USPS- The new Russian collusion hoax

@Greg: Well, that could be because Democrats in Democrat states have been mailing ballots to EVERYONE, regardless of if they are still alive, still living in the area, eligible or want to vote by mail. THEY have established the conditions to have loads of ballots ready to stuff ballot boxes with as the need arises. There is NO reason not to be voting in person. Democrats have merely established the easiest method of fraud. They cheat. They lie. They steal. They promote violence. They will do ANYTHING to get a grip on power.

@Deplorable Me:

. There is NO reason not to be voting in person.

Didn’t Handsy Joey Biden just come out of his basement to go vote in person? Why yes, yes he did. So if a demented almost 80 year old can vote in person, everyone can.

The only general election poll in which Trump is ahead is, of course, Rasmussen, and there by only one percentage point. All reliable polls have him trailing Biden by anywhere from 5 to 9 points, with his average disadvantage currently 5.9 points.

@Greg, #155:

They’re probably lot more reliable than Trump’s recently resurrected claim that republicans have a replacement healthcare plan for Obamacare that’s better, cheaper, available to everybody, and will be ready to reveal any day now; that prescription drug prices would come down; that Mexico would pay for his wall; that Hillary Clinton would be locked up for her many, many crimes; that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions would be successfully curbed; that he would negotiate a better nuclear deal with Iran than the one he tore up; that he would balance the budget in 8 years; that COVID-19 will just go away; that a vaccine will be ready by the end of October; that he would be so busy he would have no time to play golf as president; and that he would release his tax returns just as soon as the audit was over. Oh yeah… How’s that swamp-draining project coming? He has filled his administration up with swamp creatures.

The polls actually were reliable in 2016. Trump lost the popular election by nearly 3 million votes. A tiny fraction of that number was all it took to leverage the electoral college. That may not be so easy this time around. We’ll see.

Republicans have offered no compromises.

@retire05:

Like a parasitic cancer, greg has now attached himself to this thread diverting the thread topic off course. Soon there will be china virus comments as well as other distractive efforts. Interesting how Curt commented on the previous, “The dishonesty of Socialism…” and greg never went back, instead migrating to this thread.

The last date of posting on this thread until 09/16/2020 was August 22nd, 2020 at 6:45 AM

greg exposes himself for the fraud and liar he/she/it is….

@July 4th American:

greg exposes himself for the fraud and liar he/she/it is…

Oh, it’s worse than that. Comrade Greggie is a true believer. For him, there is nothing greater than the propaganda. It is more important than honesty, self respect, or honor. He peruses the threads and if he thinks he can inject his Communist propaganda, he will try to resurrect a threat months, even years old. He is the typical Communist.

@July 4th American:

Who, me? Divert a thread topic? Never would I do such a thing.

But “Handsy Joey Biden” has to do with DeJoy’s plot to slow down mail processing and delivery, right?

Trump made rumor, lies, conspiracy theory, and outright slander his favorite political tools in 2016, while the media and the people he targeted tried to keep to a higher set of standards. That didn’t work out so well, and he has kept right on using them. It was a lesson learned. You can’t play nice with a playground bully who cares nothing for the truth and has always viewed attentiveness to ethical behavior as an exploitable weakness.

The difference is that in Trump’s case it’s an entirely truthful and objective description—an assessment that can be backed up with an enormous volumes of evidence. But Trump’s cult following will never understand that, because their inability to recognize a scam when they encounter one is the very thing that Trump targets and exploits. An accomplished con man recognizes that attribute like a shark smells blood in the water. He will always his base whatever he calculates they want to hear, knowing that carries far more weight with them than objective truth. If you tell them what they want to believe, they will find their own reasons to believe it.

September 17, 2020 – C.D.C. Testing Guidance Was Published Against Scientists’ Objections

A controversial guideline saying people without Covid-19 symptoms didn’t need to get tested for the virus came from H.H.S. officials and skipped the C.D.C.’s scientific review process.

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a C.D.C. product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield.

But officials told The Times this week that the Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and then “dropped” it into the C.D.C.’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process.

“That was a doc that came from the top down, from the H.H.S. and the task force,” said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. “That policy does not reflect what many people at the C.D.C. feel should be the policy.”

The document contains “elementary errors” — such as referring to “testing for Covid-19,” as opposed to testing for the virus that causes it — and recommendations inconsistent with the C.D.C.’s stance that mark it to anyone in the know as not having been written by agency scientists, according to a senior C.D.C. scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of repercussions.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s testing coordinator and an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, the C.D.C.’s parent organization, said in an interview Thursday that the original draft came from the C.D.C., but he “coordinated editing and input from the scientific and medical members of the task force.”

Over a period of a month, he said, the draft went through about 20 versions, with comments from Dr. Redfield; top members of the White House task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx; and Dr. Scott Atlas, President Trump’s adviser on the coronavirus. The members also presented the document to Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the task force, Admiral Giroir said.

He said he did not know why the recommendation circumvented the usual C.D.C. scientific review. “I think you have to ask Dr. Redfield about that. That certainly was not any direction from me whatsoever,” he said.

The C.D.C. emailed a statement from Dr. Redfield on Thursday night that said: “The guidelines, coordinated in conjunction with the White House Coronavirus Task Force, received appropriate attention, consultation and input from task force experts.

The question of the C.D.C.’s independence and effectiveness as the nation’s top public health agency has taken on increasing urgency as the nation approaches 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic and Mr. Trump continues to criticize its scientists and disregard their assessments.

A new version of the testing guidance, expected to be posted Friday, has also not been cleared by the C.D.C.’s usual internal review for scientific documents and is being revised by officials at Health and Human Services, according to a federal official who was not authorized to speak to reporters about the matter.

Similarly, a document, arguing for “the importance of reopening schools,” was also dropped into the C.D.C. website by the Department of Health and Human Services in July and is sharply out of step with the C.D.C.’s usual neutral and scientific tone, the officials said.

The information comes mere days after revelations that political appointees at H.H.S. meddled with the C.D.C.’s vaunted weekly reports on scientific research.

“The idea that someone at H.H.S. would write guidelines and have it posted under the C.D.C. banner is absolutely chilling,” said Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting director at the Centers for Disease Control in 2009.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the agency during the Obama administration, said, “H.H.S. and the White House writing scientifically inaccurate statements such as ‘don’t test all contacts’ on C.D.C.’s website is like someone vandalizing a national monument with graffiti.”

The vast majority of C.D.C. documents are still carefully created and vetted and are valuable to the public, but having politically motivated messages mixed in with public health recommendations undermines the institution, Dr. Frieden said. “The graffiti makes the whole monument look pretty bad,” he said.

The current guidelines on testing, posted on Aug. 24, said people without symptoms “do not necessarily need a test” even if they have been in close contact with an infected person for more than 15 minutes. Public health experts roundly criticized the C.D.C. for that stance, saying it would undermine efforts to contain the virus.

Yeah, but testing would undermine the idiot in the White House’s “herd mentality” approach. Apparently Scott Atlas has filled his head up with nonsense. The problem with this approach is that it would up the projected total number of U.S. COVID-19 fatalities into the 1-2 million range, based upon the percentage of the population that would have to be exposed to achieve the desired effect, and the percentage of those exposures that would statistically result in fatal illness. Needless to say, the cumulative associated healthcare costs of all of those seriously ill Americans would be astronomical.

“Suggesting that asymptomatic people don’t need testing is just a prescription for community spread and further disease and death,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, which usually works closely with the C.D.C.

Some experts also said the recommendation appeared to be motivated by a political impetus to make the number of confirmed cases look smaller than it is.

Dr. Redfield later tried to walk back the recommendation, saying testing “may be considered for all close contacts,” but his attempts only added to the confusion. The language on the C.D.C.’s website remained unchanged.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, normally a close partner of the C.D.C., strongly criticized the recommendation on testing. “We’ve communicated that to the C.D.C. and H.H.S., but I have not seen any signs that they’re going to change it,” said Amanda Jezek, a senior vice president at the organization.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Dr. Redfield said the agency was revising the recommendation and would post the revision, “I hope before the end of the week.” The revision was written by a C.D.C. scientist but was being edited on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House coronavirus task force, according to a federal official familiar with the matter.

Dr. Redfield also said at the Wednesday hearing that vaccines would not be widely distributed till next year and that face coverings were more effective than vaccines — assertions that Mr. Trump sharply criticized in a press briefing Wednesday evening, saying Dr. Redfield “made a mistake.”

The director has been described by C.D.C. employees and outsiders as a weak and ineffective leader who is unable to protect the agency from the administration’s meddling in its science or from the public’s increasing mistrust in the agency.

“It feels like a setup,” the C.D.C. scientist said, adding that many scientists within the agency feel it is being made to take the blame for the administration’s unpopular policies.

“C.D.C. scientists are running scared,” Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said. “There’s nothing they can do that gets them out of this blame game.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also often been criticized during the pandemic, for being too slow and cautious in issuing recommendations for dealing with the coronavirus. That’s partly because every document is cleared by at least one individual on multiple relevant teams within the agency to ensure the information is consistent with the “current state of C.D.C. data, as well as other scientific literature,” according to a senior agency scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In all, each document may be cleared by 12 to 20 people within the agency. “As somebody who reads them regularly and as somebody who has written things with C.D.C., I can tell you that the clearance process is painful, but it’s useful,” said Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University. “It’s very detail oriented and very careful and they, quite frankly, improve the documents.”

At least eight versions of the current testing guidance were circulated within the agency in early August, according to officials. But staff scientists’ objections to the document went unheard. A senior C.D.C. official told the scientists, “We do not have the ability to make substantial edits,” according to an email obtained by The Times. The testing guidance was then quietly published on the agency’s website on Aug. 24.

After the new guidance was published, media inquiries to the agency about its contents were directed to the Department of Health and Human Services, prompting speculation about its origins. C.D.C. scientists were asked to make sure other pages on the website were consistent with the new recommendations. And a “talking points” memo circulated within the agency on Sept. 1 instructed employees to say that the C.D.C. was involved in developing the new guidance “with suggested comments and edits shared back with HHS and the White House Taskforce.”

That sort of instruction would not have been necessary had the document been written by the C.D.C. staff, according to experts familiar with the agency’s procedures. “Never seen that talking point before,” a C.D.C. scientist said.

The recommendation also asked people who “have attended a public or private gathering of more than 10 people (without widespread mask wearing or physical distancing)” to get tested only if they are “vulnerable.” The agency in fact recommends against people congregating in such groups, and its scientists avoid using the term “vulnerable” to describe at-risk groups, according to a C.D.C. scientist familiar with the agency’s procedures.

The guidance is also nested within the section intended for health care workers and labs, but addresses the general public and makes several references to “your health care provider.”

“We just looked so sloppy,” the scientist said. “That’s what kills me is it didn’t come from the inside.”

Experts who work closely with the C.D.C. said the mistakes were obvious.

“You’re used to reading Shakespeare and all of a sudden now you’re reading a tabloid,” Dr. del Rio said. “There was political pressure on C.D.C. in the past, but I think this is unprecedented.”

We’re also used to having policy guided by science. Unfortunately that’s been trumped by politics—a change made possible by a voter base that doesn’t have a clue what science actually is.

Now Democrats are sending out ballots with incorrect names on them. Every trick in the book. Fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud fraud. Nothing but fraud. Democrats have totally given up on ever winning a fair and honest election again.

@Greg: Biden tells such a massive lie that even WaPo calls him a liar, and he does it as he swears there is data to back him up. Biden is either a pathological liar or simply a puppet of liars. Oh, and he lied on CNN, who did not even question him, so citing them as “fact checking” anyone is ludicrous.

Biden said, straight faced and as if he actually believed anyone would believe it, that if Trump had “acted sooner” (apparently, as soon as the virus was known was not soon enough) that NO ONE would have died from the virus. NO ONE. That’s how stupid your candidate thinks you are. Of course, CNN just let it ride; no “fact checking”, no questions, no challenge. Because Biden can lie as much as he wants to on liberal media, and Biden knows it. That’s why he felt safe saying such a totally stupid thing.