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Trump admin funds plasma company based in owner's condo

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Trump administration gave a well-connected Republican donor seed money to test a possible COVID-19-fighting blood plasma technology, it noted the company’s “manufacturing facilities” in Charleston, South Carolina. Plasma Technologies LLC is indeed based in the stately waterfront city. But there are no manufacturing facilities. Instead, the company exists within the luxury condo of its majority owner, Eugene Zurlo.

Zurlo’s company may be in line for as much as $65 million in taxpayer dollars; enough to start building an actual production plant, according to internal government records and other documents obtained by The Associated Press.
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It’s also another in a series of contracts awarded to people with close political ties to key officials despite concerns voiced by government scientists. Among the others: an ill-conceived $21 million study of Pepcid as a COVID therapy and more than a half billion dollars to ApiJect Systems America, a startup with an unapproved medicine injection technology and no factory to manufacture the devices.

In addition, a government whistleblower claimed that a $1.6 billion vaccine contract to Novavax Inc. was made over objections of scientific staff.

At the center of these deals is Dr. Robert Kadlec, a senior Trump appointee at the Department of the Health and Human Services who backed the Pepcid, Novavax and ApiJect projects. Records obtained by the AP also describe Kadlec as a key supporter of Zurlo’s company.
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Top government officials began to take notice of Plasma Technologies after Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and two-time presidential candidate, became part-owner, according to the records and AP interviews.

After Congress supplied hundreds of billions of dollars to combat the pandemic, Santorum stepped up his sales pitch for the company’s method of turning human plasma into a therapeutic product — a process the company has described as a game changer. In mid-August, the federal government awarded Plasma Technologies a $750,000 grant to demonstrate that it could deliver on its promises.

Santorum, who’s held no elective office since 2007, remains influential among social conservatives, a key part of President Donald Trump’s political base.
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Zurlo has deep ties to the Republican Party. He has contributed thousands of dollars to Santorum’s campaigns and to other GOP campaigns and political action committees. He entertained Santorum and his family at the mansion Zurlo used to own on Kiawah Island, an exclusive golf resort in South Carolina.
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Zurlo brought Santorum aboard after the agreement with Abeona fell through. “We’ve got an FDA problem. Can you help me?” Santorum recalled Zurlo telling him.

Righto, drain the swap by pissing billions into it.

Trump’s campaign made stops nationwide. Coronavirus cases surged in his wake in at least five places.

As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake.

The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.

Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before – 9,647 cases, up from 8,069.
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Although there’s no way to determine definitively if cases originated at Trump’s rallies, public health experts say the gatherings fly in the face of all recommendations to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

True, correlation is not automatically causation, but don't dismiss correlation as irelevant.

Now, about entertainment part of it 'He's a salesman': why rallies are Trump's last best hope of clinging to presidency

For Donald Trump, surviving coronavirus has become just another punchline on the campaign trail.

“I had so many doctors and each one of them studied different parts of the body,” the president told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last weekend.

A roar of laughter.

“And I had a moment where almost every one of them was touching me simultaneously.” More laughter. “I didn’t like it!”

More laughter.

“I said, ‘Doc, I wanna to get out of here, I’ve gotta campaign, I’m in the midst of a campaign against ‘Sleepy Joe’. Can you imagine losing to this guy!?”

Cries of “No!” followed by Trump parodying the voice of a doctor, comparing himself to Superman and referencing “Barack Hussein Obama” – cue a chorus of boos.
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Yet on the trail he continues to project the image of a happy warrior cruising to re-election, regaling big crowds with selective poll numbers, bogus conspiracy theories and his own brand of humor. And his base remains loyal to the end with cheers, merriment and chants of “Four more years!”, “Lock him up!” and “Build that wall!”

Can I be picky and ask for, I don't know, maybe Ozzy Osbourne for POTUS instead? I mean, look, he managed his entertainer career way better than Trump, he's also both a better iron man and paranoid than Trump (or Kanye West) was or will ever be.

Some consequences for being a fan don't limit only to the risk of being infected with Covid. One may end in hospital because of cold or hot weather.

Regardless on consequences the show must go on

F(x)tec Pro1 X smartphone runs LineageOS or Ubuntu, features a sliding keyboard (Crowdfunding)

Pro1-X: XDA Developers collaborates to create the world's first Lineage OS and Ubuntu Touch smartphone

SpaceX Starlink internet seeks final approvals to serve Australia

SpaceX has begun applying for Starlink gateway licenses in at least four Australian cities – Broken Hill, Boorowa, Wagin, and Pimba – in one of the final steps needed before Starlink internet can begin operating on the continent.

[...] SpaceX must gain a final, more challenging regulatory approval by obtaining a spectrum license that will allow the Starlink satellites to communicate to ground stations that are based in Australia. The ACMA stated that SpaceX’s “inclusion in the determination does not confer a right on that entity to obtain a license, rather it is a prerequisite before a space apparatus license can be issued.” Carrier license thus in hand, a spectrum license is still needed to ensure that Starlink does not interfere with existing Australian communications services.

SpaceX Starship fires up three Raptor engines in prelude to high-altitude flight

Update: At 1:21am CDT (6:21 UTC) on October 20th, Starship SN8 ignited all three of its Raptors’ preburners, producing a spectacular fireball noticeably larger than the one produced during the rocket’s first October 19th preburner test. A mere two hours later, with no break in between, the steel rocket prototype fully ignited all three Raptor engines for the first time ever, likely producing thrust equivalent to ~90% of a nine engine Falcon 9 booster for a brief moment.

Crucially, aside from physically demonstrating Raptor’s multi-engine capabilities, Starship SN8 – already a first-of-a-kind prototype – completed and survived a static fire seemingly unscathed on its first attempt. If the data SpaceX gathers from the milestone is as good as the test appeared to be, the company could be just a few days away from installing Starship SN8’s recently-stacked nosecone, followed by a second triple-Raptor static fire test. If that second static fire goes well, SN8’s next task will be the first high-altitude Starship flight test.

[...] Curiously, moments before preburner ignition, one of the three Raptor engines appeared to command an aggressive jet-like vent of liquid oxygen identical to a vent seen just a few hours prior during the first aborted preburner test. There’s thus a chance that only two of SN8’s three Raptor engines successfully started their preburners.

More details: Starship SN8 conducts milestone Static Fire test ahead of nosecone install

Update: SpaceX Starship go for nosecone installation forward after historic static fire

This 'Please Like Me.' Women Fire Back: 'No Way.' caught my eye, so I decided to have a closer look

FT seems to indicate women vote is not likely to favor Trump (not only in Pennsylvania)

In this Pennsylvania town, racism 'was quiet.' Then Trump stoked fears of violence - hmm, so blacks voting against Trump is a matter of survival in PA? Gee, great way to make friends, mate!

Even seniors are abandoning Trump in Pa. Downplaying the pandemic was the last straw. - looks like the best Trump can hope is the pandemic to kill all seniors before they vote.

James Hill hardly leaves his home in Philadelphia anymore...
Every few days, he’s back at the kitchen table in Chestnut Hill to write another condolence note memorializing a friend of a loved one he’s lost to this deadly disease, 10 so far.
“Telling us not to be afraid of the coronavirus when so many people in the White House are coming down with it is ridiculous,”

AP says it's the Evangelicals but looks to me like the "non-college educated" is a better description for Trump base.

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Edit: 14day rolling averages in 8 swing states

"The Guardian is collating polls in each of these ​states, as well as another set of national polls. Any polls deemed unreliable – for example, because they have small sample sizes – are excluded."

Washington Examiner (right leaning) "snitches" on GOP Sen. Sasse saying Trump 'kisses dictators' butts' and mocks evangelicals

The convo is linked at the end of TFA, I brought it here for convenience.

Sasse, a possible GOP candidate for president in 2024, is up for reelection on Nov. 3 and is expected to cruise to victory.

In an audio clip of the call, obtained by the Washington Examiner, a female constituent asks Sasse to explain “your relationship with the president” and wonders, “Why do you have to criticize him so much?”

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Sasse spokesman James Wegmann confirmed that his boss made the comments, saying the call occurred earlier this week.

“I don’t know how many more times we can shout this: Even though the Beltway is obsessing exclusively about the presidential race, control of the Senate is ten times more important,” he said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "The fragile Senate seats that will determine whether Democrats nuke the Senate are the races Ben cares about, the races he’s working on, and the only races he’s talking about.”

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Sasse began by criticizing the media. “In his partial defense here, I think that lots of the news media has pretended that COVID is literally the first public health crisis ever. And somehow, it's Donald Trump's fault. That's not true. They just wanted to use it against him," Sasse said.

And then he added: "But the reality is that he careened from curb to curb. First, he ignored COVID. And then he went into full economic shutdown mode. He was the one who said 10 to 14 days of shutdown would fix this. And that was always wrong. I mean, and so I don't think the way he's lead through COVID has been reasonable or responsible, or right.”

Sasse also explored Trump's foreign policy and other issues.

“The way he kisses dictators' butts. I mean, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang. Right now, he hasn't lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers," he said. "The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending, I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He's flirted with white supremacists."

Sasse fretted that Trump and his "stupid political obsessions" could drive the country further to the Left. “If young people become permanent Democrats because they've just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics, or if women who were willing to still vote with the Republican Party in 2016 decide that they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future," Sasse said. "I've spent lots of the, of the last year on a campaign bus, and when you listen to Nebraskans, they don't really want more rage tweeting as a new form of entertainment," he said. "I think the overwhelming reason that President Trump won in 2016 was simply because Hillary Clinton was literally the most unpopular candidate in the history of polling.”

From the horse's mouth

'Sorry sunshine, wrong place' – Winston Peters shuts down American Covid-19 denier at campaign event

The party leader was taking questions from the crowd after giving a speech when a man with an American accent rose to ask for proof that Covid-19 exists.

"Where's your evidence that there is a virus that causes the disease?" the man asked, referencing a scientific method which he believed had not yet been satisfied for Covid-19.

Peters - who had already been short with the man for attempting to ask three questions rather than one - didn't hold back in his answer.

“Sit down, sit down," he said. "We’ve got someone who obviously got an education in America - 220,000 people have died in the US, where there are eight million cases to date. We’ve got 79,000 cases just today, probably in India, and here is someone who gets up and says ‘the Earth is flat’.

“Sorry sunshine, wrong place,” Peters said to applause.

The man then tried to reply but Peters moved on to the next question, telling him: "Quiet, we have manners at our meetings as well."

Take this as a sample with how the world outside US deals with the lunatics.

1. No "teach the controversy", no wasting time with "non-sense is still free speech, rebut it or you're wrong"
2. [see subject]