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While a new subvariant is causing increasing hospitalizations across the country and we await the updated Covid-19 vaccines, now may be a good time to put your mask back on, doctors say. Especially in certain settings like on plane rides and trips on the subway. The percentage of people who said they wore a mask outside of their home in the U.S. decreased from about 57% in January 2022 to around 27% in January of 2023, according to data compiled by the Covid States Project.

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby responded to claims in a State Department report that there was a failure to plan for worst-case scenarios during the planning of the withdrawal for Afghanistan by stating that President Joe Biden’s team prepared for “low-probability, high-risk worst-case scenarios” and Biden wanted this from the early going. Host Wolf Blitzer asked, “The State Department [says] that — in this report they said that it was a chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, saying there was insufficient consideration of what it described as the worst-case scenarios....

This Article considers the possibility that a major dispute over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election could arise, even without foreign interference or some other extraordinary event, but rather just from the ordinary process of counting ballots. Building upon previous research on the “blue shift” phenomenon, whereby adjustments in vote tallies during the canvassing of returns tends to advantage Democratic candidates, it is easy to imagine a dispute arising if this kind of “blue shift” were consequential in the presidential race. Using examples from both Pennsylvania and Arizona, two states susceptible to significant “blue shifts” in previous elections, the...

The public polling right now is just sort of weird.  The president's job approval nationally is 42 percent.  This should be consistent with a terrible midterm election for Democrats.  And, indeed, we have polling consistent with that: Jeanne Shaheen’s tight race in New Hampshire; Cory Gardner’s and Joni Ernst’s substantial leads in Colorado and Iowa; generic ballot polling showing Republicans up by eight and six points in some polls (leads similar to what those pollsters found in 2010); anecdotes of Democrats sending funds to Lois Capps’ otherwise-safe California district.Yet there is what we might consider a second batch of...

Right now, Goldman Sachs' Jan Hatzius is speaking on a panel and just told the audience there are only two economic scenarios for the U.S. right now: bad and very bad. Those scenarios are summed up as followed (via Jim Pethokoukis): Bad: 1-2% GDP growth and an increase to 10% unemployment Very Bad: Double-dip recession, based on Bush tax cut expiring and declining home prices Goldman Sachs put together as presentation explaining their new bearish view on the economy, and it doesn't make for easy reading. But if you want an understanding of the the terrible scenarios they've envisioned, check...

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is far more volatile now than it was on January 3, that distant day when hopeful Iowans trooped to their caucuses. And it is a whole lot more volatile than it was on February 19, when Barack Obama's landslide primary win in the classic "swing state" of Wisconsin seemed to confirm his inevitability. Back at the start of January, the best bet was still that New York Senator Hillary Clinton would be the nominee of a united Democratic party against some deeply dysfunctional Republican like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney – a northeastern...

Ramesh, re excessive GOP pleasure in Democrat primary woes, I wouldn't put it any higher than the faintest whiff of a vague possibility that, however bad things are on the Republican side, for the Democrat scenario could be of an entirely different order. What's the worst that could happen to the Republicans this fall? McCain loses, there's some further attrition in the House and Senate. In other words, just more of the genteel decline of a listless GOP that seems all out of ideological gas. What's the best that could happen? McCain wins, the attrition in the House and Senate...

WASHINGTON - An upcoming Homeland Security Department report outlines a dozen frightening if hypothetical scenarios such as a terrorist nuclear attack or spreading plague in airport bathrooms to spur state and local preparedness against security risks. Over the last year, the department has drafted its National Planning Scenarios plan that poses the possibility of credible and destructive attacks — including by nerve gas, anthrax, pneumonic plague and truck bomb. The currently confidential report, requested by a presidential directive in December 2003, will be made public in upcoming months, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Tuesday. Homeland Security "has developed a...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

<p>SACRAMENTO - Not since Gov. Jerry Brown was linked to pop diva Linda Ronstadt more than two decades ago has Sacramento generated so much buzz.</p> <p>Now that it looks as if the recall of Gov. Gray Davis will be on the ballot, California's anything-may-happen atmosphere has everyone from Beltway political junkies to People magazine fixated on the notion that Arnold Schwarzenegger could become the state's next governor. But that's just one of many possible recall scenarios making the rounds.</p>

<p>Gov. Gray Davis' potential vulnerability to a recall was underscored this week when a respected polling organization found that a whopping 72 percent of likely California voters believe that he's doing a poor job, essentially agreeing with recall leader Ted Costa's assertion that he's guilty of "gross mismanagement."</p>

<p>Virtually every California governor has faced the verbal threat of a recall, uttered in anger by someone who didn't like something that the incumbent did, or did not do. And that's about as far as it's gone.</p> <p>Is the newly minted recall drive against Gray Davis to be taken any more seriously? Maybe. Those pushing the Davis recall have more political heft, and the media are treating it more credibly.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Toppling Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is in the war simulation game "Gulf War (news - web sites) 2" is the easy part. Coping with what comes next is more difficult. Players assume the role of President Bush (news - web sites) in the online game, receiving regular briefings from caricatures of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites). It starts with Baghdad's quick fall but then proceeds to an Iraqi anthrax attack on Israel, a retaliatory nuclear strike, revolt...

Much has happened in Iraq since December 1998, when UN inspectors left that country. Saddam Hussein has had more than three years to covertly further research and enhance the development of chemical and biological weapons. The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush fears that Iraq will serve as a conduit for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), providing terrorists the means to wreak destruction on innocent civilians in the United States or other free civilized societies abroad. Because the world has been held at more than arm’s length for such a long time, the location of the majority of Iraq’s...

The Army's annual War College class concludes the ten-month course with a traditionally complex wargame scenario in March. Regarded as the "final exam" of the course (which officers must complete to command brigades), the scenarios are often intricate, terrifying, and confusing, all at the same time. The 10-day scenario included 1,900 "data inputs" of which most were false, misleading, or irrelevant, but about 350 were the scenarios "hard data". There was no way to tell the truth from nonsense without further study of the scenario, the situation, intelligence files, and "military common sense". This year, for the first time, the...