $600 weekly supplement to unemployment insurance, which helped millions weather job losses and pay household bills, came to an end last month,and Congress can’t agree on a replacement. Donald Trump issued a stopgap measure to provide $300 a week in federal support to most jobless-benefit recipients, but the funds are only slowing moving into Americans’ wallets. Americans are unlikely to be suffering from all-out starvation, which plagues parts of Asia and Africa. But many people in the U.S. cope with food insecurity by skipping meals, just not eating enough or eating the cheapest food available. That kind of diet can be calorie dense, but lead to malnutrition. For children, malnutrition can have lifelong consequences including stunted growth and even impaired cognitive development. That’s all playing out right in the middle of abundant food production, even despite government and private aid. In a pre-Covid world, it was among the most food-secure states. Now one in eight people in the state is projected to struggle with hunger. Minnesota is home to beef giant Cargill Inc., Cheerio-maker General Mills Inc. and Spam-producer Hormel Foods Corp. All three companies have been donating to food banks. And the Trump administration just dedicated an additional $1 billion to its program known as “Farmers to Families Food Box Program,” which is buying surplus supplies to deliver to food banks and other organizations. The emergency pop-up that Traxler attended was held in partnership with that program.
(Bloomberg) — The U.S. can’t put Covid-19 behind it. New case counts are declining in some recent hot spots. But they’re spiking in places like Iowa and South Dakota, signaling what may be a new phase in the country’s virus fight as progress in one state is repeatedly offset by infections in others, with little improvement overall. Politics plays a role, as do events like college reopenings and the Sturgis motorcycle rally. But it’s also a sign of fatigue, the frustration and exhaustion Americans feel after months of masks and hand sanitizer, social isolation, shuttered businesses and closed beaches. People are putting their guard down, experts agree, leaving room for the virus to continue spreading as the country seeks to reopen the economy. “It’s going to be kind of this rolling fire, with certain flare-ups that occur in different parts of the country at different times,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “This is a virus that’s established itself into the population.” Overall, U.S. cases this week surpassed 6 million. In the Midwest, positivity rates have reached alarming levels. In Iowa, for instance, 10.3% of cases came back positive on Monday, slightly below the 14-day average of 11.1%, according to state data. Overall, the state, which currently has no state-wide mask mandate, has recorded 65,478 cases, with new cases rising 50% in the last two weeks. Iowa State University, in Ames, reported Monday that 28.8% of the students, faculty and staff tested in the most recent week had the virus, although school officials have focused their testing on people showing symptoms or those who have been exposed to someone with the virus. The University of Iowa has reported 922 cases within its campus population. In Ohio, Covid-19 first started as an urban scourge in the cities of Cleveland and Columbus. But the spread is now making waves in rural regions spurred by social gatherings and the return to school, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said Tuesday during a news conference in Cedarville. “The virus is not going away,” DeWine, a Republican, said. “We think a significant part of this is caused by our colleges going back as well as our grade schools going back.”
College Reopenings
Colleges experiencing outbreaks didn’t necessarily reopen too soon, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The problem, he said in an interview Tuesday, was that the schools did not have “the capability of dealing with students who got infected.”
Schools should have tested students before they returned and planned “intermittent surveillance” to watch for rising cases, as well as creating a way to isolate students when they “inevitably” get infected, he said.
On Tuesday, Ohio reported 1,453 cases—the most in more than a month—and the state isn’t seeing signs of th virus relenting. Despite mask mandates, a rule closing bars at 10 p.m., and myriad other health orders, the state’s 21-day average of new cases sits around 1,000.
Per-capita, nine of the top-10 counties for increasing cases are rural, DeWine said. A car-pool trip to a lake led to two businesses closing from an outbreak. A card-game resulted in all family members present contracting the virus, he said.
Social gatherings like this are creating “a real movement into our rural areas,” DeWine said.
Illinois Recurrence
Illinois, too, has seen a resurgence of the virus over the last two months, reversing the progress that had lowered counts in May and June. On Aug. 22, statewide daily cases hit the highest since May, and on Tuesday the death count reached the most since June 26.
“We do not want to be part, here in Chicago, of this surge that we’re seeing broadly across the Midwest,” Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said Tuesday.
She noted Iowa, which ranks first in per capita cases, is among the states on the city’s quarantine list and Indiana may be added next week given clusters developing in college towns.
“It is not the time to relax your guard,” she said.
But that seems to be happening in Chicago and across Illinois with more cases developing when people at weddings, reunions and other gatherings are not wearing masks, watching their distance or washing hands.
Testing, Tracing
Outbreaks are going to continue to crop up because many states still don’t have the ability to do widespread testing, tracing and isolating, Johns Hopkins’s Adalja said.
“Until they have that capacity, they’re going to always run the risk of these chains of transmission getting started,” he said. “Until we get to the point of being able to do the simple public-health measures in all 50 states, we’re going to have this risk occurring and I do think we will periodically have these flares that occur in different states at different times.”
Even within states, public health officials have struggled to make consistent progress across all of their cities and counties.
California’s Spike
California, for instance, managed to stifle outbreaks in the urban San Francisco and Los Angeles areas only to see cases spike in the rural Central Valley.
Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state Health and Human Services agency, said the outbreak appeared to have been driven in part by the valley’s big farms, which employ large numbers of migrant workers. Those workers, mostly Spanish speakers, weren’t hearing the state’s messages about wearing masks and maintaining social distancing, Ghaly said.
While California is now pouring resources into tamping down the valley outbreak, Ghaly said more may follow, even as the state’s overall virus numbers improve. The number of Californians hospitalized with Covid-19 has now dropped below 4,000, after peaking above 7,000 in July.
“We are continuing to learn how to address this broad geography,” Ghaly said. “I’m sure we’ll have some counties that experience increased transmission in the months to come. We feel we’re better prepared than we were in the summer and certainly in the spring.”
