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by Lowell
Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, February 18.
- Researchers urge delay in administering Pfizer vaccine’s second dose, cite strong data (“Two Canada-based researchers on Wednesday urged governments to delay administering the second dose of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, which they said had an efficacy of 92.6% after the first dose, as it was not significantly beneficial in the short term.”)
- ‘Wildly unfair’: UN says 130 countries have not received a single Covid vaccine dose (“UN secretary general calls for ‘global vaccine taskforce’ led by G20 in what he says is a ‘moral test’ of world community”)
- Mars Rover Perseverance Hours Away From Daredevil Landing Attempt On Red Planet (“The most advanced robotic astrobiology lab ever flown to another world is nearing the end of its seven-month, 293-million-mile journey.”)
- NASA Mars rover landing seeks new alien life. Here’s how that would change the world. (“The discovery of long-expired Martian bacteria would permanently change humanity’s view of its own importance.”)
- NASA rover will attempt the most difficult Mars landing yet
- Nasa Mars rover: Perseverance robot heads for daunting landing
- After Tricky Landing, New Mars Rover To Scour Ancient Lake Bed For Life Signs
- Biden delivers a snub to Israel’s Netanyahu — and for good reason
- Netanyahu allies with Jewish supremacists ahead of Israeli election (So bad.)
- Facebook will debunk myths about climate change, stepping further into ‘arbiter of truth’ role (How about treating climate science denial the same as COVID denial, etc?)
- Why Deliberately Infect People With the Coronavirus? The U.K. Is About to Test.
- Facebook Blocks News in Australia in Warning for the World (Time for some serious anti-trust action against Facebook and other big tech monopolies. Who’s going to be the early 21st century version of Teddy Roosevelt?)
- ‘Arrogant’ and ‘wrong’: Australia slams Facebook’s move to block news as unnecessary and heavy-handed
- Facebook ‘unfriends’ Australia: news pages go dark in test for global publishing
- Cutting China off from the U.S. would cost America hundreds of billions of dollars, report says
- New Tokyo 2020 chief acknowledges ‘great public concern’ over Games
- Bill Gates says J&J and Novavax Covid vaccines still retain ‘a lot of capability’ against variants
- COVID-19 Cases Are Dropping Fast. Why? (“Four reasons: social distancing, seasonality, seroprevalence, and shots.”)
- Jobless Claims Set to Keep Easing as U.S. Economy Picks Up
- Pandemic cut life expectancy in U.S. by a year during first half of 2020
- Covid-19: U.S. Officials Pledge Almost $200 Million to Track Variants as Lawmakers Push for More
- US govt seizes over 10M phony N95 masks in COVID-19 probe
- Blame Texas Exceptionalism For This Crisis, Not Green Energy
- Texas Republicans lied about the power crisis. We need more investment in renewables — not less. (Yep, MASSIVELY more clean energy please!)
- Texas shows that when you cannot govern, you lie. A lot.
- Big Freeze in Texas Is Becoming a Global Oil Market Crisis
- Texas seceded from the nation’s power grid. Now it’s paying the price.
- Fact Checker: ‘Frozen windmills’ aren’t to blame for Texas’s power failure (Yep, that’s a Big Lie.)
- Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left state’s power grid vulnerable to winter extremes, experts say
- Perry says Texans willing to suffer blackouts to keep feds out of power market (Alrighty.)
- Texas Was Warned a Decade Ago Its Grid Was Unready for Cold (Just a reminder that “Republican governance” is a tragic oxymoron.)
- Texas Clamps Down on Out-of-State Gas Sales Amid Shortages
- Texas Gov. Is More Loyal to the Oil Industry Than to Texans (Utter disgrace.)
- White House announces sweeping immigration bill
- How the battle over redistricting in 2021 could decide control of the U.S. Congress
- The Hill’s Morning Report – Democrats ready mammoth relief bill for 10-day sprint
- The Covid-19 relief bill is also an Obamacare expansion bill (“Millions of Americans could gain health coverage under the Democrats’ stimulus bill.”)
- Biden Orders Review of Trump’s “Assaults on America’s Natural Treasures.”
- The reality-show president has been replaced by one grounded in reality
- Feds investigated Roger Stone ties to Proud Boys as part of possible threat to judge
- U.S. poised to lead utility-scale energy storage market in record year
- Senate Dems take a page from GOP in judicial nominee battles
- Trump ready to make McConnell’s life miserable
- On The Trail: Trump threatens a Tea Party redux
- McConnell’s Strategy Has Party in Turmoil and Trump on Attack
- Trump-McConnell clash threatens to settle into a cold war as GOP eyes midterms
- A congressman used the Ku Klux Klan Act to sue Trump. The lawsuit should be the first of many.
- Why we need a 1/6 commission
- Trump-McConnell rift threatens GOP’s Senate hopes
- Why Democrats aren’t fraidy cats anymore
- Biden picks another Obama veteran to oversee Medicare, Medicaid (” If confirmed, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure would lead $1 trillion agency in second-most powerful post at Health and Human Services Department”)
- The ‘audacious lie’ behind a hedge fund’s promise to sustain local journalism
- The Baltimore Sun was spared a hedge-fund owner. Now it will try to survive as a nonprofit.
- Fox News anchors allow former President Donald Trump to continue lying about the 2020 election
- Trump Avoids Mentioning Dominion, Smartmatic During Right-Wing Media Whinefest
- Federal Judge Dismisses Devin Nunes Aide’s Lawsuit Against CNN (Nunes is a really bad joke.)
- ‘I wouldn’t be complaining.’ Gov. DeSantis threatens to pull coronavirus vaccine from communities that criticize distribution (Another horrendous Republican governor.)
- Rush Limbaugh Taught Republicans to Love an Angry, Racist Bully (Exactly)
- Tell the truth about Limbaugh— he was a blight (“Godfather of GOP hate”)
- Republicans pay tribute to hate-mongering ‘hero’ Rush Limbaugh
- Rush Limbaugh, Bigoted King Of Talk Radio, Dies At 70 (The HuffPo headline nails it.)
- From Limbaugh to Trump: A historian of the right wing explains Rush’s real legacy
- Limbaugh obituaries show the mainstream media still fawning over the people who poisoned politics (The Washington Post, as is often the case, particularly sucked.)
- Rush Limbaugh Spent His Lifetime Speaking Ill of the Dead
- Lame Limbaugh obits: Mainstream media fawns over a toxic bigot who poisoned our politics
- Rush Limbaugh Leaves Behind a Conservative Movement No Longer Interested in Truth. That Alarms Me as a Conservative
- Rush Limbaugh sold listeners a false reality — and we’re all still paying for it
- Rush Limbaugh Was a Blight on America
- Rush Limbaugh Was Trapped in the ’80s(“It’s his fault that our politics were, too.”)
- Allegations of sexist cyberstalking by Trump’s top advisor roils secretive paternity case
- FBI, U.S. attorney in Brooklyn probing Cuomo administration on nursing homes
- Cuomo Faces Revolt After Handling of Nursing Home Deaths
- Former top Homeland Security official responds to whistleblower allegations (Hint: don’t believe a word Ken Cuccinelli says on anything – ever.)
- Kaine and Bennet reintroduce Medicare-X legislation
- As Mail Issues Continue in Central Virginia, Spanberger Calls on President Biden to Make USPS Nominations a First-Class Priority
- Virginia Republicans Continue Opposing Voting Rights as they Double Down on Trumpism
- New “Internal” Jennifer Carroll Foy Campaign Poll: Terry McAuliffe Starts Off Ahead By Wide Margin, But After Positive and Negative Messaging Are Read, Carroll Foy “vaults solidly into the lead”
- Polls Show Large Majority Think Schools Reopening Is Going “About Right” or “Too Quickly,” But VA GOP Gubernatorial Candidates Are Focused On The Republican “Base” and Reopening NOW
- Terry McAuliffe’s past becomes a campaign issue
- Why I Support Mark Herring For Reelection as Attorney General
- Major union that backed Biden in 2020 endorses Foy in Virginia governors race
- DPVA Releases Primary Debate Schedule For Gubernatorial and Attorney General Debates
- Maps, Tables Show Every Virginia School District’s Operational Status From 9/8/20 to 2/16/21
- Northam signs bill to grow vaccinator pool, announces launch of expanded call center for vaccine registration
- Virginia announced a COVID-19 pre-registration system
- Northam unveils new COVID-19 vaccine pre-registration system (“Wednesday, during a COVID-19 briefing, Governor Ralph Northam said the Virginia Department of Health hired 750 people to answer a new vaccine hotline. That number is 877-VAX-IN-VA. It’s staffed from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., 7 days a week.”)
- Pay No Attention to Plastics Industry Lobbyists Behind the General Assembly Curtain
- Wednesday (2/17) Virginia Data on COVID-19 Finds +2,284 Confirmed/Probable Cases (to 555,592), +137 Hospitalizations (to 23,179), +38 Deaths (to 7,075)
- Virginia says no, for now, to letting bicyclists roll through stop signs (“Amid opposition, the Virginia Senate voted to study a proposal that bike advocates said could save lives.”)
- COVID cases are rising on Virginia’s college campuses again
- General Assembly votes to give undocumented students access to college financial aid
- Eileen Filler-Corn and Schuyler VanValkenburg column: We must get kids back in school safely
- Editorial: Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act is a necessary first step
- Editorial: Democrats diminish faith in elections (I’m including this by the Roanoke Times editorial board, but I think it’s really hyperbolic…)
- Reinsurance could be an answer to sky-high premiums. But there’s debate on who should take on the cost.
- Long deadlocked, Virginia lawmakers reach compromise to seal past criminal convictions
- General Assembly Considers Allowing Sunday Voting
- Williamsburg man accused of assaulting officers during U.S. Capitol riots arrested by Norfolk FBI
- After claims of discord and sexism, Virginia Tech to dissolve Student Government Association
- Sleet and freezing rain will hit metro Richmond by daybreak on Thursday. Icy conditions could last well into Friday.
- Heavy snow and sleet make a morning mess, with iciness into early Friday
