Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Biden's Freudian slip about son clarified by repair team
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trey-go...-foul-play

EXCERPT: "I have, we have, great confidence in our son," responded Biden, referring to his wife, Jill. "I am not concerned about any accusations being made against him. It's used to get to me. I think it’s kind of foul play, but look, it is what it is and he’s a grown man, he is the smartest man I know. I mean, from a pure intellectual capacity – and as long as he’s good, we’re good."

The Biden transition team clarified that Biden was not referring to the investigation as "foul play," but rather was referencing Republicans who have used Hunter Biden's business dealings to go after the president-elect for months... (MORE - details)
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Majority of Americans Think Hunter Biden Story Was Ignored by Media: Poll
https://www.newsweek.com/hunter-biden-in...on-1555232

INTRO: More than half of Americans believe the media purposely didn't report on the federal tax investigation into Hunter Biden until after the election as it would damage his father's change of winning, according to a poll... (MORE)

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Uh... Just realize he's not THAT Michael Moore, though (if you see it in somebody's signature box)
https://twitter.com/mbracemoore/status/1...61?lang=en

Michael Moore: "Joe Biden went from stealing someone’s wife, to stealing speeches, to stealing money, to stealing an election."

Joe Biden Will Be Seen As ‘Impostor’ President Because Election Was Rigged, Former Clinton Adviser Says
https://www.inquisitr.com/6425406/joe-bi...ck-morris/

EXCERPTS: Former Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris seems to agree with their assessment. [...] Morris described the 2020 race as “a fraud being committed in plain sight,” claiming that media is doing all it can to suppress information. He said that the American people will have to come to terms with the fact that they will have an “impostor” commander-in-chief for at least the next four years.

“The message is getting out there even though the media is doing its best to screen it and stop it from getting out there. And, look, we may have a situation with the president of the United States is a transparent fraud, in which he’s a usurper, an impostor, and we may have to live with that for four years.”

Morris said that China and other countries interfered in the electoral process to help Biden win and stressed that investigations into potential irregularities must continue, even if the Democrat is inaugurated on January 20.

“Let’s at least understand who did it to us, and why they did it, and trace it back to China and the other actors who did this,” said Morris, who is writing a book about alleged irregularities in the 2020 race.

[...] in a recent Rasmussen Reports poll, only 37 percent of Republicans said that Trump should concede to Biden. A majority of Democrats and independent voters disagreed. Overall, nearly half of those surveyed said that they believe Democrats stole the election. (MORE - details)

Pat Robertson acknowledges Biden, anticipates President Harris
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...r-BB1c7vDm

EXCERPTS: . . . During an airing of "The 700 Club" on Monday, Robertson, who is considered a Trump ally, responded ... "I think the Electoral College has spoken. ... I don't think the Supreme Court is going to move in to do anything. I think we're going to see a President Biden, and I also think we'll be seeing a President Kamala Harris not too long after the inauguration of President Biden," Robertson continued.

Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent George Thomas later asked Robertson if he thought Trump should run again in 2024, as reports have suggested he has said to allies privately. "I think it will be a mistake," said Robertson. "My money would be on Nikki Haley. I think she'd make a tremendous candidate for the Republican candidate..."

[...] Though still praising Trump, Robertson said the president's behavior had been "erratic," making note of the officials he has fired in the weeks since Election Day. "It would be well to say, 'You've had your day. It's time to move on,'" Robertson said, addressing Trump.

Robertson had previously said in October that God had told him Trump would win the election, after which an asteroid would hit the Earth... (MORE - details)

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Despite Biden’s win, Democrats see grim prospects in final election results
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...r-BB1c6BuJ

EXCERPT: Ultimately, President-elect Joe Biden won the contests that mattered most, besting Trump by 7.1 million votes nationally and scoring pathbreaking wins in Georgia and Arizona. But beneath the surface, despite low approval ratings, high unemployment and a raging pandemic whose handling he had fumbled, Trump’s strength grew among key parts of the electorate.

Those warning signs have dampened the celebratory mood among Democrats enthusiastic about dispatching Trump. Party strategists now speak privately with a sense of gloom and publicly with a tone of concern as the election results become clearer.

They worry about the potential emergence of a mostly male and increasingly interracial working-class coalition for Republicans that will cut into the demographic advantages Democrats had long counted on. They speculate that the tremendous Democratic gains in the suburbs during the Trump years might fade when he leaves office. And they fret that their inability to make inroads in more rural areas could forestall anything but the most narrow Senate majority in the future.

“We just need to acknowledge that Trump’s poison was deeper in the bloodstream of the American electorate than we thought,” said Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, which ran a $62 million ad campaign to hurt Trump among White working-class voters in three northern states that Biden won... (MORE - details)

Biden criticizes slow pace of COVID vaccinations
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/12/29/b...cinations/

INTRO: President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration Tuesday for the pace of distributing COVID-19 vaccines and predicted that “things will get worse before they get better” when it comes to the pandemic. “We need to be honest — the next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, very tough for our nation. Maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” Biden said during remarks in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday.

His comments come as the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 336,000 Americans, with experts warning holiday travel and gatherings could precipitate yet another spike in virus cases even as the virus has already been surging in states nationwide. Biden encouraged Americans to “steel our spines” for challenges to come and predicted that “things are going to get worse before they get better.”

He also went after the Trump administration over its vaccination efforts, warning that the project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, is moving at a slower pace than needed. “As I long feared and warned the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he said.

Earlier this month, Trump administration officials said they planned to have 20 million doses of the vaccine distributed by the end of the year. But according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, just over 11.4 million doses have been distributed and only 2.1 million people have received their first dose. At the current pace, Biden said, “it’s gonna take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.” (MORE)

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U.S. Troops In South Korea Receive Vaccine
https://www.newsy.com/stories/u-s-troops...e-vaccine/

INTRO: The vaccines were voluntary, but were given first to military and civilian health care workers and first responders. Vaccines have reached U.S. troops in South Korea. They received the first vaccinations in the country. There are nearly 29,000 American military personnel stationed in South Korea. The vaccines were voluntary, but were given first to military and civilian health care workers and first responders. At the same time, South Korean health officials reported 40 COVID-19 deaths on Monday. That's the largest daily death count since the pandemic started... (MORE - video)

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Colorado reports first confirmed case of U.K. coronavirus variant
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-...t-n1252508

EXCERPT: The United States on Tuesday reported its first confirmed case of Covid-19 from a variant of the coronavirus that is thought to have emerged from the United Kingdom, a fresh cause for concern as new research has found it to be more contagious than other strains.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that the state identified the case in a man in his 20s with no recent travel history. It's the first known infection from the newly identified strain in the U.S., and most experts say it's likely that more will follow. "There is a lot we don't know about this new Covid-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious," Polis said Tuesday in a news briefing.

It's not uncommon for viruses to mutate, and, indeed, several other variants of the coronavirus have already been reported. But until now, most of the mutations didn't have significant impacts on how the virus spreads or how sick infected people became. [...] Many hospitals in the U.S. are already in crisis. The worry is that a more contagious variant of the virus could increase the number of new cases and put even more pressure on the health care system... (MORE - details)

Frustration over vaccine rollout grows as new variant reported in U.S.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/29/publ...e-rollout/

EXCERPTS: As frustration over the pace of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout continues to build, health officials in Colorado on Tuesday reported the first known U.S. case of the variant of Covid-19 discovered in the U.K. The U.K. variant appears to be more transmissible than other variants of the virus seen to date, and has been detected in a number of countries worldwide...

[...] The discovery will only add to the urgency of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign currently underway, which some public health experts have criticized as going too slowly. The Trump administration has shipped more than 11 million doses of the two available Covid-19 vaccines, but just over 2.1 million people nationwide have received a shot since vaccinations began December 14, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President-elect Joe Biden chastised the Trump administration for its slow rollout of the vaccine in a speech Tuesday. [...] He pledged to “move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction,” and foreshadowed a number of policy efforts he’s likely to take in his first 100 days in office ... He sought, however, to also temper expectations.

In interviews earlier this month, Moncef Slaoui, the chief advisor for the vaccine development and distribution effort known as Operation Warp Speed, had pledged 20 million Americans would be inoculated against Covid-19 in December. Michael Pratt, chief communications officer for Operation Warp Speed, insisted that the vaccine distribution effort is largely on schedule. [...] Pratt pointed to a lag in data reporting as part of the reason for the large gap between the number of vaccines delivered to states and those actually administered. However, state data compiled by the New York also show that most states have administered just a fraction of the vaccine doses they’ve received.

[...] Some vaccine experts, though, said they are not surprised by the speed of vaccine distribution so far. “It had to go this way,” Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told STAT. “We had to trip and fall and stumble and figure this out.”

Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, said [...] “I don’t think it’s bad,” she said of the pace of distribution so far. “I think it was always going to be like this. And I think that this is actually the easy part.”

The logistics of the rollout have been largely left up to states to navigate. States and local public health officials have warned for months that they would need more than $8 billion in additional funding to stand up the infrastructure needed to administer vaccines. The Trump administration instead provided states $340 million in funding to prepare for vaccinations. Congressional lawmakers also balked for months at appropriating additional funding for vaccine distribution, although the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Trump on Sunday included $8 billion in funding for that effort.

“We’re trying to do everything on a shoestring, when really we need vast amounts of money invested. It’s been phenomenal, the needs that should have been taken care of six months ago, so we’re not continuing to build the system as we’re rolling it out,” said Ann Lewandowski of the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative... (MORE - details)