It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.
Yes, this is the same Rush Limbaugh who was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump. I’m also amused by his bragging that he is “dead right”.
The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.
— Donald Trump, expressing confidence that the epidemic will not seriously harm the global economy.
The Trump administration recently overruled the CDC’s advice and put 14 Americans infected with the coronavirus on a plane back to the U.S. with others who were not infected. Trump was reportedly shocked and upset by the move. But if he didn’t know about it that is strong evidence of how ill-equipped the administration is to handle an outbreak. And if he did know about it, he simply lied, and thinks he can use PR and propaganda to make the problem go away, at the cost of American lives.
It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen.
We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.
— Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Even Republicans are concerned that Trump is just sticking his fingers in his ears and pretending that this will go away. The Senate held a hearing Tuesday morning to address the outbreak, and it did not go well for the administration.
Senator Joe Kennedy (R-LA) castigated the Acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf for being unable to answer basic questions about the potential of an outbreak in the U.S., saying “You’re the secretary. I think you oughta know that answer.”
Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) told Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that the Trump administration’s coronavirus $ 2.5 billion emergency funding request “is lowballing it, possibly, and you can’t afford to do that.” He added, “If you lowball something like this, you’ll pay for it later.”
Axios sums up the magnitude of this year’s election:
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is duking it out with Billionaire Donald Trump, often on Billionaire Jack Dorsey’s Twitter and in ads on Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, all chronicled in Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.
And it isn’t just Democrats:
60% of Republicans say they rely on Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for political news.
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Ja’net Dubois — one of the main characters on “Good Times” — was found dead Tuesday. Ja’net played the Evans family’s sassy neighbor Willona Woods on the classic ’70s TV series. Her family tells us … Ja’net died unexpectedly in her sleep overnight at her home in Glendale, CA. It’s unclear who discovered her body Tuesday morning. We’re told Ja’net hadn’t complained of any specific ailments recently, and appeared to be in good health to those around her. She even attended a fan event in Hollywood a couple weeks ago. Ja’net might be most famous for “Good Times,” but she also composed and sang the theme song, “Movin’ On Up” for, “The Jeffersons” — so, she should also be remembered for her voice.
She appeared in tons of movies over the years, including “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”, “Tropic Thunder” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” Ja’net’s acting career began on Broadway, where she was cast in a number of plays including “Golden Boy” with Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Gossett Jr. — plus “A Raisin In The Sun.”
She also won two Emmy awards for her voice-over work on “The PJs.” Ja’net is survived by her children — 2 daughters and a son. She was 74. RIP
Hollywood is a zoo, and Netflix is now home to some hippos.
The streamer has picked up the comedy package Cocaine Hippos, with comedian Jermaine Fowler set to star.
The story, which comes from writer Jordan VanDina, who is also writing the script, was inspired by the hippopotamuses that were brought into Colombia from Africa in the 1980s to populate the palatial estate of drug lord Pablo Escobar. When Escobar was killed in 1993, his menagerie of animals were taken to zoos or sold, save for the hippos, who were left to their own devices and populated, becoming an invasive species.
Cocaine Hippos will follow a group of friends who stumble across a clue leading to Escobar’s lost treasure. They then embark on a wild trip that pits them against con men, local drug lords and the deadly hippos that Escobar smuggled into Colombia back in the ’80s. The tone is being described as The Hangover meets Tropic Thunder.
Adam Goodman, former president of Paramount’s motion picture group, will produce through his Dichotomy banner, along with Matt Skiena. Fowler will also produce.
Fowler, repped by WME and 3 Arts, is best known for starring on CBS’ Superior Donuts. His upcoming credits include the Coming to America sequel and the Warner Bros. title Jesus Was My Homeboy about the assassinated Black Panther activist Fred Hampton.
VanDina, repped by UTA, 3 Arts and Ginsburg Daniels, also penned The Binge, which is set up at Hulu, and American High, with Vince Vaughn and Skyler Gisondo set to star.
Read the description of the perp. What’s the most important aspect of it that’s left out?
And he “fled war?” Makes him a deserter in my book.
A refugee who fled war in Syria is among the latest Baltimore homicide victims.
Khaled Heeba’s family said he was killed just before Friday prayer, while he was delivering pizza in west Baltimore.
“If you know him, you had to love him, because that’s the type of good person he was,” said Kimberly Mcmanaway, who worked with Khaled.
His co-workers at Vizzini’s Pizza said he was beyond a delivery driver.
“He was our friend and family. You couldn’t have a better person that what you had in Khaled. Why somebody would do this, I don’t know,” Mcmanaway said.
Police said they don’t know how the incident started, but that Khaled was out on delivery at the time.
“Putting in a hard day’s work and he didn’t come home. Help us figure it out,” said Baltimore Police Detective Donny Moses.
Police on Monday showed WJZ a video of the person they said is the killer who shot Khaled on the run.
“The suspect was an unknown male, who looked to be about 5’9″ with a slim build, who was dressed in all black,” Det. Moses said.
Through a translator, Khaled’s parents said he was a family man, worked hard to pay off his house, not far from where he was killed.
“I have not seen any of the refugees who was as hard-working as him. And he’s a very good family man to his mother and father,” said Raghad Bushnag, with Mozaic DMV.
Raghad Bushnaq works with a group that helps refugees resettle. Khaled and his family fled the war in Syria seven years ago. They left Damascus for Egypt and arrived in the U.S. three years ago.
“He is a man with high character. He has a tender heart. He helps everyone. He goes out of his way to help people,” Bushnaq said.
“This is the life we live in right now. This is a war zone here. Do you leave your country to come here and ours is a war zone. Everybody’s killing someone around the corner that you know.” Mcmanaway said.
Making things tougher for the Heeba family, his mother said her oldest son is in Germany right now and cannot come to be with his family because of the travel ban affecting Syrians.
Anyone with information on Khaled’s murder is urged to call police.
Like his boss, Rudy Giuliani loves Twitter, but he has a problem. Rudy is a poor typist, and often mistypes URLs in his tweets (along with inserting other spelling errors). A director for a cybersecurity company noted that Giuliani creates these bad URLs regularly. His mistyped URLs have become so common that hackers have started buying up the erroneous URLs and redirecting people unfortunate (or stupid) enough to click on those links to fake pages designed to spread malware.
For example, Giuliani meant to tweet a link to his own website RudyGiulianics.com, but by mistake inserted a space after Rudy. This created a link to Giulianics.com, which didn’t exist until a hacker set up a website for it. That website redirects about six times through websites that collect tracking data on visitors, and then lands on an unsecured website that prompts visitors to download a Google Chrome extension that steals their browsing history and changes their default search engine.
In another example, Giuliani tweeted a link to his website (again), but left out one letter to make it RudyGiuliancs.com. In this case, the hacker who created that domain merely used it to redirect the visitor to the Wikipedia page about Trump’s impeachment.
In yet another example, he left out a space between “G-20” and “.ln”, and Twitter mistook it for a URL and created a link out of it. Just fifteen minutes later a Twitter user had registered the domain and pointed it at an anti-Trump website.
These fat fingered typos can have serious consequences. New York Daily News editorial board member Laura Nahmias admitted that she had clicked on a link in a tweet that was supposedly to Giuliani’s website, but instead was sent to a website that installed malware. Once her computer was infected, she started receiving constant pop-ups for fake antivirus software.
As a high-level journalist, Nahmias takes extra precautions to avoid malware. She brought in the Daily News IT department, who tried several times to remove the bad software, but to no avail. Without any way to stop the malware, she ended up buying a new computer.
Apparently Giuliani doesn’t care about his dangerous mistakes, because he keeps making them. What makes this truly ironic is that at one point, Giuliani was named the Trump administration’s cybersecurity advisor. But of course, Donald Trump hires only the best people.
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Algernon: I keep science for Life. And, speaking of the science of Life, have you got the cucumber sandwiches cut for Lady Bracknell? (The Importance of Being Earnest)
Stunt for stunt. In the age of Trump the price of revealing the origin of DNA could be set at $ 130,000 an event.
The idea isn’t as outlandish as it may seem: An anonymous organization called theEarnest Projectis offering the chance to own DNA samples of a handful of world leaders and celebrities. The group claims it hassurreptitiouslycollected items discarded by attendees of the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that may contain their DNA. President Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Elton John all attended the conference.
Now that genetic testing is getting cheaperand companies are developinghand-held DNA sequencing devices, it’s no longer a far-off possibility that someone could take your DNA, get it analyzed, and use it against you for blackmail, extortion, or discrimination.
TrumpâÂÂs DNA Is Reportedly For Sale. HereâÂÂs What Someone Could Do With It. https://t.co/c4cOTMuLSU
Artist/pranksters (?) The Earnest Project claim they recovered world leaders’ DNA from discarded coffee cups, dining implements, cigarette butts, napkins, etc at Davos.
They allege they now possess waste with the DNA of various powerful people and are offering them for sale in something called “The Davos Collection” ($ 1200-$ 3000 for a hair, wine glass $ 65k, etc. 2/
They say they were planning on auctioning the collection on Feb 20, but postponed due to unspecificed legal issues. US genetic privacy law is narrow and largely toothless, meaning that if the collection is real, it’s probably legal to sell. 3/
The samples could reveal paternity of secret children, susceptibility to some diseases, etc. Much of the potential risk of genomic leakage (things like “intelligence genes” or claims about racial identity) are bullshit promoted by the genomics-for-profit industry. 4/
But for the real risks, there’s the additional problems that accrue to any biometric leakage, which is that you can’t change your biometrics. If your genome ends up leaked all over the internet, you can’t get a new genome to replace it. If you think password leaks are bad… 5/
It’s been 12 years since CCC members published German interior minister Wolfgang Schauble’s fingerprints, lifted from a water-glass at a panel — Schauble was a prominent advocate of a national biometric identity scheme. wired.com/2008/03/hacker… 6/
3 years ago, Martin Shkreli went to jail for calling on his followers to steal hair from Hillary Clinton’s head, with vague threats to do something with her genome. 7/
Presumably he planned to subject it to modern phrenology to announce that she was a mere 3% Viking or could not attain an IQ over 75. nytimes.com/2017/09/13/bus… 8/
The prank/stunt does open a fascinating dialog about what comes next. Will this stampede the wealthy and powerful into passing meaningful genomic privacy laws? Ill-considered ones? Or just legal precedents that say the rich can sue to protect their genomes but the rest can’t?
Cloning a Trump might eventually be possible, but who would want one.
I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon
Trump couldn’t find ______ on a map unless he had a Sharpietm to change the borders. You had to be there.
CNN anchor Don Lemon was infected with a case of the giggles Saturday night while discussing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Lemon was joined by two hilarious guests,New York Timescontributing op-ed writer Wajahat Ali and Rick Wilson, the author of the bestselling 2018 bookEverything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Everand the new bookRunning Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump — and Democrats from Themselves.
The three were discussing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s interview with “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly, where he reportedly demanded she point to Ukraine on a blank map.
Pompeo “also knows, deep in his heart, that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter u and a picture of an actual, physical crane next to it,” Wilson said.
And in other news, Tom “Lando” Cotton defends the Ukraine 2016 CT and Trump’s view of PTSD as “headaches”.
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On CBS, @SenTomCotton defends Trump downplaying traumatic brain injuries suffered by US troops as mere “headaches,” saying, “he’s not dismissing their injuries, he’s describing their injuries.”
