N.S.A. (News|Stories|Analytics)

2021-10-07 17:25:13 Joe Biden Failing on Major U.S. Crises While Pushing Stalled Multitrillion-Dollar Spending Agenda Open / Comment

2021-10-06 22:14:45 Joe Biden Heading Toward Clash With Progressives Over Hyde Amendment

President Joe Biden could be heading for conflict with progressive Democrats after he indicated on Tuesday that he would be willing to sign a social spending bill that contains the Hyde Amendment.

The amendment bans federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the woman's life. Most Democrats, particularly progressives, are opposed to the amendment, though Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has said the spending bill will fail without it.

While the fight over the social spending bill (current a $3.5 trillion package) has mainly focused on the price tag, the Hyde Amendment has emerged as another flashpoint that has exposed divisions within the party.

The bill—often referred to as the reconciliation bill, after the budget process that will allow Democrats to push it through along party lines—contains provisions to expand Medicaid, and bills dealing with Medicaid generally include the Hyde Amendment.

Biden was asked by a reporter at the White House on Tuesday: "Are you OK if the Hyde Amendment is in the reconciliation bill?"

The president replied: "I want to get the bill passed."

The reporter asked if he would sign the bill if the Hyde Amendment were included and Biden said: "I'd sign it either way." Open / Comment

2021-10-06 20:44:44 OPINION

Why the U.S. pandemic playbook was no match for COVID

COVID-19 deaths and cases are starting to decline and some experts are projecting that the worst of the delta surge is over, thanks to a combination of vaccine uptake and natural immunity.

However, recent experience warns against complacency. This (not-so-novel-anymore) coronavirus and its variants have wreaked havoc and could continue to.

And the country urgently needs to upgrade its pandemic response capabilities to prevent future infectious calamities, argues former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb.

In his new book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic, Gottlieb revisits the federal response to the COVID crisis from his post-government perch as a health care venture capitalist, media commentator, and member of Pfizer's board — the company that launched one of the first safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19.

Along the way, he recounts the science, the policies, the successes, and notable failures in our country's pandemic preparation — and makes a strong case that we need to already be planning ahead for more pandemics. Open / Comment

2021-10-06 19:16:45 Open / Comment

2021-10-06 01:47:45 “F*ck Joe Biden and De Blasio” chants outside NY Department of Education over vaccine mandates.

@TrumpNewsLive Open / Comment

2021-10-06 01:10:45 Open / Comment

2021-10-06 00:14:45 President Joe Biden campaigned last year on a promise to unite Americans, but nearly two-thirds of voters say the country is now more divided.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 64% of Likely U.S. Voters believe America has become more divided since the last election. Only 11% think the country is more united than before the election, while 23% say the level of division is about the same. Open / Comment

2021-10-05 22:04:45 School Shootings Nearly Double as Students Return From Remote Learning

For more than a year, millions of American children were forced to pivot to online learning as schools across the nation shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic.

Remote classes brought a multitude of challenges, ranging from computer and broadband internet access to dramatic declines in test scores to tremendous tolls on students' mental health and well-being.

So when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged schools to fully reopen for the fall, the recommendation was widely hailed by students, teachers and parents alike.
But the return to in-person learning has renewed another conversation: going back to school comes with the threat of potential school shootings.

"Over the past year, as we were sent home, one of the things that everybody thought was, 'Oh this is so nice, I don't have to think about where I would run in my bedroom.' But now that we're coming back into school, back in person, those conversations are happening again," Peren Tiemann. a high school junior from Oregon, told Newsweek.

And the anxiety surrounding increased school gun violence can be backed up by data as schools reopen. Data collected by Everytown For Gun Safety has found that the 2021 back-to-school period has seen the highest number of gunfire incidents on school grounds—a figure that has nearly doubled from the previous high.

he non-profit has analyzed the number of gun incidents on campuses between August 1 and September 15 of every school year since 2013.

In that time frame this year, there were 30 instances of gunfire on school grounds, killing five and wounding 23. The 2019 back-to-school period previously held the highest number of occurrences with 16 incidents taking place in those first six weeks of fall. Open / Comment

2021-10-05 21:20:45 Facebook blamed a global service outage that kept its social media apps offline for much of Monday on a problem with its network configuration. https://bloom.bg/2YmQD5a

European natural gas and power soared to fresh records amid worsening fears over supply. https://bloom.bg/3lcxs7j

And U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris as America looks to move past a spat over a defense agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom. https://bloom.bg/2ZSUqYR Open / Comment

2021-10-05 19:57:45 Facebook Lost About $65 Million During Hours-Long Outage

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went dark Monday—bringing the economic engine of Facebook, Inc. to a halt.

The outage began around 12:30 eastern and ended a little more than five hours later. So how much damage did that do to Facebook?

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope estimate: about $65 million. To get here, I reasoned that since Facebook brought in $29.1 billion in revenue during the second quarter, it’s collecting about $970 million a month in sales. About $313 million per day—or roughly $13 million per hour. (Like the ads business itself, my math isn’t perfect: It doesn’t account for weekly, monthly or seasonal timeframes where Facebook could be earning a little more or less.)

The outage took a bigger hit on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal figures. As Facebook stock slid 4.8% in trading Monday, Zuckerberg’s fortune declined by $5.9 billion. (He remains the world’s sixth richest person.)
Facebook’s mighty business model, the one capable of generating almost a billion dollars a day in revenue, will be shoved into the spotlight by Congress Tuesday morning. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager at the company, will testify before a Senate subcommittee and detail allegations that Facebook ignored internal research about how its platforms promote toxic content and harm their users. Open / Comment