Indutex USA says FEMA seized N95 respirators for national stockpile

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,1 Comment

NPR reported last week that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said his state’s order of millions of N95 masks was confiscated at a port in New York.

…George Gianforcaro, owner of the small, Newark, Delaware-based Indutex USA, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not pay him when it took possession of two imported shipments of masks bound for customers across the United States.

Those customers included Delaware nursing facilities, the state of Michigan and boat captains who steer foreign ships through U.S. bays.

…”Let’s not forget I paid $4 million for this product on March 18,” Gianforcaro said, referring to the million-mask order. “This is getting very, very expensive. I don’t have any money and I don’t have any product and there’s people that are asking for it.”

…While FEMA says it targets exporters, Gianforcaro’s customers for the N95 masks are domestic companies or governments, according to a list of purchase orders Gianforcaro shared with The Delaware News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

…Gianforcaro shared a written order that he says FEMA sent to his company. The document directed Indutex to sell to the federal government “all filtering facepiece respirators, including the N95 respirators contained within shipment number 8994645378 that arrived at JFK Airport” on April 6.

…That early April shipment of 100,000 N95 masks was followed by the arrival April 19 of 300,000 additional ones, which also were seized, Gianforcaro said.

Citing Defense Production Act authority, the FEMA document further ordered Indutex to “set aside” all N95 or surgical masks it may come to possess during the federal emergency for a potential sale to FEMA.

[FEMA Administrator Peter] Gaynor’s signature is written along the bottom of the document.

…In the order to Gianforcaro, [FEMA] said the shipment of masks would be sent to the Strategic National Stockpile.

…Last month, Delaware requested 10 million masks and more than 100 million gloves for what it expected to be a months-long fight against the coronavirus. Days later, the federal government asked the state to pare back the request and submit what it would need for a two-week surge.

As of early April, Delaware had been granted less than 1% of what it initially requested, according to leaked federal documents.

…In discussions with FEMA officials, [Gianforcaro] said he proposed a solution in which he could deliver masks to health facilities in the United States as directed by FEMA, rather than federal officials carrying out the logistics themselves. FEMA did not appear to [to be interested in] the proposal, he said.

Indutex USA says FEMA seized N95 respirators for national stockpile

atlantic cover crying uncle sam

The White House tried to move a reporter to the back of the press room, but she refused. Then Trump walked out.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

On Friday, just before the start of the president’s briefing, Collins was ordered to swap seats with Chris Johnson, a reporter for the Washington Blade. Johnson was in the sixth row of the seven-row seating area; Collins was in the front row.

…Johnson, who was acting as the pool reporter for the day, described his involvement in one of his pool dispatches: “Earlier today before the briefing, a White House official instructed the print pooler [Johnson] to take CNN’s seat in the briefing room because the seating would be swapped for the briefing. Given the seating assignment is under the jurisdiction of the White House Correspondents’ Association, not the White House, pooler refused to move.”

…The briefing then went ahead as planned, though Trump declined to take any questions from reporters, and walked off after only 22 minutes, making it the shortest briefing since regular sessions began last month.

…[An] official then suggested the matter would be resolved by the Secret Service,  though no action was taken, according to several people involved in the episode. [Well, duh! Secret Service is the most professional arm of the government. they may have played hard but at work they don’t play. …And they certainly don’t play politics.]

…Over the WHCA’s objections and in violation of social distancing measures, the president earlier this month gave preferential access to a reporter from the One America News Network. The small cable network has a history of favoring Trump in its reporting.

…CNN has long been a target of Trump’s reprisals. In late 2018, Trump banned Jim Acosta, its chief White House correspondent, but a federal court, acting on a CNN lawsuit, said the president’s action was unconstitutional and ordered Acosta reinstated. Trump has also taken action against Collins, banning her from an open press event in 2018 after objecting to questions she asked earlier in the day.

…Acosta called the White House’s tactics on the seating issue “Soviet-style [and] totalitarian-like.” He said it took “almost an act of civil disobedience [by Collins and Johnson] to foil the White House’s plans.”

The White House tried to move a reporter to the back of the press room, but she refused. Then Trump walked out. – The Washington Post

Insane Clown Posse: Models of Pandemic-Era Leadership

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Insane Clown Posse, the vulgar Detroit duo whose super-devoted fans call themselves “Juggalos,” had already been in the news last week for canceling its legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos (scheduled for August) because of COVID-19. Quickly, internet commentators crowed that the band that once rapped “I’m a circus ninja southwest voodoo wizard” was, as The Independent’s headline put it, “being more responsible about coronavirus than Trump.” It’s just the latest example that the portrayals of the president as a clown only end up insulting actual clowns, who probably don’t deserve the abuse. It’s also a sign that Insane Clown Posse is among the few cultural leaders who know that the pandemic-era role they should play is, simply, to tend to the community they’ve built.

Insane Clown Posse: Models of Pandemic-Era Leadership – The Atlantic

hmmm

Race for the White House: What Democrats can learn from Roosevelt vs. Taft

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

If you want to understand why Sanders [was] still running for the Democratic nomination, [after he had already lost] look at the presidential election of 1912, when a war between former President Theodore Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft tore the Republican Party apart and put a Democrat — Woodrow Wilson — in the White House.
“Third parties have a very difficult time in American political history. Third parties sting and then they die.”

…Roosevelt introduced the concept of direct presidential campaigning that year and racked up a series of wins. Until then, candidates had relied on surrogates to get their messages out to the public and at political conventions.

“He [was] promoting the cult of celebrity into politics in a way that has ramifications throughout the 20th century,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

The parties are both too small to give Americans many options and too big to allow anything in between.
If you don’t believe in abortion rights but you do believe climate change is irreparably changing the world, there’s no specific place for you at the national level on Election Day.
If you believe there should be new gun control measures but you don’t want to offer a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, you’re out of luck.

[The Peanut Gallery must interrupt to point out the ridiculous fiction these three paragraphs are predicated upon.

Within a two-party system, a political party is not a monolith. (To drill it down a bit further for all you multi-party parliamentary system advocates out there, its members viewpoints, although varied, almost certainly align more than the view points of many a coalition government.)

One does not belong to or vote for the party which exactly mirrors each political viewpoint one might hold. One votes for the party that is more closely aligned with one’s views. To claim the former is to ignore the representative nature of democracy as a system of government.

Democratically elected representative legislative body enact laws through compromise and only through compromise. There is no winner take all.

We pledge allegiance to the Republic for which it stands, the petulant fantasy of a country of people each of them having their own way all the time.

As you were.

Say a third-party candidate actually managed to split the electoral vote in a presidential election. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives, which is controlled by one or the other of the two dominant political parties, would choose the next president. The [two-] party system has backstops.

OK…. One more pause to vent and throw peanuts.

For the love of Lincoln and FDR, a two-party system functioning in a way which reinforces the dominance of  two parties is not a design flaw. Two parties are kind of the point…

Does anyone pretend to know anything about civics these days, or are we all just pretending governmental systems are something akin to children’s make-believe. they are what ever our whims and preferences say they are?

Echo-chamber of idiots running around, missing the forest for the trees because they’ve convinced themselves they should be in a field.

The parties themselves are ever-evolving, but it seems pretty clear at the moment that there can only be two and whichever one can cram the most ideas into its tent can make a claim at power until people want to leave the tent.

By jove! Is that reality seeping in?

Add to that the massive diversity — geographic, racial, economic and otherwise — of a country of 350 million people. It’s both not reasonable to think two parties can sufficiently represent the viewpoints of Americans and not possible to imagine where a third party would fit.

Nope. At least not for very long. Dipshit, it is both reasonable to assume even a group as massive and diverse as the voting citizenry of the United States can be grouped into one of two group which loosely represent opposing ends of the ideological spectrum and for those parties to change and grow and assimilate new planks to platform to accommodate changing norms in society. Grow up and vote for the group who repsents you best instead of expecting a party to perfect represent one own point of view, Zach.

 

Race for the White House: What Democrats can learn from Roosevelt vs. Taft – CNNPolitics

Mmm,no actually. Interesting anecdotes about Roosevelt though.

 

Global famines of ‘biblical proportions’ will be caused by coronavirus pandemic, UN warns

On By peanutgallerynhIn International Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The world is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions.” The UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.

Famines could take hold in “about three dozen countries” in a worst-case scenario. …Ten of those countries already have more than 1 million people on the verge of starvation.

…”There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.”

The WFP had already warned that 2020 would be a devastating year for numerous countries ravaged by poverty or war, with 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Their updated projections nearly double that number.

…That scenario would push more than 1 billion people into dire situations.

…”Lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to a major loss of income among the working poor,” Beasley said. Overseas remittances will also drop sharply, affecting countries such as Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia, for example.

…Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus, food supplies in some of the most vulnerable regions in the world were being directly affected by impacts such as crop failures and locust swarms. [Yep, locusts. Cue the end of the world comments.]

Exceptional drought followed by extremely heavy rainfall markedly decreased the seasonal crop yield in the Horn of Africa during 2019. These irregular weather and climate patterns also contributed to the worst desert locust invasion in 25 years, which further threatened the crop supply in the region.

Global famines of ‘biblical proportions’ will be caused by coronavirus pandemic, UN warns – CNN

Seriously…. In the middle of all of this… Locusts??! those poor people.

Fired captain sent memo to fewer people than former Navy head alleged: report | TheHill

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Military,Leave a comment

The email from Capt. Brett Crozier was sent to three admirals and copied to seven other captains, according to a copy obtained by the Post. Former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly [lied when he asserted that]  it was sent to “20 or 30” people.

Fired captain sent memo to fewer people than former Navy head alleged: report | TheHill

mmhmm

Trump tweets order to ‘destroy’ Iranian boats. Pentagon calls it a warning.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Middle East,, Military,Leave a comment

Trump announced Wednesday that he had directed the Navy to “shoot down” Iranian gunboats that harass U.S. ships. Pentagon officials said they had received no new directives.

…“What he was emphasizing is all of our ships retain the right of self-defense, and people need to be very careful in their interactions to understand the inherent right of self-defense,” said Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist. [?????!]

“It was a very useful thing he put out,” Norquist added. [?????!]

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten said “the president’s message was crystal clear,” adding, “I like that the president warned an adversary.” [?!!!!]

Trump tweets order to ‘destroy’ Iranian boats. Pentagon calls it a warning.

For the love of….

Labradoodle breeder tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services …assured Americans the U.S. government was prepared.

…..[Sec] Azar is a Republican lawyer who once clerked for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and counts current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a friend. Under George W. Bush, Azar worked for HHS as general counsel and deputy secretary. During the Obama years, he cycled through the private sector as a pharmaceutical company lobbyist and executive for Eli Lilly. After Trump’s first HHS secretary was forced out in a travel corruption scandal, Azar stepped in, in January 2018.

…[Although COVID-19 was] “potentially serious,” Azar assured viewers in America, it “was one for which we have a playbook.”

…He [understated] the pandemic’s severity. He also [overstated] his agency’s preparedness.

…“We developed a diagnostic test at the CDC, so we can confirm if somebody has this,” Azar said. “We will be spreading that diagnostic around the country so that we are able to do rapid testing on site.”

…[The Trump administration] wouldn’t come up with viable tests for [another] five and half weeks.

…The first test created by the CDC, meant to be used by other labs, was plagued by a glitch that rendered it useless.

…Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19: Brian Harrison.

…Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.

The company sells Australian Labradoodles, a breed that is a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. He sold it in April 2018, his financial disclosure form said. HHS emailed Reuters that the sales price was $225,000.

Special Report: Former Labradoodle breeder tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force – Reuters

Labradoodles. What a creative way to launder money.

Muted celebrations as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth turns 94 – Reuters

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, House of Windsor,Leave a comment

Royal birthdays and anniversaries are traditionally marked by ceremonial gun salutes, in which blank rounds are fired from various locations across London, but the queen felt it would be inappropriate to allow this to go ahead given the circumstances.

The latest official figures show that about 16,000 Britons infected with the new coronavirus have died in hospital, the fifth highest number globally. The nation is in its fourth week of lockdown, with most businesses closed and citizens ordered to stay at home.

Muted celebrations as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth turns 94 – Reuters

hmmm