Republican Senator from Louisiana John Kennedy has always been the type of person whom one would definitely NOT want to meet in a dark alley. Kennedy has this whole “Aw shucks, I’m so stupid” thing down pat. Many say it’s act. I’ve always maintained it couldn’t be because the man seemingly loves being perceived that way. It may have STARTED as an act, but it has taken the senator over.

Senator Kennedy is being mocked a bit right now. And that’s because of something he said about nobody’s favorite Twitter troll, Elon Musk. Kennedy appeared upset at AOC. That’s nothing new. The GOP is always upset at her for one thing or another.

But Kennedy was in the middle of praising Elon Musk. And then he said the following to Fox Non-News. “He’s tough as a pine knot. He’s got oranges the size of beachballs.” Say WHAT?

Oranges the size of beachballs. Let’s just take that in for a moment. Both the comment and the fact it was a sitting United States Senator who said it. Of course, this odd and somewhat creepy quote made it to Twitter. And faster than one could say freaky, Twitter was on it:

“Which century does he lives in?”

“cartoon character come to life.”

“The south called, and they want their weird phrasing back.”

“One of the elves escaped the north pole.”

“Dude went to Oxford. Blows my mind.”

“”His voice gives me hives.”

“What was he drinking before this interview?”

“Is he auditioning for hee-haw?”

“1925 needs to come to get this whipper-snapper.”

‘Why is Senator Kennedy so gross?”

“wuuuuttt?”

“Maybe he’s been taking ivermectin.”

“He needs to keep his citrus fantasies on the down low.”

“Senator Kennedy is a walking cartoon character.”

“Uncle hillbilly!”

“Is he Lindsey Graham’s brother?”

As you can see, Twitter is having a field day with Kennedy’s remarks. And much as I dislike the guy, he can always be counted on for a bit of amusement.

The post GOP Senator John Kennedy just found a whole new way to humiliate himself appeared first on Palmer Report.

MOSCOW, Idaho (NewsNation) — As the search for suspects continues in the killings of four college students in Idaho, a void of new information is being filled by unfounded accusations from armchair detectives.

Some people in the city of about 25,000 are suggesting innocent individuals are responsible for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. All four were stabbed to death in a rental home near the University of Idaho campus. Some have even pointed fingers and named names.

A man dubbed “The Hoodie Guy” by online detectives has been a source of speculation. Law enforcement in Moscow says they are aware of that rumor. A neighbor has also felt the wrath of online speculation. Police have cleared both individuals.

California father Darnell Hicks knows all too well how this works in the age of social media. After two deputies were shot, his phone blew up after someone in Malaysia began claiming on the internet that Hicks was the gunman.

And the re-posts quickly piled up.

”Whoever keeps framing me … making it seem like I shot two sheriffs when I was out dirt biking all Saturday … Come on now,” he said.

Retired FBI agent Kathy Guider says not only does this kind of speculation have the potential to ruin lives, it slows down investigations.

”Somebody’s got to track [the unfounded internet postings] through those threads. And sometimes those threads are hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments, and somebody’s then got to go read them,” she said.

Hicks went on to file libel lawsuits against three people who posted on social media, along with suits against Facebook and Twitter.

(NewsNation) — The city of Denver has issued an emergency declaration after hundreds of undocumented migrants came to the mile-high city unexpectedly.

The recent migrant influx is putting a strain on the city’s resources to the tune of of more than $800,000. Migrants have been trickling into the city over the past several months, and most recently a bus carrying 90 immigrants arrived.

Denver mayor Michael Hancock said Friday on “Rush Hour” that the city is need of volunteers, staff and space to handle the number of people that are seeking assistance at homeless shelters.

“We are in dire need of volunteers to help staff the facilities,” Hancock said. “Had it not been for some of the NGOs, nonprofit profits and faith-based organizations, our city would have been certainly at the brink if not broken in terms of trying to provide services.”

Some 800 migrants have arrived in Denver since Dec. 9, Hancock said, forcing the city to convert two of its largest recreational centers into shelters. City staff are being reassigned to work at the shelters, diverting them from their regular duties.

“Once we activate our emergency operations center, they leave their title roles and they go fill roles either in the operation center or they could be reassigned as other duties are needed,” Hancock said. “They’re not going back to their desk, but many of them are working exorbitant hours because we are short-staffed in our shelter centers.”

The migrants’ arrival in Denver comes as others have been bused north from Texas and Arizona to cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. The governors of those states have said northern states should share in the responsibility of assisting the migrants who are arriving at the southern border in record numbers.

Hancock said there’s no indication that Denver is the latest city to be included in that effort.

“It seems to be loosely coordinated between the migrants and asylum-seekers themselves and some nonprofit partners on the ground in El Paso, Texas,” Hancock said. “They’re coming in at our homeless shelters, and as a result because of the surge we had to set up these separate shelters.”

More than 2.37 million migrant encounters were logged at the southern border in fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022, a 37% jump from the previous year. Several Biden administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have described the southern border as being “secure” despite the increase in arrivals.

Local officials and law enforcement on the ground have repeatedly expressed their frustration over the issue, and Hancock did, too. He said the the city of Denver is more than happy to assist migrants, but he urged the federal government to put the right tools and resources in places to help achieve that goal.

“When we have 110, 170 people showing up in one night and it continues to be a constant cadence, it overwhelms our system. I can’t imagine what the mayor of El Paso, Texas, is having to deal with, 5,000 coming in,” Hancock said. “Congress literally needs to put aside their partisan politics and come to the rescue of these individuals, but also help these cities and states server their purpose in helping these individuals.”

(NewsNation) — COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency nearly three years ago, and although researchers and medical professionals have made strides in prevention and treatment, it’s unclear when the virus could level out.

As of Friday, the U.S. was home to a weekly average of more than 5,400 hospitalizations and 2,700 deaths attributed to COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 231,435 deaths attributed to the virus this week, compared to 463,203 deaths during the same time last year, according to the CDC.

Getting to endemic levels of infection could still be years away, and it’s sure to require more research and new recruits to the medical field, said Craig Klugman, a health sciences professor at DePaul University.

“It’s not going away,” he said. “And so we need funding and we need people to do that work.”

What does ‘endemic’ mean?

“Endemic” is a term used to describe the amount of a particular disease that is usually present in a community. Essentially, it’s the baseline, constant presence of a disease within a specific region. The virus’ presence becomes steady and predictable, not unlike the regular flu season.

There’s no general consensus on the conditions for meeting that benchmark, according to the Center on Foreign Relations.

It’s noteworthy, too, that infection rates can still remain high in an endemic so long as they’re static.

Are we close?

It’s hard to know. A virus like COVID-19 will require much more research to understand and predict, Klugman said.

“We’re still having 350 deaths per day and we’re still having tens of thousands of cases every day,” he said. “We’re still at a very high level. COVID is still one of the top five causes of death in the United States. I’m not sure that’s the place that we want to be at.”

What experts do know is this: The more transmission there is, the more mutations there are. The more mutations there are, the more likely it is that a variant will develop that can evade the drugs and vaccines currently in place to fight COVID-19, Klugman said.

That means in the meantime, precautions such as wearing a mask, staying up to date with vaccines and boosters and being mindful of large gatherings offer the best chance of curbing transmission.

“We don’t get to decide,” Klugman said. “The virus decides. We have to have patience, kindness and compassion for ourselves and for others as we go through this threat to our lives and to the way we’re used to living. It’s not going to be back to normal for a very long time. So we need to adapt just the way that virus adapts.”

What would it take to get there?

It can be easier to identify endemic levels retroactively, once that baseline level of infection has had a chance to establish itself.

Sometimes this happens when the community is protected by prior infection or vaccination. In the U.S., however, just more than 14% of people eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine have received an updated booster shot, according to the CDC.

Heading into the winter season, however, some researchers at Johns Hopkins are projecting 60,000-70,000 COVID-19 and flu hospitalizations during a peak weak near the end of December.

Health experts have also raised concerns about vaccines’ reduced efficacy against newer COVID-19 variants should they continue to develop.

That’s part of the reason experts are warning against prematurely treating the virus as endemic.

“It is a privilege to say that you’re done with it,” Klugman said. “There are people who are seniors, people who are immunocompromised, people who have multiple health conditions, who don’t get that luxury.”

Health officials have cautioned the public to maintain COVID-19 safety measures as the winter season and its indoor holiday gatherings approach.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the administration’s Winter Preparedness Plan, which included efforts to expand access to tests and vaccines. Although COVID-19 isn’t as disruptive as it was when it first emerged, Biden on Thursday emphasized that the virus has continued to evolve.

“Cases are on the rise again as families are spending more time indoors and gathering for the holidays,” the White House said in an official statement. “Throughout the COVID-19 response, this Administration has been prepared for whatever the virus throws our way — and this moment is no different.”

A defendant charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol has been indicted on charges of conspiring with a second man to kill the FBI agents investigating him, the Department of Justice said on Friday.

Edward Kelley, the 33-year-old Jan. 6 defendant, and Austin Carter, 26, are both charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, solicitation of a crime of violence and making threats across state lines.

“Today’s allegations that individuals sought to attack and hurt or kill FBI personnel are sickening. FBI employees honorably perform their duties protecting the American public and upholding the Constitution and they should be able to execute these duties without threats of violence,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a written statement.

Both men were ordered detained during an initial court appearance on Friday in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee.

An attorney representing the men could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Friday evening.

Prosecutors say Kelley and Carter obtained a list of federal agents taking part in the investigation into Kelley and discussed plans to kill them with a cooperating witness. The cooperating witness was not identified in the court papers.

The two men are also accused of discussing with the cooperating witness a possible attack on the FBI’s field office in Knoxville.

Kelley is among hundreds of defendants who have been charged in connection with the violent Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over incumbent Donald Trump.

He is charged with physically assaulting a U.S. Capitol police officer at the capitol and breaking a window of the building to gain entry. Kelley has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The search for the remaining 12 campers caught in Friday’s deadly landslide at an unlicensed campsite in Malaysia continued for a second day after an overnight halt due to bad weather, officials said.

At least 21 people, including five children, were killed after a landslide in Batang Kali, a popular hilly area about 50 km (30 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur, tore down while people slept in their tents.

There were 94 people caught in the landslide but 61 were safe, with 12 still missing, according to the Malaysia National Disaster Management Agency.

Search and rescue operations were suspended around 12.00 a.m. on Saturday due to unfavourable weather and resumed at 7.00 a.m. (2300 GMT), the fire and rescue department said.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told reporters late on Friday the government would provide 10,000 ringgit ($2,261.42) in aid to families of every person killed in the tragedy, while survivors would receive 1,000 ringgit per household.

An initial investigation showed an embankment of about 450,000 cubic metres of earth had collapsed. The earth fell from an estimated height of 30 metres (100 ft) and covered an area of about an acre (0.4 hectares).

The Forestry Department in several states ordered the closure of campsites considered as high risk, as well as hiking and off-road driving trails following the disaster.

Landslides are common in Malaysia, but typically only after heavy rains. Flooding occurs often, with about 21,000 people displaced last year by torrential rain in seven states.

($1 = 4.4220 ringgit)

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While the former guy loved to talk about American greatness and the return of manufacturing jobs to the US, that sector of the economy actually went into recession mode under his watch – and it happened even before everything shut down due to COVID. Under President Biden, however, we’re seeing a whole lot of manufacturing jobs return to the US in record numbers.

The latest breakthrough happened on Tuesday when the Department of Energy announced a $2.5 billion loan to Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture between both General Motors and LG Energy Solutions for making lithium ion battery cells, which will be built in factories throughout Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee.

“This loan will jumpstart the domestic battery cell production needed to reduce our reliance on other countries to meet increased demand and support President Biden’s goals of widespread EV adoption and cutting carbon pollution produced by gas-powered vehicles,” said the U.S. Dept. of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

While Republicans under Trump were trying to subsidize the backwards and dangerous coal industry in order to keep baiting a largely white base of voters into voting Republican, this administration clearly has its eye on the future and by 2024, the party will have a lot to run on for re-election.

The post Score another one for Joe Biden appeared first on Palmer Report.

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is finalizing plans to build an electric vehicle assembly plant in an industrial area of northeastern Mexico and may announce the factory as early as next week, Bloomberg News reported late Friday.

The plant will be located in Santa Catarina in Monterrey city, the capital of Nuevo Leon state in Mexico, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Final details are still being worked out, and the talks with the company have involved both the state government and Mexico’s foreign relations ministry, the report said.

It is unclear what models Tesla would produce in the Mexican factory or when it would begin production, Bloomberg said. Details could be announced in coming days, it said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in October that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk was considering investing in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, which borders Texas.

Musk held a meeting in the state with Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia along with other local officials, and Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, one of the sources said.

China’s abrupt lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions could result in an explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023, according to new projections from the U.S.-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

According to the group’s projections, cases in China would peak around April 1, when deaths would reach 322,000. About a third of China’s population will have been infected by then, IHME Director Christopher Murray said.

China’s national health authority has not reported any official COVID deaths since the lifting of COVID restrictions. The last official deaths were reported on Dec. 3.

Total pandemic fatalities stand at 5,235.

China lifted some of the world’s toughest COVID restrictions in December after unprecedented public protests and is now experiencing a spike in infections, with fears COVID could sweep across its 1.4 billion population during next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.

“Nobody thought they would stick to zero-COVID as long as they did,” Murray said on Friday when the IHME projections were released online.

China’s zero-COVID policy may have been effective at keeping earlier variants of the virus at bay, but the high transmissibility of Omicron variants made it impossible to sustain, he said.

The independent modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle, which has been relied on by governments and companies throughout the pandemic, drew on provincial data and information from a recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong.

“China has since the original Wuhan outbreak barely reported any deaths. That is why we looked to Hong Kong to get an idea of the infection fatality rate,” Murray said.

For its forecasts, IHME also uses information on vaccination rates provided by the Chinese government as well as assumptions on how various provinces will respond as infection rates increase.

Other experts expect some 60% of China’s population will eventually be infected, with a peak expected in January, hitting vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, the hardest.

Key concerns include China’s large pool of susceptible individuals, the use of less effective vaccines and low vaccine coverage among those 80 and older, who are at greatest risk of severe disease.

Disease modelers at the University of Hong Kong predict that lifting COVID restrictions and simultaneously reopening all provinces in December 2022 through January 2023 would result in 684 deaths per million people during that timeframe, according to a paper released on Wednesday on the Medrxiv preprint server that has yet to undergo peer review.

Based on China’s population of 1.41 billion, and without measures such as a mass vaccination booster campaign, that amounts to 964,400 deaths. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.22283460v1.full.pdf

Another study published July 2022 in Nature Medicine by researchers at the School of Public Health at Fudan University in Shanghai predicted an Omicron wave absent restrictions would result in 1.55 million deaths over a six month period, and peak demand for intensive care units of 15.6 times higher than existing capacity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01855-7

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there are 164 million people in China with diabetes, a risk factor for poor COVID outcomes. There are also 8 million people aged 80 and older who have never been vaccinated.

Chinese officials are now encouraging individuals to get boosted from a list of newer Chinese-made shots, however, the government is still reluctant to use foreign vaccines, Huang said.

China’s National Health Commission said on Friday it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators and essential drugs.

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A federal judge on Friday tossed a lawsuit by a group of medical professionals alleging that a fellowship program established by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) to improve diversity within its higher ranks discriminates against white and Asian-American applicants.

Do No Harm, a group opposed to what it calls “radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideologies” in healthcare, alleged the drugmaker’s Breakthrough Fellowship Program was discriminatory because only Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans could apply.

But U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon in Manhattan ruled the Virginia-based non-profit failed to show it had legal standing to sue Pfizer as it would not identify by name any members of its group who could not apply to the program due to their race.

She said instead that it submitted “perfunctory” declarations from two anonymous white and Asian-American students at unnamed Ivy League universities “with little to no details about their career and educational goals, employment history, or interests.”

She said even if the two members were identified, Do No Harm had failed to establish they were qualified to apply to the fellowship program, which aims to increase the pipeline of Black, Latino and Native American leaders at the drugmaker.

Rochon, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, said Do No Harm, regardless, lacked standing to pursue the federal claims it asserted under several federal civil rights and anti-discrimination laws.

Representatives for both Pfizer and Do No Harm did not respond to requests for comment.

Pfizer launched the fellowship in 2021. Fellows receive two years of full-time jobs, fully funded master’s degrees, and employment at New York-based Pfizer after completing the program. It aims to enroll 100 fellows by 2025.

The lawsuit was filed in September, a month before the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a pair of cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that could determine the future of affirmative action in higher education.

The Supreme Court, which has 6-3 conservative majority, appeared receptive to arguments by challengers to the universities’ race-conscious admissions policies.

Do No Harm was launched last April, saying it wants to “stop this infiltration of politics in the healthcare system and particularly into medical education before it impacts quality and access to care.”