Politics And Current Events

[grunthy]

Who the **** is that? Are we supposed to care about random blue check marks again?

[Troy Loney]

A blessed twitter account

[grunthy]

Ah I see. Just a ****** that gets dumb liberals riled up.

[Dickie Dunn]

KW Miller seems to refer to himself as KW Miller a lot.

[faftorial]

[faftorial]

Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so

Robert S. Mueller III served as special counsel for the Justice Department from 2017 to 2019.

The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.

Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy. It was critical that they be investigated and understood. By late 2016, the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled to a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate. And the FBI knew that the Russians had done just that: Beginning in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen by Russian military intelligence officers from the Clinton campaign. Other online personas using false names — fronts for Russian military intelligence — also released Clinton campaign emails.

Following FBI Director James B. Comey’s termination in May 2017, the acting attorney general named me as special counsel and directed the special counsel’s office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The order specified lines of investigation for us to pursue, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. One of our cases involved Stone, an official on the campaign until mid-2015 and a supporter of the campaign throughout 2016. Stone became a central figure in our investigation for two key reasons: He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of emails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers.

We now have a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate. We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

Uncovering and tracing Russian outreach and interference activities was a complex task. The investigation to understand these activities took two years and substantial effort. Based on our work, eight individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities, including senior Russian intelligence officers, were charged with federal crimes.

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information. Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its witnesses. When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those efforts.

We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law. The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

KW Miller seems to refer to himself as KW Miller a lot.

Makes kenny the kangaroo want to relocate to Florida and voter for this m fer

[nocera]

[Troy Loney]

This whole thing would be too stupid for idiocracy. The press and his campaign is lauding him profusely because they know if he gets good coverage for wearing a mask, he’ll keep doing it.

[count2infinity]

It’s almost as if a certain segment of the population eat up every damn word he speaks and his words/actions matter a little bit. Weird.

[eddy]

This is good

Thanks for doing the bare minium four months and 100,000 deaths later you absolute waste of a human.

[Lemon Berry Lobster]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

[AuthorTony]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Serious question - Is there any evidence that those patients lead to more cases/deaths? These are nursing home patients that contracted covid and were sent to the hospital, so covid was already rampant in their care facility. I'm just wondering if there's any proof that their return after "recovering" actually led to more cases.

[grunthy]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Serious question - Is there any evidence that those patients lead to more cases/deaths? These are nursing home patients that contracted covid and were sent to the hospital, so covid was already rampant in their care facility. I'm just wondering if there's any proof that their return after "recovering" actually led to more cases.

https://www.propublica.org/article/fire ... ding-to-it

States that issued orders similar to Cuomo’s recorded comparably grim outcomes. Michigan lost 5% of roughly 38,000 nursing home residents to COVID-19 since the outbreak began. New Jersey lost 12% of its more than 43,000 residents.
In Florida, where such transfers were barred, just 1.6% of 73,000 nursing home residents died of the virus. California, after initially moving toward a policy like New York’s, quickly revised it. So far, it has lost 2% of its 103,000 nursing home residents.

[Troy Loney]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Not to dismiss how terrible tragic this was, but we are six months into trying to address the pandemic and there are 60k+ cases a day because of active spread. Is there any rational basis for denying that widespread facial coverings would have kept this disaster from the current trajectory.

Seems like a complete non sequitor to me

[willeyeam]

We've been over the nursing home thing. Cbear covered it

Everybody agrees with nobody that a COVID+ person shouldn't be sent into a LTCF.
But to beat up people that allowed or mandated that to happen is to ignore some reality when focusing on the effects of doing so:

A person in a LTCF gets sick. They go to the hospital and get tested. Now, they're either sick enough they need to stay and rehab or they aren't admitted and go back to the LTCF.
First, they got the virus in the LTCF, so it was already there and being passed around when their symptoms got bad enough to warrant testing.
Second, if they came to the hospital and weren't admitted, then their condition didn't medically call for it and they didn't receive results for days anyways. So you're supposed to use a hospital bed for days waiting on results, for a possible COVID+ patient, who's symptoms didn't necessitate an admit?
Third, if they were admitted, there was enough demand for hospital beds to try to turn people around as soon possible. So once they no longer need hospital level services, they were discharged to where they came from. In many cases that would have been the LTCF where they contracted the virus originally so it's not a reintroduction.
Is there a situation where a patient living at home successfully, contracts COVID and goes to the hospital, and is discharged into a non-hospice LTCF? If such a situation exists I have a hard time imagining its statistically significant.

So yes, admitting a COVID+ patient into a LTCF is a bad idea. Any new admit should have been denied with a positive test. But the effect of patients returning while possibly not having fully shed the virus is likely to be a drop in the ocean in terms of the viral load present at that facility.

Finally, I'd wager 98% of those people are on Medicare. There are very exact allowances for stays, billing, etc. for hospital care on Medicare. That's all run by Fedgov. If we're going to play perfect hindsight, Medicare could have absolutely changed their billing practices to provide an incentive to keep elderly COVID patients at the hospital longer to promote complete recovery (which could require frequent testing, at a time tests were not abundant). They had already stopped paying for "elective" procedures to free up hospital space, alterations in allowable billing weren't a hurdle.

[AuthorTony]

I know more people died in those states but the outbreaks were also much higher in those states as well. People in nursing homes were getting COVID there, then sent to the hospital, then returned after "recovering." I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I haven't seen the numbers.

That article has a snippet:

Three days after Diamond Hill was informed of its first case, six other residents tested positive, suggesting the virus had been present at the home for days, maybe weeks. The resident with COVID-19 who was returned to the home might have provided more fuel for the virus’s spread.

That's where I'm coming from. These nursing homes already had COVID inside their facilities. We all know incubation can be 2 weeks from first exposure so the explosion of deaths/new cases could certainly have been brewing for weeks prior to the infected patients being returned to the facility.

I think it was a terrible call either way, just looking for numbers outside of the soundbites.

[grunthy]

We've been over the nursing home thing. Cbear covered it

Everybody agrees with nobody that a COVID+ person shouldn't be sent into a LTCF.
But to beat up people that allowed or mandated that to happen is to ignore some reality when focusing on the effects of doing so:

A person in a LTCF gets sick. They go to the hospital and get tested. Now, they're either sick enough they need to stay and rehab or they aren't admitted and go back to the LTCF.
First, they got the virus in the LTCF, so it was already there and being passed around when their symptoms got bad enough to warrant testing.
Second, if they came to the hospital and weren't admitted, then their condition didn't medically call for it and they didn't receive results for days anyways. So you're supposed to use a hospital bed for days waiting on results, for a possible COVID+ patient, who's symptoms didn't necessitate an admit?
Third, if they were admitted, there was enough demand for hospital beds to try to turn people around as soon possible. So once they no longer need hospital level services, they were discharged to where they came from. In many cases that would have been the LTCF where they contracted the virus originally so it's not a reintroduction.
Is there a situation where a patient living at home successfully, contracts COVID and goes to the hospital, and is discharged into a non-hospice LTCF? If such a situation exists I have a hard time imagining its statistically significant.

So yes, admitting a COVID+ patient into a LTCF is a bad idea. Any new admit should have been denied with a positive test. But the effect of patients returning while possibly not having fully shed the virus is likely to be a drop in the ocean in terms of the viral load present at that facility.

Finally, I'd wager 98% of those people are on Medicare. There are very exact allowances for stays, billing, etc. for hospital care on Medicare. That's all run by Fedgov. If we're going to play perfect hindsight, Medicare could have absolutely changed their billing practices to provide an incentive to keep elderly COVID patients at the hospital longer to promote complete recovery (which could require frequent testing, at a time tests were not abundant). They had already stopped paying for "elective" procedures to free up hospital space, alterations in allowable billing weren't a hurdle.

I believe Florida immediately transfers their LTCF people out if it starts having an outbreak. They bar transferring positive patients.

[grunthy]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Not to dismiss how terrible tragic this was, but we are six months into trying to address the pandemic and there are 60k+ cases a day because of active spread. Is there any rational basis for denying that widespread facial coverings would have kept this disaster from the current trajectory.

Seems like a complete non sequitor to me

Is there any rational to denying that some policies by NY, NJ, MI, MA, PA, and such exacerbated the situation and killed thousands if not tens of thousands more than should have died?

[Trip McNeely]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Not to dismiss how terrible tragic this was, but we are six months into trying to address the pandemic and there are 60k+ cases a day because of active spread. Is there any rational basis for denying that widespread facial coverings would have kept this disaster from the current trajectory.

Seems like a complete non sequitor to me

Is there any rational to denying that some policies by NY, NJ, MI, MA, PA, and such exacerbated the situation and killed thousands if not tens of thousands more than should have died?

Always. The. Same. Always.

[willeyeam]

Here's this exact discussion to save everyone the time

viewtopic.php?p=788189#p788189

[grunthy]

Yep he sure is responsible for the four states that sent covid infected people to nursing homes...

Not to dismiss how terrible tragic this was, but we are six months into trying to address the pandemic and there are 60k+ cases a day because of active spread. Is there any rational basis for denying that widespread facial coverings would have kept this disaster from the current trajectory.

Seems like a complete non sequitor to me

Is there any rational to denying that some policies by NY, NJ, MI, MA, PA, and such exacerbated the situation and killed thousands if not tens of thousands more than should have died?

Always. The. Same. Always.

Yeah. You are a broken record.

[count2infinity]

When grunts reaches the “I know you are, but what am I?” part of his argument everyone should just walk away.

[Trip McNeely]

When grunts reaches the “I know you are, but what am I?” part of his argument everyone should just walk away.

[grunthy]

When grunts reaches the “I know you are, but what am I?” part of his argument everyone should just walk away.

I didn't start antagonizing anyone. So not sure why I am singled out...