LIVE: Cory Booker speaks on the Senate floor

 

Associated Press

3.66M subscribers

#corybooker #live #politics

Watch live as U.S. Senator Cory Booker addresses the Senate floor. Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, has promised to speak "as long" as he's physically able on the Senate floor Monday night into Tuesday morning, criticizing the Trump administration. Read more: https://bit.ly/42dAdtg

 

Call it what it is.

Joyce Vance Feb 12

A week ago, I wrote a piece here called “Is It Really a Coup?” My answer, based on the evidence in front of us, was yes. Since then, life has gone on and DOGE has mostly gone on (despite what they seem to view as the inconvenience of a few temporary restraining orders), committed to nothing less than the radical transformation of government by a small band of unelected, quasi-official people, who are operating outside of government transparency rules. It has all the characteristics of a non-military transformation of a democratic government into something entirely different.

In a statement that made me proud to be a lawyer yet again, the American Bar Association (ABA) all but called it a coup, but without actually using that word: “No American can be proud of a govt that carries out change in this way. Neither can these actions be rationalized by discussion of past grievances or appeals to efficiency. Everything can be more efficient, but adherence to the rule of law is paramount.”

This morning in the Washington Post, Alan Charles Rawl wrote an excellent piece on DOGE. Mr. Ross served as the associate White House Counsel under President Ronald Reagan and went on to serve as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Not exactly a liberal.

In his piece, titled, Why DOGE is unconstitutional, he writes, “What is not debatable, however, is that Congress has not authorized this radical overhaul, and the protocols of the Constitution do not permit statutorily mandated agencies and programs to be transformed — or reorganized out of existence — without congressional authorization.”

It’s such a polite way of saying it’s a coup without saying it.

Maybe now that the Reagan Republican guys have shown up, we can all agree we are living through the quietest of coups. If we don’t start calling it what it is and putting a stop to it, it stands a fair chance of succeeding. The lawyers are hard at work, but that will not be enough alone. They are holding the ground until the public catches up. It would be nice if Congress and the Supreme Court did their jobs too. But for starters, let’s call the coup a coup—while we still can.

Lest you think that’s hyperbolic, yesterday, the Associated Press reported that they “were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.“ Later in the day, they were refused access. It’s a clear and also an extremely petty, violation of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from imposing prior restraints on anyone’s speech, let alone the press.

Apparently, it’s easy to ignore such a ridiculous moment, and most people seem to have. But this is a form of Newspeak, the Orwellian construct of language that a government insists people use in order to narrow people’s range of thought. Sure, it was only over what we call the Gulf of Mexico, but this was not trivial buffoonery; it was a significant moment, a testing of the waters to see if this new White House could get away with stepping on the First Amendment without causing a furor.

Rawls started his piece by questioning whether “the 49.8 percent of the electorate who elected Trump want all of this, and whether the 50.2 percent who voted for Kamala Harris or a third-party candidate want any of it.” My question is, who voted for a coup? And if we didn’t, why are we staying silent (or being excessively polite about it) now?

It’s a good sign that people are beginning to describe what’s happening in the language of a coup, even if they are doing everything but calling it one. But we can’t stop there, afraid to call it a coup, as though using the word itself is somehow a bridge too far, too frightening. Hiding from a problem doesn’t make it any better.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Israeli officials seize Associated Press cameras and broadcasting kit

 

Guardian News

3.57M subscribers

Israeli officials have seized a camera and broadcasting equipment belonging to the Associated Press in southern Israel after accusing the agency of violating the country’s new media law by providing content to Al Jazeera. AP denounced the move. Its vice-president of corporate communications said: 'The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law. We urge the Israeli authorities to return our equipment and enable us to reinstate our live feed immediately so we can continue to provide this important visual journalism to thousands of media outlets around the world' Israeli officials seize camera from US news agency, cutting live feed of Gaza Israel orders a ban of Al Jazeera and suspends broadcasts – video report

Israel SHUTS DOWN The AP's Live Video Stream of Gaza

The Young Turks

5.88M subscribers

 

The Israeli government seized a camera and other equipment from The Associated Press. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Your Support is Crucial to the Show: https://tyt.com/team Get the Progressive battle plan: https://go.tyt.com/book-description Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-h... "The Israeli government said it will return a camera and broadcasting equipment it had seized from The Associated Press on Tuesday, reversing course hours after it blocked the news organization's live video of Gaza and faced mounting criticism for interfering with independent journalism. Officials accusing the news organization of violating the country's new ban on Al Jazeera. The Qatari satellite channel is among thousands of clients that receive live video feeds from the AP and other news organizations. Israeli officials used the new law to close down the offices of the Qatar-based broadcaster on May 5 and confiscated its equipment, banned the channel's broadcasts, and blocked its websites." ***

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View article on FAIR's website ACTION ALERT: Dangerous Misinformation From AP Jim Naureckas AP's report on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's downplaying of Covid-19 called it a "life-or-death coronavirus gamble"—but AP's standard description of the disease, included in this and many other stories, offers similar false reassurance. There's a boilerplate passage that the Associated Press likes to insert into its stories on the coronavirus (e.g., 3/28/20, 2/29/30, 3/30/20). Under the headline "What You Need to Know About the Virus Outbreak" (3/30/20), it's the first language after the heading "What You Need to Know." And what AP thinks you need to know is this: For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. The vast majority of people recover. Well, that sounds reassuring, doesn't it? Especially if you're not an older adult or a person with existing health problems, you might even be thinking—what's the big deal? First of all, "existing health problems" are extremely common. Half of American adults have high blood pressure (American Heart Association, 1/31/18)—one of the most prevalent pre-existing conditions among Covid-19 fatalities, according to a study of Italian deaths from the disease (Bloomberg, 3/18/20).  Other common illnesses associated with coronavirus deaths include diabetes, which affects 9% of American adults (CDC, 7/18/17), and coronary heart disease, which affects 7% (CDC, 12/2/19). Altogether, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, up to half of all non-elderly Americans have pre-existing health conditions. So the "some" that are liable to "more severe illness" may amount to "most." How does that work out in reality? A Centers for Disease Control report (3/26/20) looked at domestically acquired cases of Covid-19 in the US from February 12 to March 16—a total of 4,226 cases. (As of March 30, there have been 142,746 cases of the rapidly spreading disease in the US.) Of the 2,449 patients whose ages were known, 70% were under 65. In this group, the hospitalization rate for patients 20–44 was at least 14%; for patients 45–54 and 55–64, it was at least 21%. Among the elderly, the hospitalization rate was about half again as high, rising to a minimum of 31% among those 85 and older. Only patients under 20 had a hospitalization rate comparable to that of influenza, with at least 1.6% of cases in this group going to the hospital. Almost a quarter of the hospitalized patients required intensive care. Of these, nearly half were under 65, with 36% of the intensive care Covid-19 patients aged 45–64 and 12% aged 20–44. Only patients under 20, the report found, never needed intensive care. (Some of those who require intensive care may never recover full lung capacity—ABC, 3/28/20.) These figures need to be understood in the context of the limits of the US hospital system, which has less than a million beds and less than 80,000 intensive care beds. Even a small fraction of adults—elderly or otherwise—catching the coronavirus would risk totally overwhelming US healthcare. The CDC's summary of its data sends a much different message than AP's boilerplate: Covid-19 can result in severe disease, including hospitalization, admission to an intensive care unit and death, especially among older adults. Everyone can take actions, such as social distancing, to help slow the spread of Covid-19 and protect older adults from severe illness. As for AP's claim that "the vast majority of people recover"—of the 142,746 US cases to date, 4,562 have recovered and 2,489 have died; the outcome of the rest has yet to be determined. In China, the only country where a major outbreak seems to have brought under control, 93% of 81,470 cases have been resolved, and of the resolved cases, 4% were fatal. By way of comparison—which AP's glib assurance to the "vast majority" fails to provide—the seasonal flu kills 0.1%–0.2% of people who come down with it. It's possible that the eventual death rate from Covid-19 will be considerably lower than 1 in 25; outside of the epidemic's epicenter in Hubei province, where the healthcare system was initially overwhelmed, the Chinese death rate for resolved cases is 0.9%. But in China, officials moved quickly to pause economic activity, and tested aggressively so asymptomatic carriers could be identified and isolated, thus preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed on a national level. The United States has so far failed to follow this example—and our major national news service lulling readers into a false sense of security delays the time when we will begin to do so. ACTION: Please tell the Associated Press to include a serious warning about the dangers of Covid-19, based on CDC guidelines, in its standard description of the coronavirus. CONTACT: Web Form: Contact the Newsroom Twitter: @AP Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message to AP in the comments thread of this post. Featured Image: AP photo (3/30/20) of a hospital nurse in Bergamo, Italy.

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