Saturday, May 09, 2020
Headlines for May 8, 2020
Worst, Most Misleading & Funniest Headlines for May 8, 2020
*Venezuela’s Maduro says two Americans captured in failed invasion attempt
*Venezuela claims to have captured two Americans involved in failed invasion
“Maduro says”? “Venezuela claims”? Both articles confirm everything even including the names of the Americans!
ABC News ran an “Americans ‘captured’?” caption over a photo of the captured Americans!
Any nonsensical claims about Venezuela, like US claims of Maduro being involved in drug-trafficking, are run by the corporate media without question. But even obvious facts must be doubted if they go against U.S. foreign policy.
But the prize for trivialization goes to the BBC:
*Venezuela detains two US citizens over speedboat incursion
*An Incursion Into Venezuela, Straight Out of Hollywood
No. If it were “straight out of Hollywood”, the plucky freedom-fighting Americans would have succeeded against all odds.
*Kim Jong Un appears to be alive after all. So why did CNN and other news outlets report he was on his deathbed?
The WaPo, unlike many others, wasn’t filled with “Kim is dead” stories, but they did run at least one story based on the premise he was:
*Why we shouldn’t rule out a woman as North Korea’s next leader
*Leaked ‘Five Eyes’ dossier on alleged Chinese coronavirus coverup consistent with US findings, officials say
*Intel shared among US allies indicates virus outbreak more likely came from market, not a Chinese lab
*Australia hits back at US claim linking coronavirus to Wuhan lab
The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document. “But the government appears to be walking a diplomatic tightrope, declining to back up the claim while also not wishing to antagonise its US allies – given that Donald Trump and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have claimed there is enormous evidence for the theory. Speculation about the possible involvement of the US embassy in distributing the dossier to News Corp has raised the diplomatic temperature.”
*U.S. Treasury To Borrow $3 Trillion In 3 Months To Pay For Pandemic
The word "borrow" is misleading in the extreme:
*How the Government Pulls Coronavirus Relief Money Out of Thin Air
"The Fed will be the biggest buyer by far of the bonds the government will sell to fund this spending…But the Fed isn’t an ordinary bondholder: By law, it has to pay its profits to the Treasury.
That means when the Treasury makes payments on bonds held by the Fed — either paying interest or paying it off at maturity — almost all the money eventually moves back to the Treasury.
When a government bond is involved, the cash moves from one government pocket to another.
“Once the central bank buys them, it’s as if the Treasury never issued them in the first place,” said Dr. Kelton, who was an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. “For all intents and purposes, they’re retired.”
*Trump says he learned a lot from Nixon: 'Don't fire people'
Really?
*Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.
LOL
Least surprising headline of the week:
*Push for Profits Left Nursing Homes Struggling to Provide Care
As Putin Dallies, Russia’s Small Businesses Are Withering Away
Subhead: The Russian president, who seems to share the traditional Soviet view of entrepreneurs as “swindlers,” is doing little to help them through a coronavirus lockdown.
Compare to:
Small-Business Aid Funds Run Dry as Program Fails to Reach Hardest Hit
Original headline: Daily Death Toll Will Nearly Double by June, Trump Administration Models Predict
As States Move to Reopen, 2 Projections Show Deaths Rising
Subhead: The Supreme Court hears a case remotely for the first time. An internal Trump administration report projects about 200,000 new cases [and 3000 deaths] each day by the end of the month.
NOT an “internal Trump administration report”.
Draft report predicts covid-19 cases will reach 200,000 a day by June 1
A draft government report projects covid-19 cases will surge to about 200,000 per day by June 1, a staggering jump that would be accompanied by more than 3,000 deaths each day.
The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disavowed the report, although the slides carry the CDC’s logo. The creator of the model said the numbers are unfinished projections shown to the CDC as a work in progress.
The work contained a wide range of possibilities and modeling was not complete, according to Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who created the model. He said he didn’t know how the update was turned into a slide deck by government officials and shared with news organizations.
