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tomorrowusa · 3 months

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Just so nobody can say this is out of context, here's a vid of the entire interview.

The Obama administration successfully contained the Ebola outbreak in the United States. The death toll for Ebola in the US was under a dozen. So before leaving office, the Obama National Security Council created a 69-page handbook on how to deal with a pandemic. Trump and his flunkies ignored it with disastrous results.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

The US death toll from COVID-19 is in seven digits. Other industrialized countries with advanced technological infrastructure such as Canada, Taiwan, Germany, and New Zealand had lower fatality rates per capita.

Trump largely ignored the virus until well into March when it had a chance to spread across the US.

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life The president was aware of the danger from the coronavirus – but a lack of leadership has created an emergency of epic proportions

The Trump administration, at best, was in denial; at worst, it sabotaged the pandemic response.

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Trump White House made 'deliberate efforts' to undermine Covid response, report says

Trump zombies who claim the economy was marvelous under Trump conveniently forget about everything that happened after February of 2020. Trump's early bungling of the pandemic plunged the economy into recession. The COVID supply chain problems and the economic stimulus required to prevent a depression led to the spurt in inflation which is finally receding.

People who are nostalgic about taking hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, drinking bleach, and sticking UV lights up their butts must be excited about the opportunity to vote for Trump again.

#donald trump #botched pandemic response #covid-19 #coronavirus #public health #anniversary of trump's awful covid-19 response #gross incompetence of the trump administration #the trump recession #trump tanked the economy #trump is a loser #vote blue no matter who #election 2020 #election 2024

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ukrfeminism · 1 year

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2 minute read

The number of people seeking treatment for porn addiction has trebled since the pandemic, according to new figures. More than 36,000 people sought support for porn addiction with UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT) - Britain's biggest private rehab provider - in 2021.

This is up from around 10,500 in 2020 - a rise of nearly 250 per cent. The proportion of women seeking treatment rose from 25 per cent to 38 per cent during the period.

Major cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Leeds had the highest figures in the country. But nearly all areas covered in the UKAT data saw their numbers at least double - and the company can no longer meet demand.

One patient, Tom, 38, told BBC Radio Newcastle he spent over £100,000 on a cocaine and pornography addiction and was watching sex videos for up to 15 hours a day. "Once I got cocaine I just had to watch porn for that rush," he said. "It really affects your libido in real life, sometimes nothing happens because you're so anxious.

"It affected me being with women, because I was so used to watching porn. Addiction is a disease, it's an illness. I was just a mess, just absolutely broken. "One night I spent £2,000 in lockdown on escorts and cocaine - that was my worst night but over the years it's well over £100,000 on the drugs and porn."

UKAT, which treats over 3,000 people for addiction every year, says help for pornography is now the second most common addiction men seek help for behind alcohol. Director Simon Stephens said: "The first thing I say to clients is that this is not always about sex, this is about learning how to deal with emotions in a way that is less destructive.

"Availability of this material that allows people to create a stimulus that creates dopamine in the brain, one of the effects of that is to surpress feelings. We can offer a small amount of help but in no way can we meet demand."

UKAT says the coronavirus pandemic fueled online addictions, including pornography.

Nuno Albuquerque, a treatment consultant from UKAT, said: "Self-isolation and restrictions had a big impact on people, on their well-being and mental health and we can't lose sight of that, living on fear and uncertainty sees addictions grow - and porn for some was a coping mechanisms, especially as couples in some cases, could not be together with space for intimacy."

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 3, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

On Saturday, April 1, the emergency measures Congress put in place to extend medical coverage at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic expired. This means that states can end Medicaid coverage for people who do not meet the pre-pandemic eligibility requirements, which are based primarily on income. As many as 15 million of the 85 million people covered by Medicaid could lose coverage, although most will be eligible for other coverage either through employers or through the Affordable Care Act. The 383,000 who will fall through the cracks are in the 10 states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

The pandemic prompted the United States to reverse 40 years of cutbacks to the social safety net. These cuts were prescribed by Republican politicians who argued that concentrating money upward would promote economic growth by enabling private investment in the economy. That “supply side” economic policy, they said, would expand the economy so effectively that everyone would prosper. In 2017, Republicans passed yet another tax cut, primarily for the wealthy and for corporations, to advance this policy.

As the economy fell apart during the coronavirus pandemic, though, it was clear the government must do something to shore up the tattered social safety net, and even Republicans got on board fast. On March 6, 2020, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, allocating $8.3 billion to fund vaccine research and give money to states and local governments to try to stop the spread of the virus. On March 18, he signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which provided food assistance, sick leave, $1 billion in unemployment insurance, and Covid testing. On the same day, the Federal Housing Administration put moratoriums on foreclosure and eviction for people with government-backed loans.

On March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which appropriated $2.3 trillion, including $500 billion for companies, $349 billion for small businesses, $175 billion for hospitals, $150 billion to state and local government, $30.75 billion for schools and universities, individual one-time cash payments, and expanded unemployment benefits.

Trump signed another stimulus package on April 24, 2020, which appropriated another $484 billion. And on December 27, 2020, he signed another $900 billion stimulus and relief package.

When he took office, President Joe Biden promised to rebuild the American middle class. He and the Democratic Congress began to shift the government’s investment from shoring up the social safety net to repairing the economy. On March 19, 2021, he signed the American Rescue Plan into law, putting $1.9 trillion behind economic stimulus and relief proposals.

Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Law, also known as the Bipartisan infrastructure Act, on November 15, 2021, putting $1.2 trillion into so-called hard infrastructure projects: roads and bridges and broadband.

On August 9, 2022, he signed the CHIPS and Science Act, putting about $280 billion in new funding behind scientific research and the manufacturing of semiconductors. And days later, on August 16, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Law, putting billions behind addressing climate change and energy security while also raising money to pay for new policies and to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, funding the Internal Revenue Service to stop cheating, and permitting Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

This dramatic investment in the demand side, rather than the supply side, of the economy helped to spark record inflation, compounded by supply chain issues that created shortages and encouraged price gouging. To combat that inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates. Numbers released Friday show that inflation cooled in February, suggesting that the Federal Reserve is seeing the downward trend it has been hoping for, although there is concern that the sudden decision of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this weekend to slash production of crude oil might drive the price of oil back up, dragging prices with it.

That investment in the demand side of the economy also meant that the child poverty rate in the U.S. fell almost 30%, while food insufficiency fell by 26% in households that received the expanded child tax credit. The U.S. economy recovered faster than that of any other G7 nation after the worst of the pandemic. Wages for low-paid workers grew at their fastest rate in 40 years, with real income growing by 9%. MIddle-income workers’ wages grew by only between 2.4% and 3.9% after inflation, but that, too, was the biggest jump in 40 years. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 1969, and a record 10 million people have applied to start small businesses.

This public investment in the economy has attracted billions in private-sector investment—chipmakers have planned almost $200 billion of investments in 17 states—while it has also pressured certain companies to act in the public interest: the three major insulin producers in the U.S., making up 90% of the market, have all capped prices at $35 a month.

As the economy begins to smooth out, Biden and members of his administration are touting the benefits of investing in the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out.” They have emphasized that they are working to support unions and the rights of consumers, taking on “junk fees,” noncompete agreements, and nondisparagement clauses. After the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the administration has suggested that deregulation of banking institutions went too far, and Biden has continued to push increased support for child care and health care.

A recent Associated Press–NORC poll shows that while 60% of Americans say the federal government spends too much money, they actually want increased investment in specific programs: 65% want more on education (12% want less); 63% want more on health care (16% want less); 62% want more on Social Security (7% want less); 58% want more spending on Medicare (10% want less); 53% want more on border security (23% want less); and 35% want more spending on the military (29% want less).

This puts the political parties in an odd spot. A week ago, Biden and members of the administration began barnstorming the country to highlight how their policy of “Investing in America” has been building the economy: “unleashing a manufacturing boom, helping rebuild our infrastructure and bring back supply chains, lowering costs for hardworking families, and creating jobs that don’t require a four-year degree across the country,” as the White House puts it.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are doubling down on the idea that such investments are a waste of money, and are forcing a fight over the debt ceiling to try to slash the very programs that the administration is celebrating. Ignoring that the 2017 Trump tax cuts and spending under Trump added about 25% to the debt, they are focusing on Biden’s policies and demanding that the government balance the budget in 10 years without raising taxes and without cutting defense, veterans benefits, Social Security, or Medicare, which would require slashing everything else by an impossible 85%, at least (some estimates say even 100% cuts wouldn’t do it).

As David Firestone put it today in the New York Times: “Cutting spending…might sound attractive to many voters until you explain what you’re actually cutting and what effect it would have.” Republicans cut taxes and then complain about deficits “but don’t want to discuss how many veterans won’t get care or whose damaged homes won’t get rebuilt or which dangerous products won’t get recalled.” Firestone noted that this disconnect is why the House Republicans cannot come up with a budget. “The details of austerity are unpopular,” Firestone notes, “and it’s easier to just issue fiery news releases.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#kookaid #Republican Kool-Ade #budget #Federal Government spending #pandemic #medicare #medicaid #income inequality #Corrupt GOP

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titoist · 10 months

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it is 10:40am & i am standing by my window & idly staring into the sky. the only identifiable sound beyond passive owl hooting (i have heard this sound so much & so consistently throughout the mornings of my life that i have learned to simply accept it as another passive fixture of the landscape) are the dull vibrations of cicadas (this, however, is somehow still notable to me) i am remembering a morning from… i believe, may of 2019. there's no real parable or moral lesson to be gleamed from this memory. i think i basically just feel like dryly recounting it. it was 7:34am & i had very recently returned home after a weeklong trip to my grandfather's estate. i do not remember much of the trip itself beyond fits of aimless shouting in the car-ride home. this was around the time that my grandmother had decided to spend more time with us. the can of fanta i had decided to drink to soothe my nausea immediately after tumbling out of the backseat & into that fourth story apartment was still sitting half-full on the nightstand behind my chair, in front of my bed. i did not turn my back at all in this memory, nor was there at any point any other real stimulus from which i could gleam that the can of fanta was still there. but i distinctly feel its presence in that version of my room nonetheless.

this was at a point where my desk was incredibly tiny, compact, pressed up against a corner between a window to my right & a bookshelf to my left. very little space was offered. a word that came to mind in describing it was "suffocating", but i don't think it was. that small allotted piece of space was supremely comforting. when i received a larger desk at some later point in the winter of that year, i remember being briefly extremely upset, agonied, like there was some physical wound on my brain bleeding out, like a very real part of me had actually died. notably, i remember a feeling of grief or guilt, a feeling like i had been too careless & accidentally killed someone, & now it was gone forever. the desk came to serve as the physical personification of a vague feeling of simple & unconditional contentment, & now that the desk was gone the feeling naturally accompanied it through the door.

i was sitting by that desk, head faced rightwards, & looking through the window. this was my childhood apartment, so the view was still that of a business center's eaves, flanked in front by the leaves of a tree that i could reach out & physically touch if i so wanted, & behind by the remains of an old abandoned hotel with burned out neon lettering on its rooftop. eventually, somewhere down the line in 2020, a young investor with money to spare would renovate the hotel & reopen it with all the modern chitz & vang befitting it. this happened during a period in the coronavirus pandemic where i went for extended periods of time without opening the curtains or really going out at all, so opening the windows up one day & being suddenly greeted with the blinding lights of the new hotel felt like some horrifying injoke i wasn't in on.

this was an early spring morning, so it was clear - but distinctly not sunny. this was during a period where i was obsessed with meticulous self-archivation. no unique moment could pass without me making a mental note of it, turning it around in my mind, taking a photo or video of it so that i would be able to recall what the moment in question felt like. particularly, i remember looking out at the sky & feeling very burdened by all of it. it felt like there was a giant tapestry of myself i was lugging around everywhere, a physical embroidery that i very much wanted to serve as a simulacra of my life. the idea of being the only one who would get to experience all of this qualia felt very cruel, & like a distinct barrier. the endgoal of the tapestry was to be able to push it into someone's hands, watch them study it with vague nods of approval every now & then, before being able to say decisively they understood now. but the feeling of staring into that morning made this burden seem very irrelevant & far away, & the sky was like a blanket wrapping against my skin always

it has been approx. 1,521 mornings since then.

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 2 years

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Meghan Markle was NOT invited to be a member of the 50 celebrity women/mothers who signed & published a letter to Joe Biden in the Jan 2022 NYT in support of Reshma Saujani's: Marshall Plan for Moms: "Moms are the bedrock of society. And we're tired of working for free"

A mother of six is speaking out against an effort to create a "Marshall Plan for Moms" by giving mothers $2,400 stimulus checks, arguing that it devalues motherhood and sends the wrong message.

Noelle Mering, co-author of the book, Theology of Home II: The Spiritual Art of Homemaking and co-creator of the Theology of Home ministry, explained her opposition to the Marshall Plan for Moms in an interview with The Christian Post.

The push to enact a Marshall Plan for Moms comes nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused millions of Americans to experience economic hardships.

In an op-ed published by The Hill in December, Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, called on the Biden administration to implement a "monthly, means-tested $2,400 monthly payment to the women who are the bedrock of our economy and our society." The monthly stimulus payments were just one part of Saujani's proposal, which she referred to as the Marshall Plan for Moms.

The term Marshall Plan refers to the post-World War II initiative spearheaded by the United States to rebuild war-ravaged Western Europe.

"Each day, about 45 million women in this country show up to a job where they regularly work overtime, are paid nothing, and get no time off. Their job title is mother. It's time to pay them for their labor," Saujani asserted.

The movement to create a Marshall Plan for Moms continued to gain popularity as 50 women penned a letter to President Joe Biden, which was published as an ad in The New York Times in January. Notable signatories included actresses Connie Britton, Eva Longoria, Alyssa Milano, Julianne Moore, Amy Schumer, Amber Tamblyn, Charlize Theron and Gabrielle Union.

"Moms are the bedrock of society. And we're tired of working for free," they wrote. Illustrating the need for a Marshall Plan for Moms, the women argued that "COVID has decimated so many of our careers. Two million of us have left the workforce, at a rate four times that of men in September alone. Millions more have been forced to cut back our hours or work around the clock to keep our jobs and be full-time caregivers."

The women asked Biden to address the "national crisis" and "establish a task force to create a Marshall Plan for Moms, implement a short-term monthly payment to moms depending on needs and resources, (and) pass long overdue policies like paid family leave, affordable childcare and pay equity." They concluded the letter by declaring: "It's time to put a dollar figure on our labor. Motherhood isn't a favor and it's not a luxury. It's a job."

#meghan markle #prince harry #joe biden #hunter biden #barack obama #michelle obama #eva longoria #sussex #netflix #biden

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cultml · 2 years

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globalcourant · 2 years

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Investors look ahead to Jackson Hole

The 10-year Treasury yield moved lower on Monday as investors looked ahead to the Jackson Hole economic symposium. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was down about 2 basis points at 2.968% at 6:14 a.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond traded lower by 1 basis point to 3.21%. Yields move inversely to prices, and a basis point is equal to 0.01%. The yield on the…

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healthandwealthonline · 19 days

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Coronavirus updates: US deaths hit 114; Americans may get $1000; Nevada closes casinos; NYC consider shelter-in ... - USA TODAY

A stimulus could soon put cash in American pockets, New York might consider a shelter in place order, and idled NBA star Kevin Durant says he has tested positive as the coronavirus once again dominated the global landscape Tuesday, with deaths in the U.S. surpassing the 100 mark.President Donald Trump, speaking at the White House, promised to help thousands of workers facing furloughs and…

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ananovareviews · 4 months

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Attorney General James Warns New Yorkers to Remain

Alert Against COVID-19 Vaccine and Stimulus Scams Fraudulent Actors May Send Malicious Messages and Phishing Emails While Attempting to Access Consumers’ Personal Information NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James alerted New Yorkers today to remain vigilant against potential scams related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health crisis. As more New Yorkers become…

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head-post · 5 months

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EU sanctions as a stimulus for the Russian economy

The Russian economy has recovered from the sanctions, Bloomberg reports. In the fourth quarter of 2023, its growth exceeded all expectations. These processes indicate the limitations of the measures introduced by the West.

Russia’s economic growth and rising consumer demand, backed by strong government spending, have allowed a whole range of businesses – from banks to the auto industry to airlines – to not only survive but, in some cases, even grow despite US and European restrictions designed to sink the country’s economy.

On Wednesday, the Federal Statistics Office said annual growth accelerated in the third quarter from 4.9 per cent to 5.5 per cent. The result – the fastest pace of growth in more than a decade, excluding a brief blip when Russia lifted a quarantine after a coronavirus pandemic – exceeded the expectations of all economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

This rapid recovery shows the limitations of the sanctions, which US President Joe Biden said were supposed to cut the Russian economy in half and turn the ruble into “rubble” as punishment for starting a war in Ukraine in February 2022. President Vladimir Putin has strengthened ties with countries such as China and India as the European Union has severed trade ties with Russia, including oil and gas imports, through several sanctions packages.

The ruble hit a record low immediately after the fighting began, but soon regained its footing.