Scott Atlas is exactly the kind of ‘science expert’ Trump likes …

… because he tells Trump what he wants to hear. But the real scientists among the government’s top health advisors are now openly sounding the alarm about Atlas’s outsize influence with Trump that he is using to spread wrong information.

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday joined fellow White House coronavirus task members Dr. Deborah Birx and Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield in expressing his concerns that President Trump’s new favorite COVID-19 adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, is feeding the President misinformation amid the pandemic.

On Monday, NBC News reported that while on a flight from Atlanta to Washington D.C., Redfield was overheard criticizing Atlas — a neurologist who hasn’t practiced medicine since 2012 — by proclaiming that “everything he says is false” on COVID-19.

Redfield’s reportedly dim view of the President’s favorite COVID-19 adviser comes a week after CNN reported that Birx, another prominent task force member who has managed to stay in the President’s good graces, has become “distressed” over Trump’s admiration of Atlas.

According to CNN, Birx views Atlas as “somebody who matches what (Trump) wants to believe” as the President continues offering a rosy picture of his administration’s COVID-19 response amid the country topping more than 200,000 fatalities from the novel coronavirus.

Trump loves people who can gauge what he wants to believe and then tell him that same thing.

What to look for on election night

The election system in the US is under attack as Trump seeks to preemptively discredit the process so that in the event that he loses, he can claim that the system was rigged against him, despite the manifestly obvious fact that he and the Republicans have gone to great extents to disenfranchise those groups of people whom they think might vote against him (people of color, the poor, and the young) and tilt things in favor of those whom he thinks like him (old, white, religious, suburban, and well-to-do).
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More on Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacists

As I expected, Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy in last night’s disgraceful apology for a debate has been the main topic of conversation today. You have to really see that exchange to appreciate it. Watch Trump get that hunted look in his eyes when he is asked if he will condemn white supremacists, as he tries desperately to think of a way to wriggle out of doing so. Notice that moderator Chris Wallace asks him “”Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down…” But Trump responds with the infamous line to the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by“, that they are now gleefully taking as an endorsement of them.


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Say goodbye to privacy

In an article titled The Big Tech Extortion Racket in the September 2020 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Barry C. Lynn discusses how much information Facebook and Google have on us and how their renting out this information to anyone willing to pay results in us being exploited. He says that by rolling back the anti-monopoly protections that had been in place, Congress has given them enormous power over the digital marketplace.
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Private detention centers should be shut down

Samantha Bee makes the powerful case that these are breeding grounds for appalling abuses and should be abolished. Furthermore, because of the profit motive driving them, people are kept there longer and treated terribly, just so that the corporations that own them can make more money. She goes further and says that ICE should also be shut down because it is part of the problem.

This could have gone very differently, and very badly

Lost in the news about how Trump is both a tax avoider and a failure as a businessman comes the story that police were called to the home of Trump’s former campaign manager and now campaign aide Brad Parscale by his wife because he was heavily armed and had made threats about causing self-harm.

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has been hospitalised after he threatened to harm himself, according to Florida police and campaign officials.

Police were called to the home in Desota Drive in the Seven Isles community of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, late on Sunday afternoon. The home is owned by Bradley and Candice Parscale.

“When officers arrived on scene, they made contact with the reportee (wife of armed subject) who advised her husband was armed, had access to multiple firearms inside the residence and was threatening to harm himself,” Fort Lauderdale police said in a statement.

“Officers determined the only occupant inside the home was the adult male. Officers made contact with the male, developed a rapport, and safely negotiated for him to exit the home.”

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Trump taxes revealed

Trump has long tried to hide his taxes from public view, putting forward one bogus excuse after another. It was never quite clear what he was hiding, whether that he was not as wealthy as he claimed or that he cheated on his taxes or, more likely, both. The New York Times seems to have finally got the information and has released a report that says that Trump paid next to no taxes in the past ten years. They are going to publish analyses of his taxes but not the documents themselves I order to protect the source.
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