militarytimes.com – Cashe died in 2005 from injuries sustained while trying to save his men from a burning Bradley Fighting Vehicle,
Source: Defense TV, Fate of Iraq War hero Alwyn Cashe’s Medal of Honor now rests with the White House
American Broadcasting CommUnity
"Crescit sub pondere virtus" || "Virtue thrives under oppression."
militarytimes.com – Cashe died in 2005 from injuries sustained while trying to save his men from a burning Bradley Fighting Vehicle,
Source: Defense TV, Fate of Iraq War hero Alwyn Cashe’s Medal of Honor now rests with the White House
Senator Mitt Romney said President Donald Trump is within his rights to call for investigations into any voting irregularities. But the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said any problems likely won’t change the outcome of the election. (Nov 10)
Source: USA Today, Romney: no evidence yet seen to overturn election
The friend of Rittenhouse, 17, purchased the gun later used to allegedly fatally shoot two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prosecutors say.
Source: MSDNC, 19-year-old charged with illegally supplying gun to Kyle Rittenhouse
President Trump is still refusing to concede the election, firing off baseless tweets from behind the walls of the White House, claiming he’ll still win, and alleging ballot counting abuse. Ben Tracy has the latest.
Source: CBS, Trump refuses to concede election, makes baseless ballot counting claims
Here’s a look at the top stories making headlines on the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.”
Source: CBS, “CBS Evening News” headlines for Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Source: Google News, New CDC Guidelines Say Masks Protect the Wearer, Too – The New York Times
Fifteen states have seen coronavirus hospitalizations double in the last month, including New Mexico, where hospitalizations tripled in a month. Janet Shamlian reports.
Source: CBS, Record hospitalizations across the U.S. as daily cases top 100,000 again
Guatemala’s government is asking the U.S. government to let roughly 700,000 Guatemalan migrants stay in the United States because of massive flooding that has killed 150 people in the poor country.
Source: Breitbart, Guatemala Asks for U.S. Amnesty for Its 700,000-Plus Migrants
President Donald Trump has started fundraising through his re-election campaign for a new “Save America” PAC while still battling the 2020 election results in court.
Source: ABC, Trump fundraising for new ‘Save America’ PAC while still contesting election results
Source: Google News, 1st Black winner in Mississippi history wins Miss USA crown – GMA
“No question our hospitals are about to be overrun,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm. “Don’t be surprised when we hit 200,000 [cases] a day.”
Source: CBS, Hospitals overwhelmed as coronavirus cases surge across the nation
Republicans are urging President Trump to get involved in boosting the GOP candidates in two Senate races in Georgia, where he’s narrowly trailing President-elect Joe Biden as the Senate majority hangs in the ba…
Source: The Hill, Senate Republicans urge Trump to go all-in on Georgia
US cases spike | What we know about Pfizer’s vaccine
Source: CNN, Utah, Illinois and Montana break coronavirus records
The incoming Biden administration will face a host of economic challenges — COVID-19 and partisan politics won’t help.
Source: CBS, Biden and the economy: What it means for you wallet
Source: Google News, Steve Cohen wows Mets rival while looking like anti-Wilpon: Sherman – New York Post
President Donald J. Trump talks with reporters outside the South Portico entrance of the White House Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, prior to boarding Marine One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, to begin his trip to North Carolina. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Politics.]
By Andy Puzder
Real Clear Politics
Joe Biden has made it clear that he will do his best to “unify” the country following an election in which more than 71 million Americans – nearly half the electorate – voted for Donald Trump. It is an admirable goal. But any chance of that happening depends on the American people having confidence that the election outcome resulted from a fair and honest process. Though never perfect, our electoral system has generally instilled confidence for the past 231 years, which is why it has worked so well.
Under the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media’s decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result. Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult.
Like millions of voters from both sides of the political aisle, I’m sensitive to the need for a definitive election outcome, untainted by irregularities or allegations of fraud. Even with razor-thin margins separating the two candidates in key states, we should be able to arrive at a final result that both sides can accept.
President Trump is contesting the reported results in those states where the race is close, and the conduct of election officials and the processes used appear suspicious. He is clearly within his rights to contest the results; his supporters generally want him to do so. Allowing the legal process to run its course is the only way to foster the unity Biden seeks.
Unity is much less likely, however, when the media simply declares a winner before the matter is resolved. In 2012, many Republicans felt disappointed when Mitt Romney lost to President Obama. Very few felt cheated. That will not be the case in 2020 if the current president’s supporters believe that the media preempted the official process so as to disparage or prevent a full investigation of the president’s claims.
The New York Times exacerbated this problem when it announced in an odd Election Day tweet, later withdrawn, that “the role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the U.S. falls to the news media.” Of course, it does not. That responsibility falls on Congress. But that tweet told the president’s supporters all they needed to know about the media’s intent.
Voters who supported Trump have good reason to distrust the media. For months, traditional news outlets have been telling us that he would lose his bid for reelection in a landslide and that a “blue wave” would sweep the nation, turning control of Capitol Hill completely over to the Democrats.
Reporters – not just pundits, but ostensibly fair-minded “straight news” professionals – treated Biden’s decisive victory as a foregone conclusion, actively discouraging their readers and viewers from even considering the possibility of a second Trump term. The pollsters had “fixed” the flaws that plagued their results in 2016, we were told.
The election returns proved otherwise. Yet, these same outlets are now asking us to trust them as they declare that their favored candidate won the election.
The media bias against Republicans in general and Trump in particular is certainly not of recent vintage. The multi-year Russian collusion debacle exposed the lengths to which some media outlets were willing to go to tarnish his reputation – and the stunning failure on the part of reporters, pundits, “expert” commentators, elected officials, and media executives to acknowledge their bias and their errors – let alone apologize for their roles in spreading roundly debunked disinformation — casts the motivations of those outlets in a harsh light. How can the president’s supporters trust people who misled them for years and then refused to acknowledge fault when the truth was exposed?
With nearly half the electorate now wondering if voting even matters, the media’s rush to judgment has done a grave disservice to the goal of unifying our nation. If America is to have any hope of healing the wounds inflicted by years of intense and divisive partisanship, then the media would be well advised to leave it to the proper authorities to declare the outcome of this election – and stop attempting to foist a premature judgment on unwilling voters.
The post Media ‘calling’ the election too early a mistake appeared first on WND.
Source: WND Politics, Media ‘calling’ the election too early a mistake
November 10, 2020
By Nandita Bose and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Far more executives from technology companies than outspoken tech critics were named to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team on Tuesday, offering clues on who will decide on filling key roles and ultimately influence his administration’s thinking in coming years.
Tech companies have been trying to strengthen their relationship with a future Biden administration to ensure they have a voice in an onslaught of federal and state investigations of their business practices.
The Biden transition team released a list of agency review teams on Tuesday.
Amazon.com Inc’s Tom Sullivan, an executive on the public policy team, will be part of Biden’s group reviewing appointments to the Department of State. Similarly, Mark Schwartz from Amazon’s cloud computing arm, who is also a former Obama administration official, will be making decisions for the Office of Management and Budget.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn’s senior director for North America policy, Nicole Isaac, is part of the team deciding appointments at the Department of Treasury.
Nicole Wong, a former deputy chief technology officer under the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama and a vice president and general counsel for Alphabet-owned Google found a spot in the review team for the National Security Council.
By contrast, tech critics such as Gene Kimmelman, senior adviser with Washington-based Public Knowledge, which focuses on areas such as antitrust policy, will be on the review team for the Department of Justice and Sarah Miller from the American Economic Liberties Project was chosen for the group weighing in on decisions about appointments at the Department of Treasury.
Both Kimmelman and Miller have pushed for higher antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech’s business practices.
Kimmelman declined comment. Miller did not respond to requests for comment.
Executives from relatively smaller tech companies such as AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, and Stripe were also appointed into these agency review groups.
Amazon declined comment. The other companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There will also be a team reviewing appointments to consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission, which includes Bill Baer, a former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition and ex-head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who has recently called for tougher antitrust law.
Baer’s DOJ sued to stop two insurance company mergers on the same day in 2016.
The FTC team also includes Laura Moy, who teaches at Georgetown Law and is an expert on consumer privacy, data security and net neutrality. The lead in the team is Heather Hippsley, a three-decade veteran of the agency.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose, David Shepardson and Diane Bartz in Washington and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and Rosalba O’Brien)
Source: Google News, Mayo Clinic Warns It May Soon Be Limited In Caring For COVID Patients Amid Surging Rates – CBS Minnesota
Authored by Mark Glennon, Ted Dabrowski, and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,
This is a lesson in how deficient the data and analyses are that health officials have provided to the public on COVID-19.
We tried to answer the most basic questions about where the pandemic is heading in Illinois in light of the torrent of new COVID cases: With case numbers exploding, won’t Illinois very quickly be overwhelmed with infections and herd immunity? How many deaths will result? Can hospitals handle the surge?
We looked for a model or projection that might answer at least some of those questions but found none, so we used official numbers from the State of Illinois and the Center for Disease Control to try to answer for ourselves.
Here is what published, official numbers imply: Seventy percent of Illinoisans – nearly 8.9 million people – will be infected with COVID by early December. Herd immunity, whether we like it or not, will therefore be reality by then.
Those conclusions are faulty and at odds with policy and prevailing understanding, even though they are based on official numbers. But how far off are they? We can’t say. It’s an illustration of why health officials must give us better numbers and provide models and projections consistent with those numbers.
Official numbers indeed seem to say, on the surface, that 70% percent of Illinoisans are headed for infection by early December. Here is the short version of the math behind the projection, which we did in more detail than shown here:
New “cases” – reported, actual infections – are now growing at a remarkable rate, as you can see from this chart:
At the current growth rate, Illinois would reach 890,000 confirmed cases around December 13.
But – and this is key – every confirmed case means there are 10 actual cases, which is a widely published number from the CDC. In fact, the the CDC recently increased that number to 11, but we used 10 to be conservative.
So, the cumulative number of Illinoisans infected will reach 8.9 million around December 13.
That 8.9 million is about 70% of Illinois’ population, which is widely seen as the point at which herd immunity is achieved. Many experts, however, put that percentage lower, some as low as 40%, which would mean Illinois would be well past herd immunity by early December.
“Herd immunity” is the term given to the level of infections at which the virus begins to recede because so much of the population has been infected and is therefore immune. Put simply, it’s the point at which the virus has no place to go so it begins to disappear. It’s why most viruses ultimately disappear.
So, if official numbers were correct and adequate, our projection would mean that the pandemic would start resolving itself in less than two months, even without a vaccine.
But that’s not right, for a number of reasons. To get it right, we would need more information. We would also need experts doing a more complex model that we probably couldn’t do – experts who aren’t politicized. And to get that, we would need the media to be pushing for it and asking the right questions.
Here are just a few reasons why the projection above is faulty.
First, that ratio of unreported cases to reported cases, which the CDC now says is 11, is not fixed. It will decline as more people get infected. In other words, we will hit a curve as higher immunity levels kick in, so our straight-line projection isn’t realistic. But we can find no tool or formula that adjusts that number over time. Building it into a projection would be better left to an expert.
Second, scientists don’t fully agree about immunity for those who were previously infected. Most seem to agree that a high degree of immunity lasts for at least four months after recovery, but that’s not certain.
Third, the effects from a new vaccine should be reflected in any model or projection. Those effects should begin kicking in by January. Experts have long anticipated the new vaccine announcement and there should already be projections that reflect its effects, but where are they?
We used “official” numbers even though we are well aware of other underlying questions about those numbers. Those questions include whether false positive numbers are being reported as cases, and whether tests are overly sensitive thereby recording harmless virus remnants as infections. Those issues, too, could change the projection.
What about the other key questions? With no good way to project future infection numbers, and with no good projection from health authorities, those other questions are unanswerable as well.
Specifically, how many will die because of the new surge? That’s what makes herd immunity controversial – the number of deaths required to get there. We can’t answer without a good projection on infections, and nobody has provided one. The number of deaths, however, almost certainly will be lower than you would think based on past fatality rates. That’s because infections are increasingly concentrated in younger people, who face virtually no fatality risk, and because treatment has improved significantly.
And what about hospital overload? Again, we can’t speculate without a good projection of infections. Anecdotally, we are also hearing from hospital personnel that hospital stays for COVID-19 are now shorter than before. Perhaps that, too, should be reflected in a meaningful projection.
Why hasn’t the public been provided with a credible projection or model?
In the case of Illinois, maybe it would be embarrassed to try. The last time Illinois officials talked about new models they turned out to be wrong before they were even released. And the IHME model from the University of Washington, which was earlier the most cited in the nation and among those Illinois used used, turned out to be consistently and badly wrong.
The bottom line is that if you want understand where the virus is heading in light of the new surge you will be frustrated. Neither state or federal officials have told you much or given you the numbers to figure it out for yourself.
And the media aren’t asking.
Special thanks to a particularly smart Wirepoints reader who has been tracking in detail all the numbers relevant to the projection discussed above. He sent his calculations, which we confirmed. He shares our frustration about lack of the critical information and hopes that both public health officials and the scientific community will start providing more meaningful numbers and analyses.
Source: Zero Hedge, With Illinois COVID-19 Cases Soaring, Officially Reported Information Is Increasingly Useless
Fox News has lasted through “multiple presidents, and they’re going to be around for multiple more,” said one right-wing media executive.
Source: Failing New York Times, Why a Trump Loss May Be No Match for Rupert Murdoch’s Realpolitik
NBC News Pentagon correspondent Courtney Kube joins Nicolle Wallace to break the news that in the final days of his presidency, Trump has decided to install loyalists, including Kash Patel and Anthony Tata, to prominent posts in the Defense Department
Source: MSDNC, Breaking News: Trump loyalists taking key posts at the Pentagon
Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a new initiative in two New York City communities where social workers and EMTs will respond to 911 mental health calls, eliminating the need for police response in most of these situations.
Source: Fox News, Social workers to respond to 911 mental health calls in NYC as violent crime increases
CIA Director Gina Haspel met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Tuesday amid speculation that she could be ousted from her post by President Trump following his loss in the presidential race.The me…
Source: The Hill, CIA director meets with McConnell amid speculation over possible firing
Attorney General William Barr’s decision to have the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe any “substantial allegations” of voter fraud has triggered a wave of backlash that he is seeking to breathe life into President …
Source: The Hill, Barr sparks DOJ firestorm with election probes memo