Tag: cbs news
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

‘Funerals And Funerals’: Florida Mortuaries Overwhelmed By Delta Variant Dead

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

One of the ways to gauge the severity of a COVID-19 surge in a particular state or city is how busy funeral homes become — and in Florida, according to CBS News, employees of funeral homes are absolutely swamped.

In July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that one in five new COVID-19 cases in the United States was occurring in Florida. Ron DeSantis, Florida's far-right Republican governor, has been receiving a great deal of criticism for his response to the COVID-19 surge; DeSantis has opposed social distancing measures, forbidden public schools from having mask mandates, and tried to score cheap political points with his MAGA base by railing against expert immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

CBS News' Khristopher J. Brooks explains, "In the last week of August, Florida hospitals averaged 279 deaths per day — up from 52 in July, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The spike in fatalities, although not yet definitively linked to the coronavirus, is strongly suspected to stem from the ongoing surge in cases caused by the Delta variant. Overall, the state has reported a total over 44,000 coronavirus deaths over the course of the pandemic, according to a New York Times tracker. COVID-19 has claimed so many lives in Florida that funeral directors said there aren't enough hours in the day to schedule all the services, a local TV station reported."

The local television station that Brooks is referring to is WFLA Channel 8, the NBC affiliate in Tampa. WFLA's Melanie Mitchell, on August 25, reported that funeral directors in Tampa are "working around the clock, seven days a week."

One of the funeral directors CBS News interviewed was 48-year-old Richard Prindiville, director of the Highland Funeral Home in Apopka, Florida. Prindiville told CBS News, "There's been days I've come home, and I'm exhausted — and I'm talking to my daughter, and I'm falling asleep as I'm talking to her. Every day is funerals and funerals and funerals."

According to Brooks, Prindiville "routinely works 14-hour days booking funerals, meeting with grieving families, transporting bodies and overseeing services." John Ricco, executive director of the Florida Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, told CBS News that in recent weeks, funeral workers in Florida have been as busy as they were during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Some funeral homes in Florida, Brooks reports, are running out of space for bodies of people who have died from COVID-19. And funeral homes have so many burials to arrange that they are having to ask the families of the dead to please be patient.

Prindiville told CBS News, "What makes it difficult for us nowadays is just explaining to family members that we cannot have — and we'll have to hold off having — a funeral. In an hour, I could have six death calls, and I'm back to figuring out how to piece stuff together."

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

’60 Minutes’ Interview Portends Disaster For Trump Even Before It Airs

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, along with their running mates, are slated to appear on Sunday in the upcoming episode of the CBS news and interview show 60 Minutes. But reporting from CNN and Trump's own comments made it clear on Tuesday that his interview with the network did not go to his liking.

"I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about," Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday evening. "Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!"

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Peter Kent Navarro

Trump Aide Navarro ‘Slam Dunked’ By 60 Minutes On Pandemic Preparedness

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

During a recent appearance on CBS' 60 Minutes, Peter Navarro (one of President Donald Trump's top economic advisers) aggressively defended the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic and demanded to know when 60 Minutes addressed the last two presidential administrations' preparedness for a pandemic. And a video shows that in fact, the CBS program did exactly that.

The video opens with Navarro asserting, "Show me the 60 Minutes episode — a year ago, two years ago — during the Obama administration, during the Bush administration, that said, 'Hey, a global pandemic's coming. You gotta do X, Y and Z'…. Show me that episode. Then, you'll have some credence in terms of attacking the Trump administration for not being prepared." And the video then segues into "60 Minutes" reports from 2005 (when George W. Bush was president) and 2009 (when Barack Obama was president).

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No Winners In Muddled, Chaotic CBS Democratic Debate

No Winners In Muddled, Chaotic CBS Democratic Debate

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Well, that was a complete disaster.

Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate in Charleston was the last time the candidates would meet on stage together before the potentially pivotal South Carolina primary, and largely because of absolutely dreadful moderation, the whole event was essentially pointless.

I often write up my analysis of debate nights by explaining my subjective perspective about who came out stronger after the debate and who left weaker — winners and losers. But by the midpoint of the debate on Tuesday night, that format looked less and less appropriate. The muddled, confused, and slapdash nature of the event made the candidates all look like they were struggling to get a word in edgewise. They talked over each other. The questions would insubstantial and amateurish (ironically, one of the best questions came from Twitter.) There was no cohesion to the discussion and no internal logic behind which candidate got to speak. And while there were jabs and counterattacks between some of the candidates, the moderators were usually unable to pull the discussions in a meaningful direction.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had some success in getting speaking time through force of will, but the result was such an uneven mishmash of topics and attacks that it’s hard to imagine that she came out ahead.

On a list of losers, the moderators, led by CBS News’ Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell, surely come out first. They were the subject of endless scrutiny on social media, including for others in media who know the struggles of the presidential debate format.

“Debates are hard. TV news rivalries are hardcore,” said CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter. “That said, debate pros at other TV networks are exchanging messages calling this a ‘disaster,’ a ‘nightmare’ and worse.”

Errol Louis, a local TV news host in New York City, pointed out that the moderators completely failed to manage the candidates when they talked over each other:

When the candidates start talking over each other, the moderators should:
1) Bring the whole thing to a dead halt
2) Give them an order in which to speak (“you, then you senator, then you Mr. Mayor,” etc.)
Not complicated. You have to keep control.

— Errol Louis (@errollouis) February 26, 2020

The amount of crosstalk resulted in a lot of completely useless airtime. Sometimes it wasn’t even clear who was speaking or who was supposed to be speaking.

Then there was the completely vacuous questioning. King, for instance, let former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg claim falsely that he stopped the city’s abusive policy of stop-and-frisk — in fact, a judge stopped it and Bloomberg fought the ruling, but you’d never know from King’s response. Later, after this lie, she asked Bloomberg a purely factual question — whether life expectancy improved in the city during his terms — instead of presenting the facts about his record and asking him to defend them.

And the moderators seemed completely caught off guard when Warren brought up one of the most dramatic accusations of mistreatment of women that Bloomberg had faced, that he allegedly told a female employee to “kill” the fetus when she got pregnant. By being unaware of this information, the moderators made it seem like Warren was leveling an extreme charge against the former mayor, rather than accurately reporting news reports that Bloomberg disputes.

At the end of the debate, the moderators wasted a bunch of time asking candidates to list a misconception about them and their personal mottos. These kinds of gimmicks always leave primary candidates in a tough bind: Do they stick to the rules and answer the question as straightforwardly as possible? Or do they use the speaking time to launch into their stump speeches? The candidates took different approaches with varying levels of success, but overall the segment was just a huge missed opportunity to discuss substantial issues that impact the country.

Faiz Shakir, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, expressed his frustration with the debate as well:

This poorly moderated debate so far… pic.twitter.com/W6FXEYz8nY

— Faiz (@fshakir) February 26, 2020

Because it was so poorly moderated, the viewers — myself included — must be listed on the “losers” side of the ledger as well. No one looking for substantial debate about policy issues, the upcoming election, or even for the kinds of passionate exchanges about candidates’ histories that we saw at the previous debate was likely to come away satisfied or enlightened.

And then there was the audience in the debate theater itself, which booed and cheered at the oddest times. The audience, or at least some vocal portion of it, seemed passionately in favor of Bloomberg, despite his lackluster performance.

Of course, no candidate running from behind comes away from such a dismal debate as a winner. These high-profile stages offer a rare opportunity to make a splash in a campaign that is usually drowned out by the daily outrages of the Trump White House. But failing to give candidates a decent platform to make their marks is no advantage.

Even Sanders, the frontrunner of the primary, can’t really be said to come out ahead. Going into South Carolina, he certainly has the wind at his back from his successes in the first three competitions. But he faces his biggest challenge yet in the primary on Saturday, because former Vice President Joe Biden has long been positioned for a strong showing in South Carolina.

Recent polls show Biden still with a narrow lead. If Sanders could snatch victory from his chief rival in the state, it would go along way to bolstering his campaign and raising the chances that he could wrap up the nomination sooner rather than later. But if Biden gets a win in South Carolina, it could put a real drag on Sanders’ campaign. And there’s no reason to believe that Tuesday’s debate gave Sanders any additional edge that he is looking for.