A University of Maryland analysis of anonymized smartphone data shows that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s lifting of state-ordered business closures has had the predictable, and warned-of, effect: More than 62,000 additional out-of-state visitors are arriving daily. That’s a 13% increase in state-to-state travel.
[…] almost all of that traffic came from adjacent Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, four states where business restrictions kept restaurants, theaters and other nonessential service businesses closed when Georgia’s reopened. Georgia, then, created a near-perfect scenario for spreading the virus inside and outside the state. […]
Lynna @ #497, the whole logic of it never made any sense. They kept boasting of their “moderate” approach, like all these other polities, including the other Scandinavian countries, were just being “extreme” for the hell of it. It’s a goddamned virus. It’s not negotiating with us. Because it’s a goddamned virus. It’s not like these RNA segments were going to say “Well, these Swedes are taking such a reasonable, moderate approach. Very well then, we’ll respond in kind. Fair play and all that.” The virus doesn’t respond in proportion to our moderation or bullshit courage or bogus rants about tyranny. It takes advantage of the opportunity to invade. Because it’s a goddamned virus.
…These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests. Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the President released his hold on this damning information and evidence.
Like the Ukraine investigation that would follow it, the investigation into the Trump campaign’s effort to seek and utilize Russian help in 2016 and to obstruct justice, reveal a President who believes that he is above the law. But we are a country where the truth still matters and where right still matters. Our investigation into the Trump campaign, and the evidence we uncovered despite formidable obstruction, affirms that.
re Lynna @496 in previous thread about Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth: These assholes are going to get a lot of people killed. I am uncomfortable going out as it is, but what the fucking fuck is wrong with these sociopaths?
.
re Lynna @498 in previous thread about Georgia getting extra business from adjacent states by opening: The local news here (NC) had one of the “reopen NC” crackpots complaining that because our state wasn’t reopening, other states would reap the benefits of increased revenue and NC would lose out. I just wanted to reach through the screen and smack them. Georgia and the adjacent states will also reap increased virus outbreaks and deaths. I just don’t understand the willful ignorance and just plain dumbfuckery.
If anyone can get the NYT link, I would appreciate it. They have a new report that the WH has invited a group of World War II veterans to Washington for VE Day photo ops. (The group had evidently been planning to go to Russia, but naturally that was canceled.) They’re inviting a group of men in their 90s to travel from around the country and spend the day doing group activities during a pandemic. The report had quotes from one of the men’s daughters saying inviting them was irresponsible and could endanger not just them but their families when they returned. They’re apparently going ahead with it even though one of Trump’s personal valets just tested positive. A Trump spokesfool attacked the media for even questioning the wisdom of the plan and talked about how the men’s voices needed to be heard or some such nonsense.
johnson catmansays
re SC @5:
A Trump spokesfool attacked the media for even questioning the wisdom of the plan and talked about how the men’s voices needed to be heard or some such nonsense.
They could be heard by Skype or some other web-method without risking their lives for a god-damned photo op for The Orange Toddler-Tyrant.
johnson catman @ #4, as the various pacts and coalitions amongst the states in different regions (the Western States Pact, the Coalition of Northeastern Governors, the Midwestern Alliance) have formed and expanded, I’ve had a grim laugh wondering who would want to be in the Southern States Suicide Pact with like Georgia and Texas.
johnson catman @ #6, yes! And it’s not like WWII veterans have been marginalized and silenced all these years. They’re probably the most revered group in the country!
The only person signing this motion to dismiss is the lawyer William Barr installed after he removed the U.S. attorney who oversaw the Flynn case after Robert Mueller handed it off.
No other line attorneys.
tomhsays
@ #5 Hi SC. This was on their Live Coronavirus Update page which I thought they were still providing for free. Anyway, this is the item:
The White House has invited eight World War II veterans — each older than 95 and part of the age group most at risk if they contract Covid-19 — to take part in a photo-op Friday morning at the White House and an event at the war memorial to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Victory Day, Michael D. Shear reports.
The event, which has not yet been publicized, includes an opportunity for the men to take pictures at the White House with the secretaries of defense and state, the first lady Melania Trump and the president, according to a schedule prepared by the Greatest Generations Foundation, which organized the event.
The schedule says the men will be tested before they enter the White House grounds. The group is then expected to ride in the president’s motorcade to the memorial for a ceremony before departing Washington later on Friday.
The event has raised questions about whether the celebration is putting the men in danger by asking them to potentially expose themselves to the virus when the capital and much of the country remain under orders to restrict nonessential travel.
“I think its very irresponsible to have the last remaining World War II veterans travel across the country to take a photograph during a global pandemic,” said Alex Melikian, the granddaughter of Sgt. Gregory Melikian, 97, one of the men who will be meeting the president on Friday.
“People over the age of 80 have the highest chance of passing away from this. If he gets it, this could be the end,” she said of her grandfather, who was a radio operator during the war. “I know it’s his choice to go, but it’s irresponsible to even have an event like this in the first place.”
The visit will come a day after the White House confirmed that a military aide who worked at the White House recently tested positive, raising questions about whether the president and others who were potentially exposed should be self-quarantined to ensure that they do not further spread the virus. White House officials said that the “president and the vice president have since tested negative for the virus, and they remain in great health.”
“I’ve had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday, adding that the White House would increase the frequency of its internal testing from once a week to once a day. Mr. Trump said he tested negative on Wednesday.
Hi, tomh. Thanks! I thought I got a subscription screen over the NYT page and couldn’t find a report (yet) anywhere else, but it was a screen requiring a login. I actually have an OG account there from many years ago, but I’m too distracted right now to try to reactivate it or set up a new one. Maybe next week…
Especially in light of the facts in this story [the article @ #12], it seems to me like a huge tell that Reade is ducking various mainstream television interview opportunities in favor of doing this weird Megyn Kelly one.
She paints a picture where she was ignored by the press, but actually her allegations were thoroughly investigated and experienced journalists couldn’t satisfactorally corroborate them.
Then she returned with new charges & new evidence in new outlets.
She turned down or bailed on several regular media interviews and has now chosen to do an online interview with Megyn Kelly.
The DOJ filing here is absurd and contradicts the Department’s long standing positions. There is no reasonable explanation here other than that Bill Barr is seeking to undo the Mueller investigation on behalf of Trump while the world is distracted by a deadly global pandemic.
When Barr anticipated that Trump was planning to pardon Roger Stone, he stepped in to alter the sentencing recommendation. Now with Trump all but promising to pardon Flynn, Barr is stepping in again to spare Trump the trouble.
Under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a government motion to dismiss an indictment—even after a guilty plea—requires “leave of court.”
…
That leave may well be forthcoming, but it’s up to Judge Sullivan, not DOJ—and is not automatic.
Why do white people need video? Why does the white justice system refuse to even consider taking action against the destroyers of black lives unless there is video? Why do we have to wait until the entire black community can be traumatized by video evidence of a lynching before some white people are moved to act?
By now, many have seen the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery. Arbery, a 25-year-old African American, was shot dead in Glynn County, Ga., by a father-and-son team of racists who suspected he had committed burglaries in the area. In reality Arbery was jogging through his own neighborhood, in broad freaking daylight. The video shows the two men chasing Arbery in their truck, stopping him, scuffling with him, and then shooting him dead as he tried to run away.
The two men who murdered Arbery, Gregory McMichael, 64, and his 34-year-old son, Travis McMichael, have not been arrested.
The video is sickening. Watch it yourself if you don’t believe me. And if you’re white, you may not, because I’m merely a black man trying to explain the acknowledged facts of the case.
The thing to remember is that this video, which was leaked this week, contains no new information. Arbery was shot dead on February 23. Police have had everything they’ve needed to arrest these men since then. That’s because the McMichaels’ own “official” story is an admission of crime.
…
Of course, they weren’t arrested or charged. And they still haven’t been, even now after the video’s release. Because in addition to the dripping white privilege that the McMichaels enjoyed to help them escape arrest at the scene of their crime, the McMichaels also have friends in the prosecutor’s office.
The Arbery case is on its third district attorney since he was killed in February. It turns out that Gregory McMichael is (wait for it) a former police officer and used to work as an investigator in the district attorney’s office.
…
The current DA on the case, Tom Durden, still hasn’t issued an arrest warrant for the McMichaels. But he announced this week that he would send the case up to a grand jury. He made that decision after the video was leaked. Video that Tom Durden had for at least a month before it was made available to the public.
With the video comes the outrage. With the video comes the willingness of the white justice system to engage in some performative concern over the death of Ahmaud Arbery.
But make no mistake, George and Travis McMichael described in their own words how they executed a lynching. The police didn’t care. The prosecutors didn’t care. The governor didn’t care. If there weren’t video of the event, no white person in a position of authority would care.
I don’t know why it takes video. I don’t know how many black men are buried while their killers walk free because nobody happened to record their final, terrifying moments as they succumbed to unrelenting white supremacy. I don’t know why white people must be titillated by the snuff films of murdered blacks before some of them are willing to consider the notion of justice.
I also know that video isn’t enough. Video only makes white people shake their heads and mutter platitudes about the need for investigations and trials. Video only makes white people marvel at the wanton destruction of black lives. Video is not enough to make white people put a stop to the killings. Video won’t make white people change their laws, change their votes, or change their implicit biases when they see a black man jogging past their homes.
White people will forget about this video, soon. There was video of Stephon Clark being shot 20 times, and his killers were never charged. There was video of Alton Sterling being shot to death, and his killers were never charged. There was video of Terence Crutcher being shot to death; his killer was acquitted. I could go on and on with names of black people who were shot dead on video and whom most white people have forgotten about.
Black people don’t need to see the video to know Ahmaud Arbery was lynched, and that we might be next.
SC, exactly. And that’s why it found it’s way into the White House to infect one of Trump’s valets. The virus does not care that Trump had instructed his staff to protect him from exposure to the virus.
The virus doesn’t care if Trump thinks he would look bad wearing a face mask.
The virus doesn’t care if the governor of Nebraska has decided NOT to report infections in prisons, nursing homes or meat-packing plants. The virus will continue, like a virus, no matter what propaganda unethical politicians spew.
“I’ve had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday, adding that the White House would increase the frequency of its internal testing from once a week to once a day. Mr. Trump said he tested negative on Wednesday.
How can Trump have “had very little contact” with a person that brought him meals, that played out his clothes, and so forth?
Mr. Flynn previously pleaded guilty to making false statements. In the Government’s assessment, however, he did so without full awareness of the circumstances..
Are they making the “I’m too stupid/uninformed to be aware of the circumstances” argument for Flynn? Seems like an odd argument to make to excuse the actions of a National Security Advisor.
U.S. residents began to inch out of their homes, according to new cellphone data. But even as states begin to “open up,” more Americans appear to be staying put than sprinting out the door.
[…]
as of April 30, people were still at home an average of 89 percent of the time.
[…]
They’re going to parks and grocery stores […] Workplace visits […] dropped steeply in mid-March and has barely risen.
[…]
In general, people in rural areas are away more than people in urban and suburban areas, in large part because stores, services and essential workplaces are much farther away and delivery services are rare or nonexistent. But the trend lines are very similar across all types of places.
The data clearly shows that when Americans were told it was time to stay home, most people did. It also indicates that they are deciding for themselves when to go back out.
blfsays
Locally, the S.France Mediterranean seaside village where I live recently published some Covid-19 statistics. As of c.3 days ago, there is only one hospitalised Covid-19 patient. Since lockdown began almost eight weeks ago, only 30 total have been hospitalised, two very elderly people have sadly died, but (as previously mentioned in this series of poopyhead threads) several of the local nursing homes have had no cases whatsoever. There’s also c.100 people in strict isolation at a community-run facility as “suspect cases”. The statistics are rather amateurishly presented and incomplete (e.g., nothing whatsoever is said about testing, ICU, &tc), and possibly inconsistent (some totals don’t seem to add up), but probably transparent (i.e., unlikely anything is being deliberately hidden).
The chef who owns one of my favourite restaurants is “chomping at the bit” to reopen — unsurprising, it’s both their passion and family’s livelihood (the partner helps at busy times) — and is planning to reopen, take-away only, as soon as possible (next week, I think, when France will no longer be in lockdown). I’m not (yet) tried of my own cooking, but the idea of a professionally-prepared meal by a chef I’ve known for many years is tantalizing…
Saadsays
You know you’re powerless and living under a dictatorship when the strongest penalty you can impose on your public servants is to try to scare them with a vague threat of history not remembering them nicely.
blfsays
This is a problem which — somewhat embarrassingly, as I have some experience working with hard-of-hearing — had never occurred to me, Face masks for the deaf: Covid 19’s communication challenge for the hearing impaired (video). Rather cleverly, the interviews with hard-of-hearing people do not have an audio track, they are only subtitled (in English): “How to lip read when everyone’s face is hidden behind a mask? That is the challenge facing deaf people across the world as the Covid-19 pandemic makes face masks a part of daily life. The answer could be transparent face masks but such masks are in short supply, leading some to make their own.”
Unrelated, and not at all political, Paris by Night: FRANCE 24 meets with night wanderers despite coronavirus lockdown measures (video): “France’s lockdown measures are amid the strictest in Europe, as the country tries to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Happy and moving Paris, usually known for its night wanderers, has changed and given place to calm and silence. But not all Parisians are respecting lockdown measures and FRANCE 24 met them during the night: some are simply wandering, but others don’t have other choice as the streets are sometimes their home.”
blfsays
There’s an apparently famous(?) Ozland chef who is also a kook. Recently, Pete Evans fined [AUD]$25,000 by Therapeutic Goods Administration over coronavirus claims relating to BioCharger (24-April-2020). The BioCharger is a woo-woo device, probably complete with quantum, described as “hybrid subtle energy revitalisation platform came with a [AUD]$14,990 price tag and claimed to optimise and improve potential health, wellness and athletic performance [… t]he website claimed it replicates light, frequencies, harmonics, pulsed electromagnetic fields and voltage that are found in nature, for a variety of treatments. [… A] video that Evans posted on April 9, in which he said: It’s programmed with a thousand different recipes and there’s a couple in there for the Wuhan coronavirus.” Geesh!
[…]
On Tuesday, 11 days after the Therapeutic Goods Administration fined him $25,200 for spruiking[†] a [AUD]$15,000 light machine to fight coronavirus, Evans urged his Instagram followers to watch a three-hour-long interview in which Icke simultaneously claims Covid-19 is a fake pandemic with no virus and links infections to 5G antenna installations.
[…]
According to the Grauniad’s article on the BioCharger woo machine incident, Chef Pete Evans criticised for trying to sell $15,000 light device to fight coronavirus, the kook is also an anti-vaxxer, and called Covid-19 Wuhan coronavirus. With classic Grauniad snark: “There is no evidence that [Covid-19] can be treated or cured by coloured lights.” And the kook has form, “In 2017 doctors felt compelled to condemn Evans’s documentary The Magic Pill, which claimed that following his paleo diet guidelines for five weeks could drastically reduce symptoms of diabetes, cancer and autism.”
Of course, not all chefs are eejits / kooks; e.g., French chef [Eric] Ripert feeds New York’s front-line medical workers, “The goal, said the renowned chef, is to assist ‘people who take enormous risks, see horrible things during the day — when they return to their hotel, they can relax and eat something tasty.'”
† Spruik is apparently Ozland slang(?) for selling or promoting; the etymology is unknown but possibly came from Afrikaans with soldiers returning from the Boer War.
On a different topic:
<A href=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told”>The planned contract tracing app in the UK could violate privacy laws. (This morning, it’s emerged that it may be dropped in favour of the Google/Apple app. I woludn’t necessarily trust that any more than one sponsored by Johnson’s crew.)
johnson catmansays
re tomh @10:
. . . adding that the White House would increase the frequency of its internal testing from once a week to once a day.
Everyone can get a test if they want one. As long as they work in the White House. Anyone else, not so much. As a matter of fact, it is better if they don’t test everyone so that the number of confirmed cases keeps going down.
.
I don’t think I can stand another eight months of The Orange Toddler-Tyrant and his band of sociopath grifters. If he wins in November, I may have to sell everything and move to another country just so I don’t have to see his mug or listen to his whining.
KGsays
Sorry, missed a ” @29. here is is: <A href=”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told”>again.
State representative Sarah Anthony says she wanted to highlight failure of policing after armed white protesters demonstrated
A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to tyranny.
The state representative Sarah Anthony […] said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of the Michigan capitol police to provide legislators with adequate security during the protest, which saw demonstrators with rifles standing in the legislative chamber above lawmakers.
When traditional systems, whether it’s law enforcement or whatever, fail us, we also have the ability to take care of ourselves,[†] she told the Guardian. Anthony became the first African American woman elected to represent her district in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, in 2018.
[…]
Despite the armed escort, Anthony said she was “actively working to prohibit open carry” of firearms in the state capitol, which is currently legal.
Anthony said her goal was not to encourage more armed citizens to volunteer to protect lawmakers, but to ensure that the law enforcement officers paid by taxpayers to keep legislators safe would do a better job in the future.
[… Michael Lynn Jr (one of the armed escorts)] said the escort was the first time he had ever chosen to openly carry his AR-15 rifle [… and] was frustrated after last week’s protests when he saw black Americans sharing comments that they would never be allowed to carry guns in the capitol and scream into the faces of police officers.
There was truth to those perspectives, he said; the response would have been different. […]
A spokeswoman for Michigan’s state police said that they were constantly reviewing their practices and adjusting protocols as needed.
The state police hosted a call with legislators on 4 May to brief them on available security services, including security escorts, after learning that some representatives were fearful for their safety during the protest, a spokeswoman, Shannon Banner, wrote in an e-mail. […]
For feck’s sake, armed knuckleheads on a balcony overhead, screaming and shouting, obviously angry, and it didn’t occur to Them™ others would be frightened?
The escort was certainly brave — being armed whilst black is a very good way of getting yourself shot — and the attempt to turn the tables (so to speak) or show the knuckleheads how absurd such antics are is understandable. However, I’m not at all thrilled with the copying of stoopidity. I am also doubtful the message will get through to the state “police” / knuckleheads. My immediate counter-suggestion would be to stage an FSM-style pirate escort “armed” with obviously fake plastic cutlasses and assorted banners, &tc, as, for example, as has been to teh westboro baptist church and other kooks, nazis, and bigots. That seems to have worked in the past, and “punching up” at the knuckleheads, making it obvious with humour just how idiotic they looked, can sometimes get through.
† I decided to set this remark in eejit quotes for the same reason I’d set it in eejit quotes if it was uttered by a nazi or other kook. The quoted person being an elected representative sealed the decision; they seem to have exercised poor judgement but are not an (obvious) kook.
Here’s a link to the May 8 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
KGsays
Hmm, I can’t seem to get the contact tracing app one right! Once again.
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose epidemiological model is credited with persuading Johnson to abandon the “herd immunity” strategy, has resigned from SAGE (committee of experts advising the government) after the right-wing Telegraph revealed his lover had twice visited him in contravention of the lockdown rules. There is a lot of disquiet about this, suspicion that it’s a political hit-job motivated by the right wanting the lockdown lifted. That may be so, and certainly there was no justification for naming his lover, but:
1) It just makes Ferguson’s arrogant stupidity worse – he’s given the right a weapon. I’ve had quite enough of people of power or influence in the crisis deciding the rules don’t apply to them.
2) His model, according to Ferguson himself, is a modification of a 13-year-old model of an influenza pandemic, which consists of “thousands of lines of undocumented C”. Anyone who’s done any serious coding will know that unless Ferguson is superhuman, the code will contain quite a few errors. These may be inconsequential, or they may not. Certainly, key decisions should not be made on the basis of such a model.
3) But in any case, it should not have needed any model to decide that in the face of a highly contagious and dangerous virus, about the effects of which very little was known, the correct course of action was to buy time by minimising the number of people who catch it.
Another interesting article from a few days ago: a comparison of western and eastern European countries (not including Russia in the latter). The eastern countries locked down early and strictly, and would you believe it, have many fewer cases and deaths than most of the western ones (the partial exceptions in the west, such as Austria and Portugal, also took early action). The article suggests the governments and populations in the east knew their health systems would swiftly be overwhelmed, while those in the west were more confident and so hesitated to disrupt their economies just to save lives (this may not be fair to the governments of Italy and maybe Spain, who had less warning). In the cause of political honesty, I note that most of the eastern countries have right-wing to centre-right governments, and one, Hungary, is in effect a far right dictatorship – but Orbán, who has used the crisis to make himself dictator, does at least seem to have acted reasonably quickly. So there’s seemingly nothing intrinsic to right-wing government that makes a swift response to the pandemic impossible: the personal characteristics of Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro must bear much of the blame.
Russia confirmed 10,699 new coronavirus infections Friday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 187,859.
Russia now has the world’s second-fastest rate of new infections behind the United States. It is the fifth most-affected country in terms of infections, surpassing Germany and France on Thursday.
…
On Saturday, when the country usually marks Soviet victory in World War II with large-scale military parades, there will only be fly-pasts and fireworks.
For the first time, President Vladimir Putin will give a speech by the Eternal Flame memorial beside the Kremlin walls instead of during a parade on Red Square….
(It’s odd that the identified cases are rising by approximately the same number every day.)
We go to Moscow for an update on the pandemic in Russia, where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, with at least 10,000 new cases a day and the second-highest infection rate in the world, and more than 100 medical workers have died fighting the virus, and many have reported lack of personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, three Russian healthcare workers mysteriously fell from hospital windows over the past two weeks. Two died, and the one who is hospitalized had posted a video online to note the lack of medical equipment and said he had to keep working despite testing positive. We speak with Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker magazine….
Video and transcript at the link. Yaffa is the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia, which I mentioned in a previous iteration of this thread.
Brazil’s coronavirus cases have spiked to 135,106 including 9,146 deaths, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Brazilian Health Ministry. This surge comes as President Jair Bolsonaro’s spokesman, Gen. Otavio Santana do Rego Barros, confirmed he tested positive for Covid-19.
Yet Bolsonaro said earlier this week he believed “the worst had passed” for the coronavirus pandemic, during a press conference outside the Alvorada presidential residence in Brasilia. But as the number of cases and deaths continue to climb, many health experts fear the worst is yet to come.
Since Bolsonaro made the comment in Brasilia on Tuesday, there have been more than 20,000 new cases of coronavirus and the country registered 610 deaths on Thursday, nearly the highest toll yet in a 24-hour period, according to the Health Ministry.
Health Minister Nelson Teich said Thursday that stricter lockdowns may be needed in some of the hardest-hit regions, during a video conference with members of the lower house of Congress.
Former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said “the toughest months” are likely to be May and June, during an interview with TV Globo last month, four days before he was fired by Bolsonaro over disagreements on the country’s coronavirus strategy.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro continues to dismiss the threat coronavirus presents to the country’s 209 million citizens, repeatedly saying he believes the effects of preventive measures, such as quarantines and lockdowns, could have a worse impact on Brazil’s economy.
During a speech at the Supreme Court on Thursday, Bolsonaro and Finance Minister Paulo Guedes said the economy could suffer a “total collapse” if the country doesn’t reopen.
“The issue of unemployment, the issue of the economy no longer working. We can’t let the side-effect of the fight against the virus be more harmful than the disease itself,” Bolsonaro said.
…
Bolsonaro recently reiterated his claims that efforts to flatten the curve of the virus’s spread — via quarantine measures and social distancing — were ineffective.
…
A recent survey from pollster Datafolha, showed Bolsonaro’s approval at 33% and that the country is split nearly down the middle on whether the President should be impeached.
Chile’s rightwing president, Sebastián Piñera, has prompted a firestorm of criticism after naming an open supporter of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship as the country’s new minister for women’s rights and gender equality.
Controversy over the appointment of Macarena Santelices – who is also the dictators’s great-niece – has focused on a 2016 interview in which she praised the “good side” of the 1973-90 dictatorship in which more than 3,000 people were murdered or disappeared by security forces and many thousands more imprisoned and tortured.
She also came under criticism for her outspoken comments against immigrants.
Taking office on Wednesday, Santelices denied she had ever “endorsed or justified” human rights violations and appealed to Chileans to “judge me on what I do from today onwards, as a woman”.
But activists said her comments about the period of military rule – during which at least 316 women were raped while under torture, 11 of whom were pregnant – were entirely incompatible with her new role.
“This appointment is a flagrant provocation and demonstrates the government’s total disdain for what the Chilean feminist movement is demanding,” said Romina Parada, co-founder of the feminist collective Baila Capucha Baila.
“As far as our collective are concerned, we still don’t have a minister for women’s rights and gender equality,” she said.
Santelices studied journalism and worked for several national media outlets before becoming the mayor of Olmué, a small town in the lush valleys of central Chile, in 2012.
She resigned in October 2019 to run for the governorship of Valparaíso under the banner of the rightwing Independent Democratic Union – a party founded in 1983 to preserve the political and economic legacy of the dictatorship.
The post had been vacant for 54 days since Santelices’s predecessor, Isabel Plá, resigned after months of criticism that she had been ineffectual in the role.
…
Santelices’s appointment comes amid a growing wave of women’s activism in Chile, two months after more than a million women marched in Santiago on International Women’s Day.
…
The hashtag #WeHaveNoMinister has trended on social media since her appointment and several other feminist and transgender rights organisations…have joined calls for Santelices’s resignation.
johnson catmansays
re blf @32: You are probably aware, but I will remind you that when The Black Panthers started openly carrying weapons in California, restrictions on guns were very quickly passed. The Mulford Act was introduced on April 5, 1967, passed by both the State Assembly and State Senate in late July, and was signed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan on July 29.
Governor Ronald Reagan, who was coincidentally present on the capitol lawn when the [Black Panther] protesters arrived, later commented that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons” and that guns were a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.” In a later press conference, Reagan added that the Mulford Act “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
.
Of course, “citizen” in this instance meant “black citizens”. I think that perhaps Sarah Anthony may have been trying to prompt the same reaction.
Amid a federal coronavirus response that has been criticized for missteps such as ignoring warnings of a coming pandemic, a failure to procure adequate medical supplies and a severe lack of testing, there’s nearly an entire arm of President Donald Trump’s administration effectively sitting on the sidelines — his Cabinet.
Missing from roles in the official White House Coronavirus Task Force, many of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries have remained less than fixated on rapid pandemic response.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, for example, has rebuffed pleas for new workplace safety mandates from meatpackers, other front-line workers and congressional Democrats. Critics also claim that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has been slow to release billions in federal funding to struggling farmers. And Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, encamped at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, has hardly been heard from amid the biggest economic crisis in a generation.
…
The Labor Department has issued safety recommendations and enforcement guidelines for meatpacking plants to follow but isn’t mandating infectious disease protections for meat and poultry facility workers, even though Trump ordered the plants to reopen despite a spike in coronavirus cases.
Many small businesses are still unable to obtain federal aid as the Small Business Administration comes under a crush of applications and funding debates in Congress. Many of the neediest college students are still awaiting aid promised from the Department of Education.
And only in mid-April did the Department of Agriculture start addressing disruptions to the food supply chain even as farmers destroy crops and grocery stores cite food shortages.
…
Trump last convened his Cabinet on Nov. 19, 2019, months before the administration acknowledged coronavirus as a public health threat.
The hands-off approach is especially relevant given the president’s indications that he plans to eventually wind down the task force, or at least shift its focus more toward reopening the economy, putting the onus for response efforts on federal agencies.
…
Scalia…has been working from Washington and has not personally visited any site where workers have complained about health safety measures, but he did accompany the president to Arizona on Tuesday to tour a mask-making factory.
Perdue’s office did not respond to requests about where he has been working during the pandemic, and NBC did not find news mentions of him visiting with farmers or other stakeholders.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who’s had an empty public schedule for weeks and last appeared at the White House on March 27, is working from home in Michigan. Groups funded by the billionaire DeVos family, among Michigan’s richest, helped promote a mid-April protest against stay-at-home orders that drew thousands and sparked protests in a number of other states. Her office did not respond to requests about her schedule.
As the first president with no previous government or military experience, Trump has defined his tenure in office by a steadfast commitment to shrinking the very agencies Americans are now dependent on during the pandemic, along with record-setting levels of staff turnover in the Cabinet.
…
All told, Cabinet secretaries have made a handful of appearances at the daily White House task force briefings to inform Americans about what their departments are doing to help.
But they continue to gut or enforce rules that critics argue are unrelated to the pandemic and are championed by conservatives….
Wow. Moments before govt releases what is expected to be the worst jobs report in history @realDonaldTrump has called in to @foxandfriends to air grievances about federal investigations into his 2016 campaign. Ten mins in and no mention of #Covid_19 pandemic or unemployment.
After 20 minutes of complaining about 2016 investigation into Russian interference in 2016 election, President gets *first* question about COVID-19.
blfsays
johnson catman@38, Thanks for the Black Panthers reminder. Whilst I was living in California at the time, I have essentially no memories of the incident due to being fairly young then (just making the transition from stylus-on-clay to ink-on-papyrus). I (broadly) concur, Sarah Anthony may be trying to initiate a more sensible approach to carrying arms. However, the excerpted article is fairly clear her aim with the stunt was to focus on the state “police”‘s allowing armed nutcases into the debating chamber; e.g., (from @32), “Anthony said her goal was not to encourage more armed citizens to volunteer to protect lawmakers, but to ensure that the law enforcement officers paid by taxpayers to keep legislators safe would do a better job in the future” and “Anthony said she was ‘actively working to prohibit open carry’ of firearms in the state capitol, which is currently legal.” Nothing(?) per se about more sensible shooty mcshootface laws, except at the state capital, albeit the situation does seem very close — but not identical — to that famous Black Panther incident.
The article concludes:
Anthony said it had been meaningful to receive a personal offer from constituents to help ensure her safety. But, she said, “the thing that I hope does not happen with this photo is that this creates an environment that would feel like more guns are needed in order to protect ourselves.”
“The thing that keeps me up at night is the fear that we are becoming more polarized, more angry,” Anthony said. “My fear is real that we are creating an environment that is a powder keg, and I don’t want to see citizens of all stripes getting hurt.”
I concur with the two quotes in the above concluding excerpt. My problem is the stunt replicates stoopidity without unambiguously highlighting why it’s stupid.
I do hope, of course, you’re correct it’s a Black Panthers-style stunt leading to a similar result.
As an aside, Snopes points out the the Mulford Act was introduced a month before the Black Panthers arrived at the capital; that arrival then caused the act to be strengthened. The act was originally introduced “after armed members of the Black Panther Party started patrolling city streets to counter police brutality.”
KGsays
The following comment is one I left on a Grauniad thread (slightly corrected). The ONS is the Office of National Statistics, an official and supposedly non-political UK outfit; but note how its director assumes that nothing can be done about increased numbers in poverty if there’s a long recession.
ONS chief Ian Diamond tells @CommonsSTC if there is a long recession, more people in poverty will mean higher mortality / less healthy lives
Even if there is a prolonged recession, whether there are more people in poverty will be a political decision. The last couple of months has shown that the government can find gigantic sums of money if it sees the need (or rather, it can wish them into existence – there really is a magic money tree for sovereign powers as large and rich as the UK with their own currency). The UK government prefers to borrow from the money markets, for ideological reasons and to reward its rich friends*, but it could simply borrow from the Bank of England. In either case, this is unlikely to cause either significant inflation** (because demand is so low, and not likely to fully recover any time soon) or severe depreciation of the currency (because everyone else is doing it, if their currencies are strong enough to allow it). The opportunity could be taken to institute a Universal Basic Income (UBI), set at a level sufficient to bring or keep those receiving it (i.e., everyone) out of poverty. Initially, it would be quite reasonable to fund this from borrowing, as a measure to restart the economy. Longer term, insofar as there is any real need to “balance the budget”, it could be paid for out of higher direct taxes and/or taxes on carbon-intensive activities such as flying, and driving a private motor vehicle.
* Even at very low interest rates, the sums are so huge that there will be fat profits to the lenders.
** In fact, a certain amount of inflation would be beneficial, as it would effectively reduce the debt over time.
KGsays
SC@39,
I recall deciding Michael Moore was an arsehole some time ago, but I don’t remember why!
KG@45, I also cannot recall precisely why I came to a similar conclusion, but one possibility was Planet of the Humans, albeit that’s a 2019 diatribe and my dislike goes back somewhat further. I’m reasonably confident (albeit not certain) my dubiousness is post-Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004); that, and preceding films — not all of which I’ve seen! — have generally struck me as Ok, and even (in the case of his initial film, Roger & Me (1989)) as inspired, despite (and Moore acknowledging) some sequences presented as-if in-chronological-order were not.
Here’s an update on the terrible news that a group of migrant workers has been killed by a train in India – from our South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen.
India may have been under the world’s largest lockdown for almost two months but the exodus of its tens of millions of migrant workers, who, without any transport or any way to earn money have taken to walking sometimes thousands of miles in baking heat to get back home, has continued unabated.
In one of the most tragic incidents so far, it has emerged that 16 exhausted migrant workers, who were attempting to walk the 150 miles home to Bhusaval in the state of Maharashtra, died after falling asleep on the train tracks. According to Virendra Singh, the 22-year-old who was the only one of the group who survived, they had presumed that because trains had been stopped during lockdown, it would be safe to briefly rest on the tracks. They were run over at 5:15am on Friday morning by a train travelling from Mumbai.
“We wanted to go back to our village as for the past month and a half there was no work and no money,” said Singh. “We had started walking at 7pm on Thursday and at 4am everyone’s legs were in pain, and so we took a rest on the tracks. When I heard the train sound from the distance I screamed at them to move, but they were asleep and did not hear, and the train mowed them over.” The train tracks were left littered with the meagre possessions they were carrying, including battered shoes and the few roti they were surviving on.
India’s lockdown of its 1.3bn people has been described as one of the largest and harshest in the world, depriving the 80% of India’s workforce who work in the informal sector of a way of earning a living. Migrant workers who did not attempt to walk home have been confined to camps and reliant on food donations from government and NGOs.
Cases of coronavirus in India currently stand at 56,516, with 1,895 deaths. Experts say the country has not yet reached its peak.
johnson catmansays
re blf @43: While it is true that the protest at the State Capitol took place after the introduction of the bill, the Black Panthers had organized in October 1966 and were “copwatching” by monitoring police activities and combating police brutality in black communities like Oakland with armed patrols of their own. It is likely that the Mulford Act was an attempt to suppress those actions and “control” the black citizens better. The armed protest at the Capitol brought the Black Panther Party a LOT of press and probably scared a lot of white people, further prioritizing the bill.
johnson catmansays
re SC @48: Irony died a long time ago, but if it was still alive, this would qualify as an irony-meter shattering event.
blfsays
SC@46, I know nothing about Éric Ripert, but I do not understand what “Ripert got a 2 from Room Rater” has to do with anything — it’s an image with no context, and no (obvious) woo, posted by a some random twitter source. Some (admittedly quick) searching has failed to locate any woo being spruiked by Mr Ripert, albeit he apparently is a buddhist with vegan leanings, and was, at one time, (apparently self-admittedly) rather high-strung. Plus he has a multi-starred restaurant, a well-known source of stress. Again, no serious woo-woo that I can find, certainly nothing like being an anti-vaxxer or claiming 5G causes Covid-19 or so on.
“[T]he perfect 10 for Matthew Miller” is certainly a better — and more flattering — image, but again is without context. I’m (obviously) failing to see the point… Or is it a joke I’m missing? (The “LOL” suggests so — that is, I’m missing the joke — albeit a ridiculous image of some thug again has nothing (obvious) to do with woo-woo.)
Apologies if I’m being obtuse… (And my extreme dislike of twittering perhaps has “blinded” me to the joke; admittedly exaggerating, as far as I am concerned, everything on twitshite is a very bad joke, &tc.)
blfsays
johnson catman@50, YES.
However, please, a hint (apologies for my obvious exasperation): Try reading what I wrote / quoted, or checking the references provided. For example, “The act was originally introduced ‘after armed members of the Black Panther Party started patrolling city streets to counter police brutality'”; and “Recognizing that they were its [the original bill’s] primary targets, the Black Panthers protested the Mulford bill by sending an armed contingent to the state capitol on 2 May 1967”; and so on, including confirmation that the bill was prioritised due to armed protest at the capital: “This act is an urgency statute necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety within the meaning of Article IV of the Constitution and shall go into immediate effect. The facts constituting such necessity are:
“An organized band of men armed with loaded firearms has recently entered the Capitol of the State of California […]”
Note, however, that in contrast to the recent actions, the Black Panthers were not copying any previous (known-to-me) incident; they were illustrating the absurdity of the situation, albeit perhaps inadvertently — the preceding armed patrols were about police brutality / bigotry rather than carrying shooty mcshootfaces — with a novel action. The Black Panthers also, as far as I am aware, did not shout or scream, and apparently handed over their weapons after c.30mins and allowed them to be unloaded (the empty shooty mcshootfaces were then handed back). It’s difficult to see the screaming, shouting, knuckleheads doing that… or the current-day state “police” even trying to peacefully defuse such a situation. (I do not know if the present-day escort enter3d the building or not.) Yes, there are analogies with the Black Panthers stunt, but one might argue the same could be said (albeit in weaker form!) about the preceding knuckleheads (they certainly did enter not only the building, but also, like the Black Panthers, the debating chamber (visitor’s area / balcony)).
I am uncomfortable with the present-day escort action because, as I keep saying, I don’t see how it illustrates the absurdity of the situation (carrying shooty mcshootfaces). Even Sarah Anthony could be construed as being uncertain, she is quoted as saying (see @43) “the thing that I hope does not happen with this photo is that this creates an environment that would feel like more guns are needed in order to protect ourselves.”
Exactly! The current-day incident can, it seems to me, be easily — WAY too easily — misunderstood. It hasn’t necessarily failed, but it (probably) could have been much much better.
Uh, you’re being obtuse. It’s just a lighthearted Twitter account that rates the Skype rooms of politicians, commentators, etc., on news shows during the pandemic. It’s escapist and fun for those of us who are into politics and design. It’s amusing that so many of the replies to the Ripert tweet are people shocked that such harsh words could be said about the Great Chef. Miller clearly worked on his presentation because he wanted a top score (John Heilemann and Steve Schmidt are currently in an escalating rating war amassing animals, flowers, and fruit bowls). The “LOL” link is to the rating for Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner in his pitiful room which fully reflects his pitiful politics.
This interview is an absolute embarrassment for CBS. Includes such hard hitting q’s as “It sounds to me like one of your objectives is to never allow the Justice Department to be used as a political weapon.”
…When Shirer had complained to [New York CBS executive Paul] White that he would not broadcast if it was nothing but German lies, White had cabled him to make his position clear: “Bill, we thoroughly understand, sympathize condition in Berlin, but feel we must carry on with broadcasts even if only reading official statements and newspaper texts.
Writing a half-century later in his memoir, Shirer’s anger still boiled. “CBS would have to get someone else for that menial chore,” he wrote. “I replied to White I could hire a pro-Nazi American for $50 a week and no expenses to read that crap.”
(Re #54, come to think of it, I’m not sure I’d trust Claude Taylor enough with money to necessarily endorse donating through his organization. But the Twitter account is fun and it’s an important cause.)
blfsays
SC@54, Thanks for clarifying! And w.r.t. @55, Whilst I still cannot find my copy of Shirer’s book, amazingly, I do (broadly) recall that excerpted bit. A similar incident — or maybe it was the same incident? — was when Shirer and other journalists were taken on an obviously-stage-managed tour of teh nazi “preparations” for invading England. It was so blatantly false — plus Shirer had been (pre?-)briefed by the States naval attaché what to look for, and didn’t see anything — he refused to broadcast despite the facilities put at his disposal by the nazis (highly unusual, and another clew it was all a set-up). One other journalist on the same tour also refused. Everyone else did send in reports, and CBS(?) complained to Shirer about being scooped(?) by other stations, etc. Shirer’s reply was along the same lines as quoted. From memory, Shirer speculated in his book it was an attempt to demoralise the beleaguered British.
blf @ #57, I just came across that section while I was looking for the quote above. Your memory is completely accurate! Shirer was disgusted by the reporters from the AP and another wire service who wanted their “scoop” enough to promote Nazi war propaganda. Shirer described how obviously the Nazis went about trying to get him to do it, like “Have we mentioned there’s a telephone line reserved for you? Wouldn’t you like to use this nice line for your report? Did we remind you we’re letting up on the censorship for this story in particular?”
“(Reuters) – The White House will not consider any further stimulus legislation this month as it eyes the economic impact from reopening U.S. states, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Friday, adding that formal talks with Congress have paused.”
[…]
A copy of the C.D.C. guidance obtained by The New York Times includes sections for child care programs, schools and day camps, churches and other “communities of faith,” employers with vulnerable workers, restaurants and bars, and mass transit administrators. The recommendations include using disposable dishes and utensils at restaurants, closing every other row of seats in buses and subways while restricting transit routes among areas experiencing different levels of coronavirus infection, and separating children at school and camps into groups that should not mix throughout the day.
But White House and other administration officials rejected the recommendations over concerns that they were overly prescriptive, infringed on religious rights and risked further damaging an economy that Mr. Trump was banking on to recover quickly. One senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services with deep ties to religious conservatives objected to any controls on church services.
“Governments have a duty to instruct the public on how to stay safe during this crisis and can absolutely do so without dictating to people how they should worship God,” said Roger Severino, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, who once oversaw the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation.
[…]
Particularly contentious were the C.D.C.’s recommendations for churches and other houses of worship. Mr. Severino vocally opposed them.
“Protections against religious discrimination aren’t suspended during an emergency,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “This means the federal government cannot single out religious conduct as somehow being more dangerous or worthy of scrutiny than comparable secular behavior.”
The recommendations for churches include encouraging all congregants to wear cloth face coverings when inside the building, offering video streaming or drive-in options for services and considering “suspending use of a choir or musical ensemble” during services. It also urges churches to consider “temporarily limiting the sharing of frequently touched objects,” like hymnals, prayer books and passed collection baskets.
The collection baskets were a bridge too far.
blfsays
SC@59, Heh, speaking of memory, can you recall the name of the fairly promient über-conservative loon — very possibly a john bircher — who, in the 1960(?)s, argued the States should have sided with the nazis in WW ][ because teh nazis fought the commies? I cannot.
“NEW: Chief Justice Roberts issues an administrative stay temporarily blocking disclosure of grand jury materials in the Mueller report to the House while the court considers briefs on whether to enter a longer stay.”
There have been 73 reported cases in NY of children getting severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.
On Thursday, a 5-year-old boy passed away from these complications, believed to be caused by COVID-19.
DOH is investigating.
blfsays
SC@67, Yeah, Buchanan was my first pseudo-recollection as well, but I’ve not been able to find any confirmation. Another pseudo-recollection is William F Buckley, but again, lacking confirmation. Grrrrrr…
Remember the big picture. Flynn was part of a campaign that knowingly accepted election assistance from a foreign adversary power & was in the midst of rewarding its benefactor with concessions when they were ensnared in a counterintel probe in which Flynn repeatedly lied.
(As an aside, I’m so tired of media people saying Russia “tried to interfere with” or “tried to attack” our election in 2016. They did interfere with/attack the election, and there’s no reason to add “try to” other than to minimize what they did or its effects.)
The president’s advisers are contemplating a possible visit to the White House by Flynn in the coming weeks and say he could become a campaign surrogate this fall. “I’m very happy for General Flynn,” he said on Thursday in the Oval Office. “He was a great warrior, and he still is a great warrior. Now, in my book, he’s an even greater warrior.”
Nine senior Trump administration officials, campaign staff, outside advisers and longtime associates of the president told the Daily Beast on Thursday that they want Flynn to have a public-facing role in helping the president. One of Trump’s campaign pollsters even compared Flynn to Nelson Mandela: “Years ago when Nelson Mandela came to America after years of political persecution, he was treated like a rock star by Americans,” John McLaughlin said. “Now after over three years of political persecution, General Flynn is our rock star. A big difference is that he was persecuted in America.”
The state is reopening non-essential businesses and workers wary of employers’ safety measures could lose unemployment benefits
Fear of catching Covid-19 will now cost you more than sleep in Ohio. The Ohio state government has asked employers to report anyone who refuses to return to work because they are concerned about the coronavirus pandemic. Reported workers may be ineligible for unemployment benefits.
[…]
Ohio’s department of job and family services has now asked employers to report employees who quit or refuse work when it is available due to Covid-19. The information collected on the Covid-19 Employee Fraud form can then be used to evaluate potential unemployment benefits claims from people who are refusing suitable work, and are thus ineligible for benefits.
Ohio started reopening non-essential businesses last week. Polling shows the majority of the state’s residents oppose reopening the economy, and the state, like the rest of the US, still lacks the tests to assess the true scale of infections.
An email sent to employers last Friday notifying them of the form said: Ohio law prohibits individuals from receiving unemployment benefits if they refuse to accept offers of suitable work, or quit work, without good cause.
Whilst it’s very probably true that is essentially what Ohio law says, surely “good cause” includes unsafe or unsanitary working conditions.
[…]
Employers have voiced concerns that employees are incentivized not to return to work in the case they get more from unemployment payments. If a person’s unemployment claim is accepted, they receive 50% of their normal wage in unemployment insurance, up to $480 a week for an individual, along with an additional $600 from the federal government.
HEADDESK
We are concerned about unemployment serving as a disincentive for individuals who have been laid off to get back to work when the economy reopens, said a spokesperson for US senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio.
[…]
Worker advocacy groups have criticized the government’s crackdown on employees who refuse to return to work due to the virus, saying it will ultimately harm vulnerable workers, especially those who may not have the capacity to properly fight claims from their employer that they can safely return to work.
“Leaving employees, who have little access to evidence needed to prove their employer failed to follow Covid protocols and who are largely without access to legal counsel and advice … will be too much for many with legitimate claims to navigate and will put working Ohioans at a disadvantage,” said a statement from advocacy groups Policy Matters Ohio and Ohio Poverty Law Center.
Who’s up for some philosophy? COVID is shaping up as a crucible for the very idea of freedom – and an ultimate test for populism and libertarianism. Ian Dunt talks to TOBY BUCKLE of the Political Philosophy Podcast about what freedom means, who owns it, what the lockdown is doing to international notions of liberty, and whether Boris Johnson is, if possible, even worse than Trump….
The Spanish government has refused the Madrid region permission to loosen its coronavirus lockdown, saying the area is not yet ready to move to the next phase of de-escalation.
The area in and around the capital is the region of Spain that has been hit hardest by the virus. More than 13,500 people have died there from Covid-19, or with associated symptoms, while 64,333 cases have been confirmed.
The health ministry said that while the region had sufficient care capacity, the detection capabilities of its primary medical facilities needed to be strengthened further.
The widely anticipated refusal of permission came 24 hours after the Madrid region’s director of public health resigned in protest at the Madrid regional government’s decision to seek a loosening of the lockdown from Monday.
In her resignation letter, Yoland Fuentes said that the bid to relax restrictions “was not based on health criteria”.
Spain’s deputy prime minister, the Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, went further, accusing the Madrid region’s conservative president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of “playing with people’s lives” for political ends.
Díaz Ayuso hit back, saying Iglesias had no idea of the situation in Madrid and had “never lent a hand” there.
Spain, which has been under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe following the declaration of a state of emergency on 14 March, is easing its way out via a four-phase lockdown aimed at reaching “a new normality” by the end of June.
Spain reported 221 deaths on Friday, down from daily totals of more than 900 deaths a month ago. To date, the country has confirmed 222,857 cases and 26,229 deaths.
Report criticising government lockdown proposals heavily redacted before release
Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public […].
The report was one of a series of documents published by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) this week to mollify growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus.
However, large blocks of text in the report, produced by SPI-B, the Sage subcommittee providing advice from behavioural scientists on how the public might respond to lockdown measures, were entirely blanked out.
Several SPI–B members told the Guardian that the redacted portions of the document contained criticisms they had made of potential government policies they had been formally asked to consider in late March and early April.
One SPI-B adviser said: “It is bloody silly, and completely counterproductive.” A second committee member said: “The impression I’m getting is this government doesn’t want any criticism.”
[…]
Members of the committee have been discussing among themselves how best to respond to the redaction, which they believe was a heavy-handed move that jeopardises their independence.
As a reminder, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” (associate Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, 1914), referring to the advantages of transparency against corruption. As one step, leak the full report to, say, the Grauniad.
[… assorted assertations from teh NKofE’s “government”…]
However, SPI–B advisers who spoke to the Guardian disputed that they had been consulted. “We weren’t given advance notice and we still haven’t been given a satisfactory explanation,” the second SPI–B member said, adding they felt the redaction had been intended to stifle criticism.
“This government has failed to show any self-criticism whatsoever, when it is glaringly obvious to everybody that big mistakes have been made. If you want the trust of the population you hold up your hand and you say ‘we’ve made these mistakes, this is why they happened, we regret it, we’re learning from it’. Rather than just keep saying ‘we’ve done the most fantastic job’ and not being open to criticism in any way.”
Indeed. Here in France the government has admitted to mistakes — e.g., President Macron himself has done so in at least one of his speeches — and some, abeit probably not all, of the various errors have been — or are being or promised that they will be — rectified (e.g., not counting nursing home cases / deaths, an inaccurate map, poor pay for health care workers in general and nursing home staff in particular, and so on).
There is no evidence that [Covid-19] can be treated or cured by coloured lights.”
Ha! Love the understated humor. Actually, the whacko cures on offer sound like they would appeal to Trump. I can just see him turning to Dr. Birx and asking her if she is familiar with that treatment.
Another aspect of blf’s comment stuck with me: scam artists never give up, they just change scams now and then.
blfsays
Hair furor’s dalekocrazies exterminate exterminate some more, this time at the UN (from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog):
[…]
The US has stopped a vote on a UN Security Council resolution to support Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s call for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After more than six weeks of wrangling, France thought it had achieved a breakthrough last night. But the French underestimated the determination of the Trump administration when it comes to demonising the World Health Organisation.
The US mission wanted no references to the WHO in the resolution. So the French watered down the reference in the resolution to “specialised health agencies” of the UN (of which there is really only one — the WHO).
The US mission seemed to be on board last night, but this morning they signalled that the wording was still not acceptable, leaving western diplomats at the UN to suspect that someone high up in Washington must have intervened.
The government is outsourcing the recruitment and training of contact tracers to a private company, ignoring the fact that local councils already employ thousands of them – people who know the job, and their local area.
Which private companies are making money off of that redundant activity? Friends of Boris Johnson?
The Trump Death Clock, the real-time tracker that seeks to put a figure on the number of Americans who have died needlessly during the pandemic as a result of White House inaction, has just gone live in New York’s Times Square.
A digital billboard has beamed up on 43rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan that broadcasts in large red numerals the daily estimated count of unnecessary deaths caused by Trump’s delay in issuing lockdown guidelines in March. Today’s tally: 44,809.
It is the brainchild of award-winning film-maker Eugene Jarecki and modeled on the National Debt Clock that also has a presence near Times Square. Jarecki told the Guardian he wanted to hold Trump accountable for “reckless leadership” by giving a real-time estimation of the number of Americans who have lost their lives through federal government incompetence.
He bases the figure, which will update daily on the billboard, on 60% of the total real-time tally of deaths from Covid-19 in America. That proportion was first posited as a rough calculation of unnecessary deaths by epdemiologists.
Trump has so far kept his silence about the death clock. If he finds out about the new billboard he is unlikely to be pleased, however — it is a mere 13 blocks away from his home in Trump Tower.
Uh, Grauniad, hair furor moved out of hitler hostel some time ago (Donald Trump changes primary residence from New York to Mar-a-Lago (1-Nov-2019): “Donald and Melania Trump have filed for residency in Palm Beach, according to documents obtained by the New York Times”). Actually, he hasn’t “moved out of” as such (as far as I am aware), just changed his “primary residence”.
SC @49, we should all go live with Matthew Miller. I too have derived some pleasure from analyzing the Skype backgrounds shown on TV as various personalities are interviewed remotely. Steve Schmidt added bowls of colorful fruit to his kitchen counter! It’s all nonsense, and relatively unimportant, but it’s fun. Cory Gardner’s background exemplified the Republican poverty of spirit evident in his trumpian policies.
SC @63, JFC. That is such bad news. Meanwhile some city and/or state governments are really having such financial difficulties that they are going to have to start laying off sanitation workers, teachers, police officers, and even healthcare workers, etc. It looks to me like Trump is looking for an excuse to restrict funds, without having to repeat his divisive “bailing out blue states” rhetoric. Maybe Trump’s staff came up with this no-action excuse as attempt to substitute statements that sound almost reasonable.
Anyway, the bottom line is, there will be no federal funds for states that seriously need them. It’s as if a hurricane hit New York and New Jersey and the federal government said, “We don’t care. We’re not going to rescue those citizens. Let’s leave it all up to Cuomo. He can do it … with no money.”
President Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for being in California rather than Washington — a sign, they both said, of her unwillingness to work on behalf of Americans.
As it turns out, the California Democrat was in fact in Washington, where she was visible to reporters at the Capitol.
“She’s highly overrated, a bad woman,” Trump said of Pelosi during a wide-ranging interview Friday morning on “Fox & Friends.” “She doesn’t even want to go to work. She’s in California sitting in her expensive house.”
A few hours later, McEnany echoed her boss as she complained about the difficulty of working with Congress when Pelosi is not in Washington.
“It would be helpful if Nancy Pelosi was here,” McEnany said at a White House briefing. “We need Nancy Pelosi to come back from California and get to Washington, D.C., and to work for the American people.”
Her comments prompted a tweet from Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill that included a photo of his boss.
“@SpeakerPelosi literally doing interviews from Capitol Hill as @PressSec stated this,” Hammill wrote. “Pelosi has done TV all week from DC.”
“@SpeakerPelosi literally doing interviews from Capitol Hill as @PressSec stated this,” Hammill wrote. “Pelosi has done TV all week from DC.”
She has! I’ve seen her interviewed several times in the building in the past few days!
blfsays
tomh@63, Asking about hair furor and his dalekocrazy, “Are they ever right about anything?”
They’re TREMENDOUSLY, HUGELY, extremely right-wingnut batshite loony kleptomaniacs, teh bestest everr!!1! Drink your bleach. Get that healthy inner UV glow.
With the coronavirus forcing much of Europe to tone down public celebrations this week marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the small nation of Belarus is raising eyebrows — and concerns — by going ahead with a mass military parade in the capital Minsk on Saturday.
The move reflects the business-as-usual approach of the country’s longtime president, Alexander Lukashenko — a former Soviet collective farm director leading what the U.S. once dubbed the last dictatorship in Europe.
As the coronavirus has raced across the globe, Lukashenko has dismissed the pandemic as mass “psychosis” — a disease easily cured with a bit of vodka, a hot sauna or time spent playing hockey or doing farm work on one of country’s legendary Soviet-designed tractors.
The country’s soccer league still competes. Belarus’ schools opened after a short delay. And annual Victory Day celebrations will go on.
The government “simply cannot cancel the parade,” the Belarusian leader said in a Cabinet meeting this week. “It’s an emotional, deeply ideological event.”
In a rare concession to at least some social distancing measures, Lukashenko has urged Belarusian men to spend time with their families, rather than their mistresses. But behind the theatrics sits a wily politician who plays to his base in the country’s towns and villages, analysts say.
“Lukashenko prioritizes combating panic rather than combating the pandemic,” Artyom Shraibman, a Minsk-based political analyst with Sense Analytics, tells NPR. “He downplays the threat, and of course he’s very concerned about [the] state of [the] economy.”
Shraibman notes similar echoes coming out of the Trump White House.
Belarus has reported over 21,000 suspected coronavirus cases and more than 120 deaths — comparatively low in the global count, but one of the fastest-growing infection rates in Europe, the World Health Organization says.
Amid the growing crisis, Belarusian civil society is rallying to fix what Lukashenko will not. With many Belarusians now self-isolating by choice, even the country’s health ministry has endorsed some public distancing measures over Lukashenko’s advice.
Volunteers have raised money to buy personal protective gear for hospitals. Restaurants have donated food. Hotels provide rooms pro bono to medical workers. Private businesses have raised funds.
“People who normally don’t talk to each other are working together to help,” says Andrej Stryzhak of #ByCovid19, a group of volunteer activists leading crowdfunded efforts to equip health workers across the country. “It’s been magical and I don’t use that word lightly.”
Stryzhak says many are bracing for the aftershocks of Saturday’s Victory parade, where attendance isn’t required but there are reports of pay bonuses given to those who show up.
“We believe in statistics. And the experts and doctors tell us that if there’s a crowd, then expect a new spike in cases a week or two later,” says Stryzhak. “Belarus isn’t Mars,” he adds, noting that the country is as susceptible to the virus as any other….
Maggie Haberman: “Many news outlets the president calls fake had held off on reporting who the staffer was who got COVID, out of respect for concerns about privacy. The president then blurted out the name at an event this afternoon.”
MSNBC is still not reporting it other than the first name because Trump said it. They said they wait until the person confirms.
blfsays
SC@89, I like the pictorial response(?), “Republicans will accept 100,000 deaths from a white president, but not healthcare from a Black President” (my transcription, snarky lack of CAPS in the original).
[…]
African Americans in parts of New York City are being arrested for violating social distancing rules at a far higher rate than white people, according to data from the Brooklyn district attorney.
[…]
The figures lend weight to anecdotal evidence which suggests that whiter and more affluent areas of the city are less likely to be targeted by police. More than a third of the arrests were made in the predominantly black neighbourhood of Brownsville, while no arrests were made in the predominantly white neighbourhood of Park Slope.
People have been sharing images showing how police are apparently altering their approaches to enforcing social distancing, depending on the neighbourhood.
One widely shared tweet juxtaposed officers handing masks out to a group of non-socially distancing white people in a park with the actions of an officer in the East Village in Manhattan. Video footage showed the officer approaching and punching a person of color, following a dispute over social distancing.
As of this morning, according to NBC News’ latest tally, there are nearly 1.27 million cases of the coronavirus in the United States. The death toll, meanwhile, is nearly 77,000.
It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump appeared on Fox News this morning and offered yet another death toll forecast.
“They said, ‘Sir, you have to close the country.’ Nobody ever heard of a thing like this, but they were right because if I didn’t we would have lost 2 million, 2 and a half million, maybe more than that people, and we’ll be at 100,000, 110,000 — the lower level of what was projected if we did the shutdown.”
Let’s take a moment to review the last few weeks.
On Monday, April 20, the president said he believed the overall American death toll from the pandemic would be between 50,000 and 60,000 people. Later that week, the president’s forecast had already been exposed as tragically wrong.
Exactly one week later, on Monday, April 27, Trump said the overall American death toll would “probably” be between 60,000 and 70,000 people. It took about four days for this projection to be discredited, too.
On Wednesday, April 29, the president suggested the number of fatalities in the United States could be as low as 65,000. Predictably, we soon after passed that projected total.
On Sunday, May 3, Trump acknowledged that he was moving the goalposts again. “I used to say 65,000,” the Republican said, pointing to a total he promoted just a few days earlier. “And now I’m saying 80,000 or 90,000.”
At the same event, the president upped the projection once more: “Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people.”
All of which led to this morning’s revised total of between 100,000 and 110,000 fatalities.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, when I say I don’t know why Trump keeps doing this, I’m not being coy or facetious. I honestly have no idea. There is no upside to a president, every few days, presenting a new projected death toll, seeing the actual number climb, and then starting the process anew.
Obviously, we’re dealing with an unfolding crisis and our collective understanding of the details is changing frequently. But when a president finds it necessary to revise a projected death toll six times in 18 days, there’s a problem.
blfsays
SC@91, Yeah, I was going to point roughly the same thing as MSNBC apparently has — it’s not confirmed, and because hair furor bellowed it, it must be confirmed. He lies, all the time, so much so that, as I’ve noted before (multiple times, sorry!), I won’t believe him if he says his own name (for any reason) without independent verifiable confirmation from a trustworthy source.
Trump is still focused on making sure that no one blames him:
Donald Trump sat down this week with ABC News’ David Muir, who noted rising unemployment and asked, “How bad is this going to get?” Trump didn’t hesitate.
“Well, that is what it is,” the Republican replied. “And you know, it’s very interesting. Even the Democrats aren’t blaming me for that…. Even the Democrats, they’re not hitting me with, ‘Oh gee, it’s your fault’ from that standpoint. Nobody’s blaming me.”
It was a peek into an amazing perspective: confronted with widespread public suffering, Trump’s first instinct was to emphasize the importance of not holding him responsible. [See quote above.]
[…] when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation lost more than 20 million jobs in April. His first instinct was jarring, but consistent.
[…] Trump said Friday he’s not to blame after the Labor Department reported that more than 20 million jobs had been slashed last month, when the U.S. economy buckled under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s fully expected, there’s no surprise,” Trump said. “Everybody knows that…. Even the Democrats aren’t blaming me for that.”
[…] plenty of Democrats are holding the president at least partially responsible for the effects of the crisis.
[…] Trump, even now, struggles with the very idea of empathy. It would’ve been easy for the president, in either of these interviews, to acknowledge the suffering so many American families are experiencing, and say his heart goes out to the many who’ve lost their jobs, their livelihoods, and their businesses.
Except, Trump’s instincts seem to take him in a very different direction. His top priority seems to be avoiding blame, not acknowledging pain.
I’ve long been fascinated by the limits of the Republican’s capacity for empathy, but this is a rather extreme example of Trump prioritizing Trump, even when it’d be in his interests to think of others.
Coronavirus whistleblower case may be retaliation — federal watchdog
A federal investigative office has found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the Trump administration was retaliating against a whistle-blower, Rick Bright, when he was ousted from a government research agency combating the coronavirus.
The New York Times reports that the agency further said, according to Bright’s lawyers, that Bright “Should be reinstated for 45 days while it investigates. […]”
However, the Times further notes that the recommendation is not binding. A year ago, the same office said counsel to the president [sic] Kellyanne Conway should be fired for repeatedly violating legal prohibitions on using her position for political purposes. The president [sic] ignored the recommendation.
The deaths of more than 50 hospital and care home workers have been reported to Britain’s health and safety regulator, which is considering launching criminal investigations, the Guardian has learned.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which investigates the breaking of safety at work laws, has received 54 formal reports of deaths in health and care settings “where the source of infection is recorded as Covid-19”. These are via the official reporting process, called Riddor: Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences.
Separately, senior lawyers say any failures to provide proper personal protective equipment (PPE) may be so severe they amount to corporate manslaughter, with police forces drawing up plans to handle any criminal complaints.
Despite weeks of pleading, frontline medical staff complain that PPE is still failing to reach them as hospitals battle the highly contagious virus. Senior barristers say criminal investigations should be launched, and that there are grounds to suspect high-level failures.
Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, said: “Sending someone into a high-risk situation against one of the most infectious diseases we’ve come across in 100 years without proper protection needs a proper investigation and may meet the threshold for criminal sanction.
“In due course there ought to be an investigation by either the HSE or police to identify whether the lack of PPE has caused somebody’s death.”
Public authorities are not exempt from duties of care to their employees even when responding to emergencies. A key issue will be whether organisational and management failures contributed to those deaths.
Alex Bailin QC, an expert in laws concerning corporate manslaughter, said NHS trusts and the Department of Health, as well as any other government departments involved in crucial decision-making, could be considered criminal suspects.
“Medics and other carers are doing the job with inadequate equipment, and undoubtedly some of them will have contracted it from highly infectious patients, and died. Those deaths were avoidable with proper PPE,” he said. “Had there not been organisational and management failures, those deaths could have been avoided, and that could be corporate manslaughter.
“Legally, there may well be enough for the police to open a criminal investigation, even if there is not the appetite do so in the current crisis. There is reason to suspect serious high-level failures.”
He added that there was ample warning of the need for PPE….
The responsibility to investigate deaths of workers is split between the HSE and police. The HSE would investigate health and safety alleged offences, while the more serious offence of corporate manslaughter would be investigated by police.
The HSE says cases of Covid should be reported if “a worker has been diagnosed as having Covid-19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work” and where “a worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to coronavirus”.
…
The HSE has said in guidance to employers: “If a worker dies as a result of exposure to coronavirus from their work and this is confirmed as the likely cause of death by a registered medical practitioner, then you must report this as a death due to exposure to a biological agent using the ‘case of disease’ report form. You must report workplace fatalities to HSE by the quickest practicable means without delay and send a report of that fatality within 10 days of the incident.”…
blf @ #94, I think they all knew who it was even prior to Trump blurting it out. MSNBC just apparently has a policy not to identify people until they confirm it themselves. (The media were probably told fairly early given that they would have had more contact with Miller.)
Pence posted misinformation about PPE deliveries. Then he deleted those posts.
The Washington Post has a deep look out today at Project Airbridge, the Trump administration’s effort to quickly airlift huge amounts of PPE from foreign manufacturers into the United States.
It’s an informative telling of what’s been a murky, complicated and, as the story convincingly suggests, failed effort to end chronic shortages in protective equipment supply around the country.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains a national stockpile for distribution of critical items like PPE, but it hasn’t been enough. Instead, Presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner has set up Project Airbridge, an effort to have FEMA underwrite cargo flights bringing privately produced masks to the U.S.
The Washington Post story includes a telling anecdote.
Last month, Vice President Mike Pence added posts to his Instagram and Twitter accounts that attributed the delivery of hundreds of thousands of N95 masks — as well as other PPE components — to Project Airbridge. The posts said that the effort had focused on delivering the masks to three likely swing states in the 2020 election: Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana. [You can view some of the deleted posts at the link.]
That didn’t make sense. In total, the Instagram posts claimed 1.4 million masks had been delivered to the three states.
But according to FEMA records reviewed by the Washington Post, Project Airbridge had brought fewer than 800,000 masks into the country.
After the Washington Post asked about the Instagram posts, the ones for Minnesota and Indiana were deleted and replaced. The new images attributed the PPE deliveries to FEMA, but not to Project Airbridge […]
the mix-up comes as people continue to demand answers over the unexplained series of federal confiscations of PPE being imported into the United States. In one case, FEMA confiscated a shipment that was headed to another federal agency: the Veteran’s Administration.
When asked, FEMA told the agency that the supplies had been diverted into the national stockpile. Where the PPE goes from there, and how that decision is made, is unclear. But the Vice President’s public statements suggest that the administration wants certain states to know they’re benefitting.
I should not longer be surprised, but I am that these wear-my-christianist-beliefs on my sleeve people regularly lie. This is the man [Pence] who wanted to deliver empty boxes to a care facility “for the camera.” Why do they claim that morality comes from their religion. It seems the opposite is true.
—————–
Gee, for an alleged Christian, Pence seems to have forgotten “Thou Shalt Not Lie.”
——————
Everybody in this maladministration really, really need to get their eyes examined, they are so bad at optics. The walk backs, the misstatements, the tweeting and deleting of said tweets, this is what they are spending their time on, and we pay for it.
——————–
We are a lawless failed state. I don’t see any other way to call it now. There are no consequences for malfeasance by a Republican and all of them know it.
———————-
If at first you don’t mislead, lie, lie again.
——————–
Vice President Mike Pence, in charge of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, was caught on a hot mic asking if he could carry empty boxes of what had housed personal protective equipment (PPE) off a van and into the front door of a nursing home.
“Just preposterous: Trump claims that Angela Merkel, among other foreign leaders he’s spoken to about the pandemic, ‘view us as the world leader, and they’re following us’, even if they don’t want to ‘admit it’.”
blfsays
SC@98, “The media were probably told fairly early given that they would have had more contact with Miller.” By hair furor’s Wacko House? That’d be unusually competent.
Anyways, the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog is now reporting “Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller has reportedly confirmed to the media that she tested positive for coronavirus this morning. […]” (No idea precisely when or to whom she confirmed.)
And more on Ms Millers outing as infected, from the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog, referring to hair furor blurting out her name: “It’s not clear whether or when Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller would have chosen to reveal her own diagnosis for coronavirus if it hadn’t all happened so publicly this morning. […]”
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel on Friday apologized for sharing a video that made it look like Vice President Pence delivered empty boxes to a nursing home.
“[I]t would appear that @vp was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt,” Kimmel tweeted Friday afternoon. He then apologized while making it clear he still believed the event was “a staged publicity stunt.”
“The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth,” Kimmel said. […]
“This is a pardon disguised as a technical legal matter.”
[…] Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor, 2007 to 2016
It is highly unusual for the government to dismiss a defendant’s case after he has pleaded guilty, and the DOJ’s motion contains arguments that are inconsistent with long-standing DOJ policy and practice.
There are good reasons to consider changing how DOJ handles interviews of subjects, as well as when and how it charges people for lying to the FBI. But Flynn’s case is not unlike many other cases in which the FBI interviewed someone without their attorney present with the expectation that the subject would lie.
Any change to how the FBI handles cases like Flynn’s should be done across the board, for all defendants. What we’re left with is a criminal justice system that has different rules for Donald Trump’s friends than it has for everyone else. That’s corruption, plain and simple. […]
Joshua Dressler, law professor, Ohio State University
On the face of it, this appears to be nothing more than another attack on the rule of law perpetrated by those working in the Trump administration. I can only hope that Judge Sullivan will conduct a hearing to determine whether there is any justification for Attorney General Barr’s remarkable actions.
In light of Barr’s politicized actions in the past, I suspect that this is more of the same. As for the effects, it will have no effect on Michael Flynn who would likely have been pardoned anyway. And those who believe in “deep state” conspiracies will simply nod their head and say, “I told you so.” But, this will be another blow to the morale of career lawyers working in the Justice Department and beyond.
And, lest we forget, when the rule of law is attacked, we are all at risk. […]
Jimmy Gurulé, law professor, Notre Dame
The Department of Justice under attorney general William Barr will likely be remembered as the most politicized Department of Justice in history. In a matter of a few months, Barr has personally intervened in two cases to protect President Trump’s political cronies. In February 2020, Barr overruled the sentencing recommendation of career prosecutors in order to secure a lesser sentence for Roger Stone, […] Trump’s long-time political ally.
Now, Barr has gone even further by dropping the criminal charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security Director. As a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Assistant Attorney General, it deeply saddens me to witness the severe and incalculable damage being inflicted to the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice.
The rule of law is in imminent peril. […]
Lisa Kern Griffin, law professor, Duke University
Bill Barr has taken extraordinary steps to “erase” the Mueller investigation on the president’s behalf, from misrepresenting Mueller’s findings to the public, to intervening in Roger Stone’s sentencing proceedings, to attacking the federal agents and prosecutors who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Dismissing the charges against Michael Flynn — who has twice acknowledged under oath that he lied to FBI agents about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and voluntarily entered a guilty plea —is the most brazen move Barr has made yet. It is openly corrupt and legally indefensible. To say that Flynn’s lies about contacting the Russian ambassador were not material to a national security investigation is inconsistent with precedents about what 18 U.S.C. 1001 requires and is a position the government seems to be taking for one case only.
The whole point of a special counsel is to insulate sensitive investigations from political considerations. But AG Bill Barr has sacrificed the integrity of the Justice Department and undercut the rule of law for political ends. […]
[…] “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said at the White House on April 28. Which is great news, both for individuals and hospitals who are desperately trying to avoid becoming overwhelmed. There are conflicting studies on the drug’s efficacy, but at least there’s some evidence that it’s more than a bunch of nonsense barfed out by Rudy Giuliani and the loons at Fox.
So maybe this time they’ll get it right. Maybe this time they won’t hype it as a cure-all, or let the president accidentally advise people to drink aquarium cleaner, or hoover up thousands of doses from unlicensed manufacturers in Pakistan, or pump it into patients willy nilly.
Or maybe they’ll find some entirely novel way to fuck it up. […]
Take it away, Axios:
A complete breakdown in communication and coordination within the Trump administration has undermined the distribution of a promising treatment, according to senior officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.
Why it matters: The drug, remdesivir, hasn’t made it to some of the high-priority hospitals where it’s most needed, and administration officials have responded by shifting blame and avoiding responsibility, sources said. […]
More than 32,000 doses of remdesivir were shipped and delivered on Tuesday to Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.
But many of these doses went to “less impacted counties,” an administration official said.
[…] “Some went to the wrong places, some went to the right places,” one senior official told Axios. “We don’t know who gave the order. And no one is claiming responsibility.” […]
Apparently, Dr. Deborah Birx is GRRR SO MAD. And Mike Pence is GRRR SO MAD. And HHS Secretary Alex Azar got reamed out and ordered to “take more ownership for getting remdesivir to the places where it’s needed.” Which means the HHS Secretary is also GRRR SO MAD at his deputy Robert Kadlec, who was involved in the botched distribution effort. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because Kadlec features prominently in Dr. Rick Bright’s whistleblower complaint, for his efforts to disregard the science and sprinkle Hydroxybonercream 3000 on America’s Cheerios. More or less.
Whodathunkit that Kadlec could mess it up again, huh? […]
The official added that this failure of distribution highlights the need for better data. “But it more importantly highlights the reason why the administration continues to push a locally-executed response effort, because they [the local jurisdictions] know the data and the distribution better than the federal government.”
Anyway, they have lots more drugs to distribute, and this time they’ll ONE HUNDRED PERCENT get it all right, so nothing to worry about, okay? […]
blf @ #103, I suspect Trump’s naming her might not have been just callous negligence. He could well have done it intentionally – all of the evidence is that his response to other people being sick around him is selfish anger.
Trump’s son-in-law always casts himself as the genius cleaning up someone else’s problems.
[…] He has wasted taxpayer resources and endangered lives trying on policy roles usually reserved for the country’s top experts with the sophistication of a child playing dress-up, cavalierly discarding them when he can’t fit into them.
There have been no consequences. In any normal administration, an adviser with Kushner’s string of failures would be fired, but Kushner, like his father-in-law, keeps crediting himself with imaginary successes. Most recently, he declared the administration’s coronavirus response “a great success story,” a mind-boggling assertion that raises the question of what, if anything, Kushner thinks failure looks like. He has also continued to bash the actual experts, disputing their assessments and implying that they, not he, are the amateurs, and he is here to clean up their mess.
This is basically Kushner’s modus operandi, and it’s painfully familiar to me because he was my boss when I was the editor in chief of the New York Observer, which he had bought when he was 25. […] One of the more memorable instances of this I witnessed was at a memorial service for a beloved longtime Observer staffer, Tyler Rush, who’d joined the paper well before Kushner bought it. When it came time for Kushner to say a few words, he launched into a supercilious monologue crediting himself with finally getting the paper published on time after what he described as chaos when he arrived. He also told an anecdote about Rush approaching him when he bought the paper to note that his staff was underpaid, which was true at the time, and true when I took the editor job years later. Kushner congratulated himself during the memorial for giving Rush and his production team the only raise that year because “unlike everyone else,” Rush hadn’t been lying to Kushner.
This line didn’t land the way Kushner hoped, because no one had been lying. Everyone was underpaid. But he didn’t like what he heard from the other staffers, so he proceeded to make his own assessment about what their experience and expertise were worth. […] The conclusion he drew was that people who chose less remunerative career paths had not figured out how the world worked. […]
The more grotesque and repulsive aspect of this incident was that Kusher thought this self-aggrandizing nonsense was an appropriate eulogy, but that, too, is in keeping with how he operates. When I knew him, he seemed constitutionally incapable of considering the humanity of other people as a starting point.
Relationships were primarily transactional, and this failure of empathy permeated everything he did. […]
But he’s in good company in the Trump White House with that attitude. When Kushner says the coronavirus response is going well, he’s echoing the equally preposterous rhetoric of his father-in-law, who says the same thing in any medium or venue that will amplify him. This bubble of delusion extends to the rest of the family, too. Ivanka Trump’s equally fruitless government tenure is marked primarily by her ability to take credit for family-leave policy work other people have done and her father’s insistence that she’s created 15 million jobs, even though there’s little evidence that she’s created more than one, which doesn’t even pay: senior White House adviser. […]
Worse, when they [Trump and Kushner] fail, the entire executive office apparatus is expected to adapt to their mistakes and bend reality in service of optics. When Kushner stated publicly — and incorrectly — that the national stockpile of medical supplies is “supposed to be our stockpile” and “not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” the administration changed the language on federal websites to accommodate his ignorance.
This goes beyond the sort of routine movement of goal posts many elected officials engage in when they need to explain their gaffes. This is teleporting the goal posts to an entirely different dimension or denying their existence in the first place. In this alternate universe where Jared Kushner is doing a good job, no identifiable outcomes constitute failure, and everything is, by definition, success. […]
“NEWS: A White House official tells NBC News that Katie Miller was at the White House this morning before testing positive for coronavirus. This official says Miller was showing ‘symptoms’. (Miller tells NBC News she is asymptomatic.) – h/t @PeterAlexander”
blfsays
From the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog, Brazilian president Jairo Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 denialism and obstruction is affecting(& causing the infection of) more than just Brazil and Brazilians:
Escalating levels of COVID-19 infection in Brazil are causing concerns in the neighbouring country of Paraguay as large numbers of cases of the disease are being recorded among Paraguayan citizens returning across the border between the two countries.
Of 101 new reported cases of COVID-19 in Paraguay on Friday, 99 were from Paraguayans being held in compulsory quarantine centres after returning from Brazil. This represented by far Paraguay’s largest daily jump in cases of the virus.
American Revolution 2.0, which presents itself as bipartisan, has been assisted by far-right individuals — some with extremist links
Leaked audio recordings and online materials obtained by the Guardian reveal that one of the most prominent anti-lockdown protest groups, American Revolution 2.0 (AR2), has received extensive assistance from well-established far-right actors, some with extremist connections.
AR2 presents itself as a grassroots network, but the recordings and other materials reveal its allies include a well-connected Tea Party co-founder and a family of serial online activists who have rolled out dozens of reopen websites and Facebook groups.
Its website was built and is hosted by a web designer long active in far-right circles online, and who runs a bespoke social media network for the militia movement. One of that website’s previous users bombed a mosque, and another user, now memorialized on the site, was recently shot dead by police in Maryland during a firearms raid.
Josh Ellis is the leader of AR2, which has driven anti-lockdown protests across the country, and presented itself as a spontaneous uprising. […]
[…]
Ellis told the group [“an inner circle of AR2 members” …] that in recent days he had talked to the Dorr brothers.
The Dorr brothers — Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew — are rightwing activists whose methods have been roundly criticized by conservative groups and legislators.
Ellis continued: I was like, ‘Hey guys, I just need you to promote my thing on May 1st if that’s alright,’ and they were like, ‘Hey, awesome.’
The Dorr brothers have orchestrated online campaigns which stake out positions to the right of established pro-gun groups such as the NRA, and state-based right-to-life groups. The campaigns then encourage rank-and-file conservatives to donate money and sign petitions on websites that harvest their data.
An analysis in late April by internet security researchers found hundreds of reopen related domains had been registered during that month; that scores could be connected to the Dorr brothers; and that “Facebook groups spun up by the Dorr brothers use these groups to direct traffic to these domains”.
Some of these sites acted as major hubs for disinformation about the pandemic, and many were suspended by Facebook. But the Guardian was able to establish that as of Monday, at least 20 reopen or American Revolution 2 pages for cities and states including Virginia, Florida and Los Angeles were running as private groups.
The pages viewed by the Guardian featured content promoting “deep state” or anti-China conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination beliefs and denialism about the danger of Covid-19. […]
[… many more details about (e.g.) the website…]
In the recording, Ellis is heard to say he has spoken with Mark Meckler, he’s the one who owns the openthestates.com website, and he’s super connected with {Sean} Hannity, Tucker {Carlson}, {Mark} Levin, {Ben} Shapiro, Charlie Kirk — implying Meckler could help him to connect with prominent conservative media figures.
Meckler’s openthestates.com is a slick anti-lockdown protest website that links back to another website for Convention of States (COS), a “dark money” organization attached to the big-money rightwing non-profit Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG).
Meckler’s non-profits have been widely reported as being in receipt of money from funds connected to the Koch brothers, the Coors foundation, and other rightwing megadonors.
[…]
On 28 April, Ellis was a guest on The War Room, a news show on Alex Jones’s Infowars platform. On 29 April, Ellis appeared on Meckler’s podcast with two other anti-lockdown activists.
Although the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said guidance on reopening had not been approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Robert Redfield, the new emails obtained by the AP found that Redfield did clear the guidance.
[… F]rom the AP: “On April 24, Redfield again emailed the guidance documents to Birx and Grogan, according to a copy viewed by The AP. Redfield asked Birx and Grogan for their review so that the CDC could post the guidance publicly. […]”
Not entirely sure, but “Grogan” is presumably Joe Grogan, “the director of the United States Domestic Policy Council and assistant to President [sic] Donald Trump. [… Grogan] was appointed a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in January 2020.”
They refer to “Joseph Grogan, assistant to the president for domestic policy.”
(Incidentally, I find some of George Conway’s tweets about Trump really weird, specifically the ones about Trump’s history of sexual assaults – I’m frankly concerned about McEnany – and those about the virus spreading in the WH. His wife works there!)
By the way, in the past I’ve often linked to segments from Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. They’ve all been doing such a fantastic job of late that there are too many segments to recommend, so I recommend that people in the US watch the entire shows and people outside the US watch what they can online.
Multiple members of the U.S. Secret Service have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to Department of Homeland Security documents reviewed by Yahoo News.
In March, the Secret Service, which is responsible for the protection of President Trump and other leaders, acknowledged that a single employee tested positive in March. However the problem is currently far more widespread, with 11 active cases at the agency as of Thursday evening, according to a daily report compiled by the DHS.
This report comes as a pair of cases among White House staffers close to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have put the West Wing’s coronavirus security procedures in the spotlight.
According to the DHS document, along with the 11 active cases there are 23 members of the Secret Service who have recovered from COVID-19 and an additional 60 employees who are self-quarantining. No details have been provided about which members of the Secret Service are infected or if any have recently been on detail with the president or vice president.
…
On Monday, Yahoo News reported that there are regularly held large events with unmasked attendees in close quarters at the White House — including inside the Oval Office, which is the president’s inner sanctum. Many Secret Service employees on the White House grounds are among those who are not wearing masks. The agency did not respond to questions about why its employees are not wearing masks or whether personal protective equipment is being provided to members of the Secret Service who request it. Pence and Trump have also regularly opted not to wear masks.
…
While temperature checks were being administered to everyone entering the White House complex, not everyone who entered the Oval Office with the president was given a test. On multiple occasions last week, reporters were brought into the Oval Office without being given tests or being required to wear masks.
…
The White House declined to comment on whether Stephen Miller had tested negative or was being quarantined. Deere, the deputy press secretary, provided a new statement saying, “The President’s physician and White House Operations continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy at all times.”
“In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, every staff member in close proximity to the president and vice president is being tested daily for COVID-19 as well as any guests,” Deere said.
Yet even after the pair of coronavirus cases among the Trump administration staff, not everyone who gets in a room with the president is being tested. The press that covered the event where Trump discussed Miller’s diagnosis was brought into the State Dining Room without being given tests….
This seems like malpractice on the part of the WH physician, tbh.
“FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has had to self-quarantine for 14 days after exposure to White House spokesperson Katie Miller, who tested positive for Covid-19, two administration officials said.”
MSNBC video: “As deaths in U.S. continue, a look at Trump’s words on virus”: “As of May 8, 2020, the coronavirus has claimed more than 76,000 lives in America despite the president insisting early on that he had it all under control. Morning Joe looks back at his claims.”
“Asked why President Trump didn’t wear a mask while honoring WW II veterans in their 90s—just a day after one of his personal valets tested positive for COVID-19—press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, ‘They made the choice to come here’.”
I’m speechless. Also, Trump claimed that given the way the wind was blowing the veterans couldn’t have been in danger, but in both this picture and videos I’ve seen the wind is heading directly at them. (But listening to and carrying their voices, I’m sure.)
Mike Pompeo can’t keep his lies lined up. The lies are getting out of his control:
Secretary of State Pompeo is leaning even harder into his attacks on the Chinese government over the novel coronavirus pandemic — even as he further walks back his claim that the U.S. has ‘enormous evidence’ a biomedical laboratory in Wuhan, China, is responsible for the outbreak. […]
an intelligence official says there is no signals or human intelligence backing up the idea, while lawmakers press the administration to turn over any evidence. […]
While Pompeo has said he doesn’t doubt the intelligence community assessment, he has boosted the unproven theory the first human infection came from an accidental or intentional release at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He first told ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday that there was “enormous evidence” supporting that unproven theory, before shifting slightly Wednesday to say there’s “significant” evidence, but the U.S. doesn’t have “certainty” yet. [Bullshit alert]
But in interviews Thursday, Pompeo shifted again, telling a conservative talk radio host, “There’s evidence that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the lab, but that could be wrong.”
“We’ve seen evidence that it came from the lab. That may not be the case,” he said in a second talk radio interview. […]
Asked about what kind of evidence the U.S. government has, Pompeo told CNBC Thursday, “One man’s direct is another man’s circumstantial.” […]
It also doesn’t appear any person or neighborhood connected to the lab became sick at the start of the outbreak, the intelligence official said. […]
Reports from the closest U.S. allies have also cast doubt on Pompeo’s statement. Known as the “Five Eyes,” the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand cooperate and share signals intelligence, which intercepts signals like communications or radar.
“There’s nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source,” Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the Wuhan lab last Friday. Days later, the Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the theory around the lab’s role is “mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering,” citing Australian intelligence officials. […]
The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, wouldn’t back Pompeo’s statement either, telling reporters Tuesday, “I don’t think we know, except we know it was in China.”
Instead of providing details of the “enormous evidence,” Pompeo pivoted questions Thursday to demand transparency from China, saying the Chinese government’s lack of transparency has halted any efforts to find out how that first transmission took place. […]
This isn’t the first time Pompeo has cast relations with China as a sort of clash of civilizations. He gave a major address last October when he said the Chinese Communist Party is “truly hostile to the United States and our values.”
But he has escalated that argument and started to hammer it more often, especially in interviews with conservative media — 28 of which he’s done in the last three weeks — and near weekly press conferences since March.
Pompeo’s lies seem to be partly concocted in service to his idea that Western (Christian) governments are in some sort of battle against the values systems of the Chinese government. Pompeo used the phase “China is just different than we are.” At least he realized that his claim “enormous evidence” existed for the unproven theory the first human infection came from an accidental or intentional release at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a fucking lie that he cannot sustain. Now he is really twisted up in more lies as he tries to walk that big lie back.
For nearly a quarter-century, […] Trump has envisioned boats docking at Mar-a-Lago, his swanky club set on 17 acres of prime real estate in Palm Beach, Fla. […]
Trump’s quest has, predictably, irked his wealthy neighbors, sparking one of those pesky territorial squabbles that occupy town halls and zoning boards in tony neighborhoods across the country. But the attempt by Trump and his legal team to squeeze through approval of his dock while the nation’s attention is trained on the coronavirus pandemic is now surfacing a potentially nettlesome problem for the president.
Digging into the catacombs of local records to build an argument against the dock, a small group of loosely aligned preservationists, disgruntled neighbors and attorneys have unearthed documents that they assert call into question the legality of Trump’s much-publicized decision late last year to change his official domicile from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago and to register to vote in Florida using the club’s address. According to those documents, and additional materials obtained by The Washington Post, Trump agreed in writing years ago to change the use of the Mar-a-Lago property from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation he controls.
The distinction is significant. The property is taxed as a private club — not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump’s own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there. […]
“It’s one or the other — it’s a club or it’s your home,” Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents a neighbor opposed to Trump’s dock plan, said in a recent interview. “You can’t have it both ways.”
If Stambaugh and his client have their way and persuade Palm Beach to stand firm on its long-standing agreement, Trump will be forced to make a choice, he said: Stop operating Mar-a-Lago as a club and make it a single-family home again or change his official domicile to someplace else. […]
Schadenfreude moment. Trump is being blocked from doing something he wants to do … and part of the legal reasoning harks back to mistakes he made in the past.
[…] a day after the Trump administration indicated it would wind down its coronavirus task force — and before it suddenly reversed that shit-for-brains policy when millions of lucid human beings heard about it — Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist, said what many of us have been thinking. What Trump is doing — or, more precisely, not doing — amounts to criminal negligence.
How many people will die this summer, before Election Day? What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color? This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?
So, what does it mean to let thousands die by negligence, omission, failure to act, in a legal sense under international law?
And I am being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?
Yup.
Reopening the economy with no real plan to do it safely — i.e., without testing and contact tracing — is essentially murder.
But Trump knows that he needs a much stronger economy to give him any shot at reelection. America has to be “back” before Election Day or Trump will have nothing to run on but racism, xenophobia, and a bunch of shitty right-wing judges.
So he’s gambling with our lives. If things miraculously work out, he’ll look like a strong leader who guided us through this crisis. If not, well, what’s a few hundred thousand dead Americans to him? This guy had no compunction about tearing innocent children away from their mothers and tossing them in cages. Why the fuck would you ever think he’d care about you?
Trump likes to pretend he’s a wartime president fighting an “invisible enemy.” Well, maybe we can convict him of war crimes. Deliberate mass murder qualifies, right?
KGsays
Which private companies are making money off of that redundant activity? Friends of Boris Johnson? – Lynna, OM@78
Serco. I don’t know of any specific links to Johnson – which doesn’t of course mean there are none – but the company has a dismal record of incompetence, corruption and violence, particularly its involvement with prisons, detention centres, housing asylum seekers and health.
the company has a dismal record of incompetence, corruption and violence, particularly its involvement with prisons, detention centres, housing asylum seekers and health.
Sounds about right. All the Best People.
So the lying, corrupt powers-that-be throw some money their way.
[…] looks at the worsening coronavirus situation in Iowa as infections grow at an alarming rate, making the Trump administration’s praise for Governor Reynolds’ handling of the crisis hard to understand.
The video shows Mike Pence going on and on (in the presence of Trump and others) about how well “Iowa has stayed in front of this effort,” and about “the great success story that is Iowa.” That is 180° from the truth. It is, in light of the facts, batshit bonkers.
The video is 2:49 minutes long.
I know that Trump and Pence are often wrong, or often lying, but this is mystifying. It’s a whole new level of wrong. Looking at just one fact, among many, that Pence ignored: More than 1,000 workers at the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa have tested positive for the coronavirus. Pence had bragged about the plant reopening.
More COVID-19 cases in the White House. Ivanka Trump’s personal assistant has tested positive.
[…] According to CNN, the assistant had been tested out of caution and was found to have the virus, though she did not exhibit any symptoms.
An unnamed source told CNN that she has not been near Trump in recent weeks. Trump and Jared Kushner, her husband and a fellow White House senior adviser, took tests for COVID-19 on Friday, which both came up negative.
The White House did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.
The report marks the third time this week in which a White House aide has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The President’s personal valet was found to have COVID-19, and so was Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller.
Both Donald Trump and Pence have tested negative, according to White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Friday that “the White House is continuing to operate safely” and has begun following guidelines put forth by health officials.
Dear Lord.
Please fill the White House with warriors.
Thx
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Remember the huge anti-stay-at-home protest in Wisconsin? 72 people have now tested positive here after indicating that they attended a “large event.
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We’ve learned in the past 48 hours of over 30 secret service members and 3 senior staff to the first and second families having contracted the virus. I do not think this is by coincidence. I suspect the situation is truly out of hand and people are leaking to try to protect themselves.
I also suspect that Trump’s suppression of the CDC/JHU study and the guidelines for business to manage a re-opening in the midst of the virus are the last straws for folks on the WH CV task force and the CDC and they are leaking.
The virus DGAF about political spin
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You can really see that Trump has completely eliminated all the people who would counter him and tell him that he’s running off a cliff.
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stupidity spreads faster than the virus
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The key thing to remember from this article is that Ivanka has more than one personal assistant.
This fills me with relief, because I know her sterling character, and feel she will bear up somehow with her other personal assistants. I look forward to her instagram posts on how she is bravely managing the crisis.
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No masks required
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I saw a picture of Katie Miller standing outside with a crowd of journalists around her.
She was the ONLY one not wearing a mask.
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F’ing morons!! COVID-19 has been in community spread since what? – March? Did the regime really think they were somehow immune to it??
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It is just like a meat packing plant, people are crowded together without PPE or social distancing. The difference is the White House does daily testing. I wonder if they do contact tracing?
We don’t need to worry I am sure Ivanka has a great supply of the Trump elixir Hydroxychloroquine.
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If the Dotard actually did wear a mask, how long would it take before it also turned orange? You know that’s the main reason he doesn’t wear one, right? It would smear his orange makeup/tanning cream, and rub off on his mask
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DiJiT’s White House practices and protocols seem to adhere to the rules of a witless protection program.
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And it was only until recently that Rump’s daily coronovirus updates (e.g., outbursts of total insanity and cruelty) showed people in the regime standing shoulder to shoulder with each other with no mask as if to signal to the general public that they couldn’t not possibly become infected because – reasons.
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‘Funny’ how Trump Inc. is able to get tests and PPEs so easily. Maybe this is where the ‘Fed’ supplies went that Jared told us they ‘could’ confiscate and the states had to just keep trying to get their OWN.
Having the staff and Trump wear masks would have been an appropriate preventative measure.
The whistleblower and now ousted HHS official is speaking out publicly.
Dr. Rick Bright, a top public health official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) whom[…] Trump removed this week, spoke out against the Trump administration’s dismissiveness toward science amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Bright’s first interview since he filed a whistleblower complaint alleging retaliation after he was ousted from his position as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the official rejected Trump’s accusation that he was merely a “disgruntled” employee.
“I am not disgruntled,” Bright told CBS News reporter Norah O’Donnell. “I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for Americans. I’m frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.”
The official, who has been demoted to a smaller position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), slammed the administration’s decision to “decapitate” BARDA, which is currently conducting crucial research into COVID-19.
A leading medical journal has described President Jair Bolsonaro as “perhaps the biggest threat” to Brazil’s ability to successfully fight the coronavirus pandemic, just as the country reported its highest daily death toll.
In an editorial, The Lancet said Bolsonaro’s disregard for and flouting of lockdown measures is sowing confusion across Brazil, which is quickly emerging as a hotspot for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
On Friday, Brazil’s Ministry of Health registered 10,222 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 751 related deaths, a daily high. That brought the total of confirmed cases in the country to 145,328 and deaths to 9,897.
The Lancet said Bolsonaro was becoming increasingly hamstrung by political crisis following his sacking last month of popular Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta after a disagreement over measures to tackle the pandemic and the resignation of Minister of Justice Sergio Moro.
“The challenge is ultimately political, requiring continuous engagement by Brazilian society as a whole. Brazil as a country must come together to give a clear answer to the ‘So what?’ by its President. He needs to drastically change course or must be the next to go,” the editorial by the British medical journal said.
…
On Friday, the president said he planned to have 30 friends over to the presidential palace for a barbecue. Later in the day, he joked that he may extend the invitation to thousands more, including political supporters and members of the press.
The president, who has referred to the coronavirus as the “little flu” and interacted with supporters without a face mask, has argued that the economic fallout of lockdown measures would be deadlier than the virus itself.
He has also actively encouraged people to defy physical distancing measures put in place by state governors, calling on people to return to work and take part in large gatherings despite the growing number of known infections and deaths.
A report by Imperial College London published on Friday showed that “the epidemic is not yet controlled and will continue to grow” in Brazil, in stark contrast to parts of Europe and Asia, where enforced lockdowns have had success.
“While the Brazilian epidemic is still relatively nascent on a national scale, our results suggest that further action is needed to limit spread and prevent health system overload,” the Imperial College report said.
In its editorial, The Lancet outlined challenges faced by Brazil. About 13 million Brazilians live in shanty towns where hygiene recommendations and physical distancing are near impossible to follow.
The country’s Indigenous population was also under “severe threat” even before the COVID-19 outbreak due to the government turning a blind eye to or even encouraging illegal mining and logging in the Amazon rainforest.
“These loggers and miners now risk bringing COVID-19 to remote populations,” it said. Most of Brazil’s 27 state and district governments are taking the threat of the virus more seriously than Bolsonaro.
On Friday, the government of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous state, extended mandatory quarantine orders through to May 31. They had been scheduled to expire on May 11.
23 members of the Secret Service have recovered from the virus.
[…] USA Today says that they were unable to get a breakdown of how many of these Secret Service members are civilian workers and how many are agents. Also not known is what, if any, contact to the White House or government officials any of those infected have had. […]
The Trump White House has made a habit of practicing terrible pandemic hygiene policy both publicly and privately in recent weeks. The reason for wearing these CDC-recommended face masks and washing our hands, while distancing from one another is to protect everybody.
There are plenty of photos that show Secret Service people around Trump not wearing masks.
Say, what now? “WH press secretary says she called Trump a ‘racist’ and ‘hateful’ because CNN headlines tricked her.”
On Thursday, CNN went through some of their recent archives to pull out statements that newly anointed White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made about her new boss, Donald Trump. It turns out that a lot of those statements were no good. I mean, they were honest—they just aren’t good for the job she has now.
An example of some of McEnany’s “critical” statements about Trump: In 2015 she called Trump’s racist statement about Mexican immigrants being “drug dealers” and “rapists” … “racist.” She went on to explain: “Some of the things we heard in his speech when he said, when Mexico sends people across the border, they’re sending criminals and rapists and maybe some good people. Look, the GOP doesn’t need to be turning away voters and isolating them. We need to be bringing them into the tent. Donald Trump is the last person who’s going to do that.” She also called Trump’s rhetoric “hateful” and derogatory.”
McEnany also went out of her way to lament the idea that Trump was being called a Republican, and said his entire campaign as a Republican was “inauthentic.” While McEnany did not respond to CNN’s questions about her change of heart, she did address it in the most spectacular way at a press conference on Friday, saying: “For about the first four weeks of the election, I was watching CNN and I was naively believing some of the headlines that I saw on CNN. I very quickly came around and supported the president. In fact, CNN hired me.”
CNN did hire her. That’s on them, for sure. But the idea that you call someone a racist, quoting their speeches where they are in fact being racist, as the result of a few headlines you read is … intergalactic sociopathy. It’s so far beyond lying that I really can’t call it that. It shows not simply a lack of compassion for the people hurt by Trump’s statements, subsequent policies, and lies, but also a complete disdain for people’s base intelligence. […]
Former President Barack Obama said Friday that the Department of Justice’s decision to drop charges against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn means that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”
The comments were made in a private web chat conversation with members of the Obama Alumni Association, a recording of which was obtained by Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff, who wrote about the comments late Friday.
Obama, who had once fired Flynn as his director of the Defense Intelligence Agency for being “chaotic [and] insubordinate,” Isikoff notes, said on the recording that the news about Flynn’s case had been “somewhat downplayed” but was incredibly worrying.
“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free,” Obama said. “That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic—not just institutional norms—but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
Isikoff notes that Obama misstated Flynn’s charge: He had pled guilty to lying to FBI investigators, not perjury. Flynn’s guilty plea came in late 2017 after he lied to FBI agents about whether he’d talked with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period in January 2017. As reported by Mother Jones‘ Dan Friedman, in November 2017 Flynn pled guilty to lying to FBI agents about the conversations with Kislyak, while also admitting that he had lied to the FBI about efforts to influence foreign diplomats during a December 2016 UN resolution on condemning Israeli settlement construction.
Misrepresenting the truth was a regular habit of Flynn’s. He also admitted lying to the Justice Department in a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing by claiming he was not aware that he was lobbying for Turkey. And he’d lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the call with Kislyak, which Trump acknowledged. […]
Former President Obama during a private call on Friday night with his former aides tore into the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis, calling it an “absolute chaotic disaster.”
The blistering assessment, confirmed to CNN by three former Obama administration officials, came on a call intended to encourage members of the Obama Alumni Association to engage with former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
“This election that’s coming up — on every level — is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” Obama said, according to CNN. “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
Obama continued to tear into the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, partly blaming the White House’s “what’s in it for me” mindset.
“It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said. “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ … is operationalized in our government.
“That’s why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden,” he added. […]
Here’s a link to the May 9 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Summary from there:
Thousands of people, including elderly second world war veterans, have turned out for Belarus’s Victory Day military parade despite the coronavirus epidemic.
As Spain’s daily death toll fell to its second lowest level since mid-March on Saturday, half of the country prepared to move into the next phase of exit from one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.
Russia has been hit with more than 10,000 new Covid-19 cases in the last day, as the country approaches nearly 200,000 confirmed infections with lockdown measures continuing.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has offered the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, support in tackling the coronavirus, state media said on Saturday.
As debates rage in other countries about the return of professional football, games will be played on the Faroe Islands on Saturday for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak.
Indonesia has reported its biggest daily increase in infections, with 533 new confirmed cases, taking the total to 13,645.
And a French MP has failed in her bid to to get “love” added to the list of “compelling reasons” that must be given for anyone to travel more than 100km (62 miles) in the country.
On April 1, Georgia District Attorney George Barnhill finally received the autopsy report for a 25-year-old black jogger killed during a Feb. 23 confrontation with three white Glynn County men. A day later, Barnhill laid out the case for why he didn’t believe the men should be arrested for the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.
“It appears Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and [William Bryan] were following, in ‘hot pursuit,’ a burglary suspect, with solid firsthand probable cause,” Barnhill wrote to a Glynn County police captain in a three-page letter. “Given the fact Arbery initiated the fight, at the point Arbery grabbed the shotgun [that Travis McMichael was holding], under Georgia law, McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself.”
As we all now know, Arbery wasn’t the burglar, and there was no good reason to think he was, but Barnhill’s letter provided the foundation of the argument against charging the McMichaels until just a few days ago, when a grisly cellphone video of Arbery’s death went viral and brought national outrage and renewed attention to the case.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation Wednesday and charged the McMichaels with murder and aggravated assault Thursday. A day later, the agency couldn’t help but take a swipe at the local investigation.
“Probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said during a press conference Friday, implying that it should have been just as clear to George Barnhill.
Barnhill, 63, has worked in relative obscurity as a small-town prosecutor for 36 years. He was assigned the case only after another prosecutor recused herself because Greg McMichael used to work in her office. In the letter to the police captain, Barnhill noted Greg McMichael also worked in a district attorney’s office where his son is a prosecutor.
“The victim’s mother has clearly expressed she wants myself and my office off the case,” Barnhill wrote. “She believes there are kinships between the parties (there are not) and has made other unfounded allegations of bias(es).”
A few weeks later, Barnhill requested the state assign another prosecutor to the case, but only after making clear that he saw “no grounds for arrest.”
Barnhill’s role in the Arbery shooting is his first real brush with national scrutiny. But I recalled Barnhill from an assignment in 2017, when he was doggedly pursuing Olivia Pearson on charges of felony voter fraud. Pearson, a 58-year-old black activist and city commissioner in the South Georgia town of Douglas, stood accused of improperly helping a woman vote—showing a young, first-time, black voter how to use a voting machine when she didn’t know how—in October 2012.
Barnhill has a history of applying unequal justice, to the detriment of black people.
Barnhill’s prosecution of Pearson was part of a larger campaign by then–Secretary of State (and now Gov.) Brian Kemp, Georgia’s top elections official, to make vigilance against voter fraud a priority. I was alerted to the case while reporting on voter suppression efforts heading into the 2016 presidential election. Voting rights groups flagged Barnhill’s prosecution as part of an obvious and well-orchestrated attempt to intimidate black voters. After all, Pearson was accused of simply showing a young woman how to use a voting machine, not of influencing her vote.
It was an especially uncommon prosecution: At the time, only 10 of the 154 illegal voter assistance investigations in the previous three years in Georgia had been referred to a prosecutor. Most were closed without a ruling or dismissed. But Barnhill’s office was relentless in pursuing what they saw as an important case, and Pearson’s prosecution spanned two trials and two years.
I covered Pearson’s first trial in April 2017. It ended in a mistrial due to a 29-year-old black female juror named Lenecia Armour, the only juror to stand between Pearson and a felony conviction and a possible 15-year prison sentence. “It was torture,” Armour said at the time of disagreeing with the rest of the jury. […]
Barnhill’s office quickly refiled the case and the second trial was held in February 2018. This time, Pearson’s prosecution had earned more attention around the state, and a number of local voters’ rights groups helped with her defense. That case ended with much less drama; Pearson was acquitted of all charges after less than 30 minutes of jury deliberations.
“Ms. Pearson did absolutely nothing wrong, and her life was in turmoil for years because DA Barnhill would not back down,” Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said earlier this week. “This old tactic of Southern oppression sent palpable waves of fear throughout her community.”
[…] She was reelected to the city commission last fall and has continued her work in the community, a place mired in poverty and inequality. But it wasn’t lost on her—and others who worked on her case—that Barnhill showed much more vigor in prosecuting her than in working to convict Ahmaud Arbery’s killers. […]
But she also knows it’s not just Barnhill. “Justice in South Georgia is hard to achieve for African Americans,” she said when we talked. “South Georgia is so prejudiced and racist, it’s just sad.”
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.
“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
Bowen persisted.
“We are the last major domestic mask company,” he wrote on Jan. 23. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.” […]
In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
Bowen’s overture was described briefly in an 89-page whistleblower complaint filed this week by Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright alleges he was retaliated against by Kadlec and other officials — including being reassigned to a lesser post — because he tried to “prioritize science and safety over political expediency.” […]
Within weeks, a shortage of masks was endangering health-care workers in hard-hit areas across the country, and the Trump administration was scrambling to buy more masks — sometimes placing bulk orders with third-party distributors for many times the standard price. […]
In a statement, White House economic adviser and coronavirus task force member Peter Navarro said: “The company was just extremely difficult to work and communicate with. This was in sharp contrast to groups like the National Council of Textile Organizations and companies like Honeywell and Parkdale Mills, which have helped America very rapidly build up cost effective domestic mask capacity measuring in the hundreds of millions.”
[…] A senior U.S. government official with knowledge of the offer said Bowen, 62, has a “legitimate beef.”
“He was prescient, really,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. […]
So in California, the Democrats, who fought like crazy to get all mail in only ballots, and succeeded, have just opened a voting booth in the most Democrat area in the State. They are trying to steal another election.
It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!
Governor Newsom said in-person voting will still be available, and that California legislators are currently working on a plan to operate polling sites safely.
From the readers comments:
I’m focused on the entertainment value as Spanky continues the process of melting into a steaming pile
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It [mail-in voting] works great everywhere it is used.
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Trump votes by mail in Florida, why can’t everyone?
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‘These Votes Must Not Count’
That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Votes should not count.
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California will once again lead this nation back when we finally have a Federal government that isn’t actively trying to kill us.
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He’s laying the groundwork for endless challenges to the election result.
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There’s a 57 to 43 % chance Trump, Barr and Moscow will not be in any position to do jack shit in 10 months.
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LOL TRUMP!!! Now I know for sure that Christy Smith is generating the Dem turnout she needs to win that special election.
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Trump’s next plan to fuck up the vote:
Donald Trump has now opened Phase II of his maximal carnage campaign in the ongoing battle with the coronavirus. I’m not talking about the hollow phases put forth by the White House—these are the substantive toothy phases of Trump’s work to exact the absolute most death and destruction possible on the American people.
Phase I of Trump’s carnage campaign was the period in which he ignored every possible warning coming from his own intelligence operatives, Americans working at the World Health Organization, and even officials within his own administration […]
Phase I included Trump regularly telling Americans it was all under control and U.S. cases would soon be “zero,” while simultaneously declining to take any precautions such as stockpiling test kits and protective gear in the event of an almost inevitable U.S. outbreak. When Trump finally realized he had what he considered to be a PR problem around mid-March, he hijacked the coronavirus task force briefings and began filling the airwaves with hollow talk of national guidelines and increased testing after early stumbles by his administration.
But it was all a sham, a ruse—Trump wasn’t developing any national plan with discernible testing goals and milestones for safely resuming normal activity. Trump isn’t capable of thinking in months, weeks, or even days. Hour by hour, he was trying to win the news cycle. […]
the briefings were a platform for Trump to project a 2-D image of himself as commander in chief. If Trump was a flop, may as well just scrap the briefings and dissolve the task force altogether, which is exactly what the White House was in process of doing this week when news leaked of the task force’s sudden demise. Of course, once the West Wing realized the horrendous optics of dismantling the group just after the U.S. death toll blew past the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam, it quickly backtracked. […] the task force will never have the same level of prominence going forward. Trump won’t stand for it.
[…] Trump has moved on Phase II of his maximal carnage campaign, officially christened “TRANSITION TO GREATNESS!” After thoroughly hobbling the entire U.S. pandemic response in the first phase and then feigning concern, Trump’s second phase is all about leading a completely unprepared country into the buzz saw of an economic reopening.
Naturally, Trump has laid no actual groundwork to avoid a public health calamity, he’s simply greased the skids to shirk responsibility for the mounting death toll. Governors will be on hook […]
Phase II marks Trump’s transition from a so-called ‘wartime president’ supposedly battling a pandemic to one who is fighting for the economy he desperately needs to get reelected in his estimation. And within that struggle, Trump has now cast Americans as the potential collateral damage in his victory.
[…] “We can’t keep our country closed down for years and we have to do something. Hopefully [death] won’t be the case, but it could very well be the case.” […]
In the final months leading up to the November election, Trump will roll out Phase III, a fantastical effort to gaslight America about the trauma it continues to endure, who’s really at fault (not Trump—China, the governors, Obama!), and whether it’s even real (the body count’s fake news!).
“President Trump said yesterday he would travel to Camp David this weekend for a ‘big meeting’ with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The trip was canceled but he’ll meet with senior military leadership in Cabinet Room soon. White House didn’t provide a reason for the change of plans.”
“The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, will be self-quarantining for two weeks after he was exposed to a person at the White House who tested positive for COVID-19, a CDC spokesperson confirmed to CNN.”
Author Michael Lewis explains why America is like a good team with a bad coach. Whitney Cummings joins to judge the monologue. Brittany Packnett Cunningham discusses Ahmaud Arbery and why it took a gruesome video to spur action. Listeners face off in a topical spelling bee. And finally we’re joined by a surprise special guest before we share what made listeners hopeful in this week’s high note.
The interview with Brittany Packnett Cunningham is excellent and the exchange with the surprise special guest is fun.
MSNBC is reporting that Fauci will now be on “modified” quarantine for two weeks.
Seems like they’re trying to silence some of these people. The reports are that they’ll still testify before the Senate committee on Tuesday via video conference.
KGsays
SC@142,
Is Trump planning a large-scale war to force the opening of the economy and benefit from “rallying round the flag”? The additional Covid-19 deaths could then be attributed to the enemy. China is the obvious target, but is even Trump that irrational? If so, would the Joint Chiefs go along?
blfsays
In many places, people perceived to be of Chinese descent are being shunned or discriminated against due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus first appearing in Big China. (And has caused some eejits, like hair furor and his dalekocrazy, to blame Big China.) That completely irrational reaction has also extended, in some places, to testing clinics or to people who have died from Covid-19. However, to-date, except for a few isolated individual cases, I’d not heard of shunning or discrimination against medical workers dealing with Covid-19, who are widely regarded as heroes (and generally badly underpaid). However, there seems to be a widespread exception to this general anecdotal heroes observation, from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog:
Japan: ‘Onslaught of bullying and discrimination’ amid outbreak
The Associated Press reports that the coronavirus in Japan has brought not just an epidemic of infections, but also an onslaught of bullying and discrimination against the sick, their families and health workers trying to save lives.
A government campaign to raise awareness seems to be helping, at least for medical workers. But it’s made only limited headway in countering the harassment and shunning that may be discouraging people from seeking testing and care and hindering the battle against the pandemic.
Apart from fear of infection, experts say the prejudice against those even indirectly associated with the illness also stems from deeply rooted ideas about purity and cleanliness in a culture that rejects anything deemed to be alien, unclean or troublesome.
Medical workers risking their lives to care for patients are a main target, but people working at grocery stores, delivering parcels and carrying out other essential jobs also are facing harassment, as are their family members.
“I can imagine people fear the virus, but we are working hard at the front lines under enormous pressure,” a nurse in her 30s told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear she might be targeted if identified. “We also have our own families we care about. Discrimination against us just because we are medical workers is discouraging and demoralizing.”
The backlash against coronavirus patients may lead some who fall sick to avoid seeking medical care, raising the risks of infection spreading further, clinical psychologist Reo Morimitsu at the Suwa Red Cross Hospital said in an interview with NHK public television. Reports said Japanese police last month found about a dozen people dead at home alone or collapsed on the streets who later tested positive for the virus.
No other advanced nation denies healthcare and work protections, or loosens lockdown while fatalities mount
No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.
With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.
And it is the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing. Three thousand deaths per day are anticipated by 1 June.
No other nation has loosened lockdowns and other social-distancing measures while deaths are increasing, as the US is now doing.
No other advanced nation was as unprepared for the pandemic as was the US.
We now know Donald Trump and his administration were told by public health experts in mid-January that immediate action was required to stop the spread of Covid-19. But according to Dr Anthony Fauci, “there was a lot of pushback”. Trump didn’t act until 16 March.
Epidemiologists estimate 90% of the deaths in the US from the first wave of Covid-19 might have been prevented had social distancing policies been put into effect two weeks earlier, on 2 March.
No nation other than the US has left it to subordinate units of government — states and cities — to buy ventilators and personal protective equipment. In no other nation have such sub-governments been forced to bid against each another.
In no other nation have experts in public health and emergency preparedness been pushed aside and replaced by political cronies like Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who in turn has been advised by Trump donors and Fox News celebrities.
In no other advanced nation has Covid-19 forced so many average citizens into poverty so quickly. The Urban Institute reports that more than 30% of American adults have had to reduce their spending on food.
Elsewhere around the world, governments are providing generous income support. Not in the US.
[… and on and on. and on. and on. …]
So who and what’s to blame for the worst avoidable loss of life in American history?
Partly, Donald Trump’s malfeasance.
But the calamity is also due to America’s longer-term failure to provide its people the basic support they need.
The author, Professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Reich, is a former Secretary of Labor.
Hair furor, meanwhile, is continuing to spout lies and ignore real problems. For instance, from the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
Here’s the president’s [sic] Sunday morning coronavirus tweet, or one of them: We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls — didn’t have a clue!
Suffice to say, whether or not the president is getting great marks for how the coronavirus outbreak has been handled rather depends on who is doing the judging, and Trump’s heralding of his restrictions (not outright ban) on travel from China relatively early in the outbreak is subject to all sorts of caveats.
(Sorry, the embedded link at the end is to the Washington Post, which means you may not be able to see due to anti-privacy bullshite or it being behind a paywall.)
[…] Unlike the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks, when President George W Bush called on Congress to create a Department of Homeland Security, or during the Great Depression, when President Franklin D Roosevelt led the nation to the New Deal, Trump is not seeking a legacy-defining accomplishment in the heat of national crisis.
Quibble of sorts: Bush ][‘s gestapo isn’t a positive legacy / (deliberate) accomplishment, but it is concrete and had a rationale (not necessarily a rational one, but it did have one).
blfsays
Correction to me@153, the snippet i s from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic blog (today’s link).
blf @152, I wish facts like these could pierce the willful-ignorance forcefields of Team Trump:
[…] No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.
With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.
[…] 90% of the deaths in the US from the first wave of Covid-19 might have been prevented had social distancing policies been put into effect two weeks earlier, on 2 March.
No nation other than the US has left it to subordinate units of government — states and cities — to buy ventilators and personal protective equipment. In no other nation have such sub-governments been forced to bid against each another. […]
Furthermore, it would be great if Trump’s cult followers would hear these facts from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Rush Limbaugh. They should hear those facts at least ten times a day. It will take awhile for them to sink in.
tomhsays
In Tabernacle Baptist Church, Inc. of Nicholasville, Kentucky v. Beshear, (ED KY, May 8, 2020), a Kentucky federal district court issued a state-wide temporary restraining order enjoining the state of Kentucky from enforcing the governor’s COVID-19 ban on mass gatherings with respect to in-person religious services that comply with applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines. The court said in part:
Tabernacle Baptist Church wants to gather for corporate worship. They want to freely exercise their deeply held religious belief about what it means to be a faithful Christian. For them, it is “essential” that they do so. And they want to invoke the Constitution’s protection on this point.
[…]
…evidence that the risk of contagion is heightened in a religious setting any more than a secular one is lacking. If social distancing is good enough for Home Depot and Kroger, it is good enough for in-person religious services…
YIKES! OAN ran a segment last night on “mounting evidence of a globalist conspiracy” by the Clintons, Soros, Gates, Fauci, & Chinese gov’t to use coronavirus “to establish sweeping population control” by backing remdesvir over hydroxychlorquine. It cites Plandemic’s Mikovits!
The OANN segment concludes, “There is concern that the deep-state Democratic cabal and the Big Pharma are working to derail President Trump’s reelection, and force the American people into total submission and control.”
“Plandemic Mikovits” is Judy Mikovits, the frequently-debunked virologist attacking Anthony Fauci in a viral conspiracy video.
[…] Judy Mikovits claims the new coronavirus is being wrongly blamed for many deaths. She makes head-scratching assertions about the virus—for instance, that it is “activated” by face masks.
Mikovits also accuses Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a prominent member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, of being responsible for the deaths of millions during the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The video claims Mikovits was part of the team that discovered HIV, revolutionized HIV treatment, and was jailed without charges for her scientific positions.
Science fact-checked the video. None of these claims are true. The video is an excerpt from a forthcoming movie Plandemic, which promises to “expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system.” YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms have taken down the video because of inaccuracies. It keeps resurfacing, including on the Plandemic website, which, in “an effort to bypass the gatekeepers of free speech,” invites people to download the video and repost it. […]
There’s a flurry of reporting about how South Korea’s early success breaking the COVID19 epidemic in the country has now ‘dimmed’, as the The Wall Street Journal puts it, with a new potential outbreak. This stems from a new case in which one 29 year old man hit five different bars last weekend in one part of Seoul and exposed as many as 2,000 people. More than fifty new cases have now been identified tied to this one man.
But there’s a more optimistic way of looking at this new rash of cases.
Note in the limited details I’ve just shared how much South Korean authorities know. They’ve identified the man at the center of the new flare up. They know how many and which places he visited on what appears to have been the key night. They’ve identified roughly 2,000 people he appears to have exposed or potentially exposed on that evening of bar hoping. They’ve already tested many of them; a subset has already been confirmed as infected and now quarantined.
You need to have a pretty small outbreak to be able to do this kind of rapid detective work. You also need a system in place to trace, test and isolate. Remember that South Korea’s initial outbreak was similarly focused and tracked with comparable precision. The outbreak was overwhelmingly tied to a group that is identified either as a church or a cult (the Shincheonji Church) which holds services in which congregants are especially densely packed together. One older woman who was already being treated for what turned out to be COVID19 left the hospital and attended one of these services. The whole South Korean outbreak was overwhelmingly tied to this one exposure. The initial (largely successful) effort to halt the spread was heavily focused on testing every member of that group.
You need to keep an outbreak fairly small for this kind of tracking to be at all feasible and you need the tools to be able to do it. This also reminds us that quantity of testing isn’t everything. (The US has now conducted more than twice the number of tests on a per capita basis as South Korea and has almost 50 times the number of deaths on the same per capita basis.) You need to be using them as part of an effective surveillance and containment strategy. You also need to keep the scale of the epidemic small enough that this is possible.
This new flare up in South Korea reminds us that until there’s a vaccine every national success story is provisional and vulnerable to the next mix of bad luck or recklessness that restarts the process all over again.
Biden’s new ad campaign provides more contrast between Biden and Trump:
I don’t know who the hell is on Biden’s media team, but damn they are good. I thought they couldn’t top the “Unprepared” ad, but the latest one showing factually the contrast between Biden and Trump is amazing. “Crisis reveals character”.
[…] Officials, for example, dispute the allegations that Beijing initially withheld information from international officials about the pandemic and that the virus was created in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
China defended its distribution of information during the pandemic, calling it “timely” and “open and transparent,” according to Reuters. The officials included in the [30-page] article a timeline showing when China informed the international community.
Officials also deny a theory that’s been circulating that the virus was man-made and came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, saying the lab is not capable of that technology. […]
China also pointed to media reports that said Americans were contracting the virus before the first confirmed case in Wuhan, according to Reuters, which noted that there is no evidence to support that.
The country also said the coronavirus should not be named the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” as had been suggested by President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The World Health Organization has issued guidance advising leaders against using those labels.
The article mainly repeats and expands on what Chinese officials say at the daily press briefings in the country, Reuters noted.
China has reported 82,901 confirmed coronavirus cases and 4,633, deaths, but experts and officials outside of China have questioned whether the country is reporting accurate and have speculated whether China downplayed the virus when it originally surfaced in December.
[…] Trump promised that the $2 trillion economic stimulus bill he signed in March, providing direct payments to tens of millions of Americans, would “deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families, workers and businesses.” But more out of spite than in the furtherance of any rational policy goal, several million Americans were specifically excluded from the relief plan: U.S. citizens who are children or spouses of undocumented immigrants.
In the midst of a pandemic ravaging the nation, lawmakers and the administration saw fit to insert and enact that provision of the law, for no apparent reason beyond its punitive effect. The vast majority of the nation’s babies, toddlers, middle-schoolers and teenagers younger than 17 are eligible for $500 payments — generally rendered to their parents — but not if either their mother or father is an unauthorized immigrant.
Nor can U.S. citizen parents receive the $1,200 payment to which they would otherwise be entitled if they file taxes jointly with an undocumented spouse. A household consisting of a married couple with two U.S. citizen children, which would otherwise qualify for $3,400 in benefits, would receive nothing if the undocumented mother filed a joint return with her citizen husband.
Singling out children for punishment arising from their parents’ immigration status is a senseless act of vengeance. The Trump administration’s attitudes toward legal and illegal immigrants are morally odious and pragmatically misguided, yet this policy stands out as uniquely cruel given that the immigration status of parents does not exclude their U.S. citizen children from receiving a host of other federal benefits, including welfare, food stamps and housing assistance.
What’s particularly senseless is that the administration’s policy of impoverishing households that include undocumented immigrants coincides with a moment in which the nation’s food supply — heavily dependent on those very immigrants — is in peril. By the government’s own estimate, half of all field hands in the country, more than 1 million workers, are illegal immigrants whose labor has been deemed “essential” to keeping grocery shelves stocked with meat and produce. […]
A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Maryland by advocates at Georgetown University Law Center on behalf of the citizen children of unauthorized immigrants. The plaintiffs include a 7-month-old girl, a 9-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. The punitive policy will make it more difficult for the children to be adequately fed, housed and clothed at a time of economic duress.
The effect of the measure is to make second-class citizens of several million American children, nearly all born in this country, and to intensify their family’s suffering even as unemployment tightens its grip. The unconstitutionality of such a discriminatory policy, which flies in the face of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, is rivaled only by its mean-spiritedness.
His press secretary, Katie Miller, had tested positive for coronavirus early Friday. Air Force Two sat on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews outside Washington later in the morning, engines running, as six aides who’d been in contact with Miller left to be tested for infection and sent home to quarantine.
Reporters and some staff still aboard weren’t immediately told the reason for the delay. After an hour, the plane took off for a scheduled trip to Iowa, where Pence would nudge churches to carefully resume in-person services and hear concerns from farmers worried they’ll lose everything to the economic collapse from the outbreak.
During the flight, one White House staffer expressed surprise that Pence was pressing ahead. The plane’s passengers included Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who’s 86 — elderly and male, a cohort highly vulnerable to the virus.
But the Trump administration is pressing Americans to resume their social and economic lives even in the face of the world’s largest publicly reported outbreak of the lethal virus.
Pence’s trip was intended to signal that Americans should consider resuming work and worship, and feel confident in their food supply, even though the largely rural state, population 3.1 million, has had more cases of the disease than South Korea and its 51 million people.
Pence received a warm reception from Iowa’s Republicans. The state’s governor, Kim Reynolds — who visited the White House two days earlier to discuss outbreaks in the meatpacking industry — has said that “we must learn to live with Covid virus activity without letting it govern our lives.”
…
But the state’s Democrats were appalled that Pence didn’t call off his trip.
“Iowa’s Covid-19 numbers are on the rise, and we have recently been one of the worst states in the nation for spreading this disease,” more than a dozen of Iowa’s Democratic elected officials said in a statement. “We need you to lead by example, and practice social distancing instead of traveling here and encouraging us to put our families and neighbors in danger.”
Everywhere he went in Iowa, Pence projected relentless optimism….
…
Pence’s first stop on Friday was Westkirk Presbyterian Church in Urbandale. “It is good to be in the House of the Lord,” the evangelical vice president remarked to nine faith leaders seated several feet from one another in the church’s pews.
“The fact is that, for most healthy Americans, the risks that the coronavirus poses remains very low,” Pence said. He thanked the seven evangelical Christian leaders, one Catholic bishop and one rabbi gathered at the church “for your determination to thoughtfully and carefully step forward back into the exercise of your faith.”
The rabbi, David Kaufman of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines, told Pence that in-person worship was “inadvisable at the moment.” Much of Iowa’s Jewish community is 70 or older, and many already have medical issues, he said.
…
But Terry Amann of Church of the Way in Des Moines said his services would resume on May 17.
…
Pence’s staff had taken pains to conceal Miller’s identity as the infected aide. But at about 1:28 p.m., as Pence was meeting with the religious leaders, Trump told reporters at the White House that the vice president’s “press person,” or “Katie,” was the person in question.
One White House official on the Iowa trip said Trump’s disclosure seemed almost vindictive. [See #s 107 and 141 above. – SC]
Pence’s second stop was the headquarters of grocery chain Hy-Vee Inc. in Des Moines, where he was to discuss how the coronavirus outbreak has impacted the U.S. food supply chain.
…
“You hear a lot of distress,” Grassley said. He said about 90% of calls he’s received regarding the coronavirus outbreak came from farmers or their advocates.
“Things are not very good out there on the farm,” he said.
Ernst called it “a very, very stressful and distressing time.”
Pence sat silently as they spoke, barely moving. “I hope the people of Iowa have a sense of just how fortunate you are,” he said, citing Reynolds’ leadership and Trump’s support for a $764 billion small-business loan program. He offered no new assistance or proposals to help struggling farmers.
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation [told Pence farmers were in dire straits and not getting enough federal help]…
…
Pence replied: “Zippy, thank you. Hearing you speak makes me proud to be an American.”
The vice president ended the meeting by telling the food industry executives that “it may well turn out to be your finest hour, a time when an industry stepped up and met the moment.”
…
The plane flew home through a thunderstorm that rocked it from side to side as lightning flashed….
There was just reporting on MSNBC that Katie Miller had coughed on some people (she might have said reporters, but I didn’t quite catch it) and then said (joked?) that she didn’t have coronavirus. They’re just the worst people.
Ben Wikler: “Remember the huge anti-stay-at-home protest in Wisconsin? 72 people have now tested positive here after indicating that they attended a ‘large event’. Hard to think of many others.”
KG @ #150, given that this is what we’re dealing with, hard not to conclude that any insanity is possible. (Honestly, though, I think it’s just part of his ridiculous show, or the WH babysitters are trying to find something to distract him, or he’s trying to finagle some gift for Putin…)
Here’s a link to the May 10 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Meanwhile in Algeria, analysts are saying the regime is exploiting the coronavirus to defeat a protest movement that has shaken it to its core over the past year.
Despite protesters deciding to suspend their weekly gatherings since the start of the public health crisis, repression of regime opponents has persisted, according to AFP. Security forces have targeted young bloggers, independent journalists, online media and activists from the “Hirak” protest movement.
Rapidly adopted laws ostensibly aimed at preventing the dissemination of false news and hate speech have further stoked fears of an orchestrated campaign to muzzle free expression. The new laws “aim to repress citizens’ freedom of expression”, said lawyer and activist Abdelouhab Chiter, a lecturer at the University of Bejaia.
A law on “spreading false information”, he said, “was debated and passed by parliament in a single sitting, in the absence of almost half of its members”.
Akram Belkaid, a journalist for the Oran daily, warned of “a return to the iron fist as in the 1970s”.
“Hirak won the first leg of the game,” he said. “The regime is on course to win the second leg, and its true goal is to prevent any further rematches being held at all – or in other words, to prevent protests reoccurring once the pandemic has been overcome.”
Karima Direche, a historian specialising in contemporary Maghreb region affairs, said the pandemic was “bread from heaven for the regime”.
“The confinement period lends itself to police and judicial harassment. This explains the dozens of arrests of known and unknown people in all Algeria’s cities,” she said.
“Scoop: Last week started with the reveal that Jared Kushner turned to inexperienced outsiders & private equity firms to secure hospital equipment. Now he’s received a 29 page plan to overhaul Social Security & Medicare created by… the US State Department…”
While most of the world has been on lockdown from the novel coronavirus, the wars and political machinations of the Middle East have continued. […] Russia has been making steady progress in […] its “malign engagement” in the region.
The administration’s worries about Russia were voiced in an unusual on-the-record briefing Thursday by three senior State Department officials. Henry Wooster, a deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East, summed up the concerns this way: “The Kremlin uses . . . military power, proxies and disinformation . . . to expand its influence across the [Mediterranean].”
Russia has been opportunistic toward the conflicts in Syria and Libya, using a mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, run by a friend of President Vladimir Putin. The local combatants in these wars are exhausted, but efforts to negotiate peace deals have failed, as they have in Yemen. The result may be de facto partitions in all three countries — and frozen conflicts that leave the nations fragmented and vulnerable.
Russia is likely to emerge with several important military bases in the Mediterranean, achieving a centuries-old dream.
[…] Russian impatience, especially with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is obvious. Ambassador Aleksandr Aksenenok, in an essay published last month by the Russian International Affairs Council, trashed the corruption of Assad’s regime and “outrages” by its security services. […]
But the Russians have less at stake. Their investment of blood and treasure is relatively small, and they’ve left much of the dirty work to others, like the Wagner Group. This is empire on the cheap.
One modestly hopeful development for the United States comes in Iraq, where Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, an America-friendly former chief of intelligence, has formed a new government. U.S. commanders will hold a strategic dialogue with Kadhimi in June, and they expect some U.S. troops will remain in Iraq training its military. The number will be less than the current 5,000 but still in the thousands, U.S. officials believe.
Saudi Arabia, historically the United States’ most important ally in the region, is struggling from the double whammy of covid-19 and the global crash in oil prices. Saudi officials are weighing major budget cuts, including possible delay of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform projects.
The Saudis are also discussing with the United States and Russia additional oil-production cuts to bolster prices. One possibility is a small unilateral Saudi cut for July, which would be increased if other major producers agreed to similar reductions.
With an embattled Iran posing less of a threat to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon is withdrawing some Patriot missile batteries and fighter jets that were rushed to the kingdom last summer. Yemen remains a ruinous conflict that the Saudis want to exit, but peace efforts have failed; the Saudis may have no alternative but joining the United Arab Emirates in accepting a de facto partition of Yemen’s north and south.
The United States’ dilemma this year will be how and when to extract U.S. forces from northeastern Syria. Russian and Syrian regime forces that have been fighting rebels in the western province of Idlib will move east. U.S. commanders would probably prefer a withdrawal deal with Russia to a shooting war over territory they plan to leave eventually anyway.
Libya is the most cynical Russian power play. It has been backing the Benghazi-based forces of Gen. Khalifa Hifter in an unlikely coalition that includes the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and France, against the Turkish-backed government in Tripoli.
Middle East analysts speculate that Russia may try to broker a Libya peace deal with Turkey. But Libya, like the region overall, looks too fragile and fragmented for any diplomatic breakthroughs now, and what’s more likely is continued stalemate and de facto partition.
Russia is picking up the pieces in the post-pandemic Middle East, not so much to further a grand strategy as to poke its deflated rival, the United States. This is scavenger diplomacy, feeding off the carcasses of these broken states.
“NEWS: Iowa’s Kim Reynolds may self isolate after her White House visit Wednesday. WH officials have been in contact with Iowa officials about situation. Iowa state medical director, Dr. Caitlin Pedati, who was also in coronavirus task force mtg Weds with VP staff, self isolating.”
In important weekend news, we learn that Trump is sad because it turns out killing 80,000 Americans (and counting) through rank incompetence is making him, personally, less popular.
[…] Republicans are worried that killing off their own electorate might cost them the Senate majority, come November. Not because of the deaths directly, mind you, just because it looks kind of bad. Don’t worry, though, they have a plan too: The plan is to argue that they’re doing a great job despite all the dying, and also it’s someone else’s fault.
[…] The administration has not been able to orchestrate the sort of widespread testing that other nations are relying on to determine when they should reopen their own economies, so the answer is to not try. There is zero contract tracing plan. There is no evidence that anyone has been able to drum into Trump’s empty head even the most basic facts about the virus—no, it will not “go away on its own”—or that Mike Pence or any of the other top Trump officials give a particular damn about trying.
And so Trump is sad. The Post reports that some of Trump’s advisers “described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity” and that “in private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing” in the polls to Biden. Truly, Dear Leader is having a moment here.
Oh—and we also learn that Dr. Deborah Birx is upset with the Centers of Disease Control for counting too many deaths. […] and that everything remains chaotic, bungling, delusion-based and thoroughly incompetent.
But there is a plan. The new White House plan is that people are going to keep dying, and likely in larger numbers than even now, and Trump is somehow going to argue that that’s fine. […]
Is the public “willing to accept that?” frets an anonymous White House adviser to the Post. Yes, that is the real question here. Not whether it should be prevented, but whether the White House will be politically successful in selling it.
That has become the new Senate Republican plan too. In a separate Post story, we learn that Republicans are “increasingly nervous” they will lose the Senate majority […]
But what if the economy recovers? Then perhaps killing a six-figure number of American civilians might turn out to be politically tolerable. […]Also also, “efforts to target China will continue throughout the campaign.”
It will be a stress test of just how far the Republican base has itself descended into xenophobic fascism, in other words. Is it all right that Dear Leader botched, absolutely, the most pivotal national disaster the nation has seen in a century? What if we claim it is the fault of foreigners? Is the giddy thrill of having an openly racist, boorish national shitposter as leader still so intoxicating that the base will stomach even people in their own neighborhoods dying in order to keep that intoxicating version of “winning” flowing through their veins?
Probably, as the white-nationalism heavy protests against pandemic safety demonstrate. […] Can the party’s digital operations nullify all those unpleasant cretins mumbling that maybe they didn’t want the Spanish Flu combined with the Great Depression, no matter how much President Hairstyle insists on his victory? Will Republican donors continue to support the party’s anti-competence, pro-catastrophe stance, if the party can sweeten the pot by promising to cut their taxes a wee bit more? […]
In the meantime, Republicans are Sad nationwide, it seems, from the White House downward. Not because even after 80,000 deaths the arch-conservative Republican administration continues to not have even one damn clue as to how to stop Americans from dying in whatever proportions the virus wishes them to, but because it is cutting into their poll numbers.
It’s very tragic. How very terrible, to live under such a constant feeling of dread and slow-moving disaster. The rest of us would be hard pressed to even imagine what that might be like.
I hope the judge sees this: “Former DOJ official: Department twisted my words in motion to drop Flynn case.”
A former top Justice Department official […] accused the department of twisting her words in order to make the case that former national security adviser Michael Flynn should not be prosecuted for lying to the FBI.
In the column, former acting assistant attorney general for national security Mary McCord accuses top officials of a “disingenuous” use of her statements made to the Justice Department following her retirement from the agency in order to explain why the department would no longer pursue charges against Flynn. In a motion to dismiss the case against Flynn on Thursday, Barr and the acting attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, cited an interview with McCord more than two dozen times to suggest that the FBI’s interview with Flynn was unwarranted.
“The account of my interview in 2017 doesn’t help the department support this conclusion, and it is disingenuous for the department to twist my words to suggest that it does,” McCord wrote.
“What the account of my interview describes is a difference of opinion about what to do with the information that Mr. Flynn apparently had lied to the incoming vice president, [Mike] Pence, and others in the incoming administration about whether he had discussed the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia in his calls with [then-Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergei] Kislyak,” McCord continued.
McCord went on to describe that she believed the FBI mishandled the Flynn investigation by not coordinating his interview with the Justice Department, but that she did not believe the agencies had no reason to suspect Flynn of possible criminal activity.
“[I]t has no bearing on whether Mr. Flynn’s lies to the F.B.I. were material to the clear counterintelligence threat posed by the susceptible position Mr. Flynn put himself in when he told Mr. Pence and others in the new administration that he had not discussed the sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. The materiality is obvious,” she concluded.
Attorney General William Barr has defended his decision to end the Justice Department’s prosecution of Flynn, […]
“I’m doing the law’s bidding. I’m doing my duty under the law, as I see it,” Barr told CBS News on Thursday.
“I made clear during my confirmation hearing that I was gonna look into what happened in 2016 and ’17. I made that crystal clear,” he continued. “I was very concerned about what happened. I was gonna get to the bottom of it. And that included the treatment of General Flynn.”
[…] more than 120 virus-related deaths have been recorded at just two veterans’ care facilities in New Jersey: the New Jersey Veterans Home at Paramus, and the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home. The deaths at those two facilities are just a small fraction of the high number of deaths reported in nursing homes across the state, where more than 4,800 people have died in total, more than half of the state’s total death toll.
The problem is statewide, according to data reported by the Times: More than a dozen nursing facilities in the state have reported over 30 coronavirus-related deaths.
At the Paramus facility more than 60 percent of residents have contracted the disease, while about 20 percent of the staff is sick and one employee has died. […]
“I asked them: ‘How did this get so out of control?’” the family member, Cynthia Petersen, added to the newspaper. […]
“This is not only a tragedy,” he told the Times. “This is an urgent message to all of us. These veterans fought on the field for this country.”
“Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander will isolate for 14 days in Tennessee after a staff member tests positive for covid-19, office says in a statement, adding he has no symptoms and tested negative on May 7. He will chair the Tuesday covid hearing before his committee remotely.”
So, Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson is trying to kill me. Not only me, of course, and I’m not even among his primary targets, but I have to admit I do take it personally. His “Address to the Nation” last night was an absurd piece of nonsense. He laid out a number of conditions for lifting the lockdown, admitted they had not been met – deaths and hospitalizations have fallen, but not as fast or by nearly as much as in Italy or Spain, for example – and then told everyone to go back to work, thus, in effect, lifting the lockdown! The full text is at the link, but here’s the key passage:
And though we have made progress in satisfying at least some of the conditions I have given.
We have by no means fulfilled all of them.
And so no, this is not the time simply to end the lockdown this week.
Instead we are taking the first careful steps to modify our measures.
And the first step is a change of emphasis that we hope that people will act on this week.
We said that you should work from home if you can, and only go to work if you must.
We now need to stress that anyone who can’t work from home, for instance those in construction or manufacturing, should be actively encouraged to go to work.
And we want it to be safe for you to get to work. So you should avoid public transport if at all possible – because we must and will maintain social distancing, and capacity will therefore be limited.
So work from home if you can, but you should go to work if you can’t work from home.
And to ensure you are safe at work we have been working to establish new guidance for employers to make workplaces COVID-secure.
And when you do go to work, if possible do so by car or even better by walking or bicycle. But just as with workplaces, public transport operators will also be following COVID-secure standards.
So having made strenuous efforts to minimise mixing between people from different households, only allowing it in workplaces which have had to stay open to supply essential goods and services, the UK government is now following Trump’s lead and “encouraging” millions of people to return to workplaces in which “we have been working to establish new guidance for employers to make workplaces COVID-secure” (i.e.: in which we haven’t yet established any such guidance), and in many of which it will be plain impossible to keep physical distance from fellow-employees. As it will on public transport, on which millions are dependent for travel to work, particularly in London and other big cities. It’s clear enough that the “encouragement” will be swiftly followed by economic coercion if they think they can get away with it, with the “furlough” scheme by which the state pays 80% of wages for people laid off being tapered down, something which has already been floated. Those “encouraged” to go back to work will be the first casualties, but the whole point is that the more infections there are, the more everyone is at risk.
The leaders of the opposition parties, and of the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have all reacted with some mixture of scepticism, scorn and dismay. (Johnson’s speech contains the lie that he has consulted with them and that there is consensus across the UK – they learned of the abandonment of the “Stay Home” message in favour of “Stay Alert”* by reading about it in the Sunday papers.) The devolved administration leaders have all made clear they intend to stick with “Stay Home”. But if the UK government winds down the “furlough” scheme, it’s not clear how long they could maintain their opposition in practical terms.
*”Stay Alert – your country needs Lerts!”. Presumably the idea is that if you see the virus – you know, that green soccer-ball thing with red pins sticking out of it – you should run away.
KGsays
Here’s a revealing comment from a Grauniad opinion column, from a commenter with the nym robertowendavidson:
A timeline to shock!
December 31st China alerts WHO to new virus.
January 23rd a third of China’s patients require intensive care.
January 24th Johnson misses first Cobra meeting.
January 29th Johnson misses second Cobra meeting.
January 31st ‘Level 4 NHS critical incident’ Government declines to join European PPE procurement scheme.
February 5th Johnson misses third Cobra meeting.
February 12th Johnson misses fourth Cobra meeting. Exeter University published study warning Coronavirus could infect 45 million people in the UK if left unchallenged.
February 13th Johnson misses conference call with European leaders.
February 14th Johnson goes away on holiday. Aides are told keeps Johnson’s briefings short or he will not read them.
February 18th Johnson misses fifth cobra meeting.
February 26th Johnson announces ‘Herd Immunity’ strategy – some people will lose loved ones glibly declared. Government document is leaked, predicting half a million Brits could die in ‘worse case scenario’
February 29th Johnson retreats to his country manor. PPE shortage nightmare’ evolves. Stockpiles have dwindled or expired after years of austerity cuts.
March 2nd Johnson attends his first Cobra meeting, declining another opportunity to join European PPE scheme. Johnson tells country “We are very, very well prepared.”
March 3rd Scientists urge Government to advise public not to shake hands. Johnson brags about shaking hands of Coronavirus patients.
March 4th Government stops providing daily updates on virus following a 70% spike in UK cases. Later U-turned amidst widespread criticism.
March 5th Johnson tells public to ‘wash their hands but it is business as usual’
March 7th Johnson joins 82,000 people at 6 Nations match.
March 9th Ireland cancels St Patrick’s day parades, the government says there’s “No Rationale” for cancelling sporting events.
March 10th – 13th Cheltenham takes place, more than a quarter of a million people attend.
March 11th 3,000 Atletico Madrid fans fly to Liverpool.
March 12th Boris Johnson states banning events such as Cheltenham will have little effect.
March 13th FA suspends the Premier League, citing an absence of Government guidance. Britain is invited to join European scheme for joint purchase of ventilators, and refuses. Johnson lifts restrictions of those arriving from Coronavirus hot spots.
March 14th Stereophonics play to 5,000 people in Cardiff. No ban on mass gatherings.
March 16th Johnson asks Britons not to go to pubs, but allows them to stay open.
March 19th Hospital patients with Coronavirus are returned to care homes in a bid to free up hospital space. What follows is a boom of virus cases in care homes.
March 20th Government states that PPE shortage crisis is “Completely resolved” Less than two weeks later, the British Medical Association reports an acute shortage in PPE.
March 23rd UK goes into lockdown.
March 26th Johnson is accused of putting ‘Brexit over Breathing’ by not joining EU ventilator scheme. The government then state they had not joined the scheme because they had ‘missed the email’
April 1st The Evening Standard publishes that just 0.17% of NHS staff have been tested for the virus.
April 3rd The UK death toll overtakes China.
April 5th 17.5 million Antibody tests, ordered by the government and described by Johnson as a ‘game changer’ are found to be a failure.
April 16th Flights bringing 15,000 people a day into the UK – without virus testing.
April 17th Health Secretary Matt Hancock says “I would love to be able to wave a magic wand and have PPE fall from the sky.” The UK has now missed four opportunities to join the EU’s PPE scheme.
April 21st The Government fails to reach its target of face masks for the NHS, as it is revealed manufactures offers of help were met with silence. Instead millions of pieces of PPE are being shipped from the UK to Europe.
April 23rd – 24th Government announces testing kits for 10 million key workers. Orders run out within minutes as only 5,000 are made available.
April 25th UK death toll from Coronavirus overtakes that of The Blitz.
April 30th Johnson announces the UK has succeeded in avoiding a tragedy that had engulfed other parts of the world – At this point, The UK has the 3rd highest death toll in the world.
May 1st Government announces it has reached its target of 100,000 tests – They haven’t conducted the tests, but merely posted the testing kits.
May 5th The UK death toll becomes the highest in Europe.
May 6th Boris Johnson announces the UK could start to lift lockdown restrictions by next week.
May 10. Johnson makes a vague, wooly and heavily redacted pre-recorded statement to the nation which will surely bring about chaos and misunderstanding.
Unbelievably, the Johnson government still has more Brits approving than disapproving of its overall performance on Covid-19, although on specific questions about PPE, testing, and the delay in starting lockdown, responses are predominantly negative.
KGsays
Pence ‘has tested negative every single day’ – Devin O’Malley quotes by SC@177
Wow! That’ll scare Trump! You recall how pleased he was to report that all his medical tests had come back positive :-p
“Early Monday morning, Saudi Arabia announced a slew of austerity measures to cope with the fiscal impact of the coronavirus pandemic and oil price rout, tripling its value-added tax and cutting a cost-of-living allowance for government workers:…”
President Vladimir Putin has eased Russia’s “non-working” period imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus even as Russia emerges as Europe’s new coronavirus hotspot.
During the nationwide “non-working” period, all non-essential businesses are required to close and employers ordered to continue paying staff. Apart from this, Putin has largely handed decision-making power on lockdown measures to regional authorities.
“Starting tomorrow, May 12, the national non-working period will end for the entire country and for all sectors of the economy,” Putin said in his sixth televised address on the coronavirus.
“But the fight with the epidemic isn’t ending, its threat remains even in territories where the situation is relatively safe,” he added.
Putin extended the regional governors’ authorities to impose restrictions during the outbreak and said doctors will have the “final say” on when to lift restrictions.
Putin said that Russia had used the self-isolation period to prepare its healthcare system, increasing the amount of hospital beds and saving “many thousands of lives.”
This “allows us to begin a gradual lifting of restrictions,” he said.
“It is in the interest of all of us for the economy to return to normal quickly.”
…
Earlier Monday, Putin ordered the cabinet and the national coronavirus task force to draft recommendations by Tuesday to gradually lift restrictive measures in Russia’s regions. He ordered the cabinet to provide an “action plan for economic recovery and growth” by June 1.
…
Russia has seen Europe’s highest number of new cases over the past week, reporting more than 10,000 infections daily. As of Monday, 221,344 people have been infected nationwide — the third-highest number worldwide — and 2,009 have died from Covid-19.
And here’s a link to the May 11 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Vladimir Putin announced an easing of Russia’s nationwide lockdown on Monday, even as Russia recorded a record number of new coronavirus infections.
Putin said people in some sectors would now return to work, though restrictions on public gatherings would remain in place. “We have a long and difficult process ahead of us with no room for mistakes,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
He noted the size of Russia and said the epidemiological situation in different regions varied greatly, thus local governments would retain the right to keep lockdown measures in place. In Moscow, the centre of Russia’s coronavirus epidemic, the lockdown is due to remain in force until the end of May at least.
Russia on Monday announced 11,656 new cases over the past 24 hours, a record number. The country has had a total of 221,344 confirmed cases of the virus and 2,009 deaths. It has the second highest rate of new infections after the US.
“This should be remembered. Putin has ended national self-isolation measures aimed at fighting the epidemic on the very day when we have registered a record for new infections. W for Wisdom,” wrote the opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Twitter.
In a long address, Putin also surveyed the economic situation in the country, noting that the number of registered unemployed had doubled since early April, and he announced a new package of economic measures.
I’m hearing on good authority that #coronavirus is more rampant in the #WhiteHouse than the public is being told. A very high-ranking individual may have also been impacted! The administration is currently mum on the matter, seeking prayers instead.
If this turns out to be accurate, my guess would be Pence or Stephen Miller.
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, is self-quarantining against the novel coronavirus following contact with a family member who tested positive for the virus, the Pentagon said in a statement to news outlets Sunday.
The big picture: A Navy official told CNN that Gilday had tested negative for COVID-19 and was taking the action as a precautionary measure. Gen. Joseph Lengyel will have a third test Monday after an earlier one indicated he’d tested positive and another showed a negative reading, per Reuters. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Anthony Fauci, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn and CDC director Robert Redfiel[d] have also self-quarantined after contact with people who tested positive.
Four CEOs of food companies and the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation were told to remove their face masks before a meeting in Iowa Friday with Vice President Mike Pence, a startling video posted by The Intercept reveals.
Pence — also without a mask — appeared a short time later at the headquarters of the Hy-Vee grocery chain in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with the men in front of an audience.
Just hours earlier Pence was informed that his press secretary Katie Miller had tested positive for COVID-19. She and six others in Pence’s entourage with suspected exposure to Miller were pulled from Pence’s flight to Iowa just before takeoff. Pence’s office denied news reports Sunday that he was self-isolating because of his exposure to Miller.
Video before the Hy-Vee roundtable shows an unidentified woman walking up to two groups of the men, all wearing face masks. She can be seen speaking to them and mimicking a gesture as if she’s removing a face mask. All of the men remove their masks. It isn’t clear who she was representing, but going maskless is a hallmark of the Trump administration.
…
The audience watching the Iowa roundtable practiced social distancing in the wide spacing of seating, but almost no one wore masks. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) all participated in the roundtable, but none wore a mask.
Pence traveled to Iowa to hail the state’s “success story” in getting back to business amid the COVID-19 crisis. But the Sioux City metro area had the most cases per capita of any county in the nation, according to a data analysis Sunday by The New York Times.
Iowa has also been struggling mightily with major outbreaks of the disease among workers in five meatpacking plants in the state.
…
As of Sunday, there were close to 12,000 COVID-19 cases and 265 deaths in Iowa. The cases are still on the rise, according to the state health department.
The men in the Pence roundtable who were instructed to remove their masks were American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, and CEOs Rodney McMullen of Kroger, Ron Cameron of Mountaire Farms, Ken Sullivan of Smithfield Foods and Noel White of Tyson.
Sullivan called workers at meatpacking plants “heroes” at the roundtable. A worker and a nonprofit workers’ rights group last month filed a federal lawsuit against a Missouri meat processing plant operated by Smithfield, accusing the company of maintaining dangerous conditions.
The meatpackers union said in a statement that Pence, Perdue, the senators and governor should have worked a shift at a processing plant to experience the dangerous conditions.
“They should work in the same conditions and under the same fear that our members and their fellow Iowans work under every day,” the United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement….
Great thread: “Raise your hand if you knew that in May 1937 the New York Times did a gauzy profile of Hitler, painting him as a ‘Bohemian’ with an ‘artistic temperament’?…”
Yes, those CDC guidelines were buried by the White House.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently crafted detailed guidelines, created by the nation’s top disease investigators, on how best to responsibly reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. The recommendations were specifically tailored to different parts of American society, and they were poised to play a foundational role for the public and private sectors.
But that did not happen. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the step-by-step recommendations were “shelved” by the administration. The White House’s direct role in this mess is now coming into focus:
The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press…. The trove of emails show the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their work quashed by political appointees with little explanation.
Kayleigh McEnany, the president’s new press secretary who recently vowed to never lie, defended the White House’s handling of the matter on Friday, claiming that the detailed reopening guidelines hadn’t been approved by CDC Director Robert Redfield, which is why they weren’t released to the public.
The emails obtained by the AP proves that her explanation wasn’t true: the article added that Redfield cleared the materials, but they were blocked anyway by White House officials who considered the detailed guidance politically inconvenient.
Why does this matter? For one thing, it appears the White House failed to tell the truth about its handling of important CDC materials during a pandemic crisis.
But even more important is the fact that we keep confronting instances in which leading scientific experts and authorities try to steer Team Trump in responsible directions, only to have the White House’s political interests get in the way.
In this case, however, exposing relevant details to the public had an immediate effect: according to the materials obtained by the Associated Press, after the AP’s report on Thursday about the administration burying the CDC directives, “the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.”
They got caught letting political interests get in the way of implementing scientifically-sound guidelines. Team Trump partially walked back their stupidity only because they were caught, because the press outed them as the dunderheads they are.
Lots of states already started their re-opening procedures without benefit of the CDC guidelines. Now Trump wants to fast-track some CDC guidelines for approval? The virus is running free in some states … and now Trump wants to fast-track talks about closing the barn door?
Trump seriously wants to censor or to silence his critics.
[…] Trump called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to go after NBC and its “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd, on Monday and Sunday in series of unhinged tweets in response to Todd’s criticism of Attorney General Bill Barr.
Trump was incensed by Todd, whom the President calls “Sleepy Eyes,” saying Barr “didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law” when the Trump official discussed the Justice Department’s decision to drop Michael Flynn’s case on Fox News. Right-wingers on Twitter attacked Todd for not including Barr’s comment that “fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law” in the clip NBC had played of the attorney general.
“@FCC THIS IS A DISGRACE, EVEN WORSE THAN @NBC USUALLY IS, WHICH IS REALLY BAD,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “SLEEPY EYES MUST BE FIRED!”
He had posted a similar demand the night before in which he tagged both the FCC and FCC chair Ajit Pai.
“Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd should be FIRED by “Concast” (NBC) for this fraud. He knew exactly what he was doing. Public Airwaves = Fake News! @AjitPaiFCC @FCC”
During a panel on “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, Todd had played a clip of Barr telling CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge last week that “history’s written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history” when she asked how history would view the DOJ’s decision on Flynn.
Immediately after Barr made the comment, the program cut to Todd telling the panel he was “struck” by “the cynicism” of the attorney general’s response. […]
“Meet the Press” apologized to Kerri Kupec, Barr’s spokesperson, via Twitter after she complained about Todd.
“Earlier today, we inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis,” the program’s Twitter account said. “The remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error.” […]
Orange meltdown in real time.
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Yet another reason to despise Trump: he has put me on the same side as Chuck Todd.
———————
Had the FCC done this to Fox News twenty years ago, it would have saved us all a whole lot of trouble.
————————
Chuck Todd…elevated Death threats incoming
——————– Even with the longer clip, Todd’s point still stands. Barr made the claim, but he certainly didn’t make the case. The “evidence” he presented there was, indeed, that he intended for his political side to be the winners writing history.
——————
Frankly, I haven’t been able to settle my stomach since I saw Bill Barf’s malicious little smirk as he said: “history’s written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history”
Trump Goes Wild With ‘Obamagate’ Conspiracy Theory After Obama Slams Flynn Case Withdrawal
[…] Trump littered his Twitter feed with posts about an “Obamagate” conspiracy theory all throughout Sunday. [The conspiracy theory] baselessly accuses former President Barack Obama of sabotaging Trump’s presidency with the investigation of Michael Flynn.
“The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” Trump tweeted in response to a post claiming Obama “used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration.”
“Wow, this is BIG!” he wrote with a retweet of hard right website Gateway Pundit’s post titled “Former President’s Fingerprints All Over Attempted Coup and More Documents Are Coming!”
Then Trump tweeted “OBAMAGATE!” and “He got caught, OBAMAGATE!” hours later. He spent the rest of the night retweeting various memes and articles peddling the conspiracy theory.
The president’s Twitter spree came several days after his predecessor criticized the Justice Department’s dismissal of its case against Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the agency’s investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.
Obama warned that the reversal was “the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic–not just institutional norms–but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk” during a private virtual event with the Obama Alumni Association last Friday.
“And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly, as we’ve seen in other places,” the former president added.
A group of almost 2,000 former Justice Department officials have signed onto a statement condemning the DOJ’s decision to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to resign for “repeated assaults on the rule of law.”
[…]
It also asked the judge overseeing the Flynn case to reject the government’s motion to throw out the charges.
The group said the DOJ’s reasoning “does not hold up to scrutiny given the ample evidence that the investigation was well-founded and — more importantly — the fact that Flynn admitted under oath and in open court that he told material lies to the FBI in violation of longstanding federal law.”
[…]
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 200
Do those about-2000 signatories have the power to actually DO anything if Barr refuses to resign?
A day of record high coronavirus infection numbers is an odd time to announce a route out of lockdown, but that’s what Vladimir Putin did on Monday as he announced the “non-working days” imposed by the Kremlin at the end of March would come to an end from Tuesday.
…
Rather than an invitation to Russians to stream back into the streets, however, Monday’s announcement seemed to be the latest gambit in Putin’s plan to delegate responsibility for tackling the crisis to local leaders, who he said would make their own decisions on when to end lockdown.
Certainly, Russia’s vast size means there is little point in lockdown restrictions in Vladivostok being tied to the epidemic growth seven time zones away in Moscow. But health minister Tatiana Golikova later clarified that so far only 11 of Russia’s 85 regions has an epidemiological situation that could allow for a loosening of restrictions, making Putin’s announcement look to some like passing the buck.
“This is abdication of responsibility, the architect of Russia’s hyper-presidential system suddenly discovering local authorities when it is convenient,” said Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst and author of a book on Putin. “Putin is giving them the responsibility to fight the pandemic without the funds or the powers.”
Putin has rarely shone in crisis management, something noted as far back as the sinking of the Kursk submarine 20 years ago, during his first months in office, and this one appears no different.
Since donning a yellow hazmat suit to visit coronavirus patients back in March, Putin has been largely confined to his residence, where he appears by video link to address the nation and cabinet. Russians who are used to seeing their president atop a horse or motorbike instead see a static-screen Putin who often seems visibly bored.
Last week, he was spotted distractedly playing with a pen as his health minister discussed the regional response with him. On Monday, Putin again looked less than enthusiastic as he simultaneously addressed both the nation and his government by video link. On several occasions he let out audible sighs in mid-sentence.
The virus is asking hard questions of the Kremlin and the political system constructed by Putin over the past two decades.
…
“This is arguably the most serious challenge to Putin as national leader in the twenty years he has been in power, and he is failing it,” said Galeotti.
It really takes some mental gymnastics to actually believe Pres Obama made Flynn plead guilty.
——————
a young German said to us, “I always wondered how Hitler was able to lead the German people into such a dark place and then I saw Trump.” Once again Trump is delusional but drags 40+% of the country right along with him.
——————–
Barr will undoubtedly announce a sham investigation.
———————–
More than 100 tweets yesterday. And that’s not even his record.
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I was just over to a few right-wing sites (Fox, et al.) and they are going crazy about Obamagate. I can’t remember when I saw such mindless vitriolic lies…
————————
For him not even to mention that Obama started World War I by assassinating Archduke Ferdinand shows remarkable restraint in this time of crisis.
A 60 Minutes exposé provided details about Trump de-funding NIH Pandemic Research because the head of that research wouldn’t go along with his China conspiracy theory.
Naturally Trump puts his ignorant notions, and his need to find a scapegoat above where the facts and the science point. That is that the COVID-19 viurus came from the natural world, and not some laboratory.
From Brit McCandless Farmer:
Several U.S. officials, including Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, had raised suspicions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of Daszak’s key collaborators in China. When a reporter mischaracterized key details of the NIH grant during a White House press conference last month, President Trump said he would check if any U.S. funds had been granted to the Wuhan Institute, and if so, he said, they would immediately be terminated.
But the $3.7 million grant was not given to the Wuhan Institute. It had been awarded to Daszak’s New York-based organization, EcoHealth Alliance. A week after President Trump said the funds would be terminated in China, the NIH took action against EcoHealth Alliance, giving the organization no reason for the grant’s termination. Ending an NIH grant usually requires a full investigation and proof of an egregious action like scientific or financial fraud—neither of which applied to EcoHealth Alliance.
Fellow scientists have spoken out about the unsettling precedent the NIH set. “This is cutting off your face to spite your nose,” Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH’s Fogarty International Center, told Science. “This is the worst kind of thing that political interference can cause in a democracy.”
Recognizing the ramifications of NIH’s decision involves understanding of the scope of Daszak’s work—and its impact on future coronavirus pandemics
Video available at the link is really must-see reporting.
Excerpt from CBS’ coverage in text:
When 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley recently sought to report on the origin of the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe, producer Ashley Velie pointed him to Dr. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist whose work in sampling and researching coronaviruses in wildlife has helped identify potentially dangerous emerging diseases in humans. It turns out Pelley had previously reported on Daszak and was familiar with his research into how coronaviruses—such as the one causing COVID-19—move from bats to humans.
But this time, Daszak’s story took an unexpected turn. Shortly after Pelley finished interviewing him last month about COVID-19’s origin, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) abruptly canceled a five-year, $3.7 million grant supporting his research. Pelley and Velie had a new story to report and returned to Daszak for a second interview.
Several U.S. officials, including Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, had raised suspicions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of Daszak’s key collaborators in China. When a reporter mischaracterized key details of the NIH grant during a White House press conference last month, President Trump said he would check if any U.S. funds had been granted to the Wuhan Institute, and if so, he said, they would immediately be terminated. […]
As Daszak explained to 60 Minutes, no one knows for sure why bats are such adept hosts for disease, but one theory is that bats are the only mammal naturally capable of sustained flight. Flying, Daszak explains, burns a lot of oxygen and puts a lot of stress on bats’ cells. As a result, their immune system kicks in.
“Bats can’t live with that sort of immune response all the time, so they dampen down their immune response. That’s been shown,” Daszak said. “And in dampening down their own immunity, they allow viruses to proliferate. So bats carry a higher amount of virus and a higher diversity of viruses than other mammals.”
[…] partnerships with scientists around the world are key. Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance has worked for years with the Wuhan Institute, and together they’ve catalogued hundreds of bat viruses, including dozens of previously unknown coronaviruses. The antiviral medication Remdesivir, the only drug so far proven to help patients with COVID-19, was initially tested against the viruses Daszak and his team had discovered under previous funding from the NIH.
Daszak said EcoHealth Alliance had been spending about $100,000 a year collaborating with the Wuhan Institute.
“I can’t just show up in China and say, ‘Hi, I want to work on your viruses,'” he said. “I have to do this through the correct channels. So, what we do is we talk to NIH, and they approve the people we can work with in China. And that happened. And our collaboration with Wuhan was preapproved by NIH.”
Last year, the NIH reauthorized EcoHealth’s five-year grant after independent scientists reviewed the application. According to Daszak, EcoHealth’s grant received a high-priority score and was in the top three percent of grants the NIH reviewed last year.
The NIH would not tell 60 Minutes why EcoHealth Alliance’s grant was canceled or whether anything like it had happened before.
Daszak says the consequence of NIH pulling the $3.7 million grant will be felt for years to come.
“It matters because number one, our work is used in developing vaccines and drugs to save American lives and the lives of people around the world. So that matters a lot,” Daszak said. “Number two, if we really want to know where viruses are going to emerge and cause the next pandemic, we need to have scientific collaborations like this. They’re our only eyes and ears on the ground in countries that are very difficult, for political reasons, to work in.”
“We are the frontline of preventing the next pandemic,” he said. “And we need to get on with our job.”
The reporting enraged Trump:
.@CBS and their show, @60Minutes, are doing everything within their power, which is far less today than it was in the past, to defend China and the horrible Virus pandemic that was inflicted on the USA and the rest of the World. I guess they want to do business in China!
…Emmet Sullivan would be totally within his authority to require the government to provide the actual evidence on which they make at this point unsubstantiated claims in this filing.
Mike Flynn has been demanding these transcripts for quite some time. Given the declassification spree that Barr and Ric Grenell have been on, I would imagine they would have been made public if they helped Flynn at all. So I’m guessing Yates and McCord provided a more accurate description of these transcripts than Timothy Shea.
A quote in this post was I think the first I’ve read of the Shea filing. Wow, is it bad.
@ #201
Publicity stunt? To what end? No one has the power to make Barr resign. Does that mean no one should object to what he is doing? To my mind, the more noise made about it, the better.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Monday disparaged the media’s coverage of the staggering 14.7 percent unemployment rate in April caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That was a pity party yesterday on the Sunday shows,” Navarro complained on “Fox and Friends,” singling out CBS News “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, ABC News “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos and “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.
“This is not the Great Depression,” the White House official continued. “Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn’t understand either history or economics.”
Navarro claimed that President Donald Trump had built “the strongest and most beautiful economy” before the virus took hold.
“Now it’s going to be a long process because of the structural adjustments that are going to take place as we adapt to the virus socially and culturally and economically,” he said. “But this Great Depression pity party stuff I saw yesterday, this ain’t that.”
But two of Navarro’s own colleagues, White House senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, had participated in said “pity party” on the Sunday morning shows and agreed that the onslaught of job losses is in fact headed toward Great Depression territory….
The genius may think we are suckers, but in Iowa we don’t ruin good corn liquor with Clorox
[… Unionized employee Drake Custer explained] “The vibe is: a lot of people figured out that the boss isn’t worried about them. My veteran friends, they don’t like what’s going on. They’re looking for leadership in government and the workplace. Really, everybody is.”
Folks from Milwaukee to Muskegon were having their misgivings before the pandemic shut us down in March. Trade wars with China, Mexico, Canada and Europe knocked the wind out of steel wheels and soybean prices. Workers at John Deere, the huge tractor builder, were getting pink slips in Davenport. Ethanol plants were idled. Farmers in north-west Iowa’s Sioux county, where Trump took 90% of the vote, said last fall they would not vote for him again. The 23 proclaimed they were “fed up” after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency allowed 31 petroleum refineries to shun ethanol blending requirements. Ethanol comes from corn. Corn is a religious totem in these parts.
Trump’s approval ratings sank underwater in key midwestern swing states he won: Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Any number of polls showed Trump and Joe Biden in a dead heat in about a dozen purple states, or with Biden in a comfortable lead. Bluster and blunder were coming home to roost.
Then the pandemic that Trump ignored hit and the bottom dropped out.
Corn prices dived 19% since January. Meatpacking plants are exploding with the coronavirus — 60% of the pork plant workers in Perry, Iowa, are infected. The sheriff for Waterloo, Iowa, said he wanted to stomp a boot on Tyson’s plant. The mayor of Sioux Falls argued with the South Dakota governor to shut down a Smithfield pork facility overrun with the virus. About 65% of people polled think folks should stay home and not dine in at the restaurant buffet. Although the Iowa governor allowed churches to reopen, they aren’t taking her up on the offer with Sunday services. They would just as soon wait until we can get some tests done around here. Republican leaders are not in tune with voters.
The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat on Biden’s VP shortlist, held forth ably against armed men in the capital lobby and remains far more popular than Trump. In Wisconsin, Democrats were outraged when Republicans forced a primary election involving a key state supreme court race. Voters stood up for democracy, in line for hours braving Covid-19 infection to cast their vote. The Democratic-backed court candidate won. Wisconsin unseated the Republican governor, Scott Walker, in 2018 and elected a gay woman to the US Senate, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, before that. It is the land of La Follette, after all.
[…]
A reckoning is due for incompetence and neglect. Farmers are disconsolate. Every dairy worker suicide resonates. […] It makes everyone nauseous. Everyday people can’t understand why NBA players can get tested but packinghouse workers ordered to keep the pork loins rolling can’t. […] We’re waking up, all right. When 30 million people can’t get through to the unemployment system, and half of them lose their health insurance by fall, incumbents should cover their flanks.
[…]
Even while sitting in his basement unheard, Biden is winning the midwest for all Trump’s blather. […]
One item not mentioned in this editorial is the continuing drumroll of condemnations (e.g., tomh@200) also inflicts damage and doubt, even if (as per Akira MacKenzie@201), the statements / condemners are unable to directly “do” anything. One problem, of course, is nothing “gets done” until 2021; and then, in any case, there’s a tremendous amount of damage to undo — with perhaps the must difficult to undo — and also an obstacle to other problems being fixed — being the huge number of thug-approved lunatic federal “judges” being appointed & confirmed.
tomh @ #207, also, as your quote includes and you highlight, “It also asked the judge overseeing the Flynn case to reject the government’s motion to throw out the charges.”
It’s directed at the public and the judge who does have the power to make decisions here.
“The View’s Sunny Hostin to Shelley Luther, the Texas salon owner briefly jailed for violating restraining order by keeping hair salon open: Didn’t you receive $18,000 in PPP funds before your court date?
Luther: Yeah, but I didn’t know what to do with the money.”
Most† of France left lockdown today. I myself have no idea what the situation is like, due to a mixture of bad weather‡ and sleeping-in all day, but found this report “interesting” (as an individual who notoriously neither shaves nor gets haircuts), From lockdown, to ‘locks off’: Hair salons fully booked as France reopens for business (video): “French hairdressers reopened on Monday after eight weeks under lockdown, ready to welcome an onslaught of clients. Around 60 percent of French people say they will book an appointment for a haircut within the first week, with some salons already fully booked for the next three weeks. They are required to put health and safety measures in place including protective masks, regular cleaning and prohibiting comforts such as magazines and hot drinks.”
† The exception is Mayotte, a French overseas department )in-between Madagascar and Africa), where the Covid-19 infections are still increasing.
‡ Locally, there seems to usually be a big dump of rain late(-ish) in the Spring before Summer. All this week the forecast to be rain (except tomorrow, Tuesday) — there was a yellow flood alert in effect yesterday — which I presume is this characteristic last-of-the-Spring rains.
From today’s spectacle: “Giroir points out the scary syndrome among children. Asked about it, Trump says, ‘it’s a very small percentage’. He tries to get backup from the admiral, who says, ‘yes sir, but it’s a very serious and sometimes fatal condition’. Trump not happy.”
*”Stay Alert – your country needs Lerts!”. Presumably the idea is that if you see the virus – you know, that green soccer-ball thing with red pins sticking out of it – you should run away.
“Ahead of an armed rally planned for the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, this coming Thursday, groups are promoting violence against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Facebook, in violation of the social media company’s policies….”
In Washington, Trump has ended his briefing on a very sour note.
Asked by CBS White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang why he is so fixated on comparing the US’ testing capability to other countries as opposed to focusing on the lag that still exists her, Trump snapped: “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, ok?”
He then called on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins who ceded the mic to Jiang so that she could ask her follow-up. Jiang, who is Asian-American, replied to Trump: “Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically, that I should ask China.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not saying it specifically to anybody. I’m saying it to anybody that would ask a nasty question like that,” he said.
Collins then tries to ask her question and Trump skips her. He then refuses to take anymore questions and leaves the podium.
In addition to the racism and everything else, it doesn’t make any sense.
Josh Marshall: “It was overshadowed by Trumps gross response to @weijia. But her question raised a critical point. Trump treats each metric as a competition with other countries. We are doing more tests than many other countries. But it’s not a competition. We want fewer people to die in the US.”
Trump keeps saying our testing and our equipment is better than any other country in the world, like he’s trying to sell us on the fucking country we’re already fucking living in
Like you’re going to be in the hospital and be like “ugh this ventilator sucks, I’m going to CHINA!” and then Trump is gonna like “but this ventilator is the best in the world, the best one you’re ever gonna get – anywhere!”
Saying we have the best testing is so stupid because if testing sucks in other countries, that’s actually BAD for us too!
People have been projecting that he would do a ‘mission accomplished’ style event for a while, even as several thousand Americans die of the virus every week, and he finally went and did it.
SC @217, Ha! Even Trump doesn’t really understand what he is accusing Obama of this time.
SC @219, and Trump thinks they are all fine people. He said so.
SC @220, at least the reporters held their ground long enough to make Trump realize that he should exit the stage instead of digging the hole he was in even deeper. He never did answer the question about testing.
From NBC News:
The White House began requiring all staffers entering the West Wing to wear a facial covering Monday, and asked aides to avoid going there “unless you absolutely need to conduct in-person business in the West Wing.”
Meeting the overwhelming demand for a successful coronavirus vaccine will require a historic amount of coordination by scientists, drugmakers and the government. The nation’s supply chain isn’t anywhere close to ready for such an effort.
NEWWS…Trump has wanted to get out in public to show he’s on the front lines fighting the virus. But fears are rising that such photo op visits from @realdonaldtrump and @VP are literally making the public less safe. One factory said No.
My latest…
WaPo link atl. He wanted to go to a Pennsylvania PPE factory.
[…]
The Nashville head of the NAACP said a police officer who responded to his home after a bullseye-like target appeared in his front yard dismissed his concerns.
[…]
After [Keith] Caldwell told the officer that he was concerned the target was a threat to him and his family, Caldwell said the officer responded by saying that he thought the target was pretty cool.
“It felt like to me that he really, he didn’t care,” Caldwell told WKRN-TV. After speaking with the officer, Caldwell said he then called the officer’s supervisor.
[…]
Caldwell said the police department has been taking the issue seriously after the responding officer declined to file a police report about the matter.
“I don’t want to paint the entire police department as a reflection of this one officer,” Caldwell told WKRN-TV.
The interaction between Caldwell and the responding officer is “under review”[†], police said in their statement.
[…]
There’s an image of the target at the link. Fortunately, it’s not a silhouette-style target, but a classic archery-style concentric circles.
† Taking a lead from Mr Caldwell, I’ve declined to set this “police” statement in eejit quotes; they might actually be doing something…
In private Facebook groups, calls to assassinate Michigan’s governor
Either President [sic] Trump sends in the troops or there is going to be a midnight lynching in Lansing soon.
We need a good old fashioned lynch mob to storm the Capitol.
Drag that tyrant governor out to the front lawn. Fit her for a noose.
Within private Facebook groups in Michigan, a Detroit Metro Times reporter found violent threats against Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer. “Dozens of people have called for her to be hanged,” the paper reported.
As she has led Michigan’s response to coronavirus, Whitmer has faced volatile partisan protests, opposition from Republican legislators, and personal attacks and criticism from President [sic] Donald Trump.
The Facebook discussions about lynching and assassinating Whitmer are particularly concerning ahead of a new armed rally in Michigan’s capital planned for this Thursday.
Dozens of angry Michiganders, fueled by conspiracy theories and disinformation about the coronavirus, are promoting violence and mobilizing armed rallies against Gov Gretchen Whitmer on Facebook, in violation of the social media company’s policies.
Metro Times gained access to four private Facebook groups that can only be seen by approved members. The pages, which have a combined 400,000 members, are filled with paranoid, sexist, and grammar-challenged rants, with members encouraging violence and flouting the governor’s social-distancing orders.
On Sunday, after being contacted by Metro Times, Facebook removed one of the groups, Michigan United for Liberty, and deleted posts on others for violating the company’s policy against inciting violence. […]
[… the Metro Times is less shy than the Grauniad and gives the names associated with the quoted example posts…]
Others suggested she be shot, beaten, or beheaded.
Plain and simple she needs to eat lead and send a statement to the rest of the democrats that they are next, James Greena, of Fennville, wrote.
[…]
The comments are especially disturbing because some of those calling for violence are planning to attend an armed rally at the Capitol building in Lansing on Thursday. On April 30, hundreds of protesters, some of them heavily armed, descended on the state Capitol during the American Patriot Rally, and there were armed protesters as part of Operation Lansing on April 15. A two-day rally is also planned for the weekend.
We could’ve taken over the capital last time if we wanted, Chris Coffey said. This was just a display. Next time won’t be!
If she thinks the last protest was bad she hasn’t seen anything yet, DonnaCookie Grady warned.
We haven’t had any bloodshed yet, but the populous is counting to three, and the other day was two, Dave Meisenheimer wrote in Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, which has more than 385,000 members. Next comes watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.
Gordon Chapman says he’s going to the Thursday rally and hopes demonstrators are armed to the teeth.
Voting is too late we need to act now, Chapman said.
The potential for violence prompted some public officials, including Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel, to promote banning firearms from the Capitol building.
[…]
Nessel’s support of the ban drew anger on another private Facebook page, Whitmer Recall Movement, which has more than 3,500 members.
We are sharpening a stick for you Dana, Pete Scudamore wrote.
DO you want me to bring the rope, shouldn’t be too hard to find a good tree, Russell Kynn asked.
Nessel’s spokeswoman Kelly Rossman-McKinney says the attorney general’s office will not tolerate threats.
[…]
The private Facebook groups are a hub for far-fetched conspiracy theories and disinformation, reinforcing people’s fears and anger. For some, the state’s stay-at-home order is an unconstitutional plot by liberals to strip residents of their freedoms and steal the election from President [sic] Trump. Some insist the coronavirus is a hoax, and others believe it’s a manmade disease designed to enrich billionaires and force vaccines on the masses.
One of the most popular and influential conspiracies is featured in Plandemic, a 26-minute documentary-style video with ominous music that racked up millions of views in the past week. The video features a widely refuted researcher named Judy Mikovits, who spins a baseless tale about wealthy people intentionally spreading the coronavirus to boost vaccination rates. She also warns against wearing masks, saying they can exacerbate viral symptoms. […]
Not surprisingly, many members of the groups say they will never wear a mask because they believe they are unsafe or represent tyranny.
Birbot Arvo suggested he would resort to violence if police approached him about wearing a mask. Cop or not. You come at me strong about a mask and I will break your face, […]
Nathan Silver declared he will not submit to their cultural Marxism.
I refuse to wear one, wrote Rich T Tyra II. They cause more problems than they prevent and its a sign of being silenced and submission and its training for the forced vaccinations.
To Melody DeCaire, wearing a mask is useless because the coronavirus isn’t real. theres no such thing as Covid, she insisted. Its radation {sic} poisoning coming from the 5g, referring to the conspiracy theory that 5G towers cause the illness.
[…]
When reached for comment, Facebook users who posted comments about violence said they were merely exercising their right to free speech.
Thomas Allan Morse, who wrote, Army 11 bravo vet here ready to rumble. Two to the chest one to the head, responded that he earned the right to exercise free speech because he served in the military.
Did you serve this country in the armed forces? Let alone ground combat? Morse asked Metro Times via Facebook Messenger. I earned my 1st ammendment {sic}.
[…]
Sexism also is rampant among members of the private groups.
[…]
James Davis added, Men advanced civilization from the days of banging two rocks together. I don’t doubt there are smart women out there. However, the smart women are busy doing things like having families, not corrupting themselves with power and ruining people’s lives.
Facebook users called Whitmer a Nazi,spawn of the devil,wicked witch,arrogant facist {sic} pig,Gestapo Gretchen,tyrant,Soros puppet, and baby killer tyrant.
For Patricia Folk, threats are the logical next step to regaining her freedoms.
I honestly believe that the only way that Congress and the Senate are going to start listening to ‘We the People’ are threats, Folk wrote on one of the private pages. They no longer respect the voter, or the people they represent. Maybe a tarred and feathered election official, may wake them up.
There are images — with names — of many of the quoted threats, etc., at the Metro Times report.
(I may have seriously depleted the world’s supply of eejit quoting glyphs typesetting the above excerpts!)
blfsays
Big China has prevented Island China from joining WHO — Island China has been relying on the States (at least) for communications with WHO — and now Big China is not helping itself, Island China, or anyone else (except hair furor’s baseless blame-mongering against Big China) with the latest antics (from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog):
New Zealand’s foreign minister on Tuesday said the country has to stand up for itself after China warned its backing of Taiwan’s participation at the World Health Organization (WHO) could damage bilateral ties, Reuters reports.
Taiwan, with the strong support of the United States, has stepped up its lobbying to be allowed to take part as an observer at next week’s World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s decision-making body — a move which has angered China.
Taiwan is excluded from the WHO due to the objections of China, which views the island as one of its provinces.
Senior ministers in New Zealand last week said Taiwan should be allowed to join the WHO as an observer given its success in limiting the spread of the novel coronavirus, drawing China’s ire which asked the Pacific country to stop making wrong statements.
[…]
I have no idea if the States will be attending the WHA — hair furor and his dalekocrazy are also baselessly blaming WHO, and (e.g.), recently,
US blocks vote on UN’s bid for global ceasefire over reference to WHO (8-May-2020): “Security council had spent weeks seeking resolution but Trump administration opposed mention of organization”. That is not the States only antics over WHO due to hair furor’s baseless blame-mongering against WHO. (I’m uncertain, but it appears the WHA this year (it’s an annual(?) meeting) will be virtual.)
blfsays
As an aside — I just happened to notice this — John Hopkins is reporting 84,011 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Big China, which is about the same as the number of deaths in the States (80,682; total confirmed cases 1,347,881). There are 4,367 deaths in Big China.
An anti-lockdown march in downtown Vancouver nearly spiralled out of control when dozens of protesters surrounded a hospital entrance and began berating frontline healthcare workers.
Vancouver’s anti-lockdown protests are mainly organized by anti-vaccine activists, along with a flat earth conspiracy group and individuals linked to far-right politics who promote the events through a web of private Facebook groups.
Multiple videos live streamed by participants show the crowd marching down the middle of Burrard Street on Sunday afternoon, before coming to a stop in front of the ambulance bay at St. Paul’s Hospital.
One protester shouted into a megaphone that they wanted to “talk to the doctors.”
Protesters can be heard directing chants of “no vaccines” and “let us in” at several healthcare workers who wandered outside the emergency room in their protective masks and medical scrubs.
“The hospitals are empty,” yelled one protester, along with others who are heard shouting “tell the truth” and demanding to know: “What are you hiding?”
“You’re all corrupt,” shouted another.
Protesters displayed signs referencing several conspiracies related to vaccines and 5G technology, including various messages blaming the government, Bill Gates and Satan for the lockdown.
Previous marches by the same group through downtown Vancouver have seen some protesters heckle self-isolating residents on their condo balconies. There have been several skirmishes with bystanders that nearly turned violent and protesters have complained they’ve been pelted with eggs.
Sunday’s march came close to escalating once again.
As the crowd heckled healthcare workers, one protester aggressively approached one of the police officers escorting protesters through downtown Vancouver.
The officer can be seen dismounting his motorcycle to follow the man before being swarmed by several protesters — one woman can be seen repeatedly grabbing at the officer’s back and arms.
“You’re dismissed,” one protester is seen shouting at the officer. “Go do your job.”
“Don’t you do that to me or you’ll go to jail,” the officer can be heard telling someone else in the crowd.
Video clips at link.
tomhsays
On Tuesday, 5/12, at 10:00AM (EDT) the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments by telephone on the Trump financial records cases– the subpoenas from two House committees and the subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney. You can hear the arguments live on CNN, CNBC, and probably others.
Trickster Goddesssays
More background on the kinds of anti-lockdown protestors in Canada Link
Yes, Canada’s anti-lockdown protests are even weirder than you think
[Cargill] has faced intense criticism over crowded “elbow to elbow” conditions in its slaughterhouse. To date, the outbreak at the plant [in High River, Alberta] has seen nearly 1,000 workers test positive for COVID-19, believed to be the single largest outbreak in North America — one worker has already died.
UFCW Local 401, which represents workers at Cargill’s plant, sent the company a letter dated March 20 requesting information on its response to COVID-19.
The company replied on March 23. The company outlined a number of measures it was taking to promote “social distancing” and “sanitation,” and also stated it would offer workers bonuses — except the bonuses came with a catch.
According to Cargill, “employees who work every hour of their scheduled shift each week will receive an additional $2.00 per hour” while “employees who complete their scheduled weekly shift for the next eight (8) consecutive weeks … will rreceive a one-time net $500 bonus.”
While time off for cases where workers tested positive for COVID-19 were excluded, union officials argue Cargill’s perfect attendance bonuses actually gave sick workers an incentive to show up to work when they should have stayed home and isolated.
…
“Part of the culture of these plants is you go to work when you’re sick,” he added. “The culture is ‘be tough’ and power through it. We can’t have that anymore.”
KGsays
The UK government has now issued guidance on safety at work, but (a) this does not seem to have been discussed with unions or other representatives of employees in the relevant sectors, and (b) it clearly needed to be available some time before employers re-open their workplaces, to give them time to implement the guidelines. Meanwhile the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, evaded the question when asked whether worers were legally entitled to refuse to go into work if they felt it was unsafe, and a number of sources have warned that the return to work is likely to lead to a new upsurge in Covid-19 cases.
Rachel Maddow shares video of Donald Trump melting down and walking out on his own press conference, and wonders about the circumstances that have left him unable to function as the nation reels in a state of crisis.
David Enrich, business investigations editor for the New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about the Deutsche Bank subpoena for Donald Trump’s records that is at the center of Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments and what kind of information would be exposed if Trump’s legal losing streak continues.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, plans to tell a Senate committee on Tuesday that the country risks “needless suffering and death” if states open up too quickly, he told The New York Times late Monday evening.
“If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country,” Fauci said in an email to the Times, referring to the federal government’s plan for states to re-open. “This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
Fauci’s planned testimony will fuel a hearing where senators will finally get a chance Tuesday to face off over the effectiveness of the Trump administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, in what could be one of the only public hearings featuring members of the White House’s coronavirus task force.
The hearing will be Democrats’ first opportunity since March to question leading medical experts — including Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield — about the Trump administration’s response.
“The fact of the matter is, President (Donald) Trump has been more focused on fighting against the truth, than fighting this virus — and Americans have sadly paid the price,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, plans to say Tuesday, according to excerpts of her opening statement.
“Since this Committee last heard from these witnesses on March 3rd, we have seen over 900 deaths in my home state of Washington, over 80,000 deaths nationally, and the numbers continue to climb,” Murray plans to say. “Still, President Trump is trying to ignore the facts, and ignore the experts who have been clear we are nowhere close to where we need to be to reopen safely.”
The hearing — in which committee leaders and all four government witnesses will be appearing remotely via video conference — comes as states across the country have started taking actions to roll back the business closures and stay-at-home orders that were put in place two months ago to try to slow the coronavirus infection rate, though the outbreak is far from over.
Three of the witnesses and the committee’s chairman — for a hearing titled “Covid-19: Safely getting back to work and school” — are appearing remotely because they’re self-isolating or self-quarantining after contact with individuals who tested positive for coronavirus.
The hearing is likely to further illustrate the divide within the country between Republicans and Democrats over their views on the pandemic, how the administration has handled the crisis and the best path forward amid warnings from public health experts that positive cases could surge if stay-at-home orders are rolled back too quickly….
Russia confirmed 10,899 new coronavirus infections Tuesday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 232,243.
Russia is now the third most-affected country in terms of infections and has the world’s second-fastest rate of new infections behind the United States….
[…]
Parisians have been banned from drinking alcohol on the banks of the Saint-Martin canal and the Seine river after police were forced to disperse crowds just hours after an eight-week coronavirus lockdown was eased.
Many city dwellers stuck in flats without balconies, terraces or gardens for almost two months turned out on Monday evening to celebrate. Photos quickly circulated of unmasked revellers gathering by the water in the French capital.
On the orders of the interior ministry, Paris’s police prefect issued a ban, saying it “deplored” having to do so in an indignant press release reminding everyone that the success of the déconfinement rested on “the principle of each citizen’s individual responsibility”.
“Barely a few hours after the lifting of the lockdown, dozens of people gathered … without respecting social distances and the health recommendations that have even so been hammered home for the past few weeks,” the press release said.
[…]
What makes this idiotic behaviour especially stooopid is Paris is one of “Red” areas, where there are more restrictions — most set by the local authorities — then the “Green” areas, due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus actively circulating or the hospitals are still under some pressure.
Images at the Grauniad’s link, and at France24, Paris police bans alcohol along Seine river as crowds revel in new-found freedom. As an aside, it was teh eejits in Paris (mostly) who forced the government to move from a somewhat permissive lockdown to the much more restrictive lockdown. (Paris is a large expensive city with tiny apartments, and — in the central area — good public transport, so it’s perhaps not too surprising teh eejits seem overrepresented there.)
Locally, in the S.France Mediterranean seaside village where I live, I still don’t know what the situation is like outside, as I haven’t left the lair… yet (not-leaving was easy to do yesterday because it was raining all day, but today is sunshine (perhaps the only day this week, according to some forecasts)). This is a “Green” zone, and the village council seems to be moving fast — perhaps a bit too fast? — announcing the outdoor markets will reopen in about a week, and are coordinating with the regional authorities on opening up the beaches. They might be able to enforce social distancing on the beaches, but only one of the markets does that seem to maybe be possible. The other markets are hemmed-in with not much room to “avoid” people. I wouldn’t be surprised if masks are made mandatory in the markets, but that simply isn’t going to be sufficient unless they somehow separate the traders / stalls (maybe by increasing the surface area of the markets, reducing the number of traders / stalls, and/or vectoring away the traffic (keeping the traffic further away would be a good idea anyways)). We’ll see…
Here’s a link to the May 12 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
…Vladimir Putin’s press secretary has been diagnosed with coronavirus and is currently receiving treatment, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday afternoon.
“Yes, I am sick, and receiving treatment,” Dmitry Peskov told news agency Interfax, which added that he was being treated “in a clinic”. During a trip to a coronavirus ward back in March, Peskov was the only person in Putin’s entourage to wear a mask.
Putin has been working from his residence outside Moscow in recent weeks, and it is not clear whether he has been in contact with Peskov. The Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, also has Covid-19 and is being treated in hospital, though was well enough to take part in a government video call in recent days….
Coronavirus infection rates are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection, which was obtained by NBC News.
The data in a May 7 coronavirus task force report are at odds with President Donald Trump’s declaration Monday that “all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”…
Fauci just gave his opening statement. I don’t think it included the part about “needless suffering and death,” but I guess he’ll talk about that in response to questions. He discussed the various treatment/vaccine trials they’re focusing on.
“In the past 24 hours, the president of a country told his government agency a broadcaster should fire a prominent journalist and suggested the journalist should be prosecuted.
He then baselessly accused another prominent journalist of murder.
Czech media have identified the man they say is the undercover Russian diplomat who entered the country nearly two months ago with a suitcase containing ricin as part of an alleged plot to poison as many as three Prague officials who had taken actions that angered the Kremlin.
In a report aired on May 10, the Czech public TV program 168 Hours quoted unnamed security sources as saying Andrei Konchakov flew to Prague’s Vaclav Havel Airport two months ago with the toxin and was driven to the Russian Embassy compound in the Czech capital, long considered a nerve center of Russian espionage activities.
Konchakov, 34, rejected the allegations in comments to the Czech news site Seznam Zpravy, saying the suitcase contained “disinfectant, and candies.”
“It must be some mistake,” Konchakov told the news site, declining to answer further questions, saying he would need clearance from Moscow first.
Moscow, which has been accused of targeting its critics abroad, including the novichok poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018, has also denied the allegations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it “looked like a canard,” while other Russian officials have called the story part of an anti-Russian campaign.
…
According to local media, Konchakov is suspected by Czech intelligence of working as a Russian spy. Several attempts to contact the Czech counterintelligence agency BIS to confirm those allegations were unsuccessful.
The allegations of the ricin plot were first broken by the Czech investigative weekly Respekt on April 26 and came amid reports of suspected Russia-backed hacker attacks on key Czech infrastructure. It said the targets of the alleged ricin attack were Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib as well as two of the city’s district mayors, Ondrej Kolar and Pavel Novotny.
Hrib backed a move to rename the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague after slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.
Kolar supported the removal of a statue in his Prague 6 district of a World War II Soviet general, a move Russia condemned and said it was investigating as a violation of a 1993 friendship treaty between Russia and the Czech Republic.
The statue had been a source of irritation for Moscow since 2018, when a new explanatory text on the monument was unveiled. It described Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev’s leading role in crushing the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, his contribution to the construction of the Berlin Wall ,and the preparation of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia that crushed liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring.
Afterward, Czechoslovakia was taken over by a hard-line communist regime loyal to Moscow that lasted until 1989, when it was ousted in the anti-communist Velvet Revolution.
Novotny irritated Moscow when late last year he approved the construction of a monument in his Prague district to the Vlasov Army, Soviet Army defectors who fought with the Nazis but in the final days of World War II are credited with helping liberate Prague. [?]
All three officials are now reported to be under round-the-clock police protection and Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said the Czech Republic would not tolerate “any world power” trying to interfere in its internal affairs, although few officials have publicly addressed the charges.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has highlighted the Soviet role in the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II, ignoring or criticizing any facts that downplay or contradict that narrative….
Fauci just shot down an attacking Rand Paul (who looks terrible, by the way – I point this out not to insult him but because he’s not exactly a walking advertisement for taking the virus lightly).
Yesterday, Wife and I went shopping (a local store has whole beef tenderloin at $4.99 a pound and I can’t say no to that). We stopped to get fuel ($1.69.9 a gallon and I can’t say no to that). A guy walked in without a mask. The cashier asked him to put a mask on. He said, “No. I will not wear a mask. No one can make me.” He paid for his gas, walked out, and began pumping the prepaid fuel into his massive pickup truck. I asked the clerk why he still served him even though he was breaking the rules. The clerk said, “I don’t want to get shot.”
It’s interesting that even Sen. Roberts from Kansas is emphasizing what a hard time the state is having right now. Rand Paul won’t acknowledge similar problems in Kentucky, which he’s supposed to be representing.
More re #212: “On Fox & Friends, TX salon owner Shelley Luther acknowledges that she did receive PPP funds two days before her court date, but she was too confused about what it was, where it came from, or how to spend it’.”
Video atl. She had to apply for this money, including commitments to her workers. But she says the stylists are independent contractors who rent chairs and not employees. Luther getting picked up for fraud would be the perfect outcome of this nonsense.
…Peskov’s wife, Tatiana Navka, an Olympic ice dancing champion, has reportedly also tested positive for the coronavirus and been hospitalized.
…
It was only yesterday that Putin announced the easing of a nationwide lockdown and said that Russians should get back to work.
…
More from Navka, Peskov’s wife. She said her “whole family was in strict isolation. My husband was working. In this regard, there is only one explanation: most likely, this came from him, since he was the first to get sick. He brought it home from work.”
Italian police on Tuesday arrested 91 suspected members of the Sicilian Mafia that were trying to exploit economic woes triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo.
Charges range from mafia association to extortion, fraudulent assets possession, receiving stolen goods, money laundering, drug trafficking, sporting fraud and fraud and arrests were made in Palermo and Milan.
According to Sicilian investigators, who launched the operation, mobsters were laundering extortion and drug trafficking revenue. The magistrates said bosses were preparing to use ill-gained cash to buy struggling businesses that shut down during the lockdown.
Police uncovered evidence that Cosa Nostra bosses were also rigging horse races across the country.
Authorities have also seized 15 million euros ($16.5 million) in suspected ill-gained assets, including 13 racehorses.
“Rand Paul: ‘In rural states we never really reached any sort of pandemic levels in Kentucky and other states … outside of New England, we’ve had a relatively benign course for this virus nationwide’. (More than 81,000 Americans are dead.)”
Rep. Don Beyer: “Warren County, Kentucky – where Rand Paul lives – has more COVID-19 cases per capita than 51 of the 67 counties in New England states.
Senator Paul is wrong and the ignorant message he is peddling is dangerous. There is no special immunity to this virus based on where you live.”
Jay Sekulow, president Trump’s attorney, said this twice arguing before the Supreme Court.”
blfsays
Apropos of nothing much, the sunshine proved too tempting and I went out for a stroll about the village, telling myself that I would “just” get some bread, albeit by taking the long route, and that would be that. Yeah, yeah, “plans” don’t survive contact with the nice weather… I did get some bread. And fresh pasta. And vin. And, perhaps most significantly, some hand sanitiser gel to carry with me (albeit some shops now have hand sanitising stations, which hasn’t been the case until last-ish week). And a few more fresh vegs… And… and…
Unsurprisingly, a reasonable number of people were out and about. Social distancing was good, with four exceptions: Teenagers, parents with small children, queues at ice cream stands, and one particular low-cost shop where — for reasons which baffle me (there’s adequate room to form a properly-distanced queue) — the queue waiting to get in always seems to be a mob with not only almost no internal distancing, they also seem to insist on blocking the (pedestrianised) street.
Mask-wearing seems to fall into four-ish types: No mask (includes me), mask below chin (useless!), mask covering mouth-only (not the nose / nostrils), and mask covering both mouth and nose (albeit not always firmly fixed). All the masks I did see seemed to be serious affairs, not (e.g.) the transparent cotton(?) gauze “masks” I’ve seen advertised on the ‘Net (for feck’s sake, if you can see though the mask’s material, there’s no barrier at all to a virus!).
At most 50% of the restaurants are offering take-away (and, in some cases, delivery), most(?) only lunch. A bar specialising in artisanal beers is offering take-away / delivery. In all(?) cases, orders are placed in advance via the web, assorted social apps, or by phone.
Traffic was light, but much heavier than during the lockdown, when cars seemed to be a rarity. Didn’t see any police about at all.
Athens is the latest city to announce that it will undergo a radical facelift – taking advantage of lessons learned during lockdown, writes Helena Smith, the Guardian’s Athens correspondent.
Echoing similar plans in Milan where public space is to be reclaimed for cyclists and pedestrians, the Greek capital will also see urban space opened up in response to the coronavirus crisis.
The scheme, which foresees the creation of a 6.8km-long pedestrian walkway connecting Athens’ archaeological sites, will also see cars being banned from the historic city centre around the Acropolis. The creation of extended pavements along major boulevards will facilitate social distancing.
It will be the biggest intervention in the life of the city in more than a decade. Although it will begin to be enforced in pilot form at the end of the month, the ambitious project is not expected to be completed until the end of 2022.
Athens’ mayor Kostas Bakoyannis says the corona-induced lockdown has enabled municipal authorities to accelerate works that might previously have taken years to achieve. He told the Guardian:
We have this once in a lifetime opportunity and are fast forwarding all our public works.
Milan, Paris, Berlin Bergota [Bogotá?], New York Mexico city are all giving priority to walking and cycling and creating public spaces by regulating traffic and that’s what we want to do here as well.
In a rare piece of good news, the pandemic had enabled local authorities to “liberate public space from cars and give it to people who want to walk and enjoy the city.”
Greece has handled the coronavirus pandemic unexpectedly well, recording 2,744 confirmed cases to date and a death toll of 152 following enforcement of strict lockdown measures early on.
The president’s [sic] deadly mishandling of the pandemic threatens to make the world’s most powerful country a pariah
President [sic] Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
When global crises hit, American leadership is essential. Whether it was launching the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) or marshaling efforts to respond to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the US has played a central role in tackling many of the world’s deadliest health crises. American leadership is far from perfect, but it is necessary to tackle threats of a global magnitude.
This pandemic is one of the greatest challenges the world has faced since the second world war. America has lost more people to Covid-19 than it has lost in all of its military conflicts since the beginning of the Vietnam war. The outbreak has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives around the world, and the crisis has just begun. As the death toll rises and the path out of the pandemic remains uncertain, the economic catastrophe will be enormous.
A successful global effort to defeat the pandemic will require a robust American response. Instead, Trump is making it harder for the world to address the crisis.
Trump does not seem to recognize that the only effective solution to the pandemic is to counter it everywhere. Without a universally administered vaccine, the virus could continue to cycle through country after country. […]
[…]
While the US would normally be leading calls for assistance to developing countries to help them deal with the pandemic, the Trump administration is barely noticing the desperate need around the world. In past crises, the US would gather allies and partners to develop common solutions; this time, the Trump administration blocked the G20 from taking action.
Trump has attacked the primary international governmental organization dedicated to responding to pandemics. […]
[…]
One of the threads running through all this is a deadly US–China blame game. Since the Chinese Communist party (CCP) initially responded to the outbreak by trying to censor those speaking out about it, many in the US blame China for allowing the pandemic to spread. Whatever culpability China deserves, no one gains right now from a US–China feud over the pandemic at the expense of collective efforts to beat the disease. Yet that’s exactly what the Trump administration and the CCP are doing.
Trump’s deadly mishandling of the pandemic at home also threatens to make the world’s most powerful country an international pariah. With more cases and deaths than any other country, and with a president [sic] who seems uninterested in doing what it takes to safely reopen the economy, the rest of the world is unlikely to take American policies for addressing the pandemic seriously. Even worse, as other countries begin to safely reopen their economies, the US may become the target of travel bans, as China was early in the pandemic.
In moments of global crisis, America is still the indispensable nation. But in today’s moment of need, Trump is making America an obstacle to success.
While France’s restaurants remain closed, the Fooding guide owned by the iconic Michelin group has opened a guide to the best places offering takeaway services, as a way of “resisting” Covid-19.
Called “Plats de résistance” — a play on words[†] translated as “Resistance Dishes” — the site offers a list of restaurants included in the guide that now offer takeaway services.
[…]
As well as restaurants providing takeaways, the new site will also list “artisan food shops, bakeries and caterers” that offer food to go, Fooding’s founder Alexandre Cammas told AFP.
[…]
It is still “worthwhile” to discover the “best” gastronomic experiences, even though “we’re living in complicated times”, Cammas said.
† There’s a lot of locations in France named Place de la Résistance (or similar). And yes, “fooding” is an actual term (a neologism), not only the name of a gastronomic magazine(?).
The president [sic] seems incapable of uniting the country. So, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to take a toll on America, I wrote him a speech
[…] If I were Trump’s speechwriter, using the lessons I learned from great talks I heard in my basketball career, this is what I would give him to deliver:
“America has faced many enemies before, both foreign and domestic. The goal of those enemies has always been to destroy not just America itself, but the ideal America stands for, which is equal treatment and opportunity for all who live here, regardless of wealth, ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Covid-19 is an enemy that doesn’t care about politics or social justice — it’s an opportunistic organism that just wants to feed and spread. It doesn’t want to destroy America. But if we’re not careful, it might achieve that anyway.
“People are defined by how they act, not during the good times when kindness and compassion are easy, but during the tough times, when helping a neighbor could cost us. A crisis reveals whether we are heroes are villains. Ernest Hemingway said, ‘Courage is grace under pressure,’ and I believe that Americans are ready to demonstrate their courage through grace.
“That has to start with those of us in government who are entrusted with the task of fighting this enemy. The only way we can justify the people’s trust is by being completely transparent in our mistakes, successes, and plans for the future.
“We have made mistakes. My administration did not act quickly enough in recognizing the serious threat that Covid-19 posed. We should have, but we didn’t. No excuse is offered because no excuse is acceptable. That delay led to a domino effect of playing catch-up in developing enough testing and in getting necessary medical supplies to health care facilities. But we have learned from our mistakes and those of other countries as well.
“The virus has worsened already unacceptable racial and economic disparity in this country. The death rate among the black and Latinx communities is significantly higher than among white communities. I will do everything in my power to change that. The virus is also attacking our democratic process, threatening to keep people of color and those economically challenged from being able to cast their votes in November. I will do everything in my power to ensure every eligible voter’s voice will be counted.
“As for those out there who use our national crisis as an excuse to marginalize others or do harm to others because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, not only do I not support you, I will do everything in my power to see you are prosecuted. Because the whole point of the president’s power is to use it to protect those who need it most. And if that offends you, then don’t vote for me.
“As of right now, my administration is fully committed to one mission: keeping our people physically healthy while also protecting the country’s economic health. Balancing those two crucial, yet sometimes competing goals is the greatest challenge this country has faced in decades. No one has definitive answers because this situation is unique. However, it is our pledge to never put lives at risk just for the sake of unnecessary economic policies. Any decision regarding opening businesses or reducing shelter-in-place will be data-driven, based only on the information gathered by the country’s leading scientific and medical experts, not partisan appointments.
“No one knows definitively how the virus originated. But investigating the source is crucial to further understanding how it works and spreads and may help us to battle other viruses in the future. Countries need to work together to gather this information, not to place blame or levy accusations or seek reparations, but rather to help humanity survive. Toward that end, I pledge no actions will be sought against any country involved.
“To ensure that my focus remains on this task, I will not participate in any campaigning for the 2020 presidency. I will continue to run for the office, but I will let my actions alone be my campaign. How I conduct myself as your leader over these next few months is my campaign.
“I will make no campaign speeches, I will not talk disparagingly of my opponent or his surrogates. There will be no activity regarding the border wall or other divisive issues. We all need to work together to overcome this threat in the here and now, without one eye perpetually on November. President Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That is even more appropriate now, 162 years later, as we face an increasing death toll and a declining economy. America is fighting for its survival — not just as a country, but as an ideal. And nothing is more important than proving to ourselves and the rest of the world that our shared ideals are powerful enough to overcome any enemy, seen or unseen.”
Trump accusations shed light on how he could use the Covid-19 pandemic to undermine the results of the November election
Donald Trump falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal Tuesday’s special election in California amid the Covid-19 pandemic by adding a polling place in one of the most diverse sections of a district.
But the county actually added the polling location at the request of the area’s Republican mayor.
In a move that could foreshadow his approach to November’s presidential election, Trump said Democrats were deliberately adding one of the few polling locations over the weekend in Lancaster, a city North of Los Angeles, where it was likely to benefit Democratic voters. They are trying to steal another election. It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!, he tweeted.
[…] Democrats complained that the lack of a polling location in Lancaster would harm minority voters, officials added the additional location after R Rex Parris, the city’s Republican mayor, requested it.
Though he thinks it’s dangerous to vote in person during the Covid-19 pandemic, Parris told the Guardian he made the request after realizing a nearby city had two polling locations, while his city had none. While he believes elections can be rigged and understood why it might have appeared that way to Trump, he said adding the polling location was not a Democratic power grab.
“I gotta take the rap. I called them up and said I want a vote center, so they gave it to me,” he said.
The California accusations underscore how the president [sic] could take advantage of the way voting procedures are rapidly changing in response to Covid-19 and question the legitimacy of election results in November.
[…]
“Given that the president [sic] has been making unsubstantiated voter fraud comments for years, I expect that these comments will continue,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California, Irvine. “The comments are very worrisome because they increase the chances that the president’s [sic] supporters would not accept the election results as legitimate should he lose in November.”
White House tries to block government pension fund investment that includes Chinese firms under scrutiny in Washington.
The administration of US President [sic] Donald Trump is pressing a board charged with overseeing billions in federal retirement dollars to halt plans to invest in Chinese companies that Washington suspects of abusing human rights or threatening United States security.
At issue is whether administrators of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), a retirement savings fund for federal employees and members of the military, should allow its international fund to track an index that includes some China-based stocks of companies under scrutiny in Washington.
[…] China hardliners in Washington […] argue that US federal employee pension dollars should not fund companies like aircraft and avionics company Aviation Industry Corp of China, which supplies China’s military, as well as surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd, which was sanctioned by Washington for human right abuses.
They also point to heightened risk for investors, since Chinese companies do not have to comply with strict [ha! –blf] US financial disclosure rules.
[…]
Some investors see the move as a logical way of punishing China amid rising tensions over the coronavirus.
“If this administration wants to make China the boogeyman … instead of another increase in tariffs that would end up hurting consumers already under pressure, you use other tools like limiting the number of investments US-based institutions can have in the Chinese system,” said Patrick Esteruelas, head of research at New York-based Emso Asset Management.
Trillions of dollars worldwide passively track benchmarks that are compiled by third-party index providers based on a range of criteria, including companies’ market capitalisation, as opposed to fund managers picking the individual stocks.
I’m actually a bit surprised TSP is even allowed to invest in non-USAian markets / funds. Being allowed to do so is potentially a good thing; an example is CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) which has a reputation for shareholder activism.
Whenever the Supreme Court is hearing arguments and making decisions I remember Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and sit in stunned silence at the thought that this person is one of the justices.
The US vice-president Mike Pence is keeping his distance from President Donald Trump after the former’s press secretary tested positive, the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany has confirmed.
Pence was not at Trump’s Rose Garden news conference on Monday, nor was he at a White House meeting with US military and national security officials on Saturday after press aide Katie Miller received her positive test last week. McEnany said:
The vice president has made the choice to keep his distance for a few days.
Have they said Pence continues to test negative, like they usually do? If not,…
blfsays
A follow-up to me@243, The village council has announced how the local outdoor markets will operate when they reopen in about a week’s time. The one market where social distancing could work will operate essentially as normally. The other markets, where that simply isn’t possible, will reduce the number of traders / stalls by half, by dividing them into two groups, A and B. Group A will be present one day, group B the next time, alternating back-and-forth. This will allow the traders / stalls to spread out, which is one of the possibilities I speculated might happen in @243. No word on mandatory masks or hand sanitising stations, however, or other details, so I suspect the plans will be refined some.
And apparently the plan to open the beaches fell apart; there’s not much agreement with other locales or the regional authorities on how to do it. So the local village’s new plan is to propose a “motion beach” were people will be allowed to walk, jog, &tc, but not be “static” (i.e., no sundrying). No mention of swimming or otherwise feeding the kracken.
There’s also apparently some sort of a glitch with boating. Previously, the council had said the 100km rule applied to boats / yachts as well. However, it seems the regional(?) authorities have prohibited a boat from coming within 300m of land, which means a boat can neither leave nor enter the harbour! They™ are now trying to get this straightened out… (I may be slightly misunderstanding the problem.)
This is amazing. Fox’s offices will be largely closed for another month *at the very least,* @brianstelter reports in his newsletter.
“It’s strange to see Fox stars hosting from home…telling viewers that it’s time to get back out,” Stelter says.
johnson catmansays
re blf @263: If The Orange Toddler-Tyrant tried to speak those words, his tongue would catch on fire. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has mistaken the idiot in the White House for a reasonable human being. That speech also sounds like something that would come from the likes of Obama if he were in a similar situation.
.
re blf @264: The contrast between the hope of KA-J from above and the reality of The Orange Toddler-Tyrant in this comment is starkly revealing. I have real fear about what will happen if he does lose in November and before he leaves office (or more likely is forced to leave) in January.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed prepared to rule that Congress went too far in seeking broad access to President Donald Trump’s personal financial documents but that a New York prosecutor may be able to get his tax records.
Yesterday morning, Donald Trump turned to Twitter to promote an optimistic message: “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere.” The president echoed the line a few hours later during a White House press conference.
“You know, the numbers are coming down very rapidly all throughout the country, by the way,” he declared. “There may be one exception. But all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”
It’d be great if that were true. It’s not.
Cases of COVID-19 are rising in nine states, according to an analysis of state and local data by The New York Times. In 27 other states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., the Times analysis says, the growth of the virus might be slowing, but a lack of widespread testing suggests that infections are also being undercounted. Cases are decreasing in 14 states and Guam, the analysis says.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told NBC News, “Anybody that claims we’re on a downward trajectory nationally is out of touch with reality.”
He added, “It’s not appropriate to say the U.S. is consistently on a downward trend at all. In some places, it might be the direct opposite of that.”
Making matters slightly worse, NBC News also reported yesterday that coronavirus infection rates “are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection.” […]
Trump lied some more. And he used numbers (again) to lie.
[…] Trump boasted, “I think one of the things we’re most proud of is — this just came out — deaths per 100,000 people, death — so deaths per 100,000 people: Germany and the United States are at the lowest rung of that ladder…. Germany and the United States are the two best in deaths per 100,000 people, which, frankly, to me, that’s perhaps the most important number there is.”
[…] Trump made the identical claim twice yesterday, suggesting it’s become a key White House talking point.
It is, however, spectacularly wrong. A Washington Post analysis said this might be the single “wrongest thing Trump has said about coronavirus.”
It’s true that, while the United States has the most confirmed coronavirus cases and the most confirmed coronavirus deaths, it lags behind some Western European countries when it comes to per capita deaths. I wrote about this a week ago, noting that the raw number can be deceiving when it comes to the total impact on countries. But the United States is nowhere close to having one of the lowest per capita death rates. In fact, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, we rank ninth-highest out of more than 140 countries for which information is available.
As the Post’s report added, putting the United States next to Germany “is ridiculous; Germany has about nine deaths per 100,000 people, as compared with about 24 per 100,000 people in the United States.”
All things considered, this represents either the latest instance in which the president had no idea what he was talking about, or the latest instance in which Trump peddled demonstrable nonsense with the hopes that the public wouldn’t know the difference.
Wed, 5/13, the Supreme Court will hear arguments that will presumably settle the “faithless electors” question, whether electors for the President and Vice President have the right to vote as they wish, or must follow the popular vote. Oral argument starts at 10:00 (EDT) and will be streamed live on CNN among others.
NOW: The judge in Michael Flynn’s case issued an order indicating the case isn’t over just yet — he writes that “given the current posture of this case,” he expects people will want to file amicus (friend-of-court) briefs, and he’ll be setting a schedule for that.
As a reminder, the “current posture of this case” is that DOJ moved to dismiss the prosecution, citing new evidence that officials contend undermined the case notwithstanding Flynn’s guilty plea.
Josh Marshall re the declassification of the names of the people involved in “unmasking” Flynn: “as far as i know, this was all revealed three years ago and i do know it’s a complete nothingburger but will be played a big scandal by lying to people. the whole us intel community is now overseen by a pro-trump troll.”
Not only was it revealed then – they spun it up into some bullshit scandal then, and it went on for days until it ran out of steam because everyone acknowledged that there hadn’t been anything improper about the “unmasking.” Was this stupidity what was in the mystery briefcase Grenell took into the WH several days ago (potentially exposing himself to the virus) in a Fox stunt several days ago? Gah.
“Donald G. McNeil Jr: The CDC ‘is a great agency but it’s incompetently led, and I think Dr Redfield should resign’.”
Video atl. Watching Cuomo’s press briefings vs. these WH appearances, the differences are incredibly stark. Obviously, Trump is unfit, ignorant, and incompetent and can’t answer basic questions about the response. And a Senate committee hearing shouldn’t be the only time people are answering questions like this in weeks or months. The CDC should be doing daily briefings with health reporters. But in any event, they (with the exception of Fauci) simply rattle off numbers and talk about how they’re “developing” this or “energetically working on” that (they have like twenty such terms and phrases), making more promises on top of those already unfulfilled and unable to articulate any larger strategy or how precisely all of this is getting done.
In contrast, Cuomo’s team can respond to reporters (who ask good questions) in granular detail about various aspects of their plan and how they fit together. “We’re getting that online by 7 tonight.” “We will have these four testing sites up and running this week and these four next week.” “We can have the data for you tomorrow.” “We can’t do that for this reason.” “Here’s why this policy is important.” “Here’s how we’re working with other states.” There’s nothing remotely close to that at the national level, even though they have vastly more resources and institutional knowledge. Same in the UK. It’s criminal.
Update to #s 194 and 195 above: the Department of Health has closed the restaurant and the owners’ license to operate a restaurant has been suspended indefinitely.
The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.
The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.
The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
It’s unclear just how strong the evidence is against the former Saudi Embassy official — it’s been a subject of sharp dispute within the FBI for years. But the disclosure, which a senior U.S. government official confirmed was made in error, seems likely to revive questions about potential Saudi links to the 9/11 plot.
It also shines a light on the extraordinary efforts by top Trump administration officials in recent months to prevent internal documents about the issue from ever becoming public.
…
The Saudi government has consistently denied any connection to the 9/11 hijackers, telling the New York Times and ProPublica in January: “Saudi Arabia is and has always been a close and critical ally of the U.S. in the fight against terrorism.”
Ironically, the declaration identifying the Saudi official in question was intended to support recent filings by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell barring the public release of the Saudi official’s name and all related documents, concluding they are “state secrets” that, if disclosed, could cause “significant harm to the national security.”
The declaration was filed by Jill Sanborn, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Her declaration fleshes out some of the assertions Barr and Grenell have used in their filings, arguing that publicly disclosing internal FBI files — including “interview reports, telephone and bank records, source reporting documents and foreign government information” — would reveal intelligence sources and methods of collection and would hamper the willingness of foreign governments to assist the FBI on sensitive cases.
…
Describing the request by lawyers for the 9/11 families to depose that individual under oath, Sanborn’s declaration says in one instance that it involves “any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah.”
The reference is to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000. His duties apparently included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers within the United States.
Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi mission in Morocco. His current whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be in Saudi Arabia.
Jarrah has been on the radar screen of the lawyers for the 9/11 families for some time and is among nine current or former Saudi officials who they suspect have important information about the case and have sought to either question them or get access to FBI documents that mention them.
…
The Sanborn declaration represents the first public confirmation that the so-called “third man” referred to in the 2012 report was in fact an accredited Saudi diplomat. But all of the FBI evidence the agents had gathered about Jarrah and his communications about the hijackers remain under seal.
…
Suspicions about a possible Saudi role in 9/11 are as old as the attacks themselves. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, investigators quickly concluded that 15 of the 19 hijackers were of Saudi origin.
The 9/11 commission, which extensively investigated the question, ultimately concluded that, while Saudi Arabia had long been viewed as the primary source of al-Qaida funding, “we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.”
But the 9/11 commission also acknowledged there were significant gaps in the record,…
A U.S. judge put on hold the Justice Department’s move to drop charges against Michael Flynn, saying he expects independent groups and legal experts to argue against the bid to exonerate President Trump’s former national security adviser of lying to the FBI.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said in an order Tuesday that he expects individuals and organizations will seek to intervene in the politically charged case. Having others weigh in could preface more aggressive steps that the federal judge in Washington could take, including — as many outside observers have called for — holding a hearing to consider what to do.
Sullivan’s order came after the government took the highly irregular step Thursday of reversing its stance on upholding Flynn’s guilty plea.
The action by Sullivan, a veteran 72-year-old jurist with a national reputation for advocating defendants’ rights to full government disclosure of evidence, appears to rule out immediate action on the Justice Department’s decision to reverse course and throw out Flynn’s December 2017 guilty plea.
Sullivan said he will “at the appropriate time” set a schedule for outside parties to argue against the Justice Department’s claims as the government seeks to drop the charges…The judge said he would be a rigorous gatekeeper, adding, “A criminal proceeding is not a free for all.”
[…]
The judge’s ruling appeared to be prompted by a unique request filed one day earlier by the team of Watergate prosecutors who pursued an investigation of President Richard Nixon. They sought to file a friend-of-the-court brief to give their legal arguments against Barr’s unusual reversal of Flynn’s prosecution and said they had a “unique perspective on the need for independent scrutiny and oversight to ensure that crucial decisions about prosecutions of high-ranking government officials are made in the public interest.”
“The integrity of prosecutorial decision making is a cornerstone of the rule of law,” they wrote. “Amici have a special interest in restoring the public trust in prosecutorial decision making and in public confidence in the viability of future independent investigations and prosecutions if the results of such work are likely to be subjected to reversal by transparent political influence.”
[…]
Legal experts said the order allows others to file objections to the Justice Department’s move and could open the door for adversarial proceedings in which one or more attorneys argue against the Justice Department. It would also permit, if the judge chooses, requiring both sides to produce evidence and revisit the case for and against Flynn.
Russia confirmed 10,028 new coronavirus infections Wednesday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 242,271.
Russia is now the second most-affected country in terms of infections and has the world’s second-fastest rate of new infections behind the United States….
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said in an April cabinet meeting that he needed to change Rio de Janeiro’s chief of the federal police to protect family members under investigation, a person with knowledge of a video of the meeting told Reuters news agency.
The video was shown on Tuesday to investigators looking into accusations by former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who resigned two days after the meeting, alleging Bolsonaro was trying to interfere in law enforcement for personal reasons.
The fresh evidence in the federal investigation of the president has fanned a political crisis as Bolsonaro comes under pressure over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has eaten away at his popularity.
In the video, the president said his family was being persecuted and he wanted to change the federal police chief in his hometown, or else he would replace the police force’s national director and the justice minister, the source said.
Moro, who watched the video with investigators of the case and his lawyer at a federal police facility in Brasilia, said in a statement that the video confirmed his allegations against the president, calling for the entire tape to be made public.
The former minister, one of Brazil’s most popular figures for his record fighting corruption as a judge, said events following his resignation backed up his account: The national federal police director was replaced and so was the Rio chief.
Bolsonaro told reporters he is not worried about the investigation authorised by the Supreme Court into Moro’s accusations, adding that the federal police had never investigated his family.
He said the words “federal police” did not come up on the recording in question, which he said should have been destroyed. [LOL]
…
After transcribing the video and interviewing ministers involved, Brazil’s prosecutor general will decide whether to charge the president with obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
If the Supreme Court and two-thirds of the lower house of Congress see merit to any charges, Bolsonaro would be suspended from office and would stand trial before the top court.
Bolsonaro has begun to court political power brokers he once decried as corrupt in a bid to survive his worst political crisis since taking office last year on a promise to clean up Brazilian politics….
Brazil’s confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus passed Germany on Tuesday, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fought states over his wish to reopen gyms and beauty parlors even as his country becomes a new global hotspot for the pandemic.
Brazil has confirmed 177,589 cases since its outbreak began in late February, passing Germany’s 170,508 confirmed cases and drawing nearly even with France’s tally of 178,225 confirmed and probable cases.
Europe is beginning to lift lockdowns as the death toll in the region eases, but the outbreak is still accelerating in Brazil, where Bolsonaro has played down the risks of the disease and criticized state governments’ isolation orders.
Brazil recorded its deadliest day yet, with 881 confirmed deaths in 24 hours from the COVID-19 respiratory disease caused by the virus.
Bolsonaro has ratcheted up his dispute with state governors this week, with a decree classifying businesses such as gyms and hair salons as “essential” services, exempt from lockdowns. The right-wing president has argued that the economic damage from closing businesses is worse than the disease.
“Governors who do not agree with the decree can file lawsuits in court,” Bolsonaro wrote on social media. He later threatened to take his own legal actions against them if they do not comply.
At least 10 governors said they would not follow the decree.
“Bolsonaro is walking toward the precipice and wants to take all of us with him,” Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel said on Twitter.
…
Brazil has passed France and Germany in confirmed cases even as its testing lags far behind both.
As of Monday, Brazil had processed nearly 338,000 novel coronavirus tests in three months at official labs, said the Health Ministry. Another 145,000 tests are in analysis or the backlog.
By contrast, Germany’s certified labs tested more than 330,000 samples last week alone and have the capacity to test around 838,000 samples per week. France has also invested in testing to boost capacity to around 700,000 tests per week.
Brazil’s health ministry had confirmed 12,400 deaths from the virus as of Tuesday….
Here’s a link to the May 13 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
A Russian healthcare watchdog has suspended the use of a domestically manufactured ventilator suspected to have caused two deadly fires in Russian hospitals in the last week.
Six people died and hundreds were forced to evacuate hospitals in Moscow and St Petersburg after the Russian-made ventilators were said to have ignited, apparently while patients were attached.
On Wednesday, Russia’s federal service for surveillance in healthcare said it would suspend the use of new Aventa-M ventilators produced after 1 April pending a safety review, a decision that will affect hundreds of machines.
Aventa-M ventilators were also sold to the United States last month during a controversial aid mission negotiated by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. US hospitals reportedly had not used the ventilators because they were manufactured for the wrong voltage. It is not clear when those ventilators were produced.
The US federal emergency management agency (FEMA) said on Tuesday that the ventilators were not in use in US hospitals and that local authorities would return the machines to FEMA.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it is investigating the fires in Russian hospitals. The decision by the Russian watchdog could affect hundreds of ventilators that have been produced since April as Russian hospitals sought new supplies to prepare for a flood of coronavirus cases.
Five coronavirus patients, some reportedly attached to ventilators, died in the early hours of Tuesday after a fire broke out at the St George hospital in St Petersburg. A fire last week at a Moscow hospital treating coronavirus patients also killed one person. That fire may also have been tied to a faulty ventilator. Both hospitals were reportedly using Aventa-M ventilators produced by a state-run factory in Russia’s Urals region.
An April tender showed that last month the St George hospital had ordered 237 ventilators from the factory, which is the only manufacturer of that ventilator in the country.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) reacts to the White House Coronavirus Task Force witness testimony to a Senate committee and tells Lawrence O’Donnell that the lack of adequate guidance from the Trump administration puts lives at risk.
3-minute video atl. Unfortunately, the clip ends before the part where Murphy talked about how no states that are opening up can do so in compliance with the federal guidelines because the federal government hasn’t made it possible for them to have sufficient testing, contact tracing, etc.
“U.S. @SecPompeo disembarks in Israel – with an American flag mask… Also, Embassy Spokesperson says [US ambassador to Israel David Friedman] ‘is experiencing mild upper-respiratory symptoms. He was tested for COVID-19 and the result was negative. Nevertheless, he will not be in proximity with Sec Pompeo’.”
“News: AOC will be serving on Biden’s climate policy committee. ‘She believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system. This is just one element of the broader fight for just policies’, a spokeswoman said.
More from AOC’s spokeswoman: ‘She made the decision with members of the Climate Justice community – and she will be fully accountable to them and the larger advocacy community during this process’.”
More re #290: AOC will co-chair the Biden climate task force with John Kerry. The list of who’s on the task forces is at the link. Pramila Jayapal is co-chairing the health task force with Vivek Murthy.
“@fshakir told me Sanders spent hours deciding who would go on the task forces and didn’t pick any ‘shrinking violets’ but also chose people who will actually compromise. He said the Biden campaign seems to be taking progressive input seriously with these panels.”
as other countries begin to safely reopen their economies, the US may become the target of travel bans, as China was early in the pandemic. – blf quoting the Graunaid@261
Yes, I forsee the possibility that without a fully-effective vaccine (about which I’m pessimistic at least over the next few years) the world will divide up into “coronazones”, with membership determined by the prevalence of the virus, and (eventually) of susceptible individuals, and determining who can travel where. There will be a “coronafree” zone (China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand…), a “lockdown” zone where the battle to contain the virus is still ongoing, a “coronaraging” zone (probably including the USA, Russia, Brazil, maybe UK…) where it has been abandoned, health services are swamped, and bodies are piling up in the streets, and eventually, assuming infection does confer a reasonably high degree of immunity for a significant time, a “coronaendemic” zone, derived from the “coronaraging” zone, where the virus is present at a low level, but enough people have already been infected to produce herd immunity. Anyone (outside the international elite) wanting to visit the “coronafree” zone from outside it would probably have to spend at least a month in an official quarantine hotel at their own expense, and be repeatedly tested – as would those from that zone who ventured out of it then returned – I think that governments in coronafree countries will become increasingly wary of allowing even small outbreaks, due to their economic and political costs. The “lockdown” zone would allow in those from the “coronafree” zone, but apply similar constraints on those from “coronaraging” and “coronaendemic” zones. People from “coronafree” and “lockdown” countries could visit “coronaendemic” countries in reasonable safety, but would be at high risk if they visited “coronaraging” countries.
Initially, [Trump] said because of an audit was ongoing. Now it seems to be broader than that. But the aura of this case is really: “Sauce for the goose that serves the gander as well.” So, how do you distinguish, say, Whitewater when President Clinton’s personal records were subpoenaed from his accountant or even Hillary Clinton‘s law firm billing records were subpoenaed. It seems that in prior cases–you say this one is one-of-a-kind–but it seems that in prior cases there was a much greater collision of interests. [Indistinguishable] the Nixon tapes. How do you distinguish all of those cases, Watergate, Whitewater, the Nixon tapes case, the Paula Jones case?
.
Well, your honor, we distinguish them in a number of ways,” Trump’s attorney Patrick Strawbridge responded. “With respect to Watergate and Whitewater, obviously, those are cases of relatively recent vintage. And in separation of powers disputes, this court has generally–such as in Noel Canning–looked back for a much longer precedent for the type of issue that needs to be decided with examples of the encroachment on the separation of powers. And the recent examples–there are just a handful of them that the House identifies–are too recent under that stricture, as the court recognized in Southwest General.
.
Watergate was over 35 years ago, and Whitewater was over 25 years ago. His lawyers want to say that these cases are “too recent” to set a precedent? For the more legally informed here, are his lawyers just shoveling the bovine excrement or is this a legitimate argument?
And why does Tucker Carlson think that these facts condemn Dr. Fauci: “Tony Fauci has never been elected to anything! He’s had the same job for forty years!”
Evidence is mounting against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients.
A decades-old malaria medicine touted by [Trump] as a coronavirus treatment showed no benefit for patients hospitalized in New York. There was also no noticeable advantage for patients that took the drug paired with the antibiotic azithromycin, according to hotly anticipated research published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
[…] This reporting comes on the heels of a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that found no evidence of hydroxychloroquine working as an effective treatment for coronavirus infection.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen similar assessments from the NIH and the FDA, the latter of which pointed to risks of serious side effects, “including heart rhythm problems, severely low blood pressure and muscle or nerve damage.”
[Trump] didn’t just express tacit support for hydroxychloroquine; he effectively became an infomercial pitch-man in support of an unproven medicinal treatment. Based on “a feeling” he said he had, Trump publicly encouraged Americans to start taking the medication — “Take it,” he said, adding, “I really think they should take it” — adding that he personally was prepared to start himself on the drug.
What’s more, Trump suggested it was harmless. “The nice part is, we know that if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody,” the president told the public a month ago. He added in early April, “It may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it. Nothing.” [Wrong!]
What’s more, Team Trump didn’t just cross their fingers and hope for the best. The president urged Americans to start taking the medication, creating a run on pills that some people actually needed. […]
Soon after, Politico published a related report, noting that career health officials had raised behind-the-scenes warnings about hydroxychloroquine, but they’d been “warned not to publicly speak out and potentially contradict Trump.”
There were also literal investments, as the administration put millions of doses of the drug into an emergency stockpile.
We’ve also heard from Dr. Rick Bright, who worked as a top vaccine researcher at the Department of Health and Human Services, who has said he was removed from his job for resisting the president’s preferred course.
And yet, there was Donald Trump at the Lincoln Memorial last week, telling Fox News there was only “one study” that proved to be discouraging. The president added, “I’ll tell you what: I’ve had three calls in the last three days, four days, of people that took it, and they’re giving it credit for saving their lives. You know, other countries are using it, and they’re bragging about it. You look at their numbers.”
Trump went on to say that “the Democrats” and the “radical left” would “rather see people not get well because they think I’m going to get credit if, you know, hydroxychloroquine works.” […]
[…] Trump is reportedly trying to do with the official COVID-19 death toll what he did to his inauguration crowd size: tinker with the numbers.
According to a report in the Daily Beast, the President and some officials on the Coronavirus Task Force are pushing the Centers for Disease Control to change how it counts the number of people who have died from the virus to retroactively reduce the death toll.
The proposed revisions would reduce the numbers to below the current toll of more than 80,000, in part by excluding deaths of people who presumably died of COVID-19 without having tested positive.
The impetus behind that effort is Dr. Deborah Birx, according to the Daily Beast and a report in the Washington Post. Birx reportedly said at a task force meeting last week that “there is nothing from the CDC that I can trust.”
And … we are once again in “what the heck has gone wrong with Dr. Birx” mode.
This goes beyond being a simple statistical dispute, and instead comes as […] Trump clings to the idea that keeping the numbers down — both of COVID-19 cases and deaths — could be a boon to his political fortunes in an election year, and could help make the case that it’s time for states to reopen.
[…] Trump said on Monday, despite clear evidence to the contrary, “all throughout the country, the numbers are going down.”
Birx and Trump reportedly feel that the CDC’s decision to include deaths of people who expired after showing COVID-19 symptoms but who never tested positive unjustly inflates the death toll from the pandemic.
That conveniently ignores arguments from others, like Dr. Tony Fauci, and the vast majority of the country’s epidemiological community, who have pointed out that if, this method were to be used, the severely constrained supply of tests in the U.S. would determine the death toll. Fauci told Congress on Tuesday that the current death count is likely below the virus’s true toll.
Meanwhile, reports from around the country also continue to suggest that the CDC’s tally dramatically undercounts the true toll of COVID-19.
In states and areas heavily hit by the pandemic, death rates in 2020 have been far above the norm compared to previous years.
That’s most dramatically true in New York City. According to a CDC study released on Monday, the five boroughs have seen 24,000 more deaths this year than its usual baseline average.
Of those 24,000 dead, only 13,000 had tested positive for COVID-19.
The man just makes things up out of whole cloth. He flat-out lies, industrial-strength.
That ain’t tinkering.
——————–
Speaking about the untested dead Americans and elaborating on a prior statement from Monday’s Rose Garden press briefing, Trump said, “They shouldn’t want to get tested.”
——————–
[…], early responders [to Chernoby] were told that they would be exposed to as much as 3.6 rem per hour, high but manageable. They were really exposed to a lethal 15,000 rem per hour because the gauges used at the plant only read up to 3.6 rem. The tools you use to measure outcome are important. If testing is the rate limiting step, then our data is only as good as the test (or the availability of the test). COVID-19 is turning into Trump’s Chernobyl.
—————–
Yes, “tinker with”.
Much like the Russians “meddled with” our elections in 2016.
———————–
I’m sure Jared can return any unused body bags for a full refund.
———————
If there was anyone out there that still needed convincing that Dr Birx has gone to the dark side. A pity, I have a relative that worked in her previous team, and had a lot of respect for her. She seems to have been bit by the ambition bug. Trump main talent is detecting other people’s desires and use those to make them do his corrupt biding.
———————-
I mean, seriously, we’ve already blown past 80,000 deaths, and “monkeying” with the actual death toll is somehow going to make everything hunky dory as we sail past 100,000?
———————– Are they just going to pretend that the excess mortality doesn’t exist? Is it going to look better to say “We only had 150 deaths from Covid 19, but we had 150,000+ from undetermined causes?
They need to just keep playing the “we handled it and it’s over” horn. One of their problems is that they don’t realize that being a prolific liar doesn’t mean that you’re a skillful liar.
I wonder if Dr. Birx really wants to be seen as having done a good job when she worked on the Coronavirus Task Force. The number of people in the USA who have died from coronavirus does not look good for her. Neither does the months-long lag in providing adequate testing. (Birx has been trying to explain that away for some time.) Unfortunately, if management of the coronavirus pandemic makes Trump look bad, she thinks it also makes her look bad. She has, in other words, lost her integrity.
Perhaps she only had a tenuous hold on her personal integrity before all this. She worked well in other situations, but in a Trump-dominated situation she is lost.
About Jared Kushner’s latest stupid remark, and his attempt to walk it back, (sorry, SC, more dystopian news):
White House senior adviser and son-in-law to the President Jared Kushner is walking back his outrageous suggestion about pushing back the presidential election. […]
In a statement, Kushner acknowledged that he is not “involved in, nor am I aware of any discussions about trying to change the date of the Presidential election.” Kushner was forced to back-track after he alluded in an interview with Time that he couldn’t “commit one way or the other” to the possibility of delaying the election in November due to COVID-19.
“Hopefully by the time we get to September, October, November, we’ve done enough work with testing and with all the different things we’re trying to do to prevent a future outbreak of the magnitude that would make us shut down again,” Kushner told Time yesterday.
You can’t blame the President’s son-in-law for thinking he has any say in when the election will be held. Since he joined the White House, he’s had the freedom to handle a plethora of tasks that he’s highly unqualified for, including an attempt to solve decades-old tensions in the Middle East.
But alas, as the Washington Post points out, a federal statute mandates the timing of presidential elections, which has been the same since 1845: “on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.” And, according to the National Constitution Center, only a combination of state and congressional actions could “delay elections but not postpone the selection of a president and vice president.”
Former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s prison sentence has been cut short because of the novel coronavirus. Manafort was convicted on eight charges of tax fraud, bank fraud, and hiding foreign accounts related to his Ukraine work. He received a seven-year sentence. Now he’s being released to home confinement.
He was released from FCI Loretto prison in Pennsylvania early Wednesday. Manafort’s attorneys requested his early release last month, citing his age and health as putting him at higher risk of death from the novel coronavirus. As of mid-April when the request was made, there were no reported cases of the disease at FCI Loretto but Manafort had been placed in quarantine as of March 30. That made him eligible to be transferred to home confinement based on a directive from the Department of Justice on April 3. That directive, however, seems to be pretty selective.
Attorney General William Barr issued that order in early April only to take it back a few weeks later, causing confusion in the Bureau of Prisons system. Interestingly enough, one of the prisoners whose early release was rescinded is none other than Michael Cohen.
You remember him: the former Trump lawyer and fixer, or the “rat” who was convicted and sentenced to three years for numerous tax fraud and perjury charges. He is supposedly writing a book about his time working with Trump. In a totally not coincidental occurrence, the same week Cohen’s planned early release was rescinded, he “received a letter from lawyers representing the Trump Organization demanding Cohen halt writing a ‘tell-all book’ about his time working for the president, according to sources familiar with the matter.”
There have been confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the prison camp in Otisville, New York, where he is confined. Cohen and the other prisoners at Otisville were told in mid-April they would be released to home confinement, but two weeks later all of them were told they were losing the privilege of early release to home confinement. That sure does seem unfair, and the decision sure does seem very political. It could also just be the typical Trump administration incompetence. But it’s probably politics.
Many in France have been referring to “le Covid” but guardians of French language rule otherwise
The Académie Française, guardian of the French language, has said a big non to le covid. Not to the actual disease, but to the use of the masculine definitive article “le”.
[… lots of other sillinesses, such as…] when you take your car to pick up your takeaway because the restaurants are closed, do not say “drive”, which is le verbe anglais but “point de retrait automobile” or more concisely “point de retrait”.
The analysis by NYU, which has yet to be confirmed, found that the Abbott test, used by the White House, missed at least 1/3 of positive cases of coronavirus infection.
“The analysis, which has yet to be confirmed, found that Abbott’s ID NOW missed at least one-third of positive cases detected with a rival test and much as 48% when using the currently recommended dry nasal swabs, according to the report posted on BioRxiv,….”
Dr. Fauci has repeatedly talked about the rate of false negatives and positives in task force briefings despite Trump’s interruptions and contradictions.
IIRC, they seem more concerned about false negatives, but I’m not sure. This is another tool favored by the WH, in addition to wishful thinking, lying, covering up, hydroxychloroquine, Russian fire-hazard ventilators, and ingesting disinfectant.
…This, then, is the state of things: The White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal. That is not because these things are impossible. At this point, there are dozens of plans floating around and dozens of governments offering models it could choose from. Germany’s response has been a success, and I’m sure officials would share the lessons they’ve learned. In South Korea, professional baseball is restarting, and in Taiwan, there have been about a dozen new Covid-19 cases in the month of May so far.
It is not that the president is doing the wrong thing — he is doing basically nothing. But he has combined a substantive passivity with a showman’s desire to dominate the narrative and a political street fighter’s obsession with settling scores, so he is making the job of governors and mayors harder, neither giving them what they need to beat the virus nor leaving them to make their own decisions free from his interference and criticism.
The result, as David Wallace-Wells writes at New York magazine, is that “the country has accomplished essentially none of the necessary preparatory work required to safely begin to reopen and return to some semblance of normal life.”
Americans have made tremendous sacrifices to buy their government time, and that time has been wasted. That is why we are left with an increasingly polarized, and polarizing, debate between endless lockdowns and reckless reopening: The government has failed to do what functional governments in other countries have done and create a better option.
“It’s like the Lewis Carroll line, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there,’” Osterholm says. “Well, I don’t know where we’re going.”
#308 might be confusing. I meant that on MSNBC’s list of the countries with the most recorded total cases, Russia and the UK have moved into the second and third spots. Brazil will likely be there soon.
blfsays
SC@308/309, A good site for fairly up-to-date Covid-19 statistics is John Hopkins’ Covid-19 Dashboard. It’s recently added county-by-county States data / map, etc. What it does not have, to the best of my (current) knowledge, are statistics / comparisons with testing; e.g., confirmed or false-positive or -negative, or percentage of population or suspected tested, etc, etc.
[…] An article from the Minnesota-based conservative think tank the Charlemagne Institute titled “COVID-19 Lockdowns May Destroy Our Immune Systems” is currently making the rounds […]
It’s not hard to see why this content took off. The idea—or the basic contours of it, at least—has some elements of truth. Immunologists have shown that, in general, we strengthen our immune systems by exposing them to pathogens. In the last few decades, researchers have amassed evidence to suggest that some chronic conditions that are common in the developed world but rare in poorer countries—including asthma, allergies, and autoimmune illnesses like Crohn’s disease—could be the result of an environment that doesn’t have enough germs, causing the immune system to go haywire.
But the coronavirus is not a chronic immune condition; it’s a novel virus that attacks the body’s systems in ways not yet completely understood. Experts roundly reject the idea that social distancing will dangerously weaken the immune system. “A broad-based immunity weakening because of social distancing? Definitely not,” said Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist. Jennifer Reich, a sociologist who studies the spread of misinformation about health, agreed. “In order for our immune systems to be harmed by social distancing, we would have to live in sterile settings for a long time in which no bacteria or germs could affect us,” she wrote to me in an email.
But the experts I talked to weren’t at all surprised to see these discredited ideas making the rounds; they’ve seen them before in the anti-vaccination and extreme holistic medicine communities. This is the coronavirus edition of their pervasive belief in “natural immunity.” […]
anti-vaccination groups on Facebook have referenced the idea constantly in recent posts. One widely shared meme lists, “Things that suppress our immune systems: Masks, gloves, no sun, fear, vaccines, washing hands with synthetic soaps.” […]
Meanwhile, alternative medicine groups promote the idea that eating the right foods or taking certain vitamins and supplements will strengthen the immune system so that it can successfully fight off coronavirus. […] Coconut oil, bone broth, and raw milk are among the foods she recommends to bolster the immune system against coronavirus. Just to be clear: This idea is patently false; humanity has never seen the virus before, therefore our immune systems have no natural defenses against it.
Given the holistic community and anti-vaccination groups’ fixations on “natural immunity,” it’s not surprising that the belief that we can end the pandemic through “herd immunity”—deliberately exposing everyone to the virus until we develop enough immunity that it dies out on its own—has gained traction. […]
Infectious disease experts all agree that the “herd immunity” approach would be catastrophic—millions of Americans would die in the process. […] signs that this dangerous and flawed line of thinking is making its way into the mainstream. […] the musings from armchair epidemiologists have gone viral on social media. […]. In a sprawling March 20 New York Times op-ed, David Katz, a Yale preventive medicine specialist who focuses on diet, wrote that this approach could allow us to “return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs.” When Omer read the piece, he was appalled. “These people are putting forth these theories without checking with people whose job this is, who specialize in it,” he told me. “This is not a debate society—there are actual consequences here. People are dying in hospitals alone.”
[…] Devin Burghart, vice president of the anti-white-nationalism think tank the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, has been studying the nascent co-mingling between the anti-vaccination community and groups that stage coronavirus shutdown protests. He has noticed that the protest groups have begun to repeat the “natural immunity” talking points, and that both groups have embraced the herd immunity approach. […]
Omer cautions that if these ideas take hold, they could persist even after the coronavirus pandemic dies down, noting, “Those of us in this field will be cleaning up these messes for years to come.”
[…]
A French court has scrapped all charges against an olive farmer who helped migrants enter the country illegally, the final chapter in a groundbreaking case that defined so-called “crimes of solidarity”.
Cédric Herrou, who helped about 200 people cross the border from Italy into southern France, was given a four-month suspended sentence in August 2017.
He had brought the destitute migrants home and set up a camp for them. He was also convicted of sheltering about 50 Eritreans in a disused railway building.
France’s constitutional council later said Herrou’s actions were not a crime under the “principle of fraternity” as enshrined in France’s motto: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The council, which evaluates the validity of French laws, ruled that people cannot be prosecuted for “crimes of solidarity”.
[…]
Amnesty International said the ruling would have implications throughout Europe for the criminalisation of “acts of solidarity”.
“Cédric Herrou did nothing wrong, he simply showed compassion towards people abandoned in dire conditions by European states,” said Amnesty’s Rym Khadhraoui. “Whilst it is a relief that Cédric Herrou’s ordeal is now over, he should never have been charged in the first place.”
French law should now be amended to ensure only people smuggling, which entails a material benefit, is an offence, and not humanitarian assistance, Khadhraoui said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit nursing homes especially hard. The AP says nursing homes account for “about a third” of deaths; the New York Times says it’s “over a third”; and ABC News suggests the number is more like 31 percent nationwide, but also pointing out that 15 states don’t report deaths in nursing homes as part of their coronavirus stats at all. So for the 35 states and DC that do report nursing home deaths, that works out to 40 percent.
Hey, why aren’t we giving you statistics from the federal government? That’s because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees federal regulation of nursing homes, didn’t start requiring nursing homes to report coronavirus infections and deaths directly to the CDC until late April, and won’t get around to releasing any data until the end of May. Oh, yes, and on April 30, two months into the outbreak, and long after everyone knew the disease was spreading out of control in nursing homes, the White House finally created a national task force on coronavirus in long-term care facilities. […]
So with all the horror going on, it only stands to reason that CMS, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is circulating a draft of a plan to “reopen” nursing homes so people can go visit Nana as soon as possible. Yes really, although the Wall Street Journal dutifully notes that the “final version of the guidelines might be significantly different from the early draft” that its reporters obtained. Like if people all stand up and scream “ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?”
For a good, horrifying look at how bad the situation in nursing homes has been, check out this heartbreaking New York Times story on the situation at the New Jersey Veterans Home at Paramus, where as of Tuesday, 74 deaths had resulted from COVID-19. That’s out of a late-March population of 314 residents.
The list of the dead is almost certain to grow: Of the remaining 209 veterans and their spouses, 133 had either tested positive for the virus or were awaiting results. About one in five staff members has contracted the virus, and one employee has died.
“The whole place is sick now,” said Mitchell Haber, whose 91-year-old father, Arnold, an Army veteran, died last month at the home, which is about 12 miles northwest of New York City.
“What they should really do is raze it and put a park there,” he said. “It’s like a mass shooting.”
[…] New Jersey nursing facilities have seen 4,953 fatalities, which make up over half of COVID-19 deaths in the state. […]
before the pandemic got under way, the Trump administration was working to loosen infection control standards in nursing homes. In response to the deaths of hundreds of nursing home residents in Hurricane Katrina, and thousands of people stranded in nursing homes following Hurricane Sandy, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama enacted stronger safety standards for long-term care facilities. Obama’s administration tightened up infection control standards in 2016, putting in place more protections for residents and higher fines for violations. Those rules were targeted by the nursing home industry once Trump took office, and by golly, CMS was happy to help make nursing homes more profitable by cutting burdensome regulations. […]
While the effort to undo those Obama-era safety rules hasn’t actually gone forward during the pandemic, there’s no reason to think the administration won’t still try to jam it through. […] And just to be on the safe side, the for-profit nursing home industry is lobbying for states to provide immunity from lawsuits for nursing homes, their owners, and employees, too.
[…] Residents or their families could still sue for extreme neglect, and isn’t that good enough? […]
Now, to be sure, the Trump administration has — very grudgingly and half-assedly — finally noticed there’s a problem in nursing homes. There’s the new task force, which is claiming it will get two weeks’ worth of protective equipment to all nursing homes (possibly if Jared can make some fall off a truck).
And on Monday, Mike Pence announced during a conference call with governors that the government was “recommending” that all nursing home residents in the US be tested, although it wasn’t an actual order, and it also didn’t come with any plan to provide tests, funding, or staff to make that possible. And Deborah Birx backed Pence up, too, saying “We really believe that all 1 million nursing home residents need to be tested within next two weeks as well as the staff” — though she didn’t offer any equipment or funding either.
At least Donald Trump took a firm stand on testing nursing home residents: He blamed the states. […] “Frankly, some of the governors were very lax with respect to nursing homes. It was obvious right from the beginning,” Trump said, referring to the Washington state outbreak. […]
We probably wouldn’t have given you very good odds if you had predicted at the beginning of 2020 that this would be the year many on the American Right would decide euthanasia was OK with them, as long as they can still ban abortion. […] in the case of America’s nursing homes, the Trump administration seems to be doing all it can to reduce the number of retirees living the high life on Social Security and Medicare. But will anyone thank him for such bold action to save money? […]
Speciality cheeses have been cast aside in favour of more basic foodstuffs during lockdown
[… T]he French have been urged to step up to the plate and eat more fromage to help save some of the nation’s food heritage and stop thousands of gallons of milk and 2,000 tonnes of cheese being destroyed.
With restaurants, school canteens, certain markets and many supermarket cheese counters closed during the eight-week lockdown, and many struggling families having to save money, speciality cheeses have been pushed aside in favour of more basic foodstuffs.
[…]
Producers of cheeses such as reblochon, saint-nectaire, munster, brie de meaux, roquefort and bleu d’auvergne have been hit by a 60% drop in sales, amounting to a loss of €157m of business […]
Trousdale Co, TN
Leavenworth Co, KS
Buchanan Co, MS
Muhlenberg Co, KY
Colfax Co, NE
Stearns Co, MN
Kenosha Co, WI
Polk Co, IA
Hall Co, GA,
Racine Co, WI
All counties that voted Trump in 2016, except Polk Co in Iowa
[…] “When you attribute a death to the coronavirus today, what that means is that the guy had the coronavirus and died. It doesn’t matter if he got hit by a car and died, and he would still be categorized as a coronavirus death,” the White House’s crank economist Art Laffer told the [Daily] Beast, adding, “You need the whole transcribed medical records on a disk so people can sit there, maybe without names, and look for causes and correlations.”
Which is, of course, complete bullshit. Here on Planet Earth, we have a major testing shortage — despite Trump’s constant braying about his tremendous tests, available to anyone who wants one, the envy of the world and in high demand among all your better first world nations — and are almost certainly undercounting the number of deaths — just like that tyrant Anthony Fauci testified to the Senate yesterday. Fatalities from car accidents and school shootings are way down, and yet we still have many thousands of “excess deaths” over normal mortality figures, probably attributable to undiagnosed coronavirus.
Worse still, it appears that Dr. Deborah Birx is wiling to go along with this craven hackery. The Beast notes that Birx “has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death-count reporting some of those individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials.”
Which is … not a good look.
“I don’t worry about this overreporting issue,” Bob Anderson, the chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch in CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told the Beast. “We’re almost certainly underestimating the number of deaths [in the country].” […]
SC @284 regarding the combusting Russian ventilators
US hospitals reportedly had not used the ventilators because they were manufactured for the wrong voltage. It is not clear when those ventilators were produced.
Eh what?? How could they be this stupid to not know that the US (and Canda) uses 110 volt AC while most ot ter rest of the world uses 220 volt AC? This is more a case of high doltage than one of voltage. At least this incompatibility miight have prevented a fire.
“The Darkest Winter,” a statement from Rick Bright:
“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright says in prepared testimony submitted to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. “If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities. While it is terrifying to acknowledge the extent of the challenge that we currently confront, the undeniable fact is there will be a resurgence of the COVID19 this fall, greatly compounding the challenges of seasonal influenza and putting an unprecedented strain on our health care system. Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.”
The first priority, he says, is being “truthful with the American people.”
“They want the truth. They can handle the truth,” Bright says.
[…] Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was removed April 20 after having served in the position for nearly four years […]
In his prepared testimony, Bright also touches on a whistleblower complaint in which he asserted he was pressured by Department of Health and Human Services leadership to make “potentially harmful drugs widely available,” including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump has repeatedly heralded.
“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest funding allocated to BARDA by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright says.
Bright is scheduled to appear at a hearing Thursday morning at the invitation of Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), who chairs the health subcommittee. Debra Katz, an attorney for Bright, confirmed last week that Bright plans to appear despite being under “massive stress” in the wake of his transfer. […]
In his prepared testimony, Bright argues that “it is painfully clear that we were not as prepared as we should have been” to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
“We missed early warning signals, and we forgot important pages from our pandemic playbook,” he says. “There will be plenty of time to identify gaps for improvement. For now, we need to focus on getting things right going forward.”
He says the Trump administration still lacks a national testing strategy and needs to ramp up production of essential equipment and supplies. […]
From R.R. Reno, the editor of the conservative religious magazine First Things:
By the way, the WWII vets did not wear masks. They’re men, not cowards. Masks=enforced cowardice.
Just to reinforce. Talked to my son in Seattle. The mask culture if fear driven. Masks+cowardice. It’s a regime dominate by fear of infection and fear of causing of infection. Both are species of cowardice.
Look, let’s face it. There are those who are terrified, and those who are not. Where do you stand? Terror or a more reasonable position? Will you visit our mother? If so, the mask is a PC gesture. If not, you are a moral monster.
Commentary:
[…] The first thing that leaps out is that the anti-mask crusade reflects a particular vision of masculinity. Reno’s reframing of an obvious public health measure as a kind of cowardice, something tough World War II veterans would never do, is a thinly veiled way of calling protective masks unmanly. As my colleague Anna North argues, this strain of anxious masculinity is a consistent theme in anti-mask arguments on the right.
The second is the argument that mask-wearing is a form of “political correctness.” Reno’s reasoning is incoherent — if you’re willing to visit your mother, presumably you should take mask-wearing even more seriously — but it illustrates the category of thinking he’s relying on here. The question in his mind is not “does wearing a mask contribute to public health,” but rather “what does wearing a mask say about where I stand in the culture war.” He sees the issue not through the lens of substance, but of symbolism.
When you look at the broader Republican response to masks through the lens of Reno’s thinking, it starts to make a lot more sense. This is a political movement that has been built to wage a culture war; it has no greater objective than owning the libs. And the best way to own them is to defeat them in combat over identity: gender, race, sexuality, and the like.
The war on masks is a way of taking a public health crisis — a situation that demands political unity and best practices in governance — and reshaping it into a culture war competition. The question is not “are we doing a good job handling this” so much as “whose team do you want to be on, the namby-pamby liberals or the strong fearless conservatives?”
It is difficult for members of the modern organized conservative movement to see political issues outside the lenses of partisanship and the culture wars. At a time when unity on public health matters is paramount, on issues ranging from masks to testing to the timing of reopening, this is dangerous.
How can Trump look past the slaughter of mothers and babies in Afghanistan?
At a time when tens of thousands of Americans are dying from the novel coronavirus, it is hard for a terrorist attack abroad to penetrate our consciousness. But what happened in Kabul on Tuesday was so heinous that it cannot be ignored.
Three gunmen stormed a hospital maternity ward and engaged in a lengthy gunfight with security forces. Twenty-four people were reported killed, including many new mothers. The New York Times reported: “A security official coming out of the hospital showed reporters pictures of the devastation inside the ward: mothers shot as they had tried to hide under a bed, a female nurse prostrate in blood, one woman still clinging to her newborn. ‘She was dead, but the baby was alive,’ the official said.”
What kind of monsters attack mothers and their newborn babies? The same kind of monsters who attack a funeral. That also happened on Tuesday about 100 miles east of Kabul: A funeral procession for a district police chief who had died of natural causes in Nangarhar province was attacked by a suicide bomber who killed at least 24 people. This is cradle-to-grave terrorism. The funeral attack was claimed by Islamic State, but the maternity-ward attack was so barbaric that no one assumed public responsibility.
Whoever carried out these attacks, their larger meaning is clear: The vaunted “peace deal” with the Taliban announced by the Trump administration on Feb. 29 is breaking down. The White House had claimed that it had secured “important commitments that are necessary to finally end the conflict in Afghanistan.” But six weeks later there is no sign of the conflict ending. The Taliban has avoided attacks on U.S. personnel, but it has continued to wage savage war on the people and government of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s oral assurances to the U.S. negotiating team, led by special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, that it would reduce violence by as much as 80 percent have proved to be worthless.
[…] Yet the Trump administration clings to the fiction that the Taliban is a good-faith negotiating partner. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on Tuesday said: “We note the Taliban have denied any responsibility and condemned both attacks as heinous. The Taliban and the Afghan government should cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice.” […]
The Taliban still doesn’t recognize the democratically elected government in Kabul and won’t enter into negotiations with it. The March 10 deadline for launching intra-Afghan negotiations on a political settlement has come and gone.
The Taliban’s excuse for not negotiating is that the government has failed to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as called for in the agreement. (The government says it has released 1,000 prisoners while the Taliban has released only 171.) But Ghani never made any such pledge — that was a promise from the Trump administration — and he quite understandably does not want to make the Taliban even more dangerous by releasing so many of its fighters while the war rages on. […]
SC… @ # 282: Russia is now the second most-affected country in terms of infections …
Does anybody have any idea what the hell is going on with Putin? The man is neither dumb nor lazy, he’s surely well-informed on how half-assed c-virus measures have blown up in (e.g.) Trump’s & Johnson’s faces, he has no personal qualms or opposition to hold him back on grounds of “personal liberty” – but by all reports he’s letting Russia swirl down the public-health drain by emulating Trump’s do-nothing/blame-the-local-governments non-strategy.
Putin should be just as capable of cracking the whip and making the bureaucracy dance from his dacha as was Stalin. Why isn’t he?
The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has struck down Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order, ruling that the Democratic governor does not have authority to act without input from the legislature, even during a public health crisis. The 4-to-3 decision was written by four conservative judges on the court.
Republican state lawmakers had sued Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Andrea Palm, the state Department of Health secretary, over the administration’s order that nonessential businesses remain closed until at least May 26, saying they exceeded their authority.
String together coverage of COVID-19 “stay-at-home” orders in The Federalist, the conservative website, and it begins to resemble an ode to death itself.
“Imagine for a moment that the nation were ruled by dictatorship of doctors…”
“Is it right for the nation to require our children’s futures be destroyed to keep alive less than 1 percent of our population until the next flu season?”
“It seems harsh to ask whether the nation might be better off letting a few hundred thousand people die.”
“So the barbaric, panicky elevation of mere life as the only good worth conserving is becoming increasingly shameful.”
“Is death the worst thing that could happen to you?”
So sings the chorus of conservative PhDs, right-wing think tankers, business owners and scientific contrarians narrating the impact of COVID-19. The Federalist is their echo chamber, publishing dozens of articles in recent weeks largely focused on the need to “reopen” society.
As public health experts warn that the pandemic will require long-term sacrifices in order to keep infection rates down, a TPM review of three months of coverage found that The Federalist has pursued a different route. For weeks, the site has been at the vanguard of the backlash against COVID-19 public health orders.
[…] as executive editor Joy Pullmann put it in a critique Wednesday of House Democrats’ latest stimulus proposal, “Americans shouldn’t hide in our homes fumbling in our childrens’ pockets for money like drunkards.”
“Like the greatest generation, we owe it to our nation to face danger bravely,” Pullmann wrote. “Our ancestors risked much worse to give us the best country in the world: cholera outbreaks, amputations without anesthesia, hand-to-paw combat with bears and panthers, natives who ruled territory through slavery and torture, establishing homes in a forbidding wilderness amid outbreaks of starvation and disease, volunteering to fight from poisoned foxholes, perilous trips in rickety ships across a dark ocean.”
This isn’t a fringe blog. The Federalist is […] read by those in power. A spokesperson for Republicans on the House Oversight committee, for example, lauded an article last month on “How Cowardice and Class Privilege Shift Support For Lockdowns.” […] popular conservative voices like talk show host Mark Levin regularly spread The Federalist around.
At first, The Federalist’s coronavirus coverage was pretty straight-laced. […]
But as President Donald Trump began speaking more frequently in public about the virus, The Federalist changed its tone.
“The Coronavirus Has Mutated—Into A Political Talking Point,” political editor John Daniel Davidson observed on Feb. 27, the day after Trump held his first press conference on the virus.
And boy did it: In the days and weeks that followed, The Federalist plugged the disease into its existing battles: For a border wall, against environmentalism and gender studies. Even “Big Porn” got put on notice. […]
Given its conservative audience, the site’s authors mostly preach to a relatively defined choir: Readers interested in “politics, religion, and culture from a conservatarian angle,” with a healthy dose of the culture wars on the side. But as the COVID-19 takes grew more daring — notably with the late-March call for “chickenpox parties” to voluntarily spread the disease and establish herd immunity — the criticism grew sharper. […] fatalities alone reached 50,000 three weeks after that. […]
More at the link.
John Moralessays
Pierce @330, probably, Putin’s priority is to stay in power, rather than to be benevolent.
Most plausible inference (given your own claim that he is “neither dumb nor lazy”) is that, regardless of what he decrees, bad consequences will nonetheless ensue; thus, divorcing himself from responsibility from such bad consequences is the way to go. Especially as that stance contradicts the narrative that he’s autocratic.
Another aspect is that, if things do go down the drain, it is then that he can step in as a saviour.
Pierce R. Butlersays
John Morales @ # half-a-beast – Mebbeso, except your hypothesis still contradicts my premise that Putin is not stupid…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday signaled reluctance to allow the Justice Department to drop its criminal prosecution of Michael Flynn, tasking a retired judge with advising on whether the former Trump administration official should face an additional criminal contempt charge for perjury.
In a short written order, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington asked John Gleeson, a former federal judge in New York, to present arguments in the case as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court.
Sullivan said he was seeking Gleeson’s recommendation on whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt charge for perjury because he testified under oath that he was guilty of lying to the FBI but then reversed course and said he had never lied.
Sullivan also said he wanted Gleeson to make the case for why a motion to dismiss the Flynn case filed by the Justice Department last week should be rejected.
[…]
KGsays
The three countries with the most cases today are the US, Russia, and the UK. – SC@308
Evidence that the virus was manufatured by vengence-seeking Nazis hiding under the Himalayas or on the far side of the moon???
ravensays
CNN:
Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down state’s stay-at-home order
(CNN)The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned the state’s stay-at-home order, ruling it “unlawful” and “unenforceable” in a high-profile win for the state’s Republican-led Legislature.
In a 4-3 decision Wednesday, the court ruled that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration overstepped its authority when the state Department of Health Services extended the order to May 26.
The ruling comes after the Legislature’s Republican leaders filed a lawsuit last month arguing the order
I’m sure everyone has seen this or will see it soon.
This is one of the most dismaying things I’ve seen so far about this pandemic.
It’s very likely to kill a lot of people.
It’s also not going to do a whole lot for the Wisconsin economy.
Even in the few states with no lockdown orders, they are de facto lockdown because businesses are closed and people aren’t moving around much.
People are good at calculating their risks and adjusting their behavior accordingly.
They don’t want to die or be permanently disabled, after infecting their families so they can take them with them.
It’s also likely to make this pandemic last longer.
Wisconsin could become a plague focus for the rest of the USA and Canada.
ravensays
Republican Mike Garcia wins special election for Katie Hill’s vacated House seat
What was supposed to be a tossup election ended up with Garcia holding a comfortable 12-point edge in an incomplete tally Wednesday.
After all the failures of the GOP, which is morphing into the party of corruption, incompetence, and death, this GOP far right person in California still won an election in a House district held by Democrat Katie Hill.
Trump still has a huge amount of support and no matter what happens it will always vote for him.
It’s entirely possible that Trump and the GOP will be reelected in November, 2020.
I don’t have an explanation for this.
At some point, you stop trying to explain it and start making plans to survive in a dystopian, seriously failing former superpower.
When the USSR collapsed, average lifespans in the USSR dropped sharply as a lot of people ended up dead.
ravensays
People are starting to call Covid-19, the polio of the 21st century.
The vast majority of infected don’t die so there is a tendency to not worry too much about the virus.
It’s not that simple.
A lot of the survivors are showing varying levels of permanent organ damage, mostly lung but also heart and kidneys. Since so much is happening, we are just now getting around to looking at this.
Some patients who survive COVID-19 may suffer lasting lung damage
The similar respiratory disease SARS left lasting lung injury in some patients
By David Cox APRIL 27, 2020 AT 2:19 PM ScienceNews:
Among patients who have recovered from COVID-19 in China comes the first evidence that some may suffer long-term lung damage from the disease.
In 70 patients who survived COVID-19 pneumonia, 66 had some level of lung damage visible in CT scans taken before hospital discharge, researchers report March 19 in Radiology. The damage ranged from dense clumps of hardened tissue blocking blood vessels within the tiny air sacs called alveoli, which absorb oxygen, to tissue lesions around the alveoli, Yuhui Wang, a radiologist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues found.
The permanent organ damage is not yet too well measured.
Based on simple math, 20% of patients are hospitalized.
Let’s say 80% of those patients have organ damage.
So 16% of Covid-19 patients have organ damage.
US cases as of today are ca. 1,400,000 so as of now, 224,000 people with some acquired disability.
This is going to be a huge issue going forward, after we all get over trying not to die.
Here’s a link to the May 14 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
ravensays
Kidney injury seen in more than a third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients: U.S. study
Julie Steenhuysen ,Reuters•May 14, 2020
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Over a third of patients treated for COVID-19 in a large New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% required dialysis, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Add this is for organ damage.
Add in the known heart damage.
I’m sure other organ systems will also show varying levels of damage.
Even if you don’t die for Covid-19 virus, you still have a much higher chance for permanent health problems.
We in the USA aren’t worrying about this now, but we will eventually have to deal with it.
These patients need followup care and cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation.
Right now CP-Rehab is all shut down because it requires physical closeness. It’s usually done in mass groups in health care facilities and that is out right now.
This virus is a dangerous one and it is permanently altering the way we live in the USA.
…Russia confirmed 9,974 new coronavirus infections Thursday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 252,245. Russia now has the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus infections.
…
Education and Science Minister Valery Falkov was diagnosed with coronavirus, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting, making him the fourth minister to catch the virus. During the meeting, Falkov said he has already recovered and returned to work….
Pierce R. Butler @ #330, I’m fascinated by this question. I do think there are psychological characteristics common to a particular type of authoritarian and to the movements backing them that could help to explain it. I’m hoping to post something about it later today.
Brazil’s former health minister described Jair Bolsonaro’s March visit to meet with US President Donald Trump as a “corona trip” Wednesday, noting that several members of the Brazilian president’s team tested positive for Covid-19 after the trip.
Bolsonaro and his aides met with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other American officials during their last US trip. Days later, Bolsonaro’s press secretary, Fabio Wajngarten, tested positive for Covid-19.
Several more members of Bolsonaro’s close circle contracted the virus soon after, raising concerns that the two presidents had been exposed as well.
“What I know is that it was soon after (Bolsonaro) made a visit to the United States that they went to Florida and they were all having dinner with Mr. Trump, and his communication guy … came back in the plane with the disease and from the people that went with him, 17 tested positive in about 15 days after they arrived,” Brazil’s former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “So this trip was really a corona trip.”
Bolsonaro tested negative for coronavirus in three separate exams that were released to the public on Wednesday afternoon by Supreme Court Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.
The release of the tests, which were administered between March 12 and March 17 after his return from the US, brought an end to a prolonged standoff in which Bolsonaro had refused to make results public, despite repeated legal rulings.
Despite several of his team contracting the virus, Bolsonaro has repeatedly played down the threat of Covid-19.
…
Brazil has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, with more than 180,000 confirmed cases and over 12,600 deaths so far, according to John Hopkins University.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said after Wajngarten’s diagnosis that “both the President and Vice President had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive and do not require being tested at this time.”
However, a picture posted by Wajngarten on his Instagram account showed him standing with both Trump and Pence.
Officially, the new strategy is “personal responsibility” and “good, solid British common sense”, as our prime minister colourfully describes it; unofficially, operation blame the public is well under way. As media outlets query why London’s trains and buses are rammed despite government advice, our transport secretary, Grant Shapps, pleads with silly old commuters not to “flood” back on to public transport.
The small flaw is that the government has ordered millions of workers to return to their jobs, and given the continued failure to invent teleporters, they need a means to bridge the distance between their homes and their work. If you’re a Londoner earning more than £70,000 a year, this is no big deal: about 80% have access to a car, and most can work from home. Unfortunately, nearly half of the capital’s citizens – and over 70% of those earning less than £10,000 – do not have access to a car: if you want to understand those images of packed trains and buses, start here.
It is unsurprising that a government that has presided over Europe’s worst death toll is so invested in shifting the blame. Was it “good, solid British common sense” to pursue herd immunity and impose a lockdown later than other European nations, even despite having advance notice of the horrors of Lombardy? Perhaps, indeed, it was “good, solid British common sense” to send vulnerable patients back to care homes without testing them for coronavirus first, seeding the illness in a sector in which up to 22,000 people may have died? Or, who knows, perhaps “good, solid British common sense” could explain how frontline staff have been left exposed for a lack of personal protective equipment?
But the strategy in the government’s new approach is clear. “Stay alert” is meaningless, of course, except to devolve responsibility for what happens next to individuals. Grownups don’t need a nanny state to hold their hands, scoff the government’s outriders: rather than relying on detailed instructions and central diktat, we should rely on our judgment. The implication, of course, is that if there is another spike in infections and death, that will be the public’s fault for not exercising adequate levels of personal responsibility.
Here is a revival of the ideals of High Thatcherism, except applied to a pandemic. Back in the 1980s, what were once known as social problems requiring collective solutions – such as unemployment and poverty – became redefined as individual failings. “Nowadays there really is no primary poverty left in this country,” declared Margaret Thatcher herself. “In western countries we are left with the problems which aren’t poverty. All right, there may be poverty because people don’t know how to budget, don’t know how to spend their earnings, but now you are left with the really hard fundamental character – personality defect.”
If you were poor, it became an increasingly popularised attitude that it was because you were feckless, workshy, stupid and lazy. …It was more convenient, of course, for the government to pretend that mass unemployment was caused by a lack of effort, graft and can-do determination, rather than monetarist economics that ravaged entire industries.
What the dogma of “personal responsibility” does is erase the inequalities that scar, disfigure and ultimately define society. It pretends that we are all equally free, that our autonomy over our lives and circumstances are the same; that a middle-class professional working from home with access to a car can make the same choices as a cleaner expected to work halfway across a city.
The estimated 60,000 people who have so far died in this national calamity were not wrested from their families because the public failed to be responsible, and neither will the deaths to come in the weeks ahead….
The explanation will instead be straightforward: the government relaxed a lockdown to force disproportionately working-class people into potentially unsafe environments at the behest of employers who have prioritised economic interests over human life. Another aggravating factor will be the abandonment of clear instructions in favour of confusion. It may well be this is a deliberate strategy, to claim that the government was perfectly clear, but the public let the team down by not showing enough “good, solid British common sense”. Whatever happens, the attempt to shift blame for the most disastrous government failure since appeasement on to the public must not succeed. This is on them: they did this, and we must not let them forget it.
Sen. Richard Burr on Thursday stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a day after FBI agents seized his cellphone as part of a criminal investigation into his stock sales during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.
…
New questions about Burr’s stock sales arose last week, when ProPublica reported that on the very day that Burr sold his stocks, Feb. 13, Burr’s brother-in-law, Trump appointee Gerald Fauth, also sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock.
Fauth is a former transportation consultant, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017 to a seat on the three-member National Mediation Board, a federal agency that helps facilitate labor relations for the transportation industry.
Burr’s attorney, Alice Fisher, told ProPublica that Burr “participated in the stock market based on public information,” and that “he did not coordinate his decision to trade on Feb. 13 with Mr. Fauth.”
According to the LA Times, federal agents served an earlier warrant on Apple for information about Burr’s iCloud account. They then used that information as evidence to obtain a search warrant from a judge for Burr’s phone.
It was unclear whether Fauth had also been served with a warrant. CNBC called the number for Fauth’s consulting firm, but there was no answer.
Members of Congress are prohibited by law from using nonpublic information they obtain through their official positions in order to personally profit off the stock market. The STOCK Act that codified this ban was signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, after passing the Senate in a 96-3 vote.
Burr was one of only three senators who voted against the STOCK Act.
“Lindsey Graham announces broad probe into how the Russia probe got started and whether Mueller was needed. ‘The Judiciary Committee will begin holding multiple, in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to Crossfire Hurricane starting in early June’.”
The 4th Circuit says that discovery against Trump/The Trump Hotel can proceed. The Court rejects Trump’s requests to dismiss the emoluments claim by DC and MD and rejects the request to certify an interlocutory appeal.
addressing discovery directly they state that obtaining Trump’s business records “implicates no Executive power” & records of spending at a private restaurant & hotel doesn’t threaten Executive Branch prerogative. Time to get those business records @AGKarlRacine and @BrianFrosh
Trump still denies the findings from his own country, rejects his own administration’s intelligence, and ignores the conclusions drawn by his own party.
Last summer, Donald Trump launched an illegal extortion scheme, hoping to leverage military support for a vulnerable ally in exchange for political assistance. The American president, of course, got caught and was impeached for his misconduct.
[…] one of the core motivations behind Trump’s scheme was the idea that Ukraine, and not Russia, was responsible for the attack on the U.S. elections in 2016. In fact, looking at the official call summary of Trump’s infamous July 25 phone meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it’s clear that the Republican pressed his counterpart in Kyiv to pursue a crackpot conspiracy theory intended to exonerate Russia.
[…] this was the line [Trump] peddled to Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired this morning: “Now it’s all come out that actually [Russia] wanted Hillary Clinton — you saw that, it came out yesterday — they wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Nobody’s been tougher — you can speak to Putin or anybody else — nobody has been tougher on Russian than I have. They wanted Hillary Clinton to win.”
OMFG.
[…] For now, let’s put aside the painfully obvious fact that Russia wouldn’t have stolen Democratic emails, and then strategically weaponized them for maximum political effect, if the Kremlin was eager to boost the Democratic ticket.
Let’s instead consider the president’s broader resistance to reality. For more than three years, Trump has denied the findings from his own country, rejected his own administration’s intelligence, and ignored the conclusions drawn by his own party.
In fact, it was just a few weeks ago when the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that backed the January 2017 assessment of the U.S. intelligence community: Russia targeted the 2016 presidential election in order to help Trump. The intelligence assessment, according to GOP and Democratic senators, was accurate, thorough, and untainted by political bias.
As for what “came out yesterday,” Jon Chait explained, “Last night, Fox News reporter Ed Henry excitedly reported to Tucker Carlson that [acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell] has produced documents questioning the conclusion Russia opposed Clinton at all.”
Of course, the last time Trump turned to a loyalist to produce intelligence that told the White House what it wanted to hear about this scandal, it led to the so-called “Nunes memo,” which backfired spectacularly. With this in mind, the idea that Grenell could cherry-pick some intelligence that overturns everything we know about the controversy is silly.
A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.
The department’s motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau’s 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”
That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.
The department’s decision to exclude mention of Mr. Priestap’s interview in the motion could trouble Judge Sullivan, who signaled late on Tuesday that he was skeptical of the department’s arguments.
Mr. Priestap and the Justice Department declined to comment. Mr. Priestap told investigators that he did not remember the circumstances surrounding the notes that he took, and that he was giving them his interpretation of the notes as he read them now, according to a person familiar with his interview.
Former prosecutors and defense lawyers called the department’s position hypocritical and troubling. “If it is accurate that the F.B.I. official provided context around those notes, which is materially different from what they suggest, this could be a game changer in terms of how the court views the motivations behind the request to dismiss the case,” said Edward Y. Kim, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
The department’s decision to drop the Flynn case was a stunning reversal, widely regarded as part of an effort by Mr. Barr to undermine the Russia investigation. The prosecutor who led the case, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew from it, and only the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Timothy Shea, a longtime adviser to Mr. Barr, signed the motion.
Both Mr. Van Grack and Jocelyn Ballantine, another prosecutor on the case, were upset with Mr. Barr’s decision to drop the charge and his overall handling of the Flynn review, according to people familiar with their thinking….
Are Trump and William Barr going after Senator Burr as retaliation for the “Russia interfered” report that came from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee?
[…] As of yet, Burr’s colleague—who also sold off millions in stocks—Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia hasn’t had her phone seized, raising some political questions about this focus on Burr from Trump’s Department of Justice.
It definitely appears that there was insider trading going on here. What’s questionable about this is the very public and forceful move by the Justice Department. As former DOJ official Matthew Miller tweeted: “Holy moly. Showing up at the home of a U.S. Senator and executing a warrant is not business as usual and not a step the FBI would take lightly.” The fact that thus far Loeffler, a loud and proud Trump toady, appears not to be getting the same level of scrutiny raises questions.
[…] Burr’s brother-in-law had sold off a significant number of shares at the same time Burr did. All in all, Burr and his wife sold 33 stocks valued at between $628,033 and $1.72 million. Some of those shares were in the hotel, restaurant, and shipping industries—among the sectors hit the hardest in this pandemic.
The timing of this escalation against Burr raises questions what with the current all-out attack on the Russia investigation, attempting to discredit it, restore Michael Flynn, and implicate Joe Biden in … something. Burr and his SSCI have spent that last three years investigating Russia’s election interference in 2016, with four reports released thus far and another in the works.
In fact, Burr’s committee released a report just last month, which concluded that the intelligence community’s original January 2017 assessment of Russian interference was “sound” and was reached both without political bias and using “proper analytic standards.” Overall, “the Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions,” Burr said in a statement about their report. That’s not the Trump party line […]
The other thing that Burr was intent upon reinforcing with that report was that Russia is still at it, and that the 2020 election is also in jeopardy. “With the 2020 presidential election approaching, it’s more important than ever that we remain vigilant against the threat of interference from hostile foreign actors,” Burr said in a statement released with the report.
That makes Burr really inconvenient right now to Trump and Attorney General William Barr, the guy who oversees the FBI. Barr made headlines last week when his DOJ dropped the government’s case against Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying about his Russia ties. Barr’s weaponization of the DOJ knows no bounds, certainly not the rule of law, and it sure seems that he has no qualms including a prominent Republican committee chairman.
Seriously, is this attorney general in this administration really going to after someone for insider trading? Really?
[…] “I’ll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen,” who runs Prestige Ameritech, the top surgical mask supplier in the country, Bright said, “indicating that our mask supply, our N-95 respirator supply was completely decimated. And he said, ‘We’re in deep shit. The world is.’”
Bright’s whistleblower complaint includes more details about his email conversations with Bowen. According to the complaint, Bowen sounded the alarm about impending mask shortages on January 21 and offered to produce additional N-95 respirators “with government help.”
Two days later, on January 23, Bright suggested at a meeting with HHS officials that the coronavirus might already be in the United States and requested additional funds for his agency to combat the threat posed by the emerging disease, the report alleges. That same day, an HHS spokesperson said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had determined that the coronavirus posed a low threat to the US public.
HHS official Bryan Shuy “later told Dr. Bright that his request for urgent funding at the meeting on January 23[rd] set off ‘quite a shit storm’ after the meeting,” according to the complaint. “Mr. Shuy further relayed to Dr. Bright he had offended HHS leadership by pushing for urgent funding…According to Mr. Shuy, HHS leadership believed that BARDA already had a sizable budget, albeit nothing specifically for COVID-19, and that he should not have asked for additional resources to address the virus.”
In additional emails on January 23, 24, and 25, Bowen continued to warn Bright and Dr. Laura Wolf, another HHS official, of the impending mask shortages. Bright’s efforts to amplify Bowen’s warnings continued to fall on deaf ears, according to Bright’s complaint. […]
From Matthew Yglesias: “Get ready for a second wave of economic pain.”
If Congress doesn’t act, state budget crises and unemployment insurance cuts will hammer the economy.
Just as epidemiologists are concerned that a post-reopening “second wave” of Covid-19 cases could further batter America’s health care system, many economists warn that the current wave of nutritional insecurity and overwhelmed food banks could be just the beginning of the economic crisis and will get worse starting in August if Congress doesn’t act now.
For all of Congress’s flaws, the existing economic recovery programs they’ve passed recently — especially the bonus unemployment insurance provisions of the CARES Act — have done a pretty good job of sheltering many of the most vulnerable people from the most severe forms of economic pain. But those provisions expire at the end of July, and unless the labor market is completely fixed by then, which seems unlikely, a huge hit to America’s spending power seems probable in later summer. At the same time, a separate program, the Paycheck Protection Program seems unlikely to prevent a serious number of small-business failures.
[…] The federal government has ample fiscal resources to keep spending levels from collapsing; it’s just a question of whether they’ll use them. […]
It’s common for recessions to fall harder on less educated workers […]
One way to characterize this, as BuzzFeed’s Venessa Wong did in her story on the uneven impact of the recession, is as a case of the worst-off workers being hardest hit by the downturn.
Democrats in Congress actually passed a decent unemployment insurance plan for these workers under the CARES Act. The law expanded the set of workers who are eligible for unemployment insurance benefits and increased benefit levels by $600 per week. […]
workers in the bottom half of the income distribution are generally better-off collecting UI benefits than they are working.
Many conservatives and business owners are angry about this, but President Trump signed it into law, and it means that through the end of July, working-class Americans are in practice in okay shape if they get laid off. The biggest problem for unemployed working-class people has been that state UI systems were unprepared to cope with such a large surge in claims and many people were unable to sign up for benefits in a timely manner. But those problems are abating over time.
[…] When people’s incomes are stabilized, they pay their bills on time (note that despite a lot of hype about rent strikes, landlords did not report a major spike in non-payment in May) and keep buying things. Since most workers who’ve been laid off are at the low end of the income spectrum and thus eligible for generous unemployment insurance benefits, the country has mostly avoided secondary shocks that would further exacerbate economic problems.
So far.
The problem is twofold. Even if the great reopening goes very well, at least some sectors of the economy — business travel, conferences, conventions, and leisure actives like movie theaters and concerts — are going to remain significantly depressed for a while. Workers who don’t get rehired by August 1 are set to see their bonus UI vanish and will need to start significantly curtailing their spending.
Meanwhile, lost revenue to state and local governments is already baked into the cake by the economic downturn the US has experienced.
Michael Leachman, the vice president for state fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says “state budget shortfalls from COVID-19’s economic fallout could total $650 billion over three years.” […]
the federal government’s borrowing costs are currently very low and there’s little reason we have to accept the inevitability of a late-summer spending crash.
State and local governments could easily be given an influx of cash — structured as unrestricted financial assistance, as Medicaid matching funds, as an “infrastructure package” that puts money into grant programs, or whatever else — to prevent a big wave of austerity. The bonus unemployment insurance could be extended beyond July or, at a minimum, structured to taper off rather than forming a huge cliff.
And small businesses could be given much more generous treatment in the form of big ultra-low-interest loans capped by some function of 2019 revenue rather than the complicated structure of the existing Paycheck Protection Program.
Measures along these lines wouldn’t guarantee a robust recovery — to get that, the US needs to get the virus under control — but they would at least ensure that the economy is limited by the virus rather than by mere lack of money.
A vaccine for coronavirus must be available to all countries, the EU has insisted, after the British chief executive of French drugs company Sanofi said it was reserving the first shipments of its vaccine for the US. “The vaccine against Covid-19 should be a global public good and its access needs to be equitable and universal,” said the European commission spokesman, Stefan de Keersmaecker.
Trump seems to be ordering Sen. Lindsey Graham to put Obama through a kind of show trial.
For the past few days, […] Trump has been talking nonstop about something he has termed “OBAMAGATE” — a largely incoherent conspiracy theory that positions former President Obama as the mastermind behind a conspiracy to use federal law enforcement to undermine Trump’s campaign and presidency.
Wait. Using federal law enforcement to go after one’s enemies is what Trump does. Projection much?
It is, in effect, the new birtherism: an unfounded campaign against the legitimacy of America’s first black president that Trump is trying to exploit to rally the political faithful.
This morning, Trump seriously escalated his campaign against Obama, tweeting at one of his most reliable supporters in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to force Obama to testify before Congress about this allegedly dastardly plot.
The specific wording of the tweet — “Do it… just do it” — is striking; the request sounds like a childish dare, as if Trump were daring Graham to shave his head during a late-night Zoom call. But the absurdity of the language shouldn’t distract from the nefariousness of the request.
If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama. He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!
The president of the United States is labeling a fringe right-wing conspiracy theory “the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR.” He’s also more or less ordering a particularly compliant senator — who happens to chair the Judiciary Committee — to use the powers of the Senate to treat one of his predecessors as a potential criminal suspect or witness on the basis of this conspiracy theory. […]
From Wonkette: “GOP Demands To Know Who Listened In As All Our Foreign Adversaries Secretly Chatted Up Michael Flynn”
UNMASKING? Really, they’re going to go with this one? Because the fact that disgraced former national security advisor Flynn got picked up on multiple Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretaps is hardly a great defense of the guy the Justice Department insists is innocent as a newborn lamb.
Oh, fucking fine. If we have to … here’s the deal on this stupid unmasking thing.
Yesterday, Ric Grenell, the unqualified hack stuck in as Director of National Intelligence to force the Senate to confirm the marginally less unqualified Rep. John Ratcliffe, declassified a list of people who supposedly “unmasked” Michael Flynn. Then he sent it on to Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson at the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees, who gleefully rubbed their hands together at the prospect of being able to throw more dust in the air to obscure the entirely legitimate origins of the Russia investigation.
[…] “This campaign to sabotage this administration — it is outrageous what these officials from the Obama administration did to the incoming administration,” Johnson told Politico. “There are so many questions that need to be answered.”
What they actually “did” Johnson is less clear on. Because the answer is absolutely NOTHING.
Someone got picked up on a wiretap talking to a foreign actor who was under surveillance by the NSA, and White House officials, who had every right to ask, followed appropriate channels to find out who that someone was. If Michael Flynn didn’t want to find himself in the middle of an NSA surveillance operation, he didn’t have to have those conversations. But more to the point, the White House couldn’t have been targeting Flynn, because when they made the identification requests, THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHO THE “SOMEONE” WAS.
That’s a distinction the Wall Street Journal’s batshit editorial page writers are working overtime to obscure.
GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama Administration officials who in their waning days in power “unmasked” the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who was set to become President Trump’s National Security Adviser. It seems everyone but the night janitor wanted to know who Mr. Flynn was talking to.
Here on Planet Earth, no one was trying to figure out “who Mr. Flynn was talking to.” They were trying to figure out who the foreign actors under NSA surveillance were talking to, and lo and behold, it turned out to be Michael Flynn!
[…] As Marcy Wheeler points out, the vast majority of the unmasking requests precede Flynn’s December 29 and 31 calls to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, so they have nothing to do with whatever nonsense the GOP is spinning up about the entire Russia investigation being an OBAMAGATE plot to get Donald Trump by …. forcing Michael Flynn to lie to the FBI? […]
Wheeler also points out that the masked communications likely contain information on Emirati Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (aka MBZ), who snuck into the country without officially notifying the Obama administration in December 2016 to meet with Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner. Once again, this wasn’t an effort to stalk Flynn — it was an entirely legal and appropriate attempt by our intelligence agencies to work out what a foreign official was doing in the United States and who he was meeting with.
As for the phone calls with the Russian ambassador where Flynn promised to undo the sanctions just imposed by Obama in retaliation for electoral interference, only eight of the unmasking requests came after that call. And while Johnson has promised to haul Joe Biden before the committee to explain what nefarious reason he had for trying to figure out who the hell was making secret promises to our Russian adversaries, Biden’s unmasking request came on January 12. At that point, David Ignatius had already printed the details of the call in the Washington Post, so clearly Biden wasn’t the “leaker.”
[…] Rand Paul can shout inanities about an eavesdropping operation “led by Vice President Biden, if not the president,” but the reality is that the very people who had a right to know used normal methods to determine the identity of the American promising to give Putin exactly what he wanted. Then Obama pulled Donald Trump aside and told him he should really, really not keep Flynn around because that guy was bad news. Which isn’t entirely consistent with some kind of plot to frame Donald Trump through Mike Flynn, but the GOP spin machine will make it work somehow.
And in case you were wondering if unmasking is some kind of weird, extra-legal maneuver, only employed by Democratic outlaws … NOPE.
According to the DNI, NSA received these amounts of SIGINT “unmasking” requests per year:
2016: 9200
2017: 9500
2018: 17000
2019: 10000
Something very odd was happening in 2018. Remind me who was in the White House then…
This is a bog standard procedure used thousands of times a year by every single administration. But if the Trumplanders want to pull on this thread and show us exactly which foreign adversary was spending so much time talking to Michael Flynn during the transition period when he was receiving classified intelligence briefings, they can have at it!
[…] 1. ‘Lives were lost’ because of ‘inaction,’ unheeded warnings […]
“Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost,” Bright said. “And not only that: We were forced to procure these supplies from other countries without the right quality standards. So even our doctors and nurses in the hospitals today are wearing N95-marked masks from other countries that are not providing the sufficient protection that a U.S.-standard N95 mask would provide them. Some of those masks are only 30 percent effective. Therefore, nurses are rushing in the hospitals thinking they’re protected, and they’re not.”
2. Administration pushed vastly expanded use of unproven drugs […]
3. Pessimism about 12- to 18-month timeline for vaccine […]
Trump even said, “I think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of the year.”
hat’s even more optimistic than the 12- to 18-month timeline that medical experts such as Anthony S. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said is realistic for the vaccine. But Bright said that even a year to year-and-a-half timeline might also be overly optimistic.
“I still think 12 to 18 months is an aggressive schedule, and I think it’s going to take longer than that to do so,” Bright said.
[As SC already noted up-thread] 4. We don’t have ‘a single point of leadership’ or ‘master plan
5. Azar, Republicans cast Bright as a malcontent skipping work […]
“While we’re launching Operation Warp Speed,” Azar said, “he’s not showing up for work to be part of that.”
Bright said that he has been on leave while dealing with “very high blood pressure” — owing in part to the stress from recent events.
“I had a conversation with my physician about my hypertension and how we’ve been managing it over the last three weeks because this has been very stressful to be removed suddenly without explanation from my role and position as a life change for me,” Bright said.
Bright said he would make records related to his medical condition available.
David Corn: “So it turns out that the Trump cult’s release of the unmasking requests related to Flynn suggest that Flynn was engaged in OTHER suspicious activity beyond what’s publicly known. Good work, guys.”
CNN is reporting that Jennifer Santos, in charge of implementing the Defense Production Act, has been removed from her position at the demand of the WH and with no explanation given. She’s being transferred to another position in the Navy. Her boss wasn’t aware this was planned.
“NEW: LANCET study reveals 30-fold increase of Kawasaki-like disease in Italian province over past month. Strongest evidence yet linking pediatric inflammatory syndrome to #coronavirus. Authors predict outbreak of Kawasaki-like disease in other countries:…”
More on the scandal of the outsourced PPE stockpile. It was stored for some time in a smoke-damaged warehouse where asbestos dust had been found. Of course, we are assured blah blah blah… And the army had to be called in to actually distribute the stuff when it was needed, despite the firm’s contract making clear it could be required to send anything it held anywhere in the UK at any time.
As the Government navigates towards recovery, it must ensure it learns the right lessons from this crisis and acts now to ensure that governmental structures are fit to cope with a future epidemic, including the prospect of an outbreak of a second epidemic -for example, a pandemic flu –while the Government is still responding to COVID-19.
This will require a rapid re-engineering of government’s structures and institutions to deal with this historic emergency and also build new long-term foundations for the UK, and to help the rest of the world.
The crisis has shown many parts of Government at its best; for example the NHS has demonstrated great creativity and energy in rapidly transforming its data, analytics and procurement processes. There is now an opportunity to spread these innovations across government.
Before the virus struck, the Government’s Budget set out plans to invest in infrastructure, including significant investments in science, technology and skills. Previous generations built infrastructure on which the public now depend. Now it is the Government’s responsibility to build the public health and governmental infrastructure -across the entirety of the United Kingdom -that will protect the country for decades to come.
Never let a good crisis go to waste! The impudence of claiming the credit for the performance of the NHS (and the courage and dedication of its frontline staff) for the government (it is not, in any sense, part of the government) is the most immediately outrageous part of this. But the text indicates that Dominic Cummings intends to use the crisis to advance his vendetta with and politicisation of the civil service, and the words “across the entirety of the United Kingdom”, which look oddly unnecessary, suggest an assault on the powers of the devolved administrations, which currently have much of the responsibility for public health.
“I don’t think now’s the time for me to do that,” Graham told Politico. “I don’t know if that’s even possible. I have grave concerns about the role of executive privilege and all kinds of issues.”
“I understand President Trump’s frustration, but be careful what you wish for. Just be careful what you wish for,” the senator warned.
Graham noted that forcing the former president to testify would be unprecedented and emphasized again that “presidentially, I’d be careful what I wish for.”
After all, Democrats have been pursuing multiple threads of Trump’s alleged wrongdoing for years, such as using his office to boost profits at his real estate properties and his refusal to hand over his tax returns. Thus setting a precedent of having former presidents testify would clearly backfire on Trump.
Graham had already distanced himself from Trump’s bogus “Obamagate” conspiracy theory on Monday.
“I’m not anticipating calling President Obama,” he said during a separate interview with Politico.
I have no doubt Obama would handle it with erudite aplomb.
Then let’s call Trump and see how he holds up under questioning from Kamala Harris.
———————-
“So, Mr. Obama, for the record would you recount your experience with and knowledge of Mr. Flynn, including your advice to Mr. Trump about him.”
——————
Trump simply is stupider than anybody can possibly imagine and believes his own fantasy and all the spin-off conspiracy theories on the internet about Obama.
—————–
Trump is too stupid to realize Lindsay is still trying to help him. Graham knows Obama would destroy Trump and do it with class and style.
——————
Yep. Trumpie haz a sad because Obama criticized the Flynn decision.
Trump seems to be ignoring the fact that Obama is just one of the people who’s criticizing it. Doesn’t look good for Trump or Barr right now.
A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with one of the master quotes of the Trump era.
President Trump, the official said, is not playing “the sort of three-dimensional chess people ascribe to decisions like this. More often than not he’s just eating the pieces.”
Over Mother’s Day and then through Monday […] Trump has fired off hundreds of rounds of weapons-grade lunacy on Twitter. When Trump does this kind of thing, many are ready with an explanation: He’s rallying his base; he’s distracting his critics; he’s challenging the existence of reality itself.
But these explanations miss the point. Trump horribly and uniquely bungled the coronavirus crisis. The human result is mass death and Great Depression–scale unemployment. […] The governors who have clashed with Trump have seen their poll numbers rise; […] Governors who support Trump, like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Georgia’s Brian Kemp, have seen their numbers tumble. [snipped poll results]
Trump’s psychology is defined by his terror of rejection. The most stinging insult in his vast vocabulary of disdain is loser. And yet every poll, every powerful Biden TV ad, forces Trump to contemplate that he is headed toward a historic humiliation. He’ll stand with Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover, the incumbents rejected because they failed to manage economic crises.
Trump failed to prevent the crisis. Out of envy and spite, he dismantled the pandemic-warning apparatus his predecessors had bequeathed him.
Trump failed to manage the crisis. At every turn, he gave priority to the short-term management of the stock market instead.
Trump failed to message the crisis. He not only lacks empathy; he despises empathy.
Angry, scared, and aggrieved by the lack of praise for his efforts, Trump turns for safety to television, where his two-dimensional friends explain how everything is everybody else’s fault. They tell him that he is right and all his critics are wrong. They promise that miracle drugs will—poof!—make all his troubles vanish without effort. […]
But those stories have drawn Trump into a twisting ghetto of craziness that is impenetrable to outsiders.
The “Obamagate” that Trump tweets about—like the comic-book universes on which it seems to be modeled—is a tangle of backstories. The main characters do things for reasons that make no objective sense […]
Biden’s proliferating internet ads hit two themes over and over: the pandemic and jobs, jobs and the pandemic. Those themes are easy to understand. They carry the power of truth. Above all, they are about the viewer: You are sick or scared, you have lost your job or your business—all because Trump failed to do his job.
Trump’s messages, by contrast, are all about him. You are sick or scared, you have lost your job or your business—but let’s remember who the real victim is. Me. Me and Michael Flynn. But mostly me.
The more Trump talks about his crackpot theories, the more he reveals why he plunged the country into such a catastrophe. […] He ignored unwelcome realities, because only fantasy flattered his ego as it required to be flattered. […]
the most important thing to notice about the Trump-Fox blizzard of mania is how remote it is from anything that real-world voters care about. In 2015, Trump apprehended that most Republicans were talking about things that Republican voters did not then care about: deficits, taxes, productivity, and trade. In 2015, Trump apprehended that nobody was talking about things that Republican voters did care about: immigration, drugs, the declining status of less educated white men. […]
That Trump is gone. Today’s Trump has lost the plot. He’s talking about things most voters could not even understand, let alone care about. Yes, Flynn lied to the FBI. But you have to see, the FBI’s interview was not properly predicated …
Meanwhile, the country is on track to lose more people to the coronavirus than the Union lost in battle in the Civil War. Meanwhile, 33 million Americans have filed unemployment claims. […]
Trump is all about Trump. That’s always been true. For three years, though, Trump was protected from himself by the prosperity he inherited from others. Trump has squandered that prosperity, as he previously squandered the fortune bequeathed by his father. The consequences are here. The fairy tales Trump tells on Twitter will not conceal those consequences from the voters Trump needs.
They weren’t listening before. Now they are. And what they hear is not: Obama was mean to me. What they hear is: I cannot do this job.
FYI. tonight Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s Last Word, is having Joe Biden on as his guest, and they will be later joined by Stacey Abrams. Inquiring minds want to know…
[…] When I went to college, we used to joke during exam period that you were really in trouble when you started to lie to yourself and believe it. [Trump] and at least some of his most fervent supporters appear now to be in the lying-to-yourself-and-believing-it stage of the pandemic. Truth has become so inconvenient that it’s better left aside for some alternate, less inconvenient reality. […] there is a widening and very likely unsustainable gulf between Trumpian truth and what is actually happening.
That’s because the numbers are the numbers and, for Trump and for America, they look terrible. On Wednesday, there were some twenty-six hundred deaths in the United States from covid-19, and, on Thursday, there were even more: around twenty-seven hundred. Leaked predictions from government scientists show an increase, by June 1st, to three thousand deaths, on average, every twenty-four hours. […] that amounts to essentially a 9/11’s worth of victims per day. […] charts demonstrate clearly that the national curve has not flattened, with sharp declines registered only in New York and New Jersey—which have already gone through the country’s worst ordeal—and a handful of other states. More than half the states have at least partially lifted strict stay-at-home orders, although none of the states that announced reopenings—not one—met the criteria established by the Trump Administration for doing so. […] Testing capability is nowhere near the millions of additional tests needed to resume regular daily life, according to experts, nor is there widespread capacity to conduct contact tracing, another prerequisite.
Yet many states are reopening anyway, and Trump is not, at least for now, even bothering to hide the fact that more Americans may die as a result of these decisions. […]
In the past, when Trump has got too far away from what is actually happening and into his personal hall of mirrors, the press of events has forced him to abandon his position. He is adept enough at self-survival to make wild course corrections where necessary. This is a man, after all, who said in late February that coronavirus cases would soon be down to zero and, just two weeks later, declared a national emergency and vowed to wage war on the deadly “invisible enemy.” I’ve seen many possible explanations for Trump’s bizarre, reality-defying behavior in recent days. He’s bored. He’s clueless. He’s panicking about his reëlection. He doesn’t care about anything other than the stock market. He’d rather talk about his border wall or vanquishing the “deep state.” All of them might be correct. It’s also possible that Trump really is the greatest of all time at something: believing his own hype. […] Either Trump is the most brazen politician in the long line of brazen American politicians or he somehow had been brainwashed by his own B.S.
Still, Trump appears to me to be increasingly terrified at the very real prospect of losing in November […] Overnight Monday and again on Tuesday, he let loose about an ad being run against him by a group of Never Trump Republicans called the Lincoln Project. […] This did not exactly seem like a confident performance by the most powerful man on the planet. It seemed like the scared rant of someone who knows that, eventually, he might finally be called on his most bullshit of performances.
Even Corey Lewandowski—Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and as blustery a loyalist to the President as exists—is now publicly acknowledging that Trump has set an extraordinarily risky political course in declaring victory over a still-raging pandemic. “It’s a huge gamble,” Lewandowski said in an interview, […] “If there is a resurgence . . . not just in the next four weeks or six weeks, but as the weather turns again, if, come the fall in September, in October, we see an uptick again in the covid-19 pandemic coming back because we didn’t handle it right the first time—we still don’t have testing and we don’t have a solution—that is devastating as an incumbent President of the United States.”
More than three decades ago, in his as-told-to memoir, “The Art of the Deal,” Trump bragged about the sheer, addictive effectiveness of lying—he called it “hyperbole”—in service of his goals. Yet he also acknowledged, “[…] But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.” On November 3rd, we’ll find out if they did. For now, the scary prospect is sure to keep Trump up for many more nights to come, hate-tweeting in the dark.
“Trump: ‘When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases’.”
I think it was Rachel Maddow who was saying a few days ago that she feared this was something he actually believed. He suggested that testing might be “overrated.”
I’m behind in the thread here, working too hard to follow the news much, but… Obamagate??!?
Is Trump’s actual position that he, as president, has absolute authority to do what he wants, and absolute immunity from prosecution and even investigation, but also that Obama should be in jail for the things he did as president?
How can any brain hold two such completely contradictory positions at once. I get a headache just thinking about it.
Former presidents going to jail for stuff they did in office is such a bad stupid idea for a criminal president to champion.
“For the second week in a row, Kentucky leads all other states in the number of unemployment claims filed since March 1 as a percentage of February’s labor force.
It’s at 35.9 percent—twenty percentage points higher than the U.S. overall.”
This exactly: “The less bad numbers we’ve been seeing this week are the product of our behavior 2-5 weeks ago, i.e., in April. In June, we’ll find out the consequences of what we’re doing now.”
…American leadership in any disaster, whether a tsunami or an Ebola outbreak, has been a truism for decades. The US is renowned for helping others in an emergency.
…History will mark Covid-19 as the first time that ceased to be true. US airlifts have been missing in action. America cannot even supply itself.
South Korea, which has a population density nearly 15 times greater and is next door to China, has lost a total of 259 lives to the disease. There have been days when America has lost 10 times that number. The US death toll is now approaching 90,000.
What has gone wrong? I interviewed dozens of people, including outsiders who Trump consults regularly, former senior advisers, World Health Organization officials, leading scientists and diplomats, and figures inside the White House. Some spoke off the record.
Again and again, the story that emerged is of a president who ignored increasingly urgent intelligence warnings from January, dismisses anyone who claims to know more than him and trusts no one outside a tiny coterie, led by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner – the property developer who Trump has empowered to sideline the best-funded disaster response bureaucracy in the world.
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The psychology behind Trump’s inaction on Covid-19 was on display that afternoon at the CDC. The unemployment number had come out that morning. The US had added 273,000 jobs in February, bringing the jobless rate down to a near record low of 3.5 per cent. Trump’s re-election chances were looking 50:50 or better. The previous Saturday, Joe Biden had won the South Carolina primary. But the Democratic contest still seemed to have miles to go. Nothing could be allowed to frighten the Dow Jones.
Any signal that the US was bracing for a pandemic – including taking actual steps to prepare for it – was discouraged.
“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it,” says a Trump confidant who speaks to the president frequently. “That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.”
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At some point, Congress is likely to establish a body like the 9/11 Commission to investigate Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.
…
The CDC has been plagued by mishap and error throughout the crisis….
Here again, though, Trump’s stamp is clear. It was Trump who chose Robert Redfield to head the CDC in spite of widespread warnings about the former military officer’s controversial record. Redfield led the Pentagon’s response to HIV-Aids in the 1980s. It involved isolating suspected soldiers in so-called HIV Hotels. Many who tested positive were dishonourably discharged. Some committed suicide.
A devout catholic, Redfield saw Aids as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.
“Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time,” says Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who has reported on epidemics. “He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”
…
By March 11, just five days after Trump’s CDC visit, the reality was beginning to seep through. In an Oval Office broadcast, Trump banned travel from most of Europe, which expanded the partial ban he put on China in February. Two days later, he declared a national emergency. Even then, however, he insisted America was leading the world. “We’ve done a great job because we acted quickly,” he said. “We acted early.
Over the next 48 hours, however, something snapped in Trump’s mind. Citing a call with one of his sons, Trump said on March 16: “It’s bad. It’s bad… They think August [before the disease peaks]. Could be July. Could be longer than that.”
…The next week, he was saying that America should reopen by Easter on April 12….
Trump’s mindset became increasingly surreal. He began to tout hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. On March 19, at a regular televised briefing, which he conducted daily for five weeks, often rambling for more than two hours, he depicted the antimalarial drug as a potential magic bullet. It could be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine”, he later tweeted.
The president’s leap of faith, which was inspired by Fox News anchors, notably Laura Ingraham, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, none of whom have a medical background, turned Washington’s bureaucracy upside down. Scientists who demurred were punished. In April, Rick Bright, the federal scientist in charge of developing a vaccine – arguably the most urgent role in government – was removed after blocking efforts to promote hydroxychloroquine.
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Other scientists have taken note of Bright’s fate. During the Ebola outbreak in 2014, when Obama’s administration sent 3,000 US military personnel to Africa to fight the epidemic, the CDC held a daily briefing about the state of progress. It has not held one since early March. Scientists across Washington are terrified of saying anything that contradicts Trump.
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An administration official says advising Trump is like “bringing fruits to the volcano” – Trump being the lava source. “You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason,” says the official.
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“I can’t even get my calls returned,” says Garrett. “The CDC has led the response to every disease for decades. Now it has vanished from view.” A former senior Trump official says: “People turn into wusses around Trump. If you stand up to him, you’ll never get back in. What you see in public is what you get in private. He is exactly the same.”
America’s foreign partners have had an equally sharp reminder of Trump’s way of doing business. Few western leaders are as ideologically aligned with Trump as Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister. Early into the epidemic, Morrison created a national cabinet that meets at least once a week. It includes every state premier of the two main parties. Morrison’s unity cabinet projects an air of bipartisan resolve in a country that has lost just under 100 people to coronavirus in three months. Some days, America has lost more people to it every hour.
Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff. Republican states have received considerably more ventilators and personal protective equipment per capita than Democratic states, in spite of having far lower rates of hospitalisation. Trump says America is fighting a war against Covid-19. In practice, he is stoking national disunity. “It’s like saying to the governors that each state has to produce its own tanks and bullets,” says Bernard. “You’re on your own. It’s not my responsibility.”
Trump’s dog-eat-dog instinct has been just as strong abroad as at home. A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”. America declined to participate in a recent summit hosted by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, to collaborate on a vaccine.
Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying….
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“You don’t turn off the hose in the middle of the fire, even if you dislike the fireman,” says Bernhard Schwartländer, chief of staff at the WHO. “This virus threatens every country in the world and will exploit any crack in our resolve.”…
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…“We used to think of America as the world’s leading power, not as the epicentre of disease,” says Fullilove, who is an ardent pro-American. “We increasingly feel caught between a reckless China and a feckless America that no longer seems to care about its allies.”
So where does the American chapter of the plague go from here? Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.
First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.
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In the meantime, Trump will probably continue to dangle the prospect of miracle cures. Every week since the start of the outbreak, he has said a vaccine is just around the corner. His latest estimate is that it will be ready by July. Scientists say it will take a year at best to produce an inoculation. Most say 18 months would be lucky. Even that would break all records. The previous fastest development was four years for mumps in the 1960s.
…
Friends of the president are trying to figure out how to return life to normal without provoking a new death toll….
“Trump is caught in a box which keeps getting smaller,” says George Conway, a Republican lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor. “In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasise and lose any ability to think rationally.” Conway is known for taunting Trump on Twitter (to great effect, it should be added: Trump often retaliates).
Yet without exception, everyone I interviewed, including the most ardent Trump loyalists, made a similar point to Conway. Trump is deaf to advice, said one. He is his own worst enemy, said another. He only listens to family, said a third. He is mentally imbalanced, said a fourth. America, in other words, should brace itself for a turbulent six months ahead – with no assurance of a safe landing.
…The first thing to recognize is that Bolsonaro was and is completely unequipped to respond effectively to a crisis of this magnitude. Having been elected as an anti-establishment candidate, after spending nearly 30 years as a fringe member of the Brazilian Congress, he never prepared himself to run the complex behemoth that is the federal government, in a sprawling nation of 200 million inhabitants with a territory roughly the size of the continental United States. This same anti-establishment rhetoric means he cannot effectively delegate. As such, the best he can hope for is to deflect responsibility as the COVID-19 crisis predictably worsens.
This helps explain his open antagonizing of state governors and local officials — and of his own health minister — who have been pushing for social distancing measures. Even as these measures have weakened — as some recent research shows, also due to Bolsonaro’s own words and actions — his clear goal is to pin the ensuing spike in deaths, as well as the accompanying economic collapse, on the governors themselves.
But just as importantly, the rhetorical move against social distancing also underpins a second strategic dimension: polarization. Bolsonaro, similar to other populist leaders, sits as a figure fundamentally outside of the usual mainstream. This means he cannot thrive politically under “normal” circumstances. Plenty of his support comes first and foremost from a strong rejection of the other side — what has been called “negative partisanship.” So it suits him to feed the flames of division, and to turn everything into a culture war centered around himself.
The appeal to polarization, facilitated by a social media-fueled and partisan news environment, is a key part of the strategy in normal times. In fact, it helps explain why the “pivot to the center” often expected from populists has a habit of not coming to fruition.
The incentive to polarize becomes even stronger, however, during an extreme period such as the one brought about by the pandemic. This may seem paradoxical: after all, it is intuitive to think that a crisis increases voter demand for a safe pair of hands, and there is evidence that this is indeed the case.
But a politician like Bolsonaro cannot possibly offer a calm, uniting response. It is simply not credible for someone who has neither the capabilities nor the personality to suddenly convince voters that he can provide purposeful, effective leadership. This, combined with the rejection of science and expertise that is a standard part of the populist playbook, cuts off what could have been alternative paths available to politicians of a different kind.
It follows that the only option is to double down on the original bet. The populist leader may not convince a majority that he’s the right guy to have in charge, but the strategy has never been about convincing a majority of that. Instead, the playbook is to keep enough people on board, using partisan media and Twitter (and in Brazil’s case, WhatsApp) to project an image of effective leadership — which, given the reality of public health and economic catastrophe, again requires assigning blame to adversaries or foreign entities. Add to this core support enough people who are sufficiently fearful of an alternative, and this can sustain the leader’s viability.
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At the same time, there is reason to think that Bolsonaro’s chances of success in such an endeavor have, if anything, receded. Bluster and aggressive rhetoric can only take you so far, as the trajectories of many populist leaders of the current crop illustrate, but chances are that you cannot fake your way out of a mishandled pandemic and an economic disaster. Bolsonaro may be tempted to up the antidemocratic ante, but we cannot help but think that many of the key players whose support he would need in order to succeed are now less likely to follow his march of folly.
Sarah Cooper never expected to become internet famous during a pandemic, but now she is a viral TikTok celebrity who makes people laugh without saying anything. How? She lets Trump say it all for her: Cooper lip-syncs Trump’s worst comments from press conferences.
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She has had many “you couldn’t write this stuff” moments – in fact, she says some of Trump’s comments are so unbelievable that trying to mock him would be worse than using a direct quote. “I saw people saying they shared [my videos] with Trump supporters and for once there is nothing they can say. The clip is literally, completely unedited – I haven’t edited [the audio] at all – so what can they say to argue with it?” she says.
Still, Cooper says a lot without words. Much of the comedy in her videos lies in the way she punctuates Trump’s remarks – a subtle facial expression that gives away just how clueless he is, or a gesture that reminds you of the broader context around what he is saying.
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Why do the videos resonate so much? “Coming out of my mouth, you realize how much more stupid it is – I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing!” she says. But Cooper thinks there is something else going on here: her videos reassure people that what comes out of the president’s mouth really is as crazy as it sounds.
“I feel like we’ve been gaslighted for years, being told it is totally normal for a president to say things like this. It is a very validating thing to see something remind you that, no, this is actually ridiculous and we can all agree on that,” she says.
Plus, it helps to hear the message without having to hear it from the man himself: “People really hate Trump – a lot. They hate his voice. They hate looking at him. They hate everything about him,” says Cooper. In Cooper’s view, people are watching her videos and collectively commiserating, while also having a laugh at the president’s expense….
Brazil’s health minister has resigned less than a month after being appointed and the morning after the country announced it had passed 200,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and recorded nearly 14,000 deaths. The sudden resignation of Nelson Teich, an oncologist and partner in a medical service consulting outfit, was announced in a curt WhatsApp message from the Health Ministry on Friday morning.
Teich took over after Bolsonaro sacked his popular predecessor, Luiz Mandetta, on April 16 following disagreements over social isolation measures, which Mandetta supported and Bolsonaro opposes. Initially he appeared to follow Bolsonaro’s line, arguing that Brazil’s economy was as important as the lives the pandemic is increasingly claiming here.
But in recent weeks Teich had increasingly disagreed with Bolsonaro on social isolation and the use of chloroquine, which he had described as an “uncertainty”. Bolsonaro said on Thursday he wanted to change protocol regulating its use that Mandetta had introduced.
Teich was publicly embarrassed on Monday when he discovered during a press conference that the president had issued a decree that classified gyms, beauty salons and barbers as essential services. “This was not our attribution, it was the president’s decision,” he said, looking flummoxed.
Brazil reported 844 new deaths in 24 hours on Thursday night, taking the total to 13,993 and it now has 202,918 cases, making it the world’s sixth most impacted country, according to John Hopkins University figures.
Apropos of basically nothing — and not really political, either — today was the first day in eight or so weeks I was not mostly in the lair. The morning was spent stocking up on supplies (I can now probably outlast anything except a nuclear holocaust or the mildly deranged penguin eating all the cheese), and then, due to the great weather and a poor sense of navigation (apparently, I’m out of practice from being in the lair essentially all of the preceding two months), spent a surprising amount of the afternoon wondering around wondering where teh feck a certain shop was. (Finally found it after consulting my mobile and discovered I’d been going in circles amongst all the twisty little streets in the village… duh!) Oh well, sore feet and lots of exercise out in the sun.
And, also for the first time in two months, just had a professionally-prepared dinner, take-away from one of my favourite restaurants. Still working on the nice local vin rouge (hey! this is France!), but the canard went down without any problem. For me, that is, it was quacking quite a lot, albeit I’m not sure about what (the mildly deranged penguin is refusing to translate).
Plus confirmation I’m a Really Cool Individual. I finally got a thermometer today, and it said my temperature is slightly below normal. Within a safe range — nothing to worry about — but a bit cooler than “average”. Of course, the mildly deranged one was nearby, and, well, penguins are not noted for being particularly warm…
Locally, a bit more on the boating problem previously mentioned: Apparently, the regional authorities have said something like a boat cannot leave port, but the maritime authorities have said boating is Ok (albeit the 100km rule applies, i.e., you cannot go more than 100km from port without special authorisation). The local village council is clearly exasperated, and trying to get some agreement / consistency. They’ve also started grooming the beaches — the local Mediterranean beaches are basically artificial and need to be rebuilt after the winter storms — though there is not yet any agreement / rules for opening them.
Trump wants criminal prosecutions of his former presidential rival, his presidential predecessor, and his current presidential rival – among others.
It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago. And I’m talking with 50-year sentences. It is a disgrace what’s happened…. And people should be going to jail for this stuff. And hopefully a lot of people are going to have to pay.
Commentary:
[…] What “stuff”? What “crime”? Why would anyone get “50-year sentences”? Trump has no idea, but he’s certain he sees criminals lurking in every corner.
In the same interview, as part of the same exchange, [Trump] added, “This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.”
Trump has never said what it is he thinks he’s “caught” Barack Obama and Joe Biden doing, but we’re nevertheless left with an awkward dynamic that helps define the president’s approach to politics: Trump doesn’t want to defeat his opponents; he wants to prosecute them.
In 2016, [Trump] spent months demanding that Hillary Clinton be incarcerated over her email protocols. Many of his followers still routinely chant, “Lock her up!” for no particular reason.
Once in the White House, Trump became even more aggressive on this front, with the Washington Post reporting this week, “Since taking office, Trump has casually accused multiple people of treason, ranging from former FBI director James B. Comey to the American media. He has regularly accused people of perjury or mishandling classified information, usually without evidence.”
[…] it’s extraordinary that we have a sitting American president who’s publicly called for criminal prosecutions of his former presidential rival, his presidential predecessor, and his current presidential rival. There’s nothing comparable to such a posture at any point in the American tradition.
But Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden can take some comfort in the fact that they’re hardly alone. Trump has called for criminal investigations into former Secretary of State John Kerry. And House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). And Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). And former FBI Director James Comey.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tore a copy of the president’s recent State of the Union address, Trump didn’t just whine incessantly about her having hurt his feelings, he also falsely insisted Pelosi “broke the law.”
This week, [Trump] even suggested an MSNBC host [Joe Scarborough] might be guilty of murder — which ordinarily might have caused a stir, since American presidents don’t usually throw around homicide allegations casually, but which was largely ignored because many of us have come to understand that this is what life is like during Trump’s time in office.
Given the fact that Trump has faced a criminal investigation, may yet face legal jeopardy if he loses re-election in the fall, and has surrounded himself with a variety of allies who’ve faced felony charges, the irony of his strange accusations appears lost on him.
Trump keeps repeating “the cupboards were bare” line, thinking it makes him look better and Obama look worse. In reality, that’s backwards.
At an event in Pennsylvania yesterday, Donald Trump once again made the case that Barack Obama depleted national stockpiles, leaving the Republican administration without necessary resources needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
“Today we’re announcing a groundbreaking initiative to replenish and modernize our Strategic National Stockpile. The cupboards were bare. You’ve heard me say it a lot. When we came into this administration, those cupboards were bare.”
Oddly enough, part of this was true: “You’ve heard me say it a lot.” Good lord have we heard him repeat this line with nauseating frequency. […]
Part of the problem with the attempt to shift the blame is that the claim isn’t true. […] the Trump administration “dropped the ball on stocking up at the first signs of a pandemic.”
But there’s also a self-defeating angle to this that the president apparently hasn’t thought through. […] even if Trump’s claim were accurate — it’s not, but let’s have the conversation anyway — it raises the question of his negligence.
If you moved into a new place and noticed empty cupboards, you might be justified in complaining about the previous owners. But if you moved into a new place, noticed empty cupboards, and ignored the issue for three years, you’ve effectively forfeited the high ground.
ABC News’ David Muir raised this same point while interviewing Trump last week. “What did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards that you say are bare?” the anchor asked.
“Well, I’ll be honest,” the president replied. “I have a lot of things going on.” […]
As part of the same response, [Trump] pointed to the investigation into the Russia scandal and his impeachment — as if Trump’s scandals left him too distracted to properly govern.
That’s not much of an answer, in part because we know he had plenty of time to focus on his responsibilities, in part because it raises questions about his basic competence, and in part because Trump said largely the opposite last month.
Whether he realizes it or not, every time he repeats “the cupboards were bare” line, Trump makes himself look a little worse.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to “throw a lifeline” to the private schools she’s long championed.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hasn’t made much of an effort to hide her disregard for American public education. On the contrary, DeVos has long been an enthusiastic proponent of school vouchers, which would effectively privatize the nation’s K-12 system […]
[…] Congress has limited DeVos’ ability to funnel public tax dollars into private education. […] however, the conservative Education secretary is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to “throw a lifeline” to the private schools she’s long championed, despite the fact that the law intended to direct those federal funds primarily for public schools and colleges.
Ms. DeVos has used $180 million of those dollars to encourage states to create “microgrants” that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools. And she has nearly depleted the 2.5 percent of higher education funding, about $350 million, set aside for struggling colleges to bolster small colleges — many of them private, religious or on the margins of higher education — regardless of need.
In a statement, the Department of Education disputed the idea that DeVos had done anything wrong […]
Because the CARES Act that passed in March offered cabinet agencies some flexibility, the House Democrats’ new economic aid package, set to pass today, specifically ties DeVos’ hands in this area.
That said, Republicans in the Senate and White House have no intention of even considering this legislation, and even if these provisions were to eventually become law, it wouldn’t help the states already struggling with DeVos’ recent directives.
The records show that taxpayers have now paid for the equivalent of more than four years’ worth of nightly rentals at Trump properties, including 950 nights at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. and 530 nights at the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Let’s talk about former White House doc Ronny Jackson, the one who stood in the White House press briefing room and said with a straight face […] that Donald Trump was a slender and virile man whose genes are as astonishing as a common Jane Fonda’s; that if he were any younger, he probably wouldn’t even be born yet; that his stamina was like oxen, testicles like bull, pleasing is the fragrance of his perfumes, legs like gazelle or young stag, […]
We may be paraphrasing, but slightly.
After that performance, as a treat, Donald Trump decided to let Dr. Ronny be secretary of the VA, but that didn’t work out because something something Drinky McPillpusher.
Well, as you know, he is now an official wingnut, and he is running for Congress in Texas’s 13th, and he does not like you saying Donald Trump’s “Obamagate” conspiracy theory is “stupid” or “totally made up” or “just more evidence of the president’s rapid mental decline.” After all, Dr. Ronny was the one who gave Trump that brain test, and was Trump not able to circle “camel” on the first try? […]
It started with this tweet, where Dr. Ronny accused the Obama administration, for which he also served as the White House doctor for years, of “spy[ing] on President Trump,” and called them “Deep State traitors.” [Screen shot of tweet is available at the link]
The next day, Jackson doubled down with a statement:
Let’s embiggen that. [Full statement is available at the link] Excerpt:
Once again, the “mainstream media” comprised of liberal mouthpieces and producers of FAKE NEWS, has demonstrated why an overwhelming number of Americans continue to distrust the national press. Their malicious and biased attacks on anyone associated with the Trump administration undermines our democratic process by continuing to sew [yep, “sew”] division amongst the citizens of this great country. […]
Blinded by their hatred of OUR President and their desire to defeat him at any cost, Democrats have exposed their complete disregard for the truth. Democrats are now rejecting official government reports from the Acting Director of National Intelligence [hahahahahahahahahaha = Ed] because they think it hurts Joe Biden’s chances of defeating President Trump. […]
I stand by my comments calling out President Obama’s administration for weaponizing our government to spy on President Trump and his supporters. I will never apologize for standing up to protect America’s national security interests and constitutional freedoms, even if that means triggering liberals and the “mainstream media.” As a retired Navy Rear Admiral, to suggest that I don’t have my country’s best interests at heart is patently false and offensive to not only me, but all veterans.
Oh. My. God.
So this is weird!
Former Obama officials […] were actually kinda stunned, since they worked with this guy for years, and even said nice things about Dr. Ronny, while we were all busy making fun of him fawning all over Trump’s sexxx body.
[From Jon Favreau]
Ronny Jackson palled around with us Deep State Traitors for 8 years and did nothing but smile and say kind things about Barack Obama, who made him an Admiral.
He is now as full of shit as they come.
[From Tommy Vietor]
Ronny Jackson was friends with Obama and his entire staff. I never heard him make a partisan statement. So it’s really been sad to watch him debase himself by lying for Trump and promoting this toxic bullshit to win a Congressional primary. Truly shameful.
[…] We see two possibilities here:
Maybe Dr. Ronny Jackson was always secretly a stupid and bad person, and now it’s just all coming out. Could be!
But we’d like to suggest an alternate theory […]. Maybe Dr. Ronny is a pilot fish, like never-Trumper Steve Schmidt said of Lindsey Graham, “a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus.” Dr. Ronny, any way you look at him, is a little bitty fish. Maybe he’s empty inside […] and he latches onto power wherever it is, just like Lindsey Graham does. […]
A partial transcript of the meeting in Brasília offers a glimpse of the paranoia and ideological obsessions of Brazil’s president [sic]
The coronavirus pandemic has halted production of Brazil’s steamy telenovela soap operas — but one small-screen blockbuster is on everyone’s lips.
A two-hour video of a heated and expletive-ridden cabinet meeting chaired by President Jair Bolsonaro last month has become the subject of an extraordinary political arm-wrestle, exposing the intrigues and eccentricities at the centre of Brazilian power.
“This meeting is the perfect portrait of the Bolsonaro administration,” said Bruno Boghossian, a columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in Brazil’s political capital, Brasília.
“Conspiracy theories, ideological issues, made-up battles, and culture wars — all right there at the heart of government.”
[…]
A partial transcript — produced by the attorney general’s office on Thursday — and a succession of excruciating leaks offer a tantalising glimpse of the world of paranoia, radicalism and curse words around the leader of the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
I’m not going to wait for {the federal police} to fuck my family and friends just for shits and giggles, Bolsonaro fumes at one point, according to the official account, apparently in reference to police inquiries involving his politician sons.
Elsewhere Bolsonaro allegedly brands São Paulo’s governor a shit, calls Rio’s governor manure and seems to recognize the chaos engulfing his government, as it faces economic meltdown and a public health crisis that has claimed more than 14,000 Brazilian lives.
[…]
Bolsonaro is not the only person compromised by the footage.
Reports suggest his intelligence chief, Gen Augusto Heleno, lambasted the Communist party leaders of Brazil’s most important trade partner, China, during the encounter.
The foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, also reportedly attacked Beijing, accusing it of responsibility for the spread of what he calls the communavirus. […]
On Wednesday Heleno tweeted that releasing footage containing confidential and even secret matters was an unpatriotic act, almost an attack on national security.
[… more examples of teh eejits blattering…]
The outbursts — coupled with Bolsonaro’s potentially incriminating remarks about wanting to change the head of Brazil’s federal police — explain the legal battle currently raging to prevent the video seeing the light of day.
[…]
One supreme court justice was this week reported to have branded the meeting the “reunião de insanos” — an assembly of the insane.
“It’s a pretty apt description,” Boghossian said.
The taped meeting sounds rather like a typical fox news report that mentions President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Clinton, the EU, the UN, the WHO, scientists, Muslims, Latinos, Africa, the Moon, Venus, reality, or anything in the Universe.
Team Trump claims it’s replaced Obama’s “flimsy” pandemic playbook with a “robust” alternative. It’s like a Veep script gone awry.
[…] White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany shared some thoughts with reporters about the 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics.
“The Obama-Biden plan that has been referenced was insufficient; it wasn’t going to work. So what our administration did, under the leadership of President Trump, is do an entire 2018 Pandemic Preparedness Report. Beyond that, we did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in August of last year and had an entire after-action report put together. In other words, the Obama-Biden paper packet was superseded by a President Trump-style Pandemic Preparedness Response plan.”
Donald Trump quickly added that the new “Pandemic Preparedness Response plan” is “much better” and “a lot tougher” than the Obama-era plan.
Today, from the White House press briefing room, McEnany went considerably further, holding up the “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents” from 2016, and dismissing the 69-page document as “a thin packet of paper.”
She then held up a couple of binders, holding what she described as “detailed, robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration.”
The whole thing feels a bit like a Veep script gone horribly awry, but let’s go ahead and kick around some of the obvious follow-up questions:
* How many pieces of paper are there in those two binders? If the total is under 69 pages, can we dismiss them as “thin packets”?
* If the Trump administration’s Pandemic Preparedness Response plan is real, why are we just hearing about it now, more than two months into the crisis? As a Washington Post analysis added today, “No one has ever heard of this extraordinary pandemic response plan.”
* Can the White House release the contents of its plan, so that we can do a side-by-side comparison between Trump’s “robust” blueprint, and Obama’s “flimsy” plan?
* If Trump’s plan is real, why can’t McEnany talk about its contents?
* If Trump had such an impressive and comprehensive plan, why didn’t he follow it?
Czech Americansays
@Lynna #397
I think the most likely possibility is that “Dr. Ronny” was corrupted by Trump. That’s what he does. He gets people to lie or commit crimes for him, and then they belong to him.
This doesn’t mean he was necessarily an outstanding person to begin with, but that is what Trump does, make everything and everyone worse.
Excerpts from Daniel Dale’s coverage of remarks Trump made today.:
Asked if he’s concerned about students or teachers bringing the virus home to their families, Trump says, “I’m concerned about everything. And I’m also concerned about our country. Our country has to get back.”
Trump says people need to understand that lots of people get mild symptoms. “That’s why I think the schools should be back in the fall.” He adds that teachers and professors who are senior citizens or have conditions shouldn’t work immediately, though.
Trump emphasizes that many people get infected and don’t die: “Very few people are – we reed about all of the very sad, very tragic, I’ve lost friends… we read about that and we see that and that’s what the news covers – but it’s a very small percentage…very, very small…”
Trump says of Voice of America, whose news coverage he disagrees with: “They’re not the voice of America. They’re the opposite of the voice of America.”
Trump says no concerns about the Abbott rapid test despite concerns acknowledged by the FDA about its accuracy. He says it’s a great test and can always be double checked.
Asked what he meant by “vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” Trump explains that with a vaccine, we’ll be “a big step ahead,” and without a vaccine, “it’ll go away at some point, it’ll go away,” and there may be “fires” but “we’ll put it out.”
Trump claimed Wednesday that the protesters weren’t even protesters, just Trump supporters. (They’re protesters protesting low freight rates and broker issues.) Today, he claimed they’re protesting in favor of him.
As protesting truckers continue to blast horns in the background, Trump says, “They’re protesting *in favor* of president Trump, as opposed to against…that’s the sign of love.” It’s not a pro-Trump (or anti-Trump) protest. They want a meeting with Trump on their complaints.
Trump: “I never had the flu. And I come to the White House, ‘Sir, we have to give you a flu shot.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And I took it. I don’t know if I should have. Who knows?”
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions…
Ms. DeVos has used $180 million of those dollars to encourage states to create “microgrants” that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.
And she has nearly depleted the 2.5 percent of higher education funding, about $350 million, set aside for struggling colleges to bolster small colleges — many of them private, religious or on the margins of higher education — regardless of need.
On the Senate floor this week, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, accused Ms. DeVos of “exploiting congressional relief efforts.” He said she had been “using a portion of that funding not to help states or localities cope with the crisis, but to augment her push for voucherlike programs, a prior initiative that has nothing to do with Covid-19.”
[…]
… Congress has largely rejected Ms. DeVos’s proposals to create programs that resemble private school vouchers, and public education groups say Ms. DeVos is abusing discretion granted to her under the emergency legislation to achieve a long-held agenda.
[…]
CDC director Robert Redfield: “CDC tracks 12 different forecasting models of possible #COVID19 deaths in the US. As of May 11, all forecast an increase in deaths in the coming weeks and a cumulative total exceeding 100,000 by June 1.”
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @401:
Very few people are – we reed about all of the very sad, very tragic, I’ve lost friends… we read about that and we see that and that’s what the news covers – but it’s a very small percentage…very, very small…
My emboldening. The Orange Toddler-Tyrant DOES NOT HAVE ANY FRIENDS. If someone he knows has died, I am sure that he would not care one fucking bit about it. The “very small percentage” of people that die because of his misdeeds do not concern him in the least.
“The office presently headed by Richard Grenell now has in hand the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election for a declassification review.”
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen in the USA with 1·3 million cases and an estimated death toll of 80 684 as of May 12. States that were initially the hardest hit, such as New York and New Jersey, have decelerated the rate of infections and deaths after the implementation of 2 months of lockdown. However, the emergence of new outbreaks in Minnesota, where the stay-at-home order is set to lift in mid-May, and Iowa, which did not enact any restrictions on movement or commerce, has prompted pointed new questions about the inconsistent and incoherent national response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation’s public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC’s Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control. How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public’s health?
In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency’s ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.
The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC’s leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
But punishing the agency by marginalising and hobbling it is not the solution. The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today’s complicated effort.
The Trump administration’s further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.
“President Obama will be televised in prime time on every network (including Fox) on May 16 giving a commencement speech to the entire high school graduating class of 2020. For an full, uninterrupted hour.
The juxtaposition is going to be terrible for Trump. Just terrible.”
On May 1, a visibly relieved Matt Hancock announced that the British government had exceeded its target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day. As health secretary, Mr. Hancock had set the goal after enduring intense criticism for the country’s lagging coronavirus testing program.
He called the milestone “an incredible achievement.”
But leaked documents and interviews with doctors, lab directors, and other experts show that the push to hit the April 30 deadline — and arguably salvage Mr. Hancock’s career — placed a huge strain on public laboratories and exposed other problems that are now slowing efforts to further expand coronavirus testing.
Days before the deadline, some hospitals in England were given 48 hours to rapidly expand testing to thousands of health care workers and patients, even though they were not exhibiting any symptoms of the virus, the documents show.
At the same time, public labs across the country raced through limited supplies of the chemical reagents needed to carry out a flood of tests after the government promised to replenish their supplies. Two weeks later, some labs still haven’t received the stocks they need, forcing some to reduce the number of new tests they can process, several lab managers said.
“It was clear that the reason was for meeting the 100,000 target,” said Dr. Tom Gardiner, a junior doctor at St Mary’s Hospital in London, which received a call to urgently ramp up testing. “It was two days before the deadline, only lasted two days, and we haven’t heard it before or since,” he said.
Britain has recorded the most coronavirus deaths of any country in Europe, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government have come under mounting criticism for an often-inconsistent response to the pandemic, especially on testing.
The government had a slow start in rolling out mass testing, made an ill-fated initial decision to only process tests at one central laboratory and made an embarrassing purchase of millions of unproven antibody tests from China, after failing to ramp up domestic test production.
Even the country’s statistics regulator criticized the government’s testing target this week, calling for more “trustworthiness” around how it presents its data.
Mr. Hancock set the 100,000-test target at the beginning of last month, in response to growing pressure. Now Mr. Johnson has promised to increase the daily capacity for testing to 200,000 — except the system still hasn’t recovered from the frantic push to reach the initial goal.
In the two weeks since April 30, the government’s number of daily tests initially slipped well below 100,000, where it has remained for every day but three. A major problem is that Britain has far fewer domestic producers of reagents than the United States, Germany and China, and huge global demand has made supplies scarce.
…
“When we’re chronically short of tests and supplies, the government should be prioritizing those most in need instead of focusing on hitting a target,” said Bill Esterson, a Labour Party lawmaker who has been working closely with the country’s chemical industry.
A spokesman from the Department of Health and Social Care insisted that all labs had adequate supplies of reagents and said it was working “tirelessly” to scale up capacity.
“The scale and speed at which we have increased our testing capacity and rolled out mass testing is unprecedented and a real success,” the spokesman said. [Sounds familiar. – SC]
From the moment Mr. Hancock announced that the government had surpassed the April 30 goal-reaching 122,347 tests that day — he was accused of manipulating the numbers. It turned out that the government had counted more than 40,000 home testing kits and tests that had been sent to satellite health centers but not necessarily returned.
More significantly, the government vastly expanded eligibility for testing in the week before the deadline. Ordinarily, expanding eligibility would be admirable, but the government did so even as it lacked adequate testing resources to keep up with the demand, or to process all the test results.
…
The biggest fear for health care workers is that testing to meet a target could lead to shortages of supplies that leave the sickest and most vulnerable without a test when they need it.
“It’s dangerously arbitrary,” said Dr. Gardiner, who added: “We’ve met this one target and it’s given the perception to the public that we’re doing enough on testing, when clearly we are not.”
The White House fired the State Department Inspector General late Friday, according to a State Department spokesperson and a senior congressional aide — the latest senior U.S. official involved in the impeachment probe into President Donald Trump to be forced out by his administration.
The inspector general, who acts as an independent watchdog responsible for investigating the agency, was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-NY.
Pompeo recommended to Trump that inspector general Steve Linick be fired and supported the president’s decision, a senior State Department official told ABC News.
Under Linick, the inspector general’s office had repeatedly found fault with the Trump administration’s handling of the agency, especially the treatment of career staff and its efforts to remodel its workforce, including through a damaging hiring freeze.
…
He is the latest official involved in the House probe to be fired after Trump’s effort to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for a Ukrainian investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden resulted in his impeachment.
But Engel seemed to suggest another reason Linick was ousted, saying late Friday that Linick’s office “had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo” and that his firing “amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”
“This firing is the outrageous act of a President trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the Secretary of State, from accountability,” added Engel, accusing Trump of “systematically remov[ing] the official independent watchdogs from the Executive Branch.”
In addition to Linick, Trump removed the intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson on April 3, who alerted Congress to the whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to his impeachment — an oversight function required of Atkinson by law. The White House said Trump no longer had confidence in him, while the president said he was “not a big Trump fan, that I can tell you.”
Linick played a more minor role in the impeachment probe….
…
Trump has also fired or demoted other top U.S. officials involved in the probe, including his Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom testified, as well as Vindman’s twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also served on the National Security Council.
In addition to Linick and Atkinson, Trump has waged something of a war on inspectors general in recent weeks. He effectively removed Glenn Fine, the acting Department of Defense inspector general, who was set to monitor spending from the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. After acting Department of Health and Human Services inspector general Christi Grimm’s office released a report on shortages in testing and personal protective equipment amid the coronavirus pandemic, Trump moved to replace her by nominating a full-time candidate, after leaving the post vacant for months.
…
Linick will be replaced by Stephen Akard, who has been the State Department’s Director of Foreign Missions since September 2019.
A former senior foreign policy adviser to then-governor Mike Pence, among others, Akard has served at the department since the beginning of the Trump administration as a political appointee.
He was originally nominated to be director general of the Foreign Service — a role reserved for senior Foreign Service officers, angering many career U.S. diplomats. While Akard served as a Foreign Service Officer from 1997 to 2005 and met the legal requirement, his nomination was eventually withdrawn amid congressional opposition and submitted instead to lead the Office of Foreign Missions.
Russia confirmed 9,200 new coronavirus infections Saturday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 272,043 and signaling a potential slowing of new cases.
Russia is now the second most-affected country in terms of infections and has the world’s second-fastest rate of new infections behind the United States.
One hundred and nineteen people died over the past 24 hours, bringing the total toll to 2,537.
…
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week announced that a nationwide lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the virus would be eased, even as health officials record a steady increase in new cases.
Despite its high number of cases, Russia’s official coronavirus fatality rate is low in comparison to countries like the United States, Britain, Italy and Spain.
Authorities say this is because Russia was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe, moving quickly to isolate travellers and people at risk, and launch a vast campaign to test and quarantine those infected.
But critics [sigh – SC] have cast doubt on the figures, accusing the authorities of under-counting by blaming virus-related deaths on other causes.
The number of coronavirus cases in Saudi Arabia has topped 50,000, according to the country’s health ministry.
An ministry official reported 2,840 new cases, taking the cumulative total to 51,980. That was up from an average of around 1,500 new cases a day over the past week. The death toll in the kingdom increased by 10 to 302, the official said on state television. Saudi Arabia recorded its first Covid-19 infection on 2 March.
re SC @412: I am surprised that The Orange Toddler-Tyrant hasn’t tried to intervene in Obama’s commencement address from being shown on all the major networks (yet). There are still a few hours where he might still try to do something to interrupt it.
.
I agree that the contrast will be stark between Obama’s smooth and intelligent style and the rambling incoherence of 45. I hope the ratings are through the roof for it!
America owes its existence, at least in part, to conspiracy thinking. In the colonies, a theory was born that King George III was plotting the enslavement of all Americans. Even without evidence, this theory helped tip the scales toward revolution.
Yet conspiracism here and around the world has destroyed great institutions, eradicated knowledge, endangered democracy, and ended lives. Now—fueled by the internet, partisan media, and the 45th president of the United States—paranoid thinking is more powerful, and more dangerous, than ever, threatening not just individual facts, but the idea that empirical truth exists at all.
The rise of mainstream conspiracism is the result not just of bad information or bad politics or bad thinking, but of systems built to stoke paranoia and to profit from mistrust. This project is an attempt to illuminate the forces that have created this unreality—and chart a course for how we might feel our way out….
Here’s one thorough (if somewhat depoliticizing) article from the series – “The Prophecies of Q”:
If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t care. You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet’s strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight.
…Kicking off at 8 PM ET…, the one-hour remote event put together by the XQ Institute, The LeBron James Family Foundation, and The Entertainment Industry Foundation and supported by American Federation of Teachers will be shown on ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC as well as YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, California Music Channel, CNN, ESPN, The CW, FOX Business Network, FOX News Channel, Twitter, Freeform, MSNBC, Univision and over a dozen other outlets and platforms. Donald Trump may not like seeing his old rival getting so much exposure and will undoubtedly try to pull the spotlight back to himself as the Associated Press and Reuters carry Graduate Together. As well, the USO is making the show available to every American military base around the world to see….
There’s an HBCU event beginning at 2 ET (more information about that at the link, too).
Thousands of Germans have taken to the streets to protest against restrictions imposed by the government to contain the coronavirus pandemic, according to police and organisers.
Germany’s death toll from the virus has been lower than most of its European neighbours and some lockdown measures have already been relaxed, Reuters reports. However, protests against the measures chancellor Angela Merkel insists are needed to slow down the coronavirus outbreak have become more vocal and demonstrators have filled the streets for the second weekend in a row.
Derided on social media as “covidiots” who risk causing a second wave of infections that could lead to a tightening of restrictions, protesters staged demonstrations at several locations across the capital Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg.
In Stuttgart, where some protesters last weekend had been flouting social distancing rules and not wearing face masks, police expected another rally of up to 5,000 people.
In Munich, organisers asked authorities to give the green light for a rally of up to 10,000 people on the Thersienwiese, a large square in the city centre on which Munich normally stages its world famous Oktoberfest beer festival. But city officials pointed to the need to respect social distancing rules and allowed a demonstration of up to 1,000 people.
The hard core of protesters is being led by several new groups. One group is Resistance 2020, led by a lawyer from eastern Leipzig and a doctor from south-western Germany who question official corona statistics and view the main political parties as constructs of an elitist rule.
Another group called Compact describes itself as the “sharp sword against imperial propaganda”. German media have suggested Russia could be behind a misinformation campaign that is spurring on protesters.
Coronavirus has so far infected more than 173,000 people in Germany and killed nearly 7,900. Most Germans approve of Merkel’s crisis management, with polls showing support for her conservative CDU/CSU alliance surging to 40%. A survey released on Thursday showed 56% of the population back the current lockdown measures.
KGsays
<
blockquote>accusing the [Russian] authorities of under-counting by blaming virus-related deaths on other causes. – SC quoting Moscow Times@416
“Ha! This man had dandruff! Obviously, that’s what killed him, not the Covid-19.”
German media have suggested Russia could be behind a misinformation campaign that is spurring on protesters.
Yeah, I suspect that is true. Russia is probably fielding misinformation campaigns in every democratic nation. Ditto for amplifying any campaign that will increase divisiveness.
Coronavirus is a prime opportunity for Russia to use social media to weaken the USA, Germany, U.K., etc. As an added bonus for Putin, protests in democratic nations will lead to crowds, which in turn leads to more deaths. That’s one way to fight a war.
The office presently headed by Richard Grenell now has in hand the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election for a declassification review.
With Trump’s lickspittle Richard Grenell in charge we can expect to see the release of a “declassified” version that cherry-picks the information in the report in a way that makes Trump look better, that makes the Russians look less evil, and that casts doubt on the conclusion that the Russians interfered in order to help Trump win the election.
Maybe Grenell can have William Barr present the newly revised, redacted, propagandized version.
This is how is works in Germany, where some kids are going back to school:
[…] (Lea) Hammermeister, a 17-year-old high school junior, entered the tent erected in the schoolyard along with some classmates — all standing six feet apart — and picked up a test kit. She inserted the swab deep into her throat, gagging slightly as instructed, then closed and labeled the sample before returning to class.
It took less than three minutes. The results landed in her inbox overnight. A positive test would require staying home for two weeks. Ms. Hammermeister tested negative. She now wears a green sticker that allows her to move around the school without a mask — until the next test four days later.
“I was very relieved,” she said happily. In addition to feeling safe around her classmates and teachers, who all tested negative, she feels like less of a risk to her grandmother, who eats with the family every day.
The self-administered test at the high school in Neustrelitz, a small town in northern Germany, is one of the more intriguing efforts in Europe as countries embark on a giant experiment in how to reopen schools, which have been shuttered for weeks and which are now being radically transformed by strict hygiene and distancing rules.
Restarting schools is at the core of any plan to restart economies globally. If schools do not reopen, parents cannot go back to work. […]
by offering everyone from teachers to students free tests twice a week, it is zeroing in on a central question haunting all countries at this stage in the pandemic: Just how infectious are children?
Evidence suggests that children are less likely to become seriously ill from Covid-19 than adults. But small numbers of children have become very sick and some have died, either from the respiratory failure that causes most adult deaths or from a newly recognized syndrome that causes acute inflammation in the heart.
An even greater blind spot is transmission. Children often do not have symptoms, making it less likely that they are tested and harder to see whether or how they spread the virus.
The prospect that schoolchildren, well-documented spreaders of the common flu, might also become super spreaders of the coronavirus, is the central dilemma for countries looking to reopen while avoiding a second wave of deadly infections. It means that school openings could pose real dangers. […]
The two private jet companies are among the first 96 airline companies disclosed as recipients of taxpayer funds under the CARES Act.
[…] Jet Linx Aviation, which caters to well-to-do CEOs and executives, was the second private plane company founded or owned by Trump donors to receive federal funds designated for the airline industry under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. CNBC reported on Thursday that Clay Lacy Aviation, a Van Nuys, California-based private jet company whose founder has given nearly $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and Trump, got $27 million in federal funds.
Jet Linx Management Company Vice Chairman John Denny Carreker and his wife, Connie, gave $68,100 to Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Trump Victory Committee between October 2015 and November 2016, Federal Election Commission filings show. […]
Excerpts from an article by John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker:
[…] The stock market fell for three days in a row to start this week, and Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Wednesday that there is a growing sense that “the recovery may come more slowly than we would like.”
[…] Stanley Druckenmiller, a former hedge-fund manager who now invests his own money, said, “The risk-reward for equity”—that is, stocks—“is maybe as bad as I’ve seen it in my career.” And yet many small investors, like my golfing companion, do not seem fazed by warnings like these. Since the Dow plunged more than ten thousand points in February and March, individual traders have been buying and selling stocks at record rates. On Thursday, E-Trade, the discount brokerage, reported that its daily trading volume in April was more than three times as large as it was in April, 2019. Other discount brokers have reported similar figures. TD Ameritrade said that it did more than three million trades a day in April, compared with eight hundred and seventeen thousand a year earlier.
This trading frenzy is taking place in the context of a price war that has prompted firms such as E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab to eliminate commissions for stock purchases and sales, exchange-traded funds, and index options. […]
In rational terms, getting rid of commissions shouldn’t have had a substantial impact. If you invest five thousand dollars in Apple or Tesla, the five or ten dollars you saved in fees won’t have much effect on the ultimate outcome. […] Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago […] added, “Free is always appealing.” […] Thaler said that nobody really knows what is driving all the stock trading. “It could be that it’s just a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands,” he said. “One friend suggested to me it is replacing gambling. The casinos are closed and there are no sports to bet on.”
[…] The Yale economist Robert Shiller, who shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, for his studies of what drives stock prices, suggested to me that investors are responding to a widely shared narrative that says stock prices tend to rebound sharply after a big fall, and that you have to get in early to make the biggest gains. “I hear the term ‘ “V”-shaped’ a lot,” he said. […] But Shiller told me that “a narrative is often more emotionally compelling and resonant than an argument about valuation or something else.”
[…] “The consensus seems to be, ‘Don’t worry, the Fed has your back,’ ” Druckenmiller said in his presentation. “There’s one problem with that: our analysis says it’s not true.”
Stocks don’t always rebound in a “V” shape. During the last lengthy bear market, which accompanied the Great Recession, stocks prices started falling in September, 2007, and didn’t bottom out until February, 2009, seventeen months later. During the Great Depression, in the nineteen-thirties, the bear market lasted even longer. It began with the Wall Street crash of October, 1929, and lasted until the middle of 1932; by then, the market was down about eighty per cent from its pre-crash peak. Stocks didn’t hit new highs until the nineteen-fifties.
[…] Shiller told me that he had been thinking about the Great Depression, too. In early 1930, he reminded me, the stock market rallied for a while, much like it is doing now, only to roll over and go into another remorseless decline. […]
“It’s like saying when the next war will be,” he said. “There are too many factors to consider.” For now, at least, many small investors seem happy to ignore these uncertainties and crank up their online trading accounts. They’d be safer sticking to golf.
“Rick Bright and the Pandemic Path Not Taken,” written by Amy Davidson Sorkin.
Excerpts:
Many Americans are replaying, in their minds, the steps they have taken and the choices they have made with regard to the coronavirus crisis, but perhaps few with such tragic force as Rick Bright […]
Bright, who in April was transferred from his position as the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, had caused a “commotion,” as one colleague put it, by urging more action at pandemic-planning meetings as far back as January and February. At the hearing, Representative John Sarbanes, a Democrat of Maryland, who had a pewter-gray mask around his neck—the members lowered their masks when speaking or, in some cases, when seated—asked Bright to return to that period. “I am sure that there are specific conversations, e-mails, moments in time that you remember like they happened yesterday,” Sarbanes said. Could he recall any particularly haunting ones that had caused a “sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach?”
Bright answered by speaking about e-mails he’d received in late January from an American mask manufacturer who warned, “ ‘We’re in deep shit. The world is. And we need to act.’ ” He said, “And I pushed that forward to the highest levels I could in H.H.S., and got no response. From that moment, I knew that we were going to have a crisis—our health-care workers—because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball. That was our last window of opportunity to turn on that production, to save the lives of those health-care workers. And we didn’t act.”
Sarbanes observed that there was “one inescapable conclusion” to be drawn from Bright’s testimony: “It didn’t have to be that way. There was another path. Things could have gone differently.” […] more than eighty thousand people in the U.S. dead […] Yet almost no one in the Trump Administration has said so, and certainly no one at Bright’s level.
On May 5th, Bright filed a formal whistle-blower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, alleging that his removal and transfer to a less prominent role at the National Institutes of Health was a punishment for, among other things, his outspokenness on pandemic preparation. […] Last week, the Office of Special Counsel found that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Bright had been retaliated against, and an inquiry is ongoing. In the hearing, Republican members repeatedly harped on what they viewed as his insufficient enthusiasm, while he was at barda, for hydroxychloroquine, a remedy promoted by Trump.
As was already noted up-thread, when Congressional hearings are aired on TV, we are reminded how stupid and narrow-minded many of the Republicans are.
Someone had to say what Bright said. The course of the pandemic in this country could have been different; the United States failed, and it didn’t have to. “I believe that there were critical steps we did not take in time,” Bright noted. As a result, “lives were endangered and, I believe, lives were lost.” […]
He said that many health workers are still forced to make do with inadequate or substandard equipment. To read his whistle-blower complaint is to become alarmed about, among many other things, whether the United States will even have the syringes it will need to administer a vaccine when there is one. Another worrisome sign, in terms of the future distribution of vaccines and treatments, Bright pointed out, is the confusion surrounding the allocation to hospitals of remdesivir, one of the few coronavirus treatments to show potential for at least reducing the length of hospital stays. […] Bright said, we have increased the possibility that a second wave in the fall could culminate in the “darkest winter in American history.”[…]
One of the themes of Bright’s testimony was the importance of being honest with the public. […] the Trump Administration [is] accustomed to trying to cover incompetence with misdirection and dishonesty. […]
In another series of questions, the Democratic congresswoman Doris Matsui, also of California, asked Bright if various failures to heed warnings would “ultimately shorten or lengthen the time it takes for our country to safely reopen and recover from the coronavirus pandemic.” She listed several: the slow start on vaccines, the delay in allocating resources, the failure of coördination. Yes, Bright said—it all meant that it would take longer to safely reopen. But, speaking about the shortage of masks, and what that had meant, he added another point: “No time to reopen our country will bring those people back to us.” In the middle of a pandemic, looking forward can also mean looking backward.
While trying to defend his comments comparing the Alaskan State Capitol coronavirus guidelines to Nazi concentration camps, a Republican state legislator claimed to a reporter that Adolf Hitler was not a “white supremacist” but someone who was “fearful of the Jewish nation.”
Rep. Ben Carpenter (Nikiski) made the remarks to an Anchorage Daily News reporter following a contentious email exchange with fellow lawmakers reported by the newspaper. When the Capitol in Juneau opens Monday, members must undergo a health screening and those who pass will be given a sticker to wear. Carpenter, who disagrees with the measure, replied to all 40 members of the House of Representatives, according to local media.
“How about an arm band that won’t fall off like a sticker will?” Carpenter wrote. “If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too? Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David?”
Two lawmakers objected to Carpenter’s comments in the email chain.
When reached by the Anchorage Daily News, Carpenter tried to explain himself by saying fear over the coronavirus is a greater than threat than the virus. He also dug deeper into the Nazi Germany comparison.
“Can you or I — can we even say it is totally out of the realm of possibility that covid-19 patients will be rounded up and taken somewhere?” Carpenter said. “People want to say Hitler was a white supremacist. No. He was fearful of the Jewish nation, and that drove him into some unfathomable atrocities.”
[…]
On April 30 I said: “MSNBC during the day has a list of the five countries and five US states with the most confirmed cases. The UK has moved quickly onto the list, and I imagine will shortly be followed by Russia and Brazil (and later Mexico and possibly Turkey, Chile, and Peru). It’s plausible that we’ll see a similar pattern with US states, especially as some with Republican governors reopen.”
Today: “#Brazil has now reported 233,142 confirmed #coronavirus cases, more than Italy and Spain, and the fourth highest number after USA, Russia and UK. Brazil added 816 new deaths in the last 24 hours for a total 15,633 deaths, the sixth highest toll in the world.”
The outbreak came early to British Columbia, in January, and public health officials braced for the worst. Now the Canadian province has one of the lowest death rates in North America.
[…]
British Columbia’s success story shows how tried-and-true methods — when paired with strong public health agencies — can have sweeping impact, according to Kindrachuk and other scientists. Many governments embraced technology, with the U.K. using drones to help police enforce lockdowns and South Korea tapping location data from mobile carriers and credit-card transactions to track infections.
B.C. stuck to old-fashioned basics, alerting primary care doctors by fax about how to be on the lookout for the novel pathogen and tracing potential transmissions through interviews. Data compiled on May 13 show the province’s Covid-19 death rate was 3 per 100,000 residents, better than almost anywhere in North America and much of Europe.
Local officials would be the first to say that luck surely played a role. But British Columbia also had stockpiles of equipment along with the benefit of a public-health system making communication and coordination smoother than in U.S. states. And it had a provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, with the power to order doctors and hospitals to take certain steps [..]
Henry’s soft-spoken authority — she’s on TV every day, often repeating her mantra, “Be kind, be calm, be safe” — won over British Columbians. When her favorite local shoe designer offered a limited edition Dr. Bonnie Henry Mary Jane heel ($240 a pair with all profits going to food banks), the website crashed.
“She was able to galvanize the public across British Columbia to understand that this was something new and very different,” Kindrachuk said.
[…]
Within days of Chinese researchers releasing the genetic sequence of the virus on on Jan. 10, the province became one of the first in the world to develop a test. A week later, before Case One in B.C. emerged on Jan. 26, it had the chemical reagents necessary to carry tests out, said Reka Gustafson, deputy provincial health officer.
Early testing helped the province pounce on transmissions before they spiraled, crucially at long-term care facilities. Canada has the highest share of Covid-19 deaths in care homes, according to an international study of 13 countries published on May 3, a disturbing distinction fueled by facilities in Ontario and Quebec that have been ravaged by the virus.
British Columbia commandeered nursing homes at the first sign of infection, barring visitors. Employees were forbidden from working at more than one facility, a move other Ontario and Quebec didn’t make until later in the crisis.
The ability to manage nursing-home outbreaks played a key role in limiting deaths in B.C.
[…]
Henry has become the public face of the crisis. A former military doctor who helped track down Ebola infections in Uganda earlier in her career, she also personally handled the contact tracing of Patient Zero’s family in Toronto’s SARS outbreak.
“She’s really been trained for this,” says Perry Kendall, her predecessor. “She’s not scared of giving orders.”
British Columbia’s top politician, Premier John Horgan, has taken a back seat in the public eye; it’s Henry who presides over daily briefings.
That has been key, said Peter Berman, a public-health expert at the University of British Columbia. “The same scientist who was empowered to lead this effort also has the authority to issue instructions.”
Henry is the first to caution against complacency. “We don’t know what is going to happen with this virus,” she said at a recent briefing, where she underscored how the province could quickly lose all the gains it’d made by easing restrictions too far. “We need to hold the line.”
I am so privileged to live in a jurisdiction with a prudent and sensible government and having a Health Officer who has the depth of experience for this specific crisis.
a Republican state legislator claimed to a reporter that Adolf Hitler was not a “white supremacist” but someone who was “fearful of the Jewish nation.”
Thanks for posting that, Trickster Goddess @ #433. It seems like every day I see new evidence of the importance of institutional knowledge and experience making the difference. I believe I posted a link last month to the April 6 episode of Johns Hopkins’ Public Health on Call podcast, “Lessons from Liberia: What the US Can Learn from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak” (scroll down to find). (A public health expert tweeted the other day about how some African countries appear to have a handle on the virus, but most people’s explanations for their success point to everything other than effective public health measures, despite the fact that many of these countries have deep, extensive experience with and knowledge about addressing contagious diseases. US experts took part in these past efforts and learned from them like Henry did, but they’ve been tossed aside.) I can’t find it now, but I also linked to an article about the South Korean public health leader whose agency had made major mistakes in fighting earlier epidemics and learned from them. There are worrying signs of Bill de Blasio in New York sidelining experienced public health experts. Trump, of course, has done and continues to do the opposite of what’s necessary.
Here’s a link to the May 17 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Cases in Brazil surpass the total in Italy amid fears of a surge in Latin America
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.
Brazil announced nearly 15,000 new infections on Saturday, taking its total to more than 230,000, the fourth-largest confirmed caseload after the US, Russia and the UK.
Its true number of infections is feared to be much greater, with the country carrying out fewer than a half a million tests by the start of last week, compared with about 1.9m in Spain and Italy.
The country’s response has been hamstrung by the resignation of two successive federal health ministers in the past month who have complained of inaction and interference by the president, Jair Bolsonaro, a rightwing populist who continues to be critical of the shutdown measures implemented by Brazil’s state governments.
“Unemployment, hunger and misery will be the future of those who support the tyranny of total isolation,” Bolsonaro tweeted, a day after Nelson Teich resigned on Friday after less than a month as health minister.
Brazil is expected to post its biggest annual economic contraction this year since records began over a century ago.
Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.
As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.
While the US and China face off, the EU has taken the lead. The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.
“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” they said in a statement.
The sole resolution before the assembly this year is an EU proposal for a voluntary patent pool. Drug and vaccine companies would then be under pressure to give up the monopoly that patents allow them on their inventions, which means they can charge high prices, so that all countries can make or buy affordable versions.
In the weeks of negotiations leading up to the meeting, which is scheduled to last for less than a day, there has been a dispute over the language of the resolution. Countries with major pharmaceutical companies argue they need patents to guarantee sufficiently high prices in wealthy nations to recoup their research and development costs.
Even more fraught have been attempts to reinforce countries’ existing rights to break drug and vaccine company patent monopolies if they need to for the sake of public health. A hard-fought battle over Aids drugs 20 years ago led to the World Trade Organization’s Doha declaration on trade-related intellectual property (Trips) in favour of access to medicines for all, but the US, which has some of the world’s biggest drug companies, has strongly opposed wording that would encourage the use of Trips.
Campaigners say the resolution expected to be passed by the world health assembly’s 198 member states is along the right lines, but too weakly worded.
“In general, it is a disappointment, appalling really. There was better text that was rejected,” said Jamie Love, the director of the NGO Knowledge Ecology International. “The US, UK, Swiss and some others pushed against the WHO taking the lead in pushing for open licensing of patents and know-how for drugs and vaccines.
“In a global crisis like this, that has such a massive impact on everyone, you would expect the WHO governing body to have the backbone to say no monopolies in this pandemic. It’s one thing for a country to use its economic clout to buy preferential access to drugs or vaccines. It’s another to prevent others from manufacturing and expanding global supply.”
Oxfam’s health policy manager, Anna Marriott, said: “This week’s letter calling for a people’s vaccine, which was signed by more than 140 world leaders and experts, sets the bar for the scale of ambition we need to meet the challenge before us.
“As we approach the final stages of this resolution, we need to see health ministers raise their game to match this ambition. Any government that tries to block or dilute this resolution is risking lives and standing on the wrong side of history.”
…
Wellcome published a poll on Sunday of 2,000 people in the UK which found 96% supported the idea that national governments should work together to ensure that treatments and vaccines can be manufactured in as many countries as possible and distributed globally to everyone who needs them….
blfsays
SC@437 quotes the Grauniad as writing, “Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly” (my added emphasis).
Uh, no. Last I heard, Big China is still refusing to let Island China — despite the protests of many (including Japan, New Zealand, UK, the States, and others) — attend, Taiwan must accept Chinese status to attend WHO, says Beijing (15-May-2020):
[…]
Beijing has stepped up the pressure on European states to reject Taiwan’s call to be represented at next week’s assembly of the World Health Organization, arguing that its presence can only be justified if it accepts that it is part of China.
[…]
Chinese diplomats have been contacting governments across Europe to limit the diplomatic support for Taiwan’s attendance, targeting northern and eastern European states. […]
[…]
Taiwan had observer status at the WHO for seven years until 2016, when it was blocked by China, as it has been every year since. […]
Only a few weeks ago Boris Johnson was invoking the spirit of Winston Churchill when he called on the nation to unite in the fight against the coronavirus. As he took the momentous decision to order the closure of pubs, restaurants and many shops on 23 March, much of the United Kingdom seemed ready to respond and rally round the flag at a time of crisis. Similar lockdowns were ordered in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Rival political leaders offered to abandon hostilities and seek consensus. There was talk of forming a government of national unity. Johnson’s ratings soared in the polls as voters heard the call to join a great collective effort. “We will get through this together,” he told the country.
That was then. Last week the short-lived unity fractured, and trust in the government in London started to haemorrhage away. Political leaders in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast began to resist and go their own ways in the fight against Covid-19. In England, open dissent started to break out in the regions. This weekend some council leaders in England have vowed to defy the government at Westminster by refusing to re-open schools on 1 June, as Johnson wants, because of fears for their pupils’ and teachers’ safety. The R rate (of the virus’s reproduction) is too high and the move too risky, they say, echoing the views of worried teaching unions….
The worry in northern parts of the country where the R rate is rising is that there could be a surge in cases that would then spread nationally….
The unravelling of consensus began with Johnson’s televised address to more than 27m viewers from Downing Street, in which he announced a number of minor relaxations of lockdown rules and dropped his government’s “stay at home” message in favour of a new slogan – “stay alert”….
Those in charge in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were both dismayed that Johnson had abandoned the “stay at home” slogan and furious at the lack of consultation. “There has been dialogue and it has always been in a convivial atmosphere,” said the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford. “But the problem is that this has been after decisions have been taken. It seemed on Sunday night as if Johnson thought he was announcing policy for the whole United Kingdom.”
If that was the case, the prime minister knows better now. The devolved administrations have flatly rejected Johnson’s strategy and warned that they will continue with the ‘stay at home’ guidelines. Ahead of what is expected to be a spell of good weather over the next few days, Adam Price, the leader of Plaid Cymru – a party whose raison d’etre is Welsh independence – warned that English people would be pulled up by the police if they ventured into his country to visit beauty spots such as Snowdonia.
“Let’s not beat about the bush,” Price said. “If you drove into Wales from England at the moment without a legitimate excuse you would get arrested. Many people would not have thought that it was even possible but it is the reality on the ground.”
…
The first minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, also spoke of repelling the English if they tried to cross the border to her country without good reason. Appearing against a “stay at home” backdrop, Sturgeon said: “If you are coming into Scotland for reasons that are not covered by those essential purposes then you potentially would be in breach of the law.”
As disunity and confusion reign, the government’s poll ratings have nosedived. Since last weekend, approval ratings for Johnson’s government’s handling of Covid-19 have dropped by nine percentage points. For the first time since Opinium began polling on Covid-19 for the Observer, more people disapprove of the government’s handling of the crisis than approve. In late March the government had a net approval rating of plus 42. Now it is -3.
…
As the past week has made clear, the crucial battles – for power, money and control as lockdown is eased – will now be fought between London, the devolved administrations and England’s regions and local councils. The argument for a more decentralised Britain has been unleashed in earnest by Covid-19.
…
…local government, whose financial resources had been cut by over 40% since 2010….
For a Tory party traditionally committed to low taxes, which has relentlessly squeezed public services and local authorities in the past, giving the regions their head is an ideological challenge. But a second, even more severe, bout of austerity to pay the Covid-19 bill will not satisfy the many new Conservative MPs in the Midlands and North who won Johnson his majority at the election in December. They will also be aware that, for Keir Starmer’s Labour party, championing the regions may offer a way to re-connect with traditional areas of support that abandoned the party in the general election.
Former home secretary Amber Rudd said she expected a “big debate” on the way forward and Johnson to address some of the challenges in a big, defining speech, imminently…. [FFS – SC]
blf @ #438, it seems to still be up in the air. The last paragraph of the article I linked to reads: “The invitation of Taiwan to the assembly, which has been blocked in recent years by China, has also triggered a dispute. Taiwan has a lot of support from countries including the US that say its handling of Covid-19 has been exemplary and it could teach the world a lot. Beijing, however, is pressuring other countries to block Taiwan, arguing it can only be represented if it accepts it is part of China.”
President Trump and his team are launching an unprecedented smear campaign against rivals, leveling wild and false allegations against critics in the media and politics, ranging from bizarre conspiracy theories to spreading lies about pedophilia and even murder.
These smear campaigns are unmoored from reality. They’re deranged and indecent and seem designed at least in part to distract us from the horrific death, health, and economic crisis caused by the pandemic. The pandemic, which impacts you, is what we will continue to focus on.
Congrats to the high school Class of 2020, as well as to the teachers, coaches, and most of all, parents and family who’ve guided you along the way. Thanks for letting me be part of your big day!
China’s Ambassador to Israel, Du Wei, was found dead inside his official residence Sunday morning, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN.
At this stage, the 57-year-old’s death is not being treated as suspicious.
Police are outside the ambassador’s residence in Herzliya — to the north of Tel Aviv — as part of standard procedure, the spokeswoman said.
His death comes less than a week after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Jerusalem, openly criticizing China’s actions during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as calling on Israeli leaders to stop signing major infrastructure and communications deals with Chinese companies.
There has been no comment on the ambassador’s death from the Chinese embassy in Israel or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.
The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power.
Thirteen sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive again for Covid-19 after recovering from the disease and returning to the ship, which has been stranded in Guam since late March after an outbreak of the virus, according to two U.S. defense officials.
The Roosevelt’s crew began returning to the ship in late April after spending a month either in quarantine or isolation in Guam. But sailors in early May began showing symptoms of the virus, such as a cough and fever, despite testing negative twice.
Some of the sailors who returned to the ship showed expanded symptoms, including body aches and headaches, according to one official. This has slowed the move back onto the ship, as all sailors who return must have been symptom-free for three days and have tested negative twice, as well as completed their isolation period.
CNN first reported on Thursday that five sailors had tested positive after reboarding the ship, so the new number means the positive cases have more than doubled. The 13 Covid-positive sailors have been removed from the ship and are back in isolation on U.S. Naval Base Guam, according to the officials.
“This week, a small number of TR Sailors who previously tested COVID positive and met rigorous recovery criteria have retested positive,” said Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Myers Vasquez….
…
At the end of April, when the Navy stopped releasing daily totals, the number of active cases hit 1,102. As of Thursday, more than 2,900 sailors had moved aboard the Roosevelt. More than a quarter of all sailors who have tested positive for Covid-19 have now recovered, according to the Navy.
In addition to the outbreak, the Roosevelt now has a new medical problem. One sailor has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and has been removed from the ship, Vasquez said.
Tuberculosis, or TB, is a bacterial infection that affects the lungs and carries symptoms similar to Covid-19 such as coughing, fever and difficulty breathing. TB kills 1.5 million people per year worldwide — more than any other infectious disease….
Rep. Engel, yesterday: “Today I launched an investigation into President Trump’s firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. @SenatorMenendez and I requested that administration officials preserve all records related to the firing & turn info over to the committees by Friday, May 22.”
Carole Cadwalladr: “How are you? I’m feeling furious all over again this morning. 60,000 people are dead. And there’s been no reckoning, no accounting, no acknowledgement. Just denials & lies. And same scientists who warned us before are not being listened to all over again”
Infuriating video atl. I’m sure Johnson’s “big, defining” speech will help.
Barack Obama delivered two commencement speeches. One was to the nation’s 101 historically Black colleges and universities.
[…] Obama was the final act in the HBCU edition of the “#ShowYourWalk” virtual graduation ceremony,. Hosted by Kevin Hart, the well-produced, nearly two-hour event was jam-packed with thoughtful messages from celebrities, many of them HBCU grads themselves, and sprinkled with musical performances. I’ve queued right to Obama’s speech, but scroll on back for musical—including a drum line tribute from Doug E. Fresh and speeches, including one from Sen. Kamala Harris. […]
Video available at the link.
Excerpt from the speech:
Hi, everybody. Congratulations to H.B.C.U. class of 2020. Michelle and I are so proud of you.
[…] Many of you had to stretch to afford tuition. And some of you are the first in your families to reach this milestone.
So even if half this semester was spent at Zoom University, you’ve earned this moment. You should be very proud. Everybody who supported you along the way is proud of you — parents, grandparents, professors, mentors, aunties, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, second cousins, cousins who you aren’t even sure are cousins. Show them some gratitude today.
[…] Springfest at schools like Howard and Morehouse, that’s the time when you get to strut your stuff a little bit. And I know that in normal times, rivals like Grambling and Southern, Jackson State and Tennessee State, might raise some eyebrows at sharing a graduation ceremony.
But these aren’t normal times. You’re being asked to find your way in a world in the middle of a devastating pandemic and a terrible recession. The timing is not ideal. And let’s be honest — a disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country. We see it in the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog, and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.
Injustice like this isn’t new. What is new is that so much of your generation has woken up to the fact that the status quo needs fixing; that the old ways of doing things don’t work; and that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick […]
More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.
If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you. With everything suddenly feeling like it’s up for grabs, this is your time to seize the initiative. Nobody can tell you anymore that you should be waiting your turn. Nobody can tell you anymore “this is how it’s always been done.” More than ever, this is your moment — your generation’s world to shape.
[…] Many of you could have attended any school in this country. But you chose an H.B.CU. — specifically because it would help you sow seeds of change. You chose to follow in the fearless footsteps of people who shook the system to its core — civil rights icons like Thurgood Marshall and Dr. King, storytellers like Toni Morrison and Spike Lee. You chose to study medicine at Meharry, and engineering at NC A&T, because you want to lead and serve.
And I’m here to tell you, you made a great choice. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve got more road maps, more role models, more resources than the civil rights generation did. You’ve got more tools, technology, and talents than my generation did. No generation has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world. […]
First, make sure you ground yourself in actual communities with real people — working whenever you can at the grass-roots level. […]
Second, you can’t do it alone. Meaningful change requires allies in common cause. As African Americans, we are particularly attuned to injustice, inequality, and struggle. But that also should make us more alive to the experiences of others who’ve been left out and discriminated against.
So rather than say, “What’s in it for me?” or “What’s in it for my community? And to heck with everyone else,” stand up for and join up with everyone who’s struggling — whether immigrants, refugees, the rural poor, the L.G.B.T. community, low-income workers of every background, women who so often are subject to their own discrimination and burdens and not getting equal pay for equal work; look out for folks whether they are white or black or Asian or Latino or Native American. As Fannie Lou Hamer once said, “nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
And on the big unfinished goals in this country, like economic and environmental justice and health care for everybody, broad majorities agree on the ends. That’s why folks with power will keep trying to divide you over the means. That’s how nothing changes. You get a system that looks out for the rich and powerful and nobody else. So expand your moral imaginations, build bridges, and grow your allies in the process of bringing about a better world.
[…] You’ve earned your degree. And it’s up to you to use it. So many of us believe in you. I’m so proud of you. And as you set out to change the world, we’ll be the wind at your back.
Congratulations Class of 2020, and God bless all of you.
Video clip atl. I’m having a hard time getting information about Belarus (I did see they had almost a thousand new cases yesterday, in the wake of the parade they held last week) or Chechnya. There are some numbers coming out, but how accurately they reflect reality is another question. Little on-the-ground reporting that I’m seeing, at least in English.
He is “flooding the zone with shit.” And it’s working.
We’ve been introduced to a new conspiracy theory this week: “Obamagate.”
There’s no point in unpacking this theory here because it’s bullshit and everyone knows it. (If you need an explainer, my Vox colleague Jen Kirby has you covered.) But for the sake of a reference point, here’s the simplest version possible: “Deep state” holdovers from the Obama administration allegedly spearheaded the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as part of a broader scheme to undermine the Trump presidency.
I really don’t want to offer any more details because, again, this is a bullshit story. (Trump, despite promoting it endlessly, couldn’t even explain it when asked by a reporter.)
The important thing here is not that this theory is false. The important thing is that we’re talking about it at all, and we’re only talking about it because the president wants us to talk about it. Talking about this non-story means we’re talking less about, say, the nearly 85,000 [nearly 90,000 now] Americans who have died so far from the coronavirus or the impending recession.
Watching the media pounce on this story like greyhounds chasing mechanical rabbits has been painful, but also deeply familiar. It’s a pattern we’ve seen unfold countless times. The president unleashes a tweetstorm, millions of people retweet it, right-wing media boosts the signal, and then mainstream media outlets cover it […]
Consider this Axios tweet stating that “Biden’s presence on the list could turn it into an election year issue, though the document itself does not show any evidence of wrongdoing.” But Biden’s name on a document is only an election issue if the press treats it like one. And if the “document itself does not show any evidence of wrongdoing,” why the hell are we talking about it? Again, we’re talking about it because Trump talked about it and now it’s a legitimized “story.”
[…] The strategy was best articulated (in America, at least) by Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump, who in 2018 reportedly said: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
[…] muddying the waters so that consensus isn’t possible. And it’s all the more difficult because even the most scrupulous, well-intentioned coverage can easily fall into the trap of flooding the zone.
[…] The goal of zone-flooding is simple: introduce bullshit stories into the information bloodstream, sit back while the media feverishly covers them (from all sides), and then exploit the chaos that results from the subsequent fog of disinformation.
[…] reporting on deliberately misleading stories in ostensibly objective ways serves only to reward the bad-faith actors spreading the nonsense in the first place.
The AP, for example, ran an article with the headline: “Flynn case boosts Trump’s bid to undo Russia probe narrative.” The word “boosts” appears neutral, but it isn’t. The Flynn case is a nothingburger and doesn’t inherently boost anything. But saying it does, even in such an impartial fashion, is self-fulfilling. At the very least, it cements the impression that there’s something here when, in fact, there isn’t. […] they just have to introduce enough doubt to ensure that people won’t mobilize around a coherent narrative […]
The press has always sought to conquer lies by exposing them. But that doesn’t work anymore. There is too much misinformation, too many claims to refute, too many competing narratives. And because the decision to cover something is almost always a decision to amplify it, the root problem is our very concept of “news” — what counts and what doesn’t. […]
Obamagate is another example of this systemic failure. Here we have — and I can’t say this enough — a complete non-scandal. There’s no “there” there. It’s pure misinformation. But we’re still talking about it. And I’m writing this piece about it. This is a massive problem. Even though I’m trying to point up a flaw in our system, I’m still somehow participating in the mess I’m hoping to clean up. This is the paradox we’re all up against.
The diagnosis is always easier than the cure, and I don’t have any solutions. […]
And if the past few days are any indication, we’re screwed.
[…] he posted a meme on his Instagram account that called former Vice President Joe Biden a pedophile. The meme that the president’s eldest son posted for his 2.8 million followers includes a picture of Biden saying, “See you later, alligator” while an alligator below replies, “In a while, pedophile.”
When he was asked about it by the New York Times, Trump Jr. borrowed from his father’s tactics and wrote on Twitter that he was only kidding, telling his five million followers that the three laughing emojis in the caption of his post “should indicate to anyone with a scintilla of common sense” that he was just “joking around.” But then in the same post he also suggested there was something to the meme, saying the former vice president was guilty of “unwanted touching” as he included several obviously misleading photos of Biden with children.
[…] He continued to make clear he was going to continue pushing the baseless attack as he retweeted several supporters who agreed with his allegation. He then proceeded to tweet a video compilation of Biden showing affection to children, largely at swearing-in ceremonies at the Capitol. […] Trump Jr. then doubled down on a subsequent tweet that included another video compilation […]
For now at least, Biden appears set against falling into these clear provocations from the Trump camp, characterizing them as efforts to distract Americans as the coronavirus crisis continues to engulf the nation.
Some of Biden’s allies are convinced that Trump’s strategy will end up backfiring considering the soaring unemployment rate and rising COVID-19 death toll. “The public is really focused on what matters in this election. And they’re not being dragged into side issues and they are not being dragged into manufactured issues,” Mike Donilon, the senior strategist for Biden’s campaign, tells the Washington Post. “It’s just too serious. So I think Trump is risking a real problem in trying to push the conversation to a place where the country knows that’s not what’s at stake.”
[…] In an interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, [Eric] Trump suggested the president’s critics were using the pandemic to undermine his father’s rallies, calling it a “cognizant strategy” that would go away once it was no longer politically expedient.
“They think they are taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every single time,” the younger Trump said. “You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3. And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”
Leading health officials have repeatedly warned that the coronavirus will not go away by fall and that a surge in cases toward the end of the year could be even harder to manage than the current outbreak. […]
In separate, stark warnings, two major European leaders have bluntly told their citizens that the world needs to adapt to living with the coronavirus and cannot wait to be saved by the development of a vaccine. […]
Pushed hard by Italy’s regional leaders and weeks in advance of an earlier timetable, Conte [Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte] is allowing restaurants, bars and beach facilities to open Monday, the same day that church services can resume and shops reopen.
’’We are facing a calculated risk, in the awareness … that the epidemiological curve could go back up,” Conte said late Saturday. “We are confronting this risk, and we need to accept it, otherwise we would never be able to relaunch.”
Conte added that Italy could “not afford” to wait until a vaccine was developed. Health experts say the world could be months, if not years, away from having a vaccine available to everyone despite the scientific gold rush now on to create such a vaccine.
“We would find ourselves with our social and productive fabric heavily damaged,” Conte said.
Italy’s economy is forecast to contract 9% this year due to the coronavirus amid a long, strict lockdown.
For his part, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was hospitalized last month with a serious bout of COVID-19, speculated Sunday that a vaccine may not be developed at all, despite the huge global effort to produce one.
“I said we would throw everything we could at finding a vaccine,” Johnson wrote in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. “There remains a very long way to go, and I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition.” […]
From the comments posted by readers of the article:
U.S. states like Texas have prematurely reopened and infections are soaring.
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Meanwhile, back in the Home on the Range America, we’re moving at Warp Speed to make the new Vaccine Czar (Slaoui) richer than Croesus: “Trump’s Vaccine Czar Holds Millions in Stock Options at Company That Got…
Dr. Moncef Slaoui reportedly owns 156,000 stock options in Moderna, the first company to enter a coronavirus vaccine into clinical trials. […]
Trump attempted to offer assurances on the topic of price, saying “The last thing anybody’s looking for is profit.” But when asked directly if the vaccine would be offered to the public free of charge, he was non-committal, saying only: “We’re looking at that, actually.” […] Daily Beast link
From Elizabeth Warren:
It is a huge conflict of interest for the White House’s new vaccine czar to own $10 million of stock in a company receiving government funding to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Slaoui should divest immediately.
More from the readers comments:
We were stupid not to have joined the international consortium to develop a vaccine cooperatively. Trump will be ordering corners cut and shoddy, possibly dangerous, testing methodology to force a timeframe. We’ll get unsafe or useless vaccine candidates
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ANY use or deployment of a vaccine associated with Trump in any way*** is the worst thing that could happen at this point. For the love of everything this country has ever hoped for, THIS particular grift must be stopped, for the sake of our children and future.
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Biden (god willing) wins in January and we will have lost an entire year. That very well might mean starting all over again – quarantine, contact tracing, etc., while the rest of the Western world is on their merry way.
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As infections and deaths continue to rise throughout the US, there will be no more shut downs. None of these leaders want it. They want us to risk death for dollars, and if we won’t, there’s a mass grave waiting for our impoverished souls.
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the 6 foot rule seemed like a compromise, rather than a true safe zone. but if everyone did wear masks (and wear them correctly and keep them on), then the transmission rate is next to zero.
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while you can rush the development side, you can’t rush the trials. The human body’s immune system operates on its own timeline, which is why vaccines take a while to develop safely. If you care about safety that is, and Trump doesn’t.
Short version: economic response maybe not quite so bad as in the US, medical response possibly worse, political response terminally short-sighted at best.
KGsays
As the past week has made clear, the crucial battles – for power, money and control as lockdown is eased – will now be fought between London, the devolved administrations and England’s regions and local councils. The argument for a more decentralised Britain has been unleashed in earnest by Covid-19. – SC quoting the Grauniad@439
Ironically, the SNP is highly centralist within Scotland – every year since the last Scottish election, which left them just short of a majority at Holyrood, the Scottish Greens, sometimes with support from other opposition parties, have fought to obtain increased funding for local councils in the annual budget.
A Georgia cop encouraged the two accused killers to play pretend cop with Ahmaud Arbery.
[…]Gregory McMichael practically was given a license to kill then allowed free rein to do whatever it took to exonerate himself, according to new evidence TMZ obtained. That evidence, a text message from an unidentified police officer, revealed that Georgia police actually encouraged the former cop and prosecutor’s investigator to play pretend cop for the neighborhood. McMichael went on to not only rack up murder charges in Arbery’s death but also leak the very footage of the encounter he apparently thought would exonerate him and his son Travis, Channel 2 Action News reported Friday. Both men were instead arrested on murder and aggravated assault charges 74 days after Arbery’s death on Feb. 23, 2020.
But months before the deadly encounter, police apparently didn’t see the white men as potential threats. An officer with the Glynn County Police Department responded to a December 20 trespassing complaint from homeowner Larry English with directions to call Gregory McMichael with any more trespassing complaints. “Greg is retired Law Enforcement and also a Retired Investigator from the DA’s office. He said please call him day or night when you get action on your camera,” the officer said in the text. […]
“It appears that Gregory McMichael had been informally ‘deputized’ by the Glynn County Police Department,” Graddy said in the statement. It’s unclear why police reportedly gave Gregory McMichael that power, but the next text message in the thread with English was surveillance footage from inside his home on February 11. On that day, Travis McMichael reportedly came face-to-face with the man TMZ later identified as Arbery. […]
Graddy said in a statement CBS obtained that, “this young man may have been coming onto the property for water.” “There is a water source at the dock behind the house as well as a source near the front,” Graddy added.
The McMichaels apparently assumed Arbery was doing much more than drinking water because when the elder McMichael spotted Arbery “hauling ass” in the same area of the home under construction, the former cop went home, grabbed his .357 Magnum, and called for his son armed with a shotgun, according to another incident report Daily Kos obtained. The McMichaels said in the report they grabbed firearms because they “didn’t know if the male was armed or not.” […]
They spotted Arbery running down Burford Drive and first tried to cut him off in the truck, but Arbery only changed directions, Gregory McMichael told police. He said that’s when William “Roddie” Bryan, an area resident who recorded the controversial shooting footage, also tried unsuccessfully to block Arbery. McMichael told police he then jumped into the bed of the truck, and Travis kept driving.
“Stop, stop we want to talk to you,” Gregory McMichael reportedly yelled at Arbery. The accused murderer told police he then pulled up beside Arbery and again shouted for him to stop. Travis got out of the truck with the shotgun and the man later identified as Arbery “began to violently attack Travis”, Gregory told police. The two men “then started fighting over the shotgun at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot,” the reporting officer said in the incident report. “McMichael stated the male fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body.” Gregory rolled Arbery over to see if he had a weapon, according to the report.
He didn’t, according to his family’s attorney. Protestors have since called for justice in the case, attracting national media attention. On the site of a tribute to the 25-year-old former high school football standout, an unnamed person unconnected to the case left a note expressing condolences for Arbery’s death. “Ahmaud – I am so sorry,” the person said in the note. “I should have stopped them. I am so sorry.” […]
A U.S. district judge on Saturday denied a request by ex-pharmaceutical CEO and convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli to be released from prison to research possible treatments for the novel coronavirus.
In a nine-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals had not demonstrated any compelling factors making him eligible for the home confinement some non-violent, vulnerable inmates have been granted during the coronavirus pandemic, The Associated Press reported.
Shkreli is incarcerated in a low-security Allenwood, Pa., facility that has so far not recorded any cases of the virus among staff or inmates, and Matsumoto wrote that his medical records did not indicate his childhood asthma made him particularly vulnerable to the virus. […]
Shkreli posted a research proposal saying the industry’s response thus far had been “inadequate” and that his experience “as a successful two-time biopharma entrepreneur, having purchased multiple companies, invented multiple new drug candidates” positioned him to find a cure.
Matsumoto wrote that Shkreli’s suggestion he could develop a cure for the virus when it has “so far eluded the best medical and scientific minds in the world working around the clock” is “delusional self-aggrandizing behavior.” […]
[…] Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, said in a statement that for President Trump’s son “to claim that the coronavirus is a political hoax that will ‘magically’ disappear is absolutely stunning and unbelievably reckless.”
“The simple fact is that President Trump ignored the threat of the coronavirus for months and has mishandled the response at every step since — destroying the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden administrations and leading to countless unnecessary death,” she said.
“Trump’s campaign knows he can’t run on that dismal record so they’re desperate to do whatever they can to throw up a smokescreen to try to conceal his historic mismanagement of this crisis,” she continued.
The president’s son, who is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said Saturday on Fox News that the coronavirus will “magically, all of a sudden go away and disappear and everyone will be able to reopen” after Election Day.
Eric Trump also claimed on Fox News’ “Justice w/ Jeanine Pirro” that the Democratic Party strategized the pandemic to prevent President Trump from hosting campaign rallies ahead of the election.
“They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every time,” Eric Trump said. […]
THE HYPE over the drug hydroxychloroquine was fueled by […] Trump and Fox News […] claims were not backed by scientific evidence, but he was enthusiastic. “What do you have to lose?” he has asked. […]
Now comes the evidence. Two large studies of hospitalized patients in New York City have found the drug was essentially useless against the virus.
One study, by Eli S. Rosenberg and colleagues, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined 1,438 patients suffering from infection across 25 hospitals in the New York area between March 15 and 28. The study also looked at those who received hydroxychloroquine along with the antibiotic azithromycin. Mr Trump had heralded the combination as “a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” The conclusion of the study: “Among patients hospitalized in metropolitan New York with COVID-19, treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both, compared with neither treatment, was not significantly associated with differences in in-hospital mortality.”
The second study, by Joshua Geleris and colleagues, examined 1,376 patients at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Irving Medical Center in northern Manhattan from March 7 to April 8. Their conclusion in the New England Journal of Medicine: “In this analysis involving a large sample of consecutive patients who had been hospitalized with Covid-19, the risk of intubation or death was not significantly higher or lower among patients who received hydroxychloroquine than among those who did not.” The results, they said, “do not support the use of hydroxychloroquine at present” except in clinical trials.
The two studies were observational. Separate, controlled clinical trials are underway, including one sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. But both of these hospital studies examined a group of patients significantly larger than the tiny, initial research by the maverick doctor Didier Raoult in Marseille, France, that triggered the frenzy. If the drug had any effectiveness against the coronavirus, it would probably have shown some positive results among more than 2,800 hospitalized patients in New York. It did not. […]
The health care system in Brazil’s largest city is wavering on the brink of collapse and coronavirus deaths throughout the South American nation are soaring — but President Jair Bolsonaro nonetheless reveled in crowds of supporters on Sunday, joining yet another anti-lockdown protest in Brasilia.
With Brazil still approaching its peak of cases, Sao Paulo’s mayor warned that the health system could be overwhelmed very soon if residents don’t follow social distancing guidelines.
“The city is coming to the limit of options,” Bruno Covas told journalists Sunday, warning that nine in ten intensive care beds were full. “We need to decide if we want to test the limits, or if we will be prudent and firmly maintain social isolation for the time needed so that the health system doesn’t collapse. We are closer than we would like.”
But there was a strikingly different message on display outside the President’s offices in Brasilia, where Bolsonaro appeared among crowds protesting the country’s lockdown measures on Sunday.
The populist leader, who has frequently dismissed the threat posed by Covid-19 even as it began to ravage his own nation, disregarded social distancing guidelines to pose with supporters. His appearances at such rallies have become a regular phenomenon.
At another engagement with a group of men in military outfits, he dropped to the ground to do pushups. “Above all (people) want freedom, they want democracy, they want respect,” he said in a video posted online.
Brazil is one of the few large countries in the world where daily cases and death rates are still ascending.
The country has overtaken Spain and Italy to record the fourth-most Covid-19 cases anywhere in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, even though its outbreak is at a far earlier stage than countries in Europe or Asia. Its death toll has meanwhile topped 16,000.
The virus has dealt a blow to Sao Paulo, home to 12 million people, whose hospitals are suffering a fate previously seen in similarly hard-hit cities and regions like Lombardy, Madrid and New York.
The city has 38,605 confirmed cases, around a sixth of the total confirmed cases in Brazil, and has reported a significant proportion of the country’s deaths.
In March, when Sao Paulo city and state declared quarantine, more than 60% of residents sheltered at home and the spread of the virus slowed. But in the last few weeks the share of residents respecting the quarantine has fallen below 50% and the numbers have started to quickly rise.
Staying in isolation has been particularly difficult for the city’s poorest residents, many of whom live in tightly packed favelas and who are forced to go to work in order to maintain an income.
Bolsonaro has pressed ahead with his anti-lockdown rhetoric even as cases skyrocket. He has repeatedly dismissed Covid-19 as a “little flu” and urged businesses to reopen, even as many governors scramble to implement social isolation measures and slow the spread….
In one of the photos from the pro-Bolsonaro/virus rally in Brasilia yesterday, a woman stands next to him on the platform wearing a “Make Brasil Great Again” t-shirt.
…The AfD has struggled to formulate a coherent stance on the coronavirus and failed to leverage a grassroots anti-lockdown movement, and the expulsion of Kalbitz has caused a split through the party’s leadership and set eastern against western delegates….
…The league will violate its own charter if it allows the move to go ahead: this charter prohibits someone to become a club’s director if “he has engaged in conduct outside the United Kingdom that would constitute an offence … if such conduct had taken place in the United Kingdom, whether or not such conduct resulted in a conviction”. I have no doubt that Newcastle United’s fans do not wish their club to be run by the architect of such brutal repression. His is a regime where journalists are tortured, dissidents disappear and reformers are sentenced to death….
…Police operations and body bags are nothing new to Rio, where state police killed a record 1,810 people last year, nearly five a day.
But with the city now in partial shutdown because of Covid-19, and citizens under orders to stay indoors, favela residents are voicing outrage that the police’s terrifying incursions into their communities have not been halted.
…
“Instead of sending doctors and nurses to protect residents from Covid-19, the government sends police, bullet-proof vehicles and helicopters to kill us,” said Bruno Itan, a photographer from the Complexo do Alemão who documented Friday’s raid in a series of photos that show police officers in anti-coronavirus face masks standing over corpses covered in sheets. “We are tired.”
Renata Souza, a leftwing congresswoman, demanded an inquiry into what she called a “massacre”.
“People should be getting help, not getting shot at,” complained Souza, who said it was inhumane for such operations to continue during the pandemic.
…
Residents described scenes of terror as black-clad security forces and armoured personnel carriers streamed into the favela to a soundtrack of gunfire and explosions.
Houses and walls were destroyed in the ensuing gun battles, water tanks exploded and the power network was wrecked, leaving thousands without electricity.
By the time the shooting stopped, nearly six hours later, police bullets had killed exactly the same number of people as Covid-19 in the Complexo do Alemão: 13.
“Ah, there it is. ‘[T]he fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year’.”
Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, argues that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is a “cancer on democracy” in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, using “mafia”-like intimidation tactics against dissenting voices. Rudd says this issue “goes to the heart of our future democracies. Therefore we need to stand up and fight, and fight hard.”
SC @468, that makes the charge that Pompeo “made a staffer walk his dog, pick up his dry cleaning and make dinner reservations for Pompeo and his wife, among other personal errands” look less important. It’s important that people like Pompeo NOT use taxpayer-paid staffers to run their errands, but it doesn’t compare to Trump and Pompeo going around Congress to pursue arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
From Steve Benen:
[…] House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who’s earned a reputation as a very cautious lawmaker, said in a statement, “I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing. His office was investigating — at my request — Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
Greg’s report added, “Committee Democrats have also learned that the State Department was recently briefed on the IG’s conclusions in that investigation, aides say. They do not know what role this investigation — and its conclusions — played in Linick’s removal, if any.”
[…] In a historic use of the War Powers Resolution last April, both the Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate voted to end American involvement in the war in Yemen, defying Trump’s wishes, and curtailing U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in the conflict.
A month later, the Trump administration decided to move forward anyway with an arms sale worth roughly $8 billion for Saudi Arabia and its allies in the United Arab Emirates. It was, officials claimed at the time, a national security “emergency.” […]
The evidence to support the claim of an “emergency” was hard to find, and more than a few lawmakers cried foul. If today’s reporting is correct, the State Department’s inspector general’s office took a closer look into the deal — and the administration’s willingness to circumvent Congress.
The mess is likely to receive quite a bit of congressional scrutiny, at least in the Democratic-led House […]
Well, this is good news, even if it is a bit confusing:
Rep. Justin Amash has scrapped his Libertarian presidential campaign, citing the challenges posed by mounting a third-party bid during a pandemic. It’s unclear why the Michigan congressman didn’t recognize these challenges when he kicked off his national bid a few weeks ago.
In other campaign news, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg “is plotting a massive spending blitz to back Joe Biden’s quest for the White House” according to CNBC.
And here’s an update on the Joe Biden/Tara Reade story:
PBS spoke with 74 former Biden staffers, 62 of whom are women, as part of an evaluation of Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault. Politico also spoke to many of Reade’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill. Neither report helped bolster the accuser’s claims.
This year will feature the first presidential election since 1984 in which Republicans can approach “ballot integrity” issues without court restraints.
A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump published a tweet ahead of a congressional special election in California, insisting that the race was “rigged.” The president was predictably wrong — the talking point mysteriously disappeared after the Republican candidate won — but it came on the heels of a lengthy effort in which Trump condemned voting by mail as a “horrible” and “corrupt” scheme that he should be able to take advantage of, but most voters should not.
[…] there’s a larger campaign underway that goes well beyond the president’s posturing. […] the Republican Party, the Trump campaign, and conservative activists are collectively “mounting an aggressive national effort to shape who gets to vote in November — and whose ballots are counted.”
[…] recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on balloting. The party and its allies also intend to use advertising, the internet and Trump’s command of the airwaves to cast Democrats as agents of election theft.
[…]t it’s worth appreciating what will make 2020 different [worse!]
[…] there was a very competitive gubernatorial race in 1981 in New Jersey, which the Republican National Committee was eager to win. […] the RNC launched a program called the “Ballot Security Task Force,” which involved having Republican operatives and off-duty law enforcement personnel hanging around dozens of minority-voting precincts, looking for evidence of election irregularities, and intimidating local voters.
The campaign was not subtle: Republicans put up warning signs, telling locals that their precincts were being monitored, and creating quasi-official arm bands for the party’s monitors to wear while physically patrolling polling places in areas made up mostly of minority voters.
[…] the Republicans successfully intimidated people of color and narrowly won New Jersey’s gubernatorial election that year. But the victory came at a price: the RNC’s scare tactics were so egregious, and the scheme targeted black voters so brazenly, that the Republican Party faced a court fight that they lost.
At the time, the RNC felt compelled to accept a 35-year consent decree that included legal restrictions on the party’s efforts to monitor polling locations.
[…] Republicans were desperate to get out from under the court-imposed constraints. […] The RNC’s efforts ultimately succeeded. A court agreed that the consent decree expired in December 2017 and would not be extended — all of which means that this year will feature the first presidential election since 1984 in which Republicans can approach “ballot integrity” issues without court restraints.
To that end, the RNC and the president’s re-election campaign has set aside $20 million to help pay for voting-rights lawsuits. Politico recently reported that the budget was doubled, and Trump “has taken a personal interest in the project.” […]
This scenario makes Stacey Abrams’ involvement more crucial. She is great at fighting for voting rights.
Everything Trump dislikes is “illegal.” This is going to keep William Barr busy.
For Donald Trump, it’s not enough to condemn his political opponents; he consistently finds it necessary to accuse them of unidentified crimes. [Trump] has publicly called for criminal prosecutions of his former presidential rival, his presidential predecessor, and his current presidential rival, among many others.
But as Trump sees criminals lurking in every corner, his focus isn’t limited to public officials […] published a tweet that was apparently directed at CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“They, and the Lamestream Media (including Jake), have spent 3 1/2 years illegally smearing me. They got caught!”
Note, the president could’ve simply accused news organizations of “smearing” him, or made an argument about reporting he considers unfair, but for Trump, that’s not good enough. He instead felt the need to argue that American news organizations are guilty of “illegal” coverage.
A day earlier, Trump wrote that the “radical left” controls a variety of tech companies, adding that his administration “is working to remedy this illegal situation.”
The president also, of course, recently condemned the investigation into the Russia scandal and his impeachment as “illegal.”
[Trump]t apparently believes “illegal” is little more than a synonym for “stuff Trump doesn’t like.”
[…] the knee-jerk assumption that everything that bothers the president is illegal is unsettling.
But making matters slightly worse is the problem that sits alongside Trump’s misguided rhetoric: he and Attorney General Bill Barr have abused federal law enforcement in ways without modern precedent. When the president falsely labels routine developments, including White House coverage from a free press, as “illegal,” it’s hard not to wonder what Trump, Barr, and their politicized Justice Department intend to do with the absurd allegations. […]
“[…] inspectors general are independent watchdogs, but they shouldn’t expect to be independent of Trump.”
[…] Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper yesterday and made clear that the president’s assumptions about firing independent watchdogs with impunity are almost certainly correct.
“I take a slightly different view in terms of what [inspectors general] should be independent from. They need to retain their independence within the agencies, so they can do inspections and investigations and provide that to their leadership, but primarily to the president. And so they serve at the president’s will.”
In other words, according to the powerful Republican committee chair, inspectors general are independent watchdogs, but they aren’t, and shouldn’t expect to be, independent of Trump. […]
They can’t let it go. The Trump administration is in a hole and still digging when it comes to the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China. No, it wasn’t. That’s wrong.
The Trump administration—led by Donald himself—keeps pushing the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China. But a report purporting to provide evidence for that theory is based in part on provably false claims. It’s “an illustrated guide on how not to do open source analysis,” according to one expert […]
The report, produced by a defense contractor and referred to as the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE) report, is being looked at by several congressional committees. At least some are skeptical. It “doesn’t quite pass the smell test,” one aide told The Daily Beast. It’s “not based on actual intelligence,” another source said. But with Donald Trump invested in the claim that this pandemic is all China’s fault, don’t expect the Trump administration to let it go.
According to the MACE report, traffic around the Wuhan lab was blocked for a time in October, suggesting that authorities were trying to keep people away from the site of a leak so the virus wouldn’t spread. But satellite imagery shows that there were vehicles on the road at that time, though nearby highway construction may have led to some closures.
That’s one bit of misinformation.
The report also claims to have found highly suspicious gaps in cell phones going in and out of the lab in October … only its authors failed to note that there was a major holiday during that time. […]
That’s two bits of misinformation.
Another investigator quickly found the MACE report’s claim that a November conference at the Wuhan lab was canceled was false—a Pakistani scientist who attended the conference posted selfies on Facebook.
That’s three bits of misinformation
At the same time as the MACE report is circulating in Congress, Australian officials have had to push back on a second dossier making similar claims that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab. Although the claims made a splash in a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper [see SC’s comment 470], “It’s a dead story here—it’s not been taken seriously,” one Australian official told The Daily Beast. Unfortunately, in the U.S., Trump seems likely to continue to try to distract from his own failures by pushing the theory that the virus came from a Chinese lab.
Dr. Rick Bright was on “60 Minutes” last night. Trump, predictably, didn’t like that.
Days after testifying to Congress, coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright spoke to 60 Minutes about how he was removed from the head of a federal pandemic response and vaccine development agency after he pushed for a more effective response. Bright still has a warning to sound, saying “We don’t yet have a national strategy to respond fully to this pandemic. The best scientists that we have in our government who are working really hard to try to figure this out aren’t getting that clear, cohesive leadership, strategic plan message yet. Until they get that, it’s still gonna be chaotic.”
In response, Donald Trump showed that failure of leadership in action, rage-tweeting that Bright is “yet another Fake ‘Whistleblower’, a disgruntled employee who supports Dems, fabricates stories, & spews lies.” But it wasn’t just a personal attack. Trump took aim at the idea of accountability, continuing “This whole Whistleblower racket needs to be looked at very closely, it is causing great injustice & harm,” and predictably attacking the media for daring to report on his failures.
[…] Bright’s story is damaging and totally believable. Starting in January, he has told Congress and now 60 Minutes, he was warning his fellow Health and Human Services officials that a pandemic was coming and the U.S. was unprepared. He warned specifically about personal protective equipment, and pushed for N95 mask manufacturing in the U.S. to be boosted early, in time to build a stockpile.
[…] “There was a belief that we could contain this virus and keep it out of the United States. Containment doesn’t work. Containment does buy time. It could slow. It very well could slow the spread. But while you’re slowing the spread, you better be doing something in parallel to be prepared for when that virus breaks out. That was my job.”
And that was the job the top people in the Trump administration weren’t interested in having done. […]
”I believe my last ditch effort to protect Americans from that drug [hydroxychloroquine] was the final straw that they used […] to push me out,” Bright told Norah O’Donnell in the interview that aired Sunday. He acknowledged that he ultimately signed an emergency use authorization for the untested drug, but noted it was after he had already worked to limit the drug’s use to hospital patients, saying, “I was given a directive. I didn’t have a choice, other than to leave at that time. And I went along and signed that letter knowing that we had contained access to that drug.”
Unfortunately, Trump had other plans—and continues to push the government in a series of disastrous directions.
From Wonkette: “Trump Maybe Fired State Department IG To Cover Up Way More Than Mike Pompeo’s Dog Poop”
[…] Reporting is starting to hit about why Linick was fired, besides how Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo do not like inspectors general or the oversight it is their fuckin’ job to provide, which is why Trump has been on a rampage firing them ever since he was impeached for all of eternity.
In a normal world, IGs root out corruption, yes, but they’re also just there to provide unbiased suggestions for How To Do Better. If there is one thing the Trump administration hates besides getting caught committing crimes, it’s being told their perpetual incompetence is a bad thing. […]
The new IG appointee is some Mike Pence-affiliated weenus named Stephen Akard […] Of course, Akard was reportedly hand-picked by Mike Pompeo, which is … totally not how this shit is supposed to work.
From Geoff Bennett:
State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to green-light billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia against the will of Congress, two sources tell @JoshNBCNews and @mitchellreports.
More from Wonkette:
[…] Now THAT sounds more like something Donald Trump might fire an IG over, especially with the Trump administration’s very weird and cozy […] relationship with the Saudi Murder Prince. […]
Congress has been kind of mad — even some Republicans! — about how Trump and Jared Kushner have been giving Saudi Arabia a free pass for murdering Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and about the Trump administration’s unquestioning support of the very bad and evil Saudi war on Yemen. Congress has a say in whether we sell weapons to foreign countries, but Trump declared NATIONAL EMERGY in 2019 in order to push that through without asking for Congress’s opinion.
Remember last year when Pompeo’s State Department could not WAIT to publicly blame Iran for an attack on Saudi oil production facilities, even though Houthi rebels in Yemen were taking credit for it? It sure looked like we were going to get into a stupid war with Iran there for a minute, upon Saudi Arabia’s orders. […]
Point is, without totally rehashing all Trump’s Saudi weirdness […] the Trump administration has been outsourcing a lot of American war decisions to Prince Mohammed Bone Saw, instead of the United States Congress, and it sounds like Steve Linick was investigating stuff related to that.
CNN also is reporting that Linick did a little bitty thing during the Trump impeachment, by giving Congress a briefing about Rudy Giuliani’s batshit lie-filled smear campaign against both Joe Biden and former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Mike Pompeo’s Department of State was not acknowledging the impeachment investigation was even real, so obviously Linick did a VERY BAD THING right then. So that could also be a part of this.
In short, Steve Linick appears to have been competently doing his job and maybe uncovering incompetence, corruption, grift, graft and God even knows what other crimes. And that is a no-no in the Trump administration. […]
[…] The report describes the lending facilities the Treasury Department has created to operate through the Federal Reserve, and says that only one of them has received funding. It is called the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility and is supposed to purchase corporate debt. It has received $37.5 billion.
The $500 billion Treasury fund also set aside $46 billion to make loans and loan guarantees to the airline industry. None of that money has been disbursed.
Although the White House and numerous states are pushing forward with efforts to reopen parts of the economy, the severe economic trauma caused in the past two months has dealt a heavy blow to a large number of businesses and workers. A growing number of businesses, particularly those that rely on direct customer interaction, have closed and are not expected to reopen. And others have expressed frustration about the changing terms of government aid programs.
The Treasury Department has announced five lending facilities to disburse other portions of the money, including a Main Street Lending Program that is supposed to help small and medium-size businesses.
The report describes how even before any money from the Main Street program has been lent, the terms of the program already have evolved. The changes include increasing the size of loans, eliminating a requirement that companies have to attest they need money “due to the exigent circumstances presented by” the coronavirus, and modifying a requirement that companies make “reasonable efforts” to maintain payroll and retain employees during the term of a loan. Instead, they will be required to make “commercially reasonable efforts” to do so.
There is also a Municipal Liquidity Facility that is supposed to loan money to state and local governments, an issue that has been the topic of intense debate on Capitol Hill and at the White House. The Cares Act allocated a separate $150 billion pot for state and local governments, but governors and Democratic lawmakers have been petitioning for more. Treasury intends to invest $35 billion in the Municipal Liquidity Facility, which can support up to $500 billion in lending, the report says. But none of the money has gone out yet.
The report pressed the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to answer questions about risk to taxpayers and how the agencies will assess success or failure of its programs. It also specifically asks when the Main Street and Municipal Liquidity Facilities will begin to function. […]
The report underscores the wide discretion the Treasury Department has in using $500 billion in taxpayer money as it sees fit. Congressional Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who headed a similar oversight commission after the 2008 financial crisis bailout, have criticized the money as a “slush fund” for corporations. […]
Trump probably thinks the “slush fund” is his … his alone.
From Paul Waldman, writing for the Washington Post:
From the moment he took office, Donald Trump wanted the presidency to be grand in its public image — let’s put on a military parade! — but small in substance. And now, faced with a death toll from covid-19 of 90,000 Americans and counting, Trump has pretty much decided that he’s done all he can and managing the pandemic will have to be left to somebody else.
The Post reports:
Amid a once-in-a-century deadly pandemic, Trump has inserted his ego squarely into the U.S. response while simultaneously minimizing his own role — deferring critical decisions to others, undermining his credibility with confusion and misinformation, and shirking responsibility in what some see as a shrinking of the American presidency.
Trump has never faced a problem that was so resistant to PR, in which his ability to manipulate the media and create an alternate reality can’t turn everything in his favor. To solve it he’d actually have to be informed, engaged and competent. That is just way too much to ask.
[…] Just a few months into his presidency, he was already wishing he could unburden himself of the office’s more tedious requirements. “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” he told Reuters in April 2017. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”
Consider that for a moment. Trump thought that managing the U.S. government, the largest organization on Planet Earth — dealing with foreign and domestic policy, confronting natural and man-made disasters, trying to solve short- and long-term problems — would be easier than running a midsize real estate and brand licensing firm.
[…] Trump has spent his entire life believing that there’s no challenge he couldn’t meet with his superior genes, firm will and ruthless lack of scruples. Everyone who allegedly knows what they’re doing is actually stupid, and he knows more than all of them.
[…] “I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” “I know tech better than anyone.”
[…] When he encounters a truly complex problem (“Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated”) he takes a shot at solving it, then gives up. And he regularly laments that there is some easy solution to a problem he faces if only he wasn’t constrained.
So last September, he mused on the possibility of bombing Iran: “The easiest thing I can do — in fact, I could do it while you’re here — would say, ‘Go ahead, fellas. Go do it.’ And that would be a very bad day for Iran. That’s the easiest thing I could do. It’s so easy.”
[…] “We could win that war in a very short period of time, but I’m not looking to kill 10 million people, okay?”
[…] Given all that, it’s completely unsurprising that he would eventually give up on dealing with this pandemic. It requires an intellectual and material mobilization across multiple domains — health care on both a micro and macro level, state-federal coordination, supply chain management, international cooperation — that would challenge even the most engaged president […]
He kept searching for a “miracle,” either that the virus would just vanish or that something like hydroxychloroquine would solve the problem and take it off his hands. Now that it’s clear that won’t happen, he has decided that the pandemic is taken care of and he’ll devote his time to cheerleading for our coming economic recovery.
But ask yourself this: Even on this ground where he feels more comfortable, what is Trump actually doing?
He’s tweeting about it. And visiting a factory or two, and holding some meetings with business leaders. But what is he doing, substantively, to help the economy recover? Pretty much nothing.
[…] In the face of all this misery and death, the person in charge has made the presidency a reflection of himself: All about a vulgar show, with no substance underneath it. And the price we’re all paying continues to rise.
Local authorities across Mexico have resisted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call to lift emergency measures in municipalities without confirmed cases, warning that the pandemic is far from over.
Mexico has registered nearly 50,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths, and its testing rate ranks among the lowest in Latin America, with just 0.4 tests per 1,000 people.
But, on Monday, approximately 300 municipalities throughout the country – called “municipalities of hope” – were given the green light to restart economic activities and lift sheltering-in-place recommendations. Similar measures are scheduled to start 1 June in the rest of the country, while classes will resume the same day. López Obrador said:
We need to maintain discipline, not relax this discipline since we’re almost there. I have a lot of faith and many expectations that we’re going to finish taming this pandemic.
Lynna @ #474, given Trump’s propensity for projection, his ramping up the rhetoric of illegality suggests to me that he’s also ramping up his own crimes and that he’s worried about what might be revealed if his financial documents are turned over.
Quoted in Lynna’s #480 above:
But ask yourself this: Even on this ground where he feels more comfortable, what is Trump actually doing?
He’s tweeting about it. And visiting a factory or two, and holding some meetings with business leaders. But what is he doing, substantively, to help the economy recover? Pretty much nothing.
The report @ #479 could indicate that he’s deliberately keeping funds from businesses to force them to reopen fully as quickly as possible, based on the magical thinking that this will get the economy going again. Once again sabotaging real recovery efforts based on cruel delusions.
By April 30, 2020, South Korea had reported 10,765 cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) (1); ≈76.2% of cases were from Daegu and North Gyeongsang provinces. On February 25, a COVID-19 case was detected in Cheonan, a city ≈200 km from Daegu. In response, public health and government officials from Cheonan and South Chungcheong Province activated the emergency response system. We began active surveillance and focused on identifying possible COVID-19 cases and contacts. We interviewed consecutive confirmed cases and found all had participated in a fitness dance class. We traced contacts back to a nationwide fitness dance instructor workshop that was held on February 15 in Cheonan.
Fitness dance classes set to Latin rhythms have gained popularity in South Korea because of the high aerobic intensity (2). At the February 15 workshop, instructors trained intensely for 4 hours. Among 27 instructors who participated in the workshop, 8 had positive real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) results for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes COVID-19; 6 were from Cheonan and 1 was from Daegu, which had the most reported COVID-19 cases in South Korea. All were asymptomatic on the day of the workshop.
By March 9, we identified 112 COVID-19 cases associated with fitness dance classes in 12 different sports facilities in Cheonan (Figure). All cases were confirmed by RT-PCR; 82 (73.2%) were symptomatic and 30 (26.8%) were asymptomatic at the time of laboratory confirmation. Instructors with very mild symptoms, such as coughs, taught classes for ≈1 week after attending the workshop (Appendix). The instructors and students met only during classes, which lasted for 50 minutes 2 times per week, and did not have contact outside of class. On average, students developed symptoms 3.5 days after participating in a fitness dance class (3). Most (50.9%) cases were the result of transmission from instructors to fitness class participants; 38 cases (33.9%) were in-family transmission from instructors and students; and 17 cases (15.2%) were from transmission during meetings with coworkers or acquaintances.
Among 54 fitness class students with confirmed COVID-19, the median age was 42, all were women, and 10 (18.5%) had preexisting medical conditions (Appendix Table 1). The most common symptom at the time of admission for isolation was cough in 44.4% (24/54) of cases; 17 (31.5%) case-patients had pneumonia. The median time to discharge or end of isolation was 27.6 (range 13–66) days after symptom onset.
Before sports facilities were closed, a total of 217 students were exposed in 12 facilities, an attack rate of 26.3% (95% CI 20.9%–32.5%) (Appendix Table 2). Including family and coworkers, transmissions from the instructors accounted for 63 cases (Appendix Figure 2). We followed up on 830 close contacts of fitness instructors and students and identified 34 cases of COVID-19, translating to a secondary attack rate of 4.10% (95% CI 2.95%–5.67%). We identified 418 close contacts of 34 tertiary transmissions before the quarantine and confirmed 10 quaternary cases from the tertiary cases, translating to a tertiary attack rate of 2.39% (95% CI 1.30%–4.35%).
The instructor from Daegu who attended the February 15 workshop had symptoms develop on February 18 and might have been presymptomatic during the workshop. Evidence of transmission from presymptomatic persons has been shown in epidemiologic investigations of COVID-19 (4,5).
Characteristics that might have led to transmission from the instructors in Cheonan include large class sizes, small spaces, and intensity of the workouts. The moist, warm atmosphere in a sports facility coupled with turbulent air flow generated by intense physical exercise can cause more dense transmission of isolated droplets (6,7). Classes from which secondary COVID-19 cases were identified included 5–22 students in a room ≈60 m2 during 50 minutes of intense exercise. We did not identify cases among classes with [fewer than] 5 participants in the same space. Of note, instructor C taught Pilates and yoga for classes of 7–8 students in the same facility at the same time as instructor B (Figure; Appendix Table 2), but none of her students tested positive for the virus. We hypothesize that the lower intensity of Pilates and yoga did not cause the same transmission effects as those of the more intense fitness dance classes.
A limitation of our study is the unavailability of a complete roster of visitors to the sports facilities, which might have meant we missed infections among students during surveillance and investigation efforts. Discovery of outbreak cases centered on exercise facilities led to a survey of instructors who participated in a fitness dance workshop and provided clues to identifying additional cases among students. Early identification of asymptomatic persons with RT-PCR–confirmed infections helped block further transmissions. Because of the increased possibility of infection through droplets, vigorous exercise in closely confined spaces should be avoided (8) during the current outbreak, as should public gatherings, even in small groups (9,10).
tomhsays
Probably lying about this, just like everything else.
President Trump told reporters Monday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine for about a week and a half and that the White House physician knows he is taking the anti-malaria drug despite the fact that he continues to test negative for the coronavirus.
Clinical trials, academic research and scientific analysis indicate the danger of the drug is a significantly increased risk of death for certain patients, particularly those with heart problems. Trump dismissed those concerns, saying he has heard about the drug’s benefits from doctors and others he has spoken with.
“I think it’s good. I’ve heard a lot of good stories. And if it’s not good, I’ll tell you right. I’m not going to get hurt by it,” he said. “It’s been around for 40 years — for malaria, for lupus, for other things. I take it. Front-line workers take it. A lot of doctors take it.”
tomh @482, yeah, I too think he is lying. As a doctor on MSNBC noted, it is hard to imagine any doctor writing that prescription.
SC @482:
The report @ #479 could indicate that he’s deliberately keeping funds from businesses to force them to reopen fully as quickly as possible, based on the magical thinking that this will get the economy going again.
Yeah, that could well be true. I still wouldn’t put it past Trump and Munchin to still be working out how they could keep more of that money for themselves, (as well as trying to force businesses to open). It’s a lot of money, but it reminds me of the slush fund Trump managed to create and use when he accepted donations for his inaugural expenses.
If you’re wondering why Wall Street soared, this Moderna news had a lot to do with it: “A COVID-19 vaccine candidate has shown it can prompt an immune response in the human body, and was also found to be safe and well-tolerated in a small group of patients.”
———————-
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) today “vowed to appeal a court ruling to the state’s Supreme Court on Monday after a judge ruled her executive orders on social distancing guidelines ‘null and void.'”
————————–
Georgia: “In the latest bungling of tracking data for the novel coronavirus, a recently posted bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website appeared to show good news: new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks. In fact, there was no clear downward trend.” [Lying with bar charts!]
————————-
In retreat: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appears to be backing away from a theory he and President Donald Trump were pushing that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated at a lab in Wuhan, China.” [About damned time Pompeo realized that wouldn’t fly.]
———————-
There are so just so many stories like this one: “A Florida man who thought the coronavirus was ‘a fake crisis’ has changed his mind after he and his wife contracted COVID-19.” [Why do you have to catch the disease before you think it is real?]
———————
On a related note: “A congregant who attended a California church on Mother’s Day for a service that was against state orders tested positive for coronavirus the next day, possibly exposing 180 other churchgoers.”
—————————
Truckers: “President Donald Trump says the sound of truck horns just south of the White House is a ‘sign of love’ for him from truckers. But the truckers are actually honking their opposition to low shipping rates.” [Trump lied!]
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White House dysfunction: “In early May, White House aides had seemingly settled on Derek Lyons as President Donald Trump’s next top domestic policy adviser. They told reporters as much. A week later, though, Brooke Rollins got the job, according to five people familiar with the situation, including two White House officials. And Lyons got a promotion to counselor to the president, while keeping his job as White House staff secretary.” [WTF? I expect to hear more on this story.]
————————
Karl Rove is still Karl Rove: “Former President George W. Bush senior adviser Karl Rove accused Barack Obama — the nation’s first black president — of committing a ‘political drive-by shooting’ on Monday for subtly criticizing President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response in a commencement speech for historically black colleges.”
Follow-up to tomh @482: The FDA warnings against taking hydroxychoroquine say that patients should NOT take the drug outside of a hospital or clinical trial setting.
A tell from Trump: he expanded his lie to include front-line workers. He claims they are taking the drug. There’s no evidence for that. We do have evidence that whenever Trump tells a lie, he tends to embroider it in a way that ropes in other people.
Yep, worst campaign season ever … and not because of coronavirus.
[…] armed with a website and a video saying that Joe Biden’s political party was the Chinese Communist Party (not a joke), the Trump campaign announced the launch of the “’TRUTH OVER FACTS’ INVESTIGATIVE WEBSITE.”
George Orwell wrote in 1984 that his concept of Doublethink was “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. […]
“Doublethink” and “Newspeak” have been paraphrased as “Doublespeak” in the American lexicon over the years. […]
Looking at the Trump administration’s use of “Doublethink” is only a part of the story. Current U.S. Attorney General William Barr is using his power of office to do the bidding of our current fascist in power, Donald Trump. When asked about how this might look at the end of the day, Barr gave another 1984 explanation: “Well, history is written by the winner.”
Trump’s campaign is going after Joe Biden, and will throw Hunter Biden in the mix. He will throw China into the mix, and he will throw whoever he tells his base is the “enemy” into the mix. Then, if successful, he will turn around and sell the children of that very same support base back to the “enemy” he has created, and tell them that “War is Peace,” and that “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.”
[…] congressional Democrats investigating why Donald Trump fired the State Department watchdog just got a whopper of a lead from the man who originally said he let the inspector general go because he had lost confidence in him.
Asked why he thought Steve Linick needed to be removed, Trump offered a blunt response that surely left Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dry heaving.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know,” Trump said of Linick, “other than the State Department and Mike, in particular, I guess they weren’t happy with the job he’s doing or something.” […]
UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Sec. Pompeo refused to cooperate with the newly fired State Department IG’s probe of the $8 billion arms sale to the Saudis.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know,” Trump said of Linick, “other than the State Department and Mike, in particular, I guess they weren’t happy with the job he’s doing or something.”
Oh. So Pompeo made him do it. Okay. And just to be crystal clear: “Mike requested that I do it.” Righto. Got it.
That is super interesting, since Pompeo just told The Washington Post he didn’t know the inspector general had opened a probe into him. In an interview with the Post, Pompeo admitted he had been involved in the decision but couldn’t provide any specific concerns he had about the job Linick was doing. In fact, it rather sounded like Pompeo simply didn’t think Linick was taking the marching orders he was being given.
“I went to the president and made clear to him that Inspector General Linick wasn’t performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to, that was additive for the State Department,” Pompeo explained.
Hmm… in a way that we had tried to get him to.
But when reporters asked Trump why Pompeo wanted Linick axed, he offered, “Maybe [Pompeo] thinks he’s being treated unfairly.”
Oh.
As for all the personal errands Pompeo was reportedly having government appointees run for him, Trump didn’t see any problem with a little illegal grifting of American taxpayers.
“I don’t think it’s that important,” Trump said of Pompeo. “They’re bothered because he had somebody walk his dog? This country has a long way to go. The priorities are really screwed up.”
Oh.
Trump sounds as mentally addled as ever. […]
tomhsays
For anyone keeping up with the Flynn case, this is Judge Gleeson’s response to his appointment by Judge Sullivan as amicus curiae, in which he was asked to (1) present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss, and, (2) whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt hearing for pleading guilty to a crime of which he now claims to be innocent. Gleeson’s resonse is here. Presumably Judge Sullivan will agree.
johnson catmansays
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., chastised President Donald Trump on Monday for his decision to take hydroxychloroquine, saying health experts have warned about its effects and that it could be harmful to the president because he’s “morbidly obese.”
“As far as the President is concerned, he’s our president and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say. So, I think it’s not a good idea,” Pelosi said in an interview about the coronavirus with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Here’s a link to the May 19 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog
Their summary:
Global cases pass 4.8 million. There are 4,817,105 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins university data. The death toll stands at 318,775. US deaths, the highest worldwide, passed 90,000, and the number of cases climbed above 1.5m.
Trump threatens to make WHO funding freeze ‘permanent’. Late on Monday evening, Donald Trump tweeted a letter addressed to World Health Organization director general saying that if the WHO “does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary [funding] freeze permanent and reconsider our membership of the organization”. He also claimed the WHO had shown an “alarming lack of independence” from China.
In response, China accused Trump of trying to “smear China” and “shirk responsibility and bargain over its international obligations to the WHO”, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
WHO chief promises review of coronavirus response. Before Trump’s letter was released, the World Health Organization said an independent review of the global coronavirus response would begin as soon as possible.
A resolution drafted by the European Union calling for an independent evaluation of the WHO’s performance appeared to have won consensus backing among the WHO’s 194 states. The motion is expected to be voted on on Tuesday. [Update: the resolution has been adopted]
Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine. His doctor released a letter confirming that they had discussed the use of the drug and “concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks”. The US Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.
Brazil cases overtake UK to become third-highest worldwide. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Brazil stands at 255,368, according to Johns Hopkins University figures, making the country the third-worst affected in terms of cases.
UK jobless claims soar by nearly 70% in April. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits increased in April by the most since records began, to reach almost 2.1 million.
The Office for National Statistics said about 856,500 people signed up for universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance benefits in April, driving up the overall UK claimant count by 69% in a single month.
Russia coronavirus cases edge towards 300,000. Health officials reported 9,263 new infections, bringing the total to 299,941 – the fourth day in a row new cases fell below 10,000.
The prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, who returned to work today after testing positive for the virus, said the country had stopped the growth of new infections but cautioned that the situation remains “difficult”.
Hong Kong blocks Tiananmen Square vigil with gathering ban. It has in effect banned the annual vigil by extending its physical distancing measures for another 14 days. The restrictions were due to expire this week but will now end no earlier than 5 June, the day after the event commemorating the Chinese army’s brutal crackdown on protesters in 1989.
Czech coronavirus cases show biggest jump in four weeks. The number of new cases climbed above 100 for the first time this month, partly due to an outbreak at a coal mine in Karvina.
Researchers are finding evidence that patients who test positive for the coronavirus after recovering aren’t capable of transmitting the infection, and could have the antibodies that prevent them from falling sick again.
Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 Covid-19 survivors who had tested positive for the coronavirus after their illness had apparently resolved, as indicated by a previous negative test result. The so-called re-positive patients weren’t found to have spread any lingering infection, and virus samples collected from them couldn’t be grown in culture, indicating the patients were shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles.
The findings, reported late Monday, are a positive sign for regions looking to open up as more patients recover from the pandemic that has sickened at least 4.8 million people. The emerging evidence from South Korea suggests those who have recovered from Covid-19 present no risk of spreading the coronavirus when physical distancing measures are relaxed.
The results mean health authorities in South Korea will no longer consider people infectious after recovering from the illness. Research last month showed that so-called PCR tests for the coronavirus’s nucleic acid can’t distinguish between dead and viable virus particles, potentially giving the wrong impression that someone who tests positive for the virus remains infectious.
…
As a result of the findings in the South Korea study, authorities said that under revised protocols, people should no longer be required to test negative for the virus before returning to work or school after they have recovered from their illness and completed their period of isolation.
“Under the new protocols, no additional tests are required for cases that have been discharged from isolation,” the Korean CDC said in a report. The agency said it will now refer to “re-positive” cases as “PCR re-detected after discharge from isolation.”…
They’re going to these great lengths to exclude and expel refugees, children, scientists, people fleeing persecution and they let an AQAP guy planning a terrorist attack onto a fucking military base.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio will serve as acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday, after Senator Richard Burr announced he would step aside from the position during a federal investigation of his stock trades….
As Florida starts to reopen, the architect and manager of Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard, announced she’d been removed from her position, Florida Today reported.
Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was “not voluntary” and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
Jones made the announcement May 5 in a farewell email to researchers and other members of the public who had signed up to receive updates on the data portal, according to Florida Today. She said that for “reasons beyond my division’s control,” her office is no longer managing the dashboard, involved in its publication, fixing errors or answering any questions.
Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard, created by a team of Florida Department of Health data scientists and public health officers led by Jones, was praised by White House officials for its accessibility, the Florida Daily reported. But over the last few weeks, it “crashed and went offline, data disappeared with no explanation and access to the underlying data sheets became difficult.”
Jones told CBS12 News that since she’s been removed, the dashboard still hasn’t been fully repaired….
ravensays
Twitter copy
David Fahrenthold
✔
@Fahrenthold
The state of Georgia made it look like its covid cases were going down ***by putting the dates out of order on its chart*** May 5 was followed by April 25, then back to May again, whatever made it look like a downslope.
This ties in with SC above about Florida lying about its Covid-19 cases.
This is a GOP Red state thing.
So did Georgia.
They really don’t care how many people they kill.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Supreme Court late Monday halted a rural judge’s order earlier in the day that had tossed out statewide coronavirus restrictions imposed by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown.
Baker County Circuit Judge Matthew Shirtcliff had ruled that Brown erred by not seeking the Legislature’s approval to extend the stay-at-home orders beyond a 28-day limit.
A judge in a rural county in Oregon tossed out all of Oregon’s rules and laws to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
A judge in a county with 16,000 people is now running the Covid-19 pandemic response for a state of 4.3 million people.
Or rather not running it because he abolished it.
For a few hours anyway.
The Oregon Supreme court stayed his ruling pending further consideration.
They could still abolish the state government’s ability to do anything about the Covid-19 pandemic, as happened in Wisconsin.
The GOP is so predictable.
They really don’t care how many people they kill.
Yikes. This is bad. This was not unexpected.
Link
Lynna @ #497, the whole logic of it never made any sense. They kept boasting of their “moderate” approach, like all these other polities, including the other Scandinavian countries, were just being “extreme” for the hell of it. It’s a goddamned virus. It’s not negotiating with us. Because it’s a goddamned virus. It’s not like these RNA segments were going to say “Well, these Swedes are taking such a reasonable, moderate approach. Very well then, we’ll respond in kind. Fair play and all that.” The virus doesn’t respond in proportion to our moderation or bullshit courage or bogus rants about tyranny. It takes advantage of the opportunity to invade. Because it’s a goddamned virus.
Just released by the House Intel Committee: “Russia Investigation Transcripts and Documents.”
It’s a lot.
Tweet o’ the day.
“Trump says he discussed the U.S. investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election with Putin on Thursday, calling the probe a ‘hoax’.”
Bloomberg link atl.
Wow.
re Lynna @496 in previous thread about Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth: These assholes are going to get a lot of people killed. I am uncomfortable going out as it is, but what the fucking fuck is wrong with these sociopaths?
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re Lynna @498 in previous thread about Georgia getting extra business from adjacent states by opening: The local news here (NC) had one of the “reopen NC” crackpots complaining that because our state wasn’t reopening, other states would reap the benefits of increased revenue and NC would lose out. I just wanted to reach through the screen and smack them. Georgia and the adjacent states will also reap increased virus outbreaks and deaths. I just don’t understand the willful ignorance and just plain dumbfuckery.
If anyone can get the NYT link, I would appreciate it. They have a new report that the WH has invited a group of World War II veterans to Washington for VE Day photo ops. (The group had evidently been planning to go to Russia, but naturally that was canceled.) They’re inviting a group of men in their 90s to travel from around the country and spend the day doing group activities during a pandemic. The report had quotes from one of the men’s daughters saying inviting them was irresponsible and could endanger not just them but their families when they returned. They’re apparently going ahead with it even though one of Trump’s personal valets just tested positive. A Trump spokesfool attacked the media for even questioning the wisdom of the plan and talked about how the men’s voices needed to be heard or some such nonsense.
re SC @5:
They could be heard by Skype or some other web-method without risking their lives for a god-damned photo op for The Orange Toddler-Tyrant.
johnson catman @ #4, as the various pacts and coalitions amongst the states in different regions (the Western States Pact, the Coalition of Northeastern Governors, the Midwestern Alliance) have formed and expanded, I’ve had a grim laugh wondering who would want to be in the Southern States Suicide Pact with like Georgia and Texas.
johnson catman @ #6, yes! And it’s not like WWII veterans have been marginalized and silenced all these years. They’re probably the most revered group in the country!
Noteworthy:
@ #5 Hi SC. This was on their Live Coronavirus Update page which I thought they were still providing for free. Anyway, this is the item:
The White House invites a group of World War II veterans — all older than 95 — for a commemoration event.
Hi, tomh. Thanks! I thought I got a subscription screen over the NYT page and couldn’t find a report (yet) anywhere else, but it was a screen requiring a login. I actually have an OG account there from many years ago, but I’m too distracted right now to try to reactivate it or set up a new one. Maybe next week…
Vox – “The agonizing story of Tara Reade.”
(I’m not so agonized.)
Matt Yglesias:
She turned down or bailed on several regular media interviews and has now chosen to do an online interview with Megyn Kelly.
Susan Hennessey:
Steve Vladeck:
Elie Mystal in the Nation – “We Didn’t Need Video to Know Ahmaud Arbery Was Lynched”:
While I was posting #16, I had Chris Hayes on pause. Evidently the McMichaels were just arrested.
SC, exactly. And that’s why it found it’s way into the White House to infect one of Trump’s valets. The virus does not care that Trump had instructed his staff to protect him from exposure to the virus.
The virus doesn’t care if Trump thinks he would look bad wearing a face mask.
The virus doesn’t care if the governor of Nebraska has decided NOT to report infections in prisons, nursing homes or meat-packing plants. The virus will continue, like a virus, no matter what propaganda unethical politicians spew.
It will refuse to be hidden.
My comment 18 was in response to SC’s comment 499 in the previous chapter of this thread.
From text quoted by tom in comment 10:
How can Trump have “had very little contact” with a person that brought him meals, that played out his clothes, and so forth?
From SC’s link in comment 3:
Are they making the “I’m too stupid/uninformed to be aware of the circumstances” argument for Flynn? Seems like an odd argument to make to excuse the actions of a National Security Advisor.
From Adam Schiff:
Bill Barr should be impeached.
“When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?”
Barr: “Well, history is written by the winners [smug laughter] so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”
These people are comic book villains. Cartoonishly evil.
WaPo – Where Americans are still staying at home the most
(Interactive county-by-county map at the link.)
Locally, the S.France Mediterranean seaside village where I live recently published some Covid-19 statistics. As of c.3 days ago, there is only one hospitalised Covid-19 patient. Since lockdown began almost eight weeks ago, only 30 total have been hospitalised, two very elderly people have sadly died, but (as previously mentioned in this series of poopyhead threads) several of the local nursing homes have had no cases whatsoever. There’s also c.100 people in strict isolation at a community-run facility as “suspect cases”. The statistics are rather amateurishly presented and incomplete (e.g., nothing whatsoever is said about testing, ICU, &tc), and possibly inconsistent (some totals don’t seem to add up), but probably transparent (i.e., unlikely anything is being deliberately hidden).
The chef who owns one of my favourite restaurants is “chomping at the bit” to reopen — unsurprising, it’s both their passion and family’s livelihood (the partner helps at busy times) — and is planning to reopen, take-away only, as soon as possible (next week, I think, when France will no longer be in lockdown). I’m not (yet) tried of my own cooking, but the idea of a professionally-prepared meal by a chef I’ve known for many years is tantalizing…
You know you’re powerless and living under a dictatorship when the strongest penalty you can impose on your public servants is to try to scare them with a vague threat of history not remembering them nicely.
This is a problem which — somewhat embarrassingly, as I have some experience working with hard-of-hearing — had never occurred to me, Face masks for the deaf: Covid 19’s communication challenge for the hearing impaired (video). Rather cleverly, the interviews with hard-of-hearing people do not have an audio track, they are only subtitled (in English): “How to lip read when everyone’s face is hidden behind a mask? That is the challenge facing deaf people across the world as the Covid-19 pandemic makes face masks a part of daily life. The answer could be transparent face masks but such masks are in short supply, leading some to make their own.”
Unrelated, and not at all political, Paris by Night: FRANCE 24 meets with night wanderers despite coronavirus lockdown measures (video): “France’s lockdown measures are amid the strictest in Europe, as the country tries to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Happy and moving Paris, usually known for its night wanderers, has changed and given place to calm and silence. But not all Parisians are respecting lockdown measures and FRANCE 24 met them during the night: some are simply wandering, but others don’t have other choice as the streets are sometimes their home.”
There’s an apparently famous(?) Ozland chef who is also a kook. Recently, Pete Evans fined [AUD]$25,000 by Therapeutic Goods Administration over coronavirus claims relating to BioCharger (24-April-2020). The is a woo-woo device, probably complete with quantum, described as “ came with a [AUD]$14,990 price tag and claimed to [… t]he website claimed it replicates light, frequencies, harmonics, pulsed electromagnetic fields and voltage that are found in nature, for a variety of treatments. [… A] video that Evans posted on April 9, in which he said: ” Geesh!
Anyways, kook chef is back, Australian celebrity chef Pete Evans under fire for sharing views of UK conspiracy theorist David Icke (as per several previous comments in this series of poopyhead threads, Icke has been kicked off both farcebork and twittering for spruiking† Covid-19 nonsense (extreme antisemitism apparently wasn’t sufficient)):
According to the Grauniad’s article on the woo machine incident, Chef Pete Evans criticised for trying to sell $15,000 light device to fight coronavirus, the kook is also an anti-vaxxer, and called Covid-19 . With classic Grauniad snark: “There is no evidence that [Covid-19] can be treated or cured by coloured lights.” And the kook has form, “In 2017 doctors felt compelled to condemn Evans’s documentary The Magic Pill, which claimed that following his paleo diet guidelines for five weeks could drastically reduce symptoms of diabetes, cancer and autism.”
Of course, not all chefs are eejits / kooks; e.g., French chef [Eric] Ripert feeds New York’s front-line medical workers, “The goal, said the renowned chef, is to assist ‘people who take enormous risks, see horrible things during the day — when they return to their hotel, they can relax and eat something tasty.'”
† Spruik is apparently Ozland slang(?) for selling or promoting; the etymology is unknown but possibly came from Afrikaans with soldiers returning from the Boer War.
Some interesting UK reports from the Grauniad:
Black and brown people must be at the centre of the Covid-19 story in the UK (so many have contributed, and in some case died. working in the NHS, care homes, etc.)
Black people in the UK four times more likely to die of Covid-19 than whites. Differences persist when locality, age and wealth are taken into account. Possibly because so many are in “front-line” occupations.
On a different topic:
<A href=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told”>The planned contract tracing app in the UK could violate privacy laws. (This morning, it’s emerged that it may be dropped in favour of the Google/Apple app. I woludn’t necessarily trust that any more than one sponsored by Johnson’s crew.)
re tomh @10:
Everyone can get a test if they want one. As long as they work in the White House. Anyone else, not so much. As a matter of fact, it is better if they don’t test everyone so that the number of confirmed cases keeps going down.
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I don’t think I can stand another eight months of The Orange Toddler-Tyrant and his band of sociopath grifters. If he wins in November, I may have to sell everything and move to another country just so I don’t have to see his mug or listen to his whining.
Sorry, missed a ” @29. here is is: <A href=”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/uk-coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-could-fall-foul-of-privacy-law-government-told”>again.
Some more:
UK ministers were warned about the dangers in care homes, particularly if patients discharged from hospital were sent back to them – as they have been.
Why the UK testing figures have fallen over the past few days. The government focused on pretending they had met an arbitrary target set by Matt Hancock, the health minister, not on doing what would be most useful.
The government is outsourcing the recruitment and training of contact tracers to a private company, ignoring the fact that local councils already employ thousands of them – people who know the job, and their local area.
Not entirely sure what I think of this stunt, Armed black citizens escort Michigan lawmaker to capitol after volatile rightwing protest:
For feck’s sake, armed knuckleheads on a balcony overhead, screaming and shouting, obviously angry, and it didn’t occur to Them™ others would be frightened?
The escort was certainly brave — being armed whilst black is a very good way of getting yourself shot — and the attempt to turn the tables (so to speak) or show the knuckleheads how absurd such antics are is understandable. However, I’m not at all thrilled with the copying of stoopidity. I am also doubtful the message will get through to the state “police” / knuckleheads. My immediate counter-suggestion would be to stage an FSM-style pirate escort “armed” with obviously fake plastic cutlasses and assorted banners, &tc, as, for example, as has been to teh westboro baptist church and other kooks, nazis, and bigots. That seems to have worked in the past, and “punching up” at the knuckleheads, making it obvious with humour just how idiotic they looked, can sometimes get through.
† I decided to set this remark in for the same reason I’d set it in if it was uttered by a nazi or other kook. The quoted person being an elected representative sealed the decision; they seem to have exercised poor judgement but are not an (obvious) kook.
Here’s a link to the May 8 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Hmm, I can’t seem to get the contact tracing app one right! Once again.
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose epidemiological model is credited with persuading Johnson to abandon the “herd immunity” strategy, has resigned from SAGE (committee of experts advising the government) after the right-wing Telegraph revealed his lover had twice visited him in contravention of the lockdown rules. There is a lot of disquiet about this, suspicion that it’s a political hit-job motivated by the right wanting the lockdown lifted. That may be so, and certainly there was no justification for naming his lover, but:
1) It just makes Ferguson’s arrogant stupidity worse – he’s given the right a weapon. I’ve had quite enough of people of power or influence in the crisis deciding the rules don’t apply to them.
2) His model, according to Ferguson himself, is a modification of a 13-year-old model of an influenza pandemic, which consists of “thousands of lines of undocumented C”. Anyone who’s done any serious coding will know that unless Ferguson is superhuman, the code will contain quite a few errors. These may be inconsequential, or they may not. Certainly, key decisions should not be made on the basis of such a model.
3) But in any case, it should not have needed any model to decide that in the face of a highly contagious and dangerous virus, about the effects of which very little was known, the correct course of action was to buy time by minimising the number of people who catch it.
Another interesting article from a few days ago: a comparison of western and eastern European countries (not including Russia in the latter). The eastern countries locked down early and strictly, and would you believe it, have many fewer cases and deaths than most of the western ones (the partial exceptions in the west, such as Austria and Portugal, also took early action). The article suggests the governments and populations in the east knew their health systems would swiftly be overwhelmed, while those in the west were more confident and so hesitated to disrupt their economies just to save lives (this may not be fair to the governments of Italy and maybe Spain, who had less warning). In the cause of political honesty, I note that most of the eastern countries have right-wing to centre-right governments, and one, Hungary, is in effect a far right dictatorship – but Orbán, who has used the crisis to make himself dictator, does at least seem to have acted reasonably quickly. So there’s seemingly nothing intrinsic to right-wing government that makes a swift response to the pandemic impossible: the personal characteristics of Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro must bear much of the blame.
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Coronavirus Cases Rise By More Than 10K Overnight, Hitting 187K”:
(It’s odd that the identified cases are rising by approximately the same number every day.)
Democracy Now! – “How Russia Became the Next COVID-19 Hot Spot: Infection Rate Soars with 10,000 New Cases Each Day”:
Video and transcript at the link. Yaffa is the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia, which I mentioned in a previous iteration of this thread.
CNN – “Bolsonaro continues to dismiss Covid-19 threat as cases skyrocket in Brazil”:
Guardian – “Naming of Pinochet’s great-niece as Chile women’s minister sparks outrage”:
re blf @32: You are probably aware, but I will remind you that when The Black Panthers started openly carrying weapons in California, restrictions on guns were very quickly passed. The Mulford Act was introduced on April 5, 1967, passed by both the State Assembly and State Senate in late July, and was signed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan on July 29.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
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Of course, “citizen” in this instance meant “black citizens”. I think that perhaps Sarah Anthony may have been trying to prompt the same reaction.
George Monbiot in the Guardian – “How did Michael Moore become a hero to climate deniers and the far right?”
Heidi Przybyla at NBC – “Trump’s Cabinet remains largely sidelined in coronavirus fight”:
The US April jobs report has been released: 20.5 million jobs lost, unemployment rate at 14.7%.
CNN chyron calls it the “worst jobs report in U.S. history.”
Paula Reid, CBS:
johnson catman@38, Thanks for the Black Panthers reminder. Whilst I was living in California at the time, I have essentially no memories of the incident due to being fairly young then (just making the transition from stylus-on-clay to ink-on-papyrus). I (broadly) concur, Sarah Anthony may be trying to initiate a more sensible approach to carrying arms. However, the excerpted article is fairly clear her aim with the stunt was to focus on the state “police”‘s allowing armed nutcases into the debating chamber; e.g., (from @32), “Anthony said her goal was not to encourage more armed citizens to volunteer to protect lawmakers, but to ensure that the law enforcement officers paid by taxpayers to keep legislators safe would do a better job in the future” and “Anthony said she was ‘actively working to prohibit open carry’ of firearms in the state capitol, which is currently legal.” Nothing(?) per se about more sensible shooty mcshootface laws, except at the state capital, albeit the situation does seem very close — but not identical — to that famous Black Panther incident.
The article concludes:
I concur with the two quotes in the above concluding excerpt. My problem is the stunt replicates stoopidity without unambiguously highlighting why it’s stupid.
I do hope, of course, you’re correct it’s a Black Panthers-style stunt leading to a similar result.
As an aside, Snopes points out the the Mulford Act was introduced a month before the Black Panthers arrived at the capital; that arrival then caused the act to be strengthened. The act was originally introduced “after armed members of the Black Panther Party started patrolling city streets to counter police brutality.”
The following comment is one I left on a Grauniad thread (slightly corrected). The ONS is the Office of National Statistics, an official and supposedly non-political UK outfit; but note how its director assumes that nothing can be done about increased numbers in poverty if there’s a long recession.
SC@39,
I recall deciding Michael Moore was an arsehole some time ago, but I don’t remember why!
blf @ #28, on the other hand, Ripert got a 2 from Room Rater (contrast with the perfect 10 for Matthew Miller). Also, LOL.
KG@45, I also cannot recall precisely why I came to a similar conclusion, but one possibility was Planet of the Humans, albeit that’s a 2019 diatribe and my dislike goes back somewhat further. I’m reasonably confident (albeit not certain) my dubiousness is post-Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004); that, and preceding films — not all of which I’ve seen! — have generally struck me as Ok, and even (in the case of his initial film, Roger & Me (1989)) as inspired, despite (and Moore acknowledging) some sequences presented as-if in-chronological-order were not.
Seriously.
G liveblog:
re blf @43: While it is true that the protest at the State Capitol took place after the introduction of the bill, the Black Panthers had organized in October 1966 and were “copwatching” by monitoring police activities and combating police brutality in black communities like Oakland with armed patrols of their own. It is likely that the Mulford Act was an attempt to suppress those actions and “control” the black citizens better. The armed protest at the Capitol brought the Black Panther Party a LOT of press and probably scared a lot of white people, further prioritizing the bill.
re SC @48: Irony died a long time ago, but if it was still alive, this would qualify as an irony-meter shattering event.
SC@46, I know nothing about Éric Ripert, but I do not understand what “Ripert got a 2 from Room Rater” has to do with anything — it’s an image with no context, and no (obvious) woo, posted by a some random twitter source. Some (admittedly quick) searching has failed to locate any woo being spruiked by Mr Ripert, albeit he apparently is a buddhist with vegan leanings, and was, at one time, (apparently self-admittedly) rather high-strung. Plus he has a multi-starred restaurant, a well-known source of stress. Again, no serious woo-woo that I can find, certainly nothing like being an anti-vaxxer or claiming or so on.
“[T]he perfect 10 for Matthew Miller” is certainly a better — and more flattering — image, but again is without context. I’m (obviously) failing to see the point… Or is it a joke I’m missing? (The “LOL” suggests so — that is, I’m missing the joke — albeit a ridiculous image of some thug again has nothing (obvious) to do with woo-woo.)
Apologies if I’m being obtuse… (And my extreme dislike of twittering perhaps has “blinded” me to the joke; admittedly exaggerating, as far as I am concerned, everything on twitshite is a very bad joke, &tc.)
johnson catman@50, YES.
However, please, a hint (apologies for my obvious exasperation): Try reading what I wrote / quoted, or checking the references provided. For example, “The act was originally introduced ‘after armed members of the Black Panther Party started patrolling city streets to counter police brutality'”; and “Recognizing that they were its [the original bill’s] primary targets, the Black Panthers protested the Mulford bill by sending an armed contingent to the state capitol on 2 May 1967”; and so on, including confirmation that the bill was prioritised due to armed protest at the capital: “This act is an urgency statute necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety within the meaning of Article IV of the Constitution and shall go into immediate effect. The facts constituting such necessity are:
“An organized band of men armed with loaded firearms has recently entered the Capitol of the State of California […]”
Note, however, that in contrast to the recent actions, the Black Panthers were not copying any previous (known-to-me) incident; they were illustrating the absurdity of the situation, albeit perhaps inadvertently — the preceding armed patrols were about police brutality / bigotry rather than carrying shooty mcshootfaces — with a novel action. The Black Panthers also, as far as I am aware, did not shout or scream, and apparently handed over their weapons after c.30mins and allowed them to be unloaded (the empty shooty mcshootfaces were then handed back). It’s difficult to see the screaming, shouting, knuckleheads doing that… or the current-day state “police” even trying to peacefully defuse such a situation. (I do not know if the present-day escort enter3d the building or not.) Yes, there are analogies with the Black Panthers stunt, but one might argue the same could be said (albeit in weaker form!) about the preceding knuckleheads (they certainly did enter not only the building, but also, like the Black Panthers, the debating chamber (visitor’s area / balcony)).
I am uncomfortable with the present-day escort action because, as I keep saying, I don’t see how it illustrates the absurdity of the situation (carrying shooty mcshootfaces). Even Sarah Anthony could be construed as being uncertain, she is quoted as saying (see @43) “the thing that I hope does not happen with this photo is that this creates an environment that would feel like more guns are needed in order to protect ourselves.”
Exactly! The current-day incident can, it seems to me, be easily — WAY too easily — misunderstood. It hasn’t necessarily failed, but it (probably) could have been much much better.
blf:
Uh, you’re being obtuse. It’s just a lighthearted Twitter account that rates the Skype rooms of politicians, commentators, etc., on news shows during the pandemic. It’s escapist and fun for those of us who are into politics and design. It’s amusing that so many of the replies to the Ripert tweet are people shocked that such harsh words could be said about the Great Chef. Miller clearly worked on his presentation because he wanted a top score (John Heilemann and Steve Schmidt are currently in an escalating rating war amassing animals, flowers, and fruit bowls). The “LOL” link is to the rating for Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner in his pitiful room which fully reflects his pitiful politics.
Most important, Room Rater is raising money for PPE to US Indian communities.
Speaking of Matt Miller, here he is on the Barr interview (link atl):
From Steve Wick’s The Long Night:
William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, describing Shirer’s struggles reporting under heavy censorship from Nazi Germany during the war:
(Re #54, come to think of it, I’m not sure I’d trust Claude Taylor enough with money to necessarily endorse donating through his organization. But the Twitter account is fun and it’s an important cause.)
SC@54, Thanks for clarifying! And w.r.t. @55, Whilst I still cannot find my copy of Shirer’s book, amazingly, I do (broadly) recall that excerpted bit. A similar incident — or maybe it was the same incident? — was when Shirer and other journalists were taken on an obviously-stage-managed tour of teh nazi “preparations” for invading England. It was so blatantly false — plus Shirer had been (pre?-)briefed by the States naval attaché what to look for, and didn’t see anything — he refused to broadcast despite the facilities put at his disposal by the nazis (highly unusual, and another clew it was all a set-up). One other journalist on the same tour also refused. Everyone else did send in reports, and CBS(?) complained to Shirer about being (?) by other stations, etc. Shirer’s reply was along the same lines as quoted. From memory, Shirer speculated in his book it was an attempt to demoralise the beleaguered British.
“NEWS: Pence flight to Iowa delayed an hour after a staffer tested positive for coronavirus, I’m told. Some aides disembarked AF2. Wheels up now for Iowa.”
blf @ #57, I just came across that section while I was looking for the quote above. Your memory is completely accurate! Shirer was disgusted by the reporters from the AP and another wire service who wanted their “scoop” enough to promote Nazi war propaganda. Shirer described how obviously the Nazis went about trying to get him to do it, like “Have we mentioned there’s a telephone line reserved for you? Wouldn’t you like to use this nice line for your report? Did we remind you we’re letting up on the censorship for this story in particular?”
“(Reuters) – The White House will not consider any further stimulus legislation this month as it eyes the economic impact from reopening U.S. states, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Friday, adding that formal talks with Congress have paused.”
NYT:
White House Rejects C.D.C.’s Coronavirus Reopening Plan
By Abby Goodnough and Maggie Haberman
May 7, 2020 Updated May 8, 2020
The collection baskets were a bridge too far.
SC@59, Heh, speaking of memory, can you recall the name of the fairly promient über-conservative loon — very possibly a john bircher — who, in the 1960(?)s, argued the States should have sided with the nazis in WW ][ because teh nazis fought the commies? I cannot.
“NEW: Chief Justice Roberts issues an administrative stay temporarily blocking disclosure of grand jury materials in the Mueller report to the House while the court considers briefs on whether to enter a longer stay.”
blf @ #62, I’m not able to call to mind any specific names at the moment. I do know that the odious Pat Buchanan has a long history of comments opposing US intervention in World War II and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, in addition to Holocaust denial.
Gov. Cuomo:
SC@67, Yeah, Buchanan was my first pseudo-recollection as well, but I’ve not been able to find any confirmation. Another pseudo-recollection is William F Buckley, but again, lacking confirmation. Grrrrrr…
Josh Marshall:
(As an aside, I’m so tired of media people saying Russia “tried to interfere with” or “tried to attack” our election in 2016. They did interfere with/attack the election, and there’s no reason to add “try to” other than to minimize what they did or its effects.)
WaPo:
Trump seems determined to rehabilitate Flynn.
James Hohmann, May 8
Oh for feck’s sake, Ohio urges employers to report workers fearful of returning to work:
Whilst it’s very probably true that is essentially what Ohio law says, surely “good cause” includes unsafe or unsanitary working conditions.
HEADDESK
Relates to blf’s #72 above – Ian Dunt talks to Toby Buckle – “DAILY: Give me liberty AND give me death?”:
Link to 25-minute podcast atl.
Guardian liveblog:
In teh NKofE, UK scientists condemn ‘Stalinist’ attempt to censor Covid-19 advice:
As a reminder, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” (associate Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, 1914), referring to the advantages of transparency against corruption. As one step, leak the full report to, say, the Grauniad.
Indeed. Here in France the government has admitted to mistakes — e.g., President Macron himself has done so in at least one of his speeches — and some, abeit probably not all, of the various errors have been — or are being or promised that they will be — rectified (e.g., not counting nursing home cases / deaths, an inaccurate map, poor pay for health care workers in general and nursing home staff in particular, and so on).
From text quoted by blf in comment 31:
Ha! Love the understated humor. Actually, the whacko cures on offer sound like they would appeal to Trump. I can just see him turning to Dr. Birx and asking her if she is familiar with that treatment.
Another aspect of blf’s comment stuck with me: scam artists never give up, they just change scams now and then.
Hair furor’s dalekocrazies exterminate exterminate some more, this time at the UN (from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog):
KG @34:
Which private companies are making money off of that redundant activity? Friends of Boris Johnson?
Another good one from Sarah Cooper.
The staffer who tested positive is Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller (wife of Stephen Miller).
From teh Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
Uh, Grauniad, hair furor moved out of hitler hostel some time ago (Donald Trump changes primary residence from New York to Mar-a-Lago (1-Nov-2019): “Donald and Melania Trump have filed for residency in Palm Beach, according to documents obtained by the New York Times”). Actually, he hasn’t “moved out of” as such (as far as I am aware), just changed his “primary residence”.
SC @49, we should all go live with Matthew Miller. I too have derived some pleasure from analyzing the Skype backgrounds shown on TV as various personalities are interviewed remotely. Steve Schmidt added bowls of colorful fruit to his kitchen counter! It’s all nonsense, and relatively unimportant, but it’s fun. Cory Gardner’s background exemplified the Republican poverty of spirit evident in his trumpian policies.
SC @63, JFC. That is such bad news. Meanwhile some city and/or state governments are really having such financial difficulties that they are going to have to start laying off sanitation workers, teachers, police officers, and even healthcare workers, etc. It looks to me like Trump is looking for an excuse to restrict funds, without having to repeat his divisive “bailing out blue states” rhetoric. Maybe Trump’s staff came up with this no-action excuse as attempt to substitute statements that sound almost reasonable.
Anyway, the bottom line is, there will be no federal funds for states that seriously need them. It’s as if a hurricane hit New York and New Jersey and the federal government said, “We don’t care. We’re not going to rescue those citizens. Let’s leave it all up to Cuomo. He can do it … with no money.”
Are they ever right about anything?
WaPo Live Updates
Lynna @ #82:
Elegantly put.
Quoted in tomh’s #83:
She has! I’ve seen her interviewed several times in the building in the past few days!
tomh@63, Asking about hair furor and his dalekocrazy, “Are they ever right about anything?”
They’re TREMENDOUSLY, HUGELY, extremely right-wingnut batshite loony kleptomaniacs, teh bestest everr!!1! Drink your bleach. Get that healthy inner UV glow.
Me@86, obviously I meant tomh@83.
More re Belarus – “In Belarus, World War II Victory Parade Will Go On Despite Rise In COVID-19 Cases”:
“Folks, I’m telling you, there’s a decent chance show trial-style charges are brought against Barack Obama before November. Watch this clip….”
Video clip atl.
“BREAKING: NYPD just released coronavirus enforcement data from March 16 to May 5.
There were 374 summonses issued, which is not many.
BUT: Of those, an astounding 304 or 81% were given to people who are black or Hispanic.”
Maggie Haberman: “Many news outlets the president calls fake had held off on reporting who the staffer was who got COVID, out of respect for concerns about privacy. The president then blurted out the name at an event this afternoon.”
MSNBC is still not reporting it other than the first name because Trump said it. They said they wait until the person confirms.
SC@89, I like the pictorial response(?), “Republicans will accept 100,000 deaths from a white president, but not healthcare from a Black President” (my transcription, snarky lack of CAPS in the original).
And a follow-up to SC@90, Social distancing: New York police arresting black people at far higher rate:
When a president finds it necessary to revise a projected death toll six times in 18 days, there’s a problem.
SC@91, Yeah, I was going to point roughly the same thing as MSNBC apparently has — it’s not confirmed, and because hair furor bellowed it, it must be confirmed. He lies, all the time, so much so that, as I’ve noted before (multiple times, sorry!), I won’t believe him if he says his own name (for any reason) without independent verifiable confirmation from a trustworthy source.
Sadly, the Grauniad repeated the full name without any (obvious) confirmation.
Trump is still focused on making sure that no one blames him:
Link
From the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
Guardian – “UK health watchdog may investigate coronavirus deaths”:
blf @ #94, I think they all knew who it was even prior to Trump blurting it out. MSNBC just apparently has a policy not to identify people until they confirm it themselves. (The media were probably told fairly early given that they would have had more contact with Miller.)
Pence posted misinformation about PPE deliveries. Then he deleted those posts.
TPM Muckraker link
From the readers comments:
Project Airball, project hairball.
“Just preposterous: Trump claims that Angela Merkel, among other foreign leaders he’s spoken to about the pandemic, ‘view us as the world leader, and they’re following us’, even if they don’t want to ‘admit it’.”
SC@98, “The media were probably told fairly early given that they would have had more contact with Miller.” By hair furor’s Wacko House? That’d be unusually competent.
Anyways, the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog is now reporting “Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller has reportedly confirmed to the media that she tested positive for coronavirus this morning. […]” (No idea precisely when or to whom she confirmed.)
“VP Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller confirms to @NBCNews that she has tested positive to COVID-19. She says she’s asymptomatic. Miller’s husband is Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump.”
And more on Ms Millers outing as infected, from the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog, referring to hair furor blurting out her name: “It’s not clear whether or when Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller would have chosen to reveal her own diagnosis for coronavirus if it hadn’t all happened so publicly this morning. […]”
Ah, that was a Jimmy Kimmel joke that did not work well. Kimmel apologizes for suggesting Pence carried ’empty boxes’ to nursing home.
Still funny:
11 legal experts agree: There’s no good reason for DOJ to drop the Michael Flynn case
“This is a pardon disguised as a technical legal matter.”
More at the link.
From Wonkette:
blf @ #103, I suspect Trump’s naming her might not have been just callous negligence. He could well have done it intentionally – all of the evidence is that his response to other people being sick around him is selfish anger.
“I worked for Jared Kushner. Of course he says his covid-19 failure is a success.”
Washington Post link
Trump’s son-in-law always casts himself as the genius cleaning up someone else’s problems.
“NEWS: A White House official tells NBC News that Katie Miller was at the White House this morning before testing positive for coronavirus. This official says Miller was showing ‘symptoms’. (Miller tells NBC News she is asymptomatic.) – h/t @PeterAlexander”
From the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog, Brazilian president Jairo Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 denialism and obstruction is affecting(& causing the infection of) more than just Brazil and Brazilians:
More at the linked-to live blog entry.
Not much of a surprise, Major anti-lockdown group’s links to America’s far right (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):
Liars caught lying again, from the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
Not entirely sure, but “Grogan” is presumably Joe Grogan, “the director of the United States Domestic Policy Council and assistant to President [sic] Donald Trump. [… Grogan] was appointed a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in January 2020.”
blf @ #112, yes. Here’s the link to the original AP report: “AP Exclusive: Docs show top WH officials buried CDC report.”
They refer to “Joseph Grogan, assistant to the president for domestic policy.”
(Incidentally, I find some of George Conway’s tweets about Trump really weird, specifically the ones about Trump’s history of sexual assaults – I’m frankly concerned about McEnany – and those about the virus spreading in the WH. His wife works there!)
By the way, in the past I’ve often linked to segments from Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. They’ve all been doing such a fantastic job of late that there are too many segments to recommend, so I recommend that people in the US watch the entire shows and people outside the US watch what they can online.
Yahoo – “Document reveals Secret Service has 11 current virus cases, as concerns about Trump’s staff grow”:
This seems like malpractice on the part of the WH physician, tbh.
Tweet o’ the day.
“FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has had to self-quarantine for 14 days after exposure to White House spokesperson Katie Miller, who tested positive for Covid-19, two administration officials said.”
Politico link atl.
MSNBC video: “As deaths in U.S. continue, a look at Trump’s words on virus”: “As of May 8, 2020, the coronavirus has claimed more than 76,000 lives in America despite the president insisting early on that he had it all under control. Morning Joe looks back at his claims.”
“Asked why President Trump didn’t wear a mask while honoring WW II veterans in their 90s—just a day after one of his personal valets tested positive for COVID-19—press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, ‘They made the choice to come here’.”
I’m speechless. Also, Trump claimed that given the way the wind was blowing the veterans couldn’t have been in danger, but in both this picture and videos I’ve seen the wind is heading directly at them. (But listening to and carrying their voices, I’m sure.)
Mike Pompeo can’t keep his lies lined up. The lies are getting out of his control:
ABC News Link
Pompeo’s lies seem to be partly concocted in service to his idea that Western (Christian) governments are in some sort of battle against the values systems of the Chinese government. Pompeo used the phase “China is just different than we are.” At least he realized that his claim “enormous evidence” existed for the unproven theory the first human infection came from an accidental or intentional release at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a fucking lie that he cannot sustain. Now he is really twisted up in more lies as he tries to walk that big lie back.
“Trump made Florida his official residence. He may have also made a legal mess.”
Washington Post link
Schadenfreude moment. Trump is being blocked from doing something he wants to do … and part of the legal reasoning harks back to mistakes he made in the past.
Yale epidemiologist: Trump’s response to COVID-19 ‘close to genocide by default’
Serco. I don’t know of any specific links to Johnson – which doesn’t of course mean there are none – but the company has a dismal record of incompetence, corruption and violence, particularly its involvement with prisons, detention centres, housing asylum seekers and health.
KG @123:
Sounds about right. All the Best People.
So the lying, corrupt powers-that-be throw some money their way.
From The Rachel Maddow Show:
The video shows Mike Pence going on and on (in the presence of Trump and others) about how well “Iowa has stayed in front of this effort,” and about “the great success story that is Iowa.” That is 180° from the truth. It is, in light of the facts, batshit bonkers.
The video is 2:49 minutes long.
I know that Trump and Pence are often wrong, or often lying, but this is mystifying. It’s a whole new level of wrong. Looking at just one fact, among many, that Pence ignored: More than 1,000 workers at the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa have tested positive for the coronavirus. Pence had bragged about the plant reopening.
More COVID-19 cases in the White House. Ivanka Trump’s personal assistant has tested positive.
TPM link
From the readers comments:
Having the staff and Trump wear masks would have been an appropriate preventative measure.
The whistleblower and now ousted HHS official is speaking out publicly.
TPM link
Al Jazeera – “Bolsonaro called biggest threat to Brazil’s coronavirus response”:
The U.S. Secret Service has 11 active COVID-19 cases and 60 more in self-quarantine.
Link
23 members of the Secret Service have recovered from the virus.
There are plenty of photos that show Secret Service people around Trump not wearing masks.
About an hour ago, Trump tweeted “TRANSITION TO GREATNESS!” which has a very Logan’s Run vibe.
Say, what now? “WH press secretary says she called Trump a ‘racist’ and ‘hateful’ because CNN headlines tricked her.”
Link
In Leaked Audio, Barack Obama Warns That Donald Trump Is Corrupting the “Rule of Law”
Follow-up to comment 132.
Link
California has become the first state to send all voters mail-in ballots for the November election.
In response to Covid-19, California will allow everyone to vote by mail.
Here’s a link to the May 9 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Summary from there:
The District Attorney Who Saw “No Grounds for Arrest” in the Killing of Ahmaud Arbery Has a History
Barnhill has a history of applying unequal justice, to the detriment of black people.
In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America.
Washington Post link
Much more at the link.
Follow-up to comment 134.
Reaction from Trump:
Governor Newsom said in-person voting will still be available, and that California legislators are currently working on a plan to operate polling sites safely.
From the readers comments:
From Kerry Eleveld:
Link
“CSPAN’s @SteveScully asks Pelosi if Trump is ‘part of these discussions’ over new Dem stimulus plan
Pelosi: I don’t have any idea what the President does.
Scully: He said that the House is on vacation.
Pelosi: You know what – don’t waste your time or mine on what he says”
Sarah Cooper’s latest.
“President Trump said yesterday he would travel to Camp David this weekend for a ‘big meeting’ with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The trip was canceled but he’ll meet with senior military leadership in Cabinet Room soon. White House didn’t provide a reason for the change of plans.”
“Angered at reporting he does not like, Trump pressures Senate GOP to confirm Bannon ally to oversee @VOANews and other publicly funded broadcasters.”
NYT link atl.
“the room next door – Matt Hancock’s Daily Briefing”
Video atl.
“The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, will be self-quarantining for two weeks after he was exposed to a person at the White House who tested positive for COVID-19, a CDC spokesperson confirmed to CNN.”
Tweet o’ the day.
“Coronavirus cases continue to mount for the White House.
A personal aide to First Lady Melania Trump has now tested positive.”
New episode of Lovett or Leave It – “Murder Hornets, Inc.”
The interview with Brittany Packnett Cunningham is excellent and the exchange with the surprise special guest is fun.
MSNBC is reporting that Fauci will now be on “modified” quarantine for two weeks.
Seems like they’re trying to silence some of these people. The reports are that they’ll still testify before the Senate committee on Tuesday via video conference.
SC@142,
Is Trump planning a large-scale war to force the opening of the economy and benefit from “rallying round the flag”? The additional Covid-19 deaths could then be attributed to the enemy. China is the obvious target, but is even Trump that irrational? If so, would the Joint Chiefs go along?
In many places, people perceived to be of Chinese descent are being shunned or discriminated against due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus first appearing in Big China. (And has caused some eejits, like hair furor and his dalekocrazy, to blame Big China.) That completely irrational reaction has also extended, in some places, to testing clinics or to people who have died from Covid-19. However, to-date, except for a few isolated individual cases, I’d not heard of shunning or discrimination against medical workers dealing with Covid-19, who are widely regarded as heroes (and generally badly underpaid). However, there seems to be a widespread exception to this general anecdotal heroes observation, from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog:
I recommend reading the whole opinion column, not just the excerpt below, Under Trump, American exceptionalism means poverty, misery and death:
The author, Professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Reich, is a former Secretary of Labor.
Hair furor, meanwhile, is continuing to spout lies and ignore real problems. For instance, from the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
(Sorry, the embedded link at the end is to the Washington Post, which means you may not be able to see due to anti-privacy bullshite or it being behind a paywall.)
A snippet from the Grauniad’s current States live pandemic blog:
Quibble of sorts: Bush ][‘s gestapo isn’t a positive legacy / (deliberate) accomplishment, but it is concrete and had a rationale (not necessarily a rational one, but it did have one).
Correction to me@153, the snippet i s from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic blog (today’s link).
blf @152, I wish facts like these could pierce the willful-ignorance forcefields of Team Trump:
Furthermore, it would be great if Trump’s cult followers would hear these facts from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Rush Limbaugh. They should hear those facts at least ten times a day. It will take awhile for them to sink in.
In Tabernacle Baptist Church, Inc. of Nicholasville, Kentucky v. Beshear, (ED KY, May 8, 2020), a Kentucky federal district court issued a state-wide temporary restraining order enjoining the state of Kentucky from enforcing the governor’s COVID-19 ban on mass gatherings with respect to in-person religious services that comply with applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines. The court said in part:
From Matthew Gertz:
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1259184336995258372
“Plandemic Mikovits” is Judy Mikovits, the frequently-debunked virologist attacking Anthony Fauci in a viral conspiracy video.
Link
See also:
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1259185633924431878
That links to the post showing the screenshot from OAN. Unbelievable. You have to see it to believe that they could be this nutty.
From Trump:
From Josh Marshall:
Biden’s new ad campaign provides more contrast between Biden and Trump:
You can view the ad here
From Malcolm Nance:
https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1259156123204149251
I don’t know if the ad is all that brilliant, but it is very good.
Saturday Night Live opening.
https://twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/1259326250176385036
Follow-up to comment 120.
China is pushing back.
Link
Reuters link
Let’s Enjoy These Nice Times With Little Richard
Wonkette link
“Long tall Sally” video, in black and white, with a weird all-white audience. Followed by “Tutti Frutti.”
Other Little Richard videos are also available at the link.
Trump is withholding relief from these U.S. children — just to spite their parents.
Washington Post link
Bloomberg – “In Zeal to Urge U.S. Reopening, Pence Sets Virus Worries Aside”:
There was just reporting on MSNBC that Katie Miller had coughed on some people (she might have said reporters, but I didn’t quite catch it) and then said (joked?) that she didn’t have coronavirus. They’re just the worst people.
Ben Wikler: “Remember the huge anti-stay-at-home protest in Wisconsin? 72 people have now tested positive here after indicating that they attended a ‘large event’. Hard to think of many others.”
Link atl.
KG @ #150, given that this is what we’re dealing with, hard not to conclude that any insanity is possible. (Honestly, though, I think it’s just part of his ridiculous show, or the WH babysitters are trying to find something to distract him, or he’s trying to finagle some gift for Putin…)
Here’s a link to the May 10 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
“The number of new #coronavirus cases in #Italy falls below 1,000 for the 1st day in months. And the number of daily deaths- 165 are reported- is also the lowest for months. More than 30,500 are dead and Lombardy is its main killing ground but #COVID19 is being smothered in Italy.”
The numbers are down in France and Spain as well.
“Scoop: Last week started with the reveal that Jared Kushner turned to inexperienced outsiders & private equity firms to secure hospital equipment. Now he’s received a 29 page plan to overhaul Social Security & Medicare created by… the US State Department…”
WaPo link atl. WTF.
Aaron Rupar:
JFC.
SC at 171, Glen Greenwald is defending Russia. He is attacking the USA.
In other news related to Russia: Russia’s scavenger diplomacy is succeeding in the Middle East.
Washington Post link
So a couple hours after posting #164 above, I see MSNBC is reporting that Pence is going to be taking “a few days rest” and working remotely.
“Democrats have crafted a $1.2 trillion+ coronavirus relief package without input from the White House or Hill Republicans, congressional aides familiar with their plans tell me.
The bill could hit the floor as early as this week…”
Axios link atl.
“NEWS: Iowa’s Kim Reynolds may self isolate after her White House visit Wednesday. WH officials have been in contact with Iowa officials about situation. Iowa state medical director, Dr. Caitlin Pedati, who was also in coronavirus task force mtg Weds with VP staff, self isolating.”
You couldn’t write this.
Donald Trump is “glum” and confused.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/10/1944117/-Donald-Trump-is-glum-because-80-000-dead-Americans-is-cutting-into-his-own-popularity
O…K: “Pence ‘has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow’, a spokesman for the VP, Devin O’Malley, says in a statement.”
Sounds smart. Good plan.
I hope the judge sees this: “Former DOJ official: Department twisted my words in motion to drop Flynn case.”
Link
He got to the bottom of it his way, by willfully misrepresenting Mary McCord’s statements.
Yikes. Awful news.
Link
A sardonic bit of levity, which I don’t think has yet been featured here:
Honest Government Ad | The Machine.
“Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander will isolate for 14 days in Tennessee after a staff member tests positive for covid-19, office says in a statement, adding he has no symptoms and tested negative on May 7. He will chair the Tuesday covid hearing before his committee remotely.”
PSA – let them drink..
So, Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson is trying to kill me. Not only me, of course, and I’m not even among his primary targets, but I have to admit I do take it personally. His “Address to the Nation” last night was an absurd piece of nonsense. He laid out a number of conditions for lifting the lockdown, admitted they had not been met – deaths and hospitalizations have fallen, but not as fast or by nearly as much as in Italy or Spain, for example – and then told everyone to go back to work, thus, in effect, lifting the lockdown! The full text is at the link, but here’s the key passage:
So having made strenuous efforts to minimise mixing between people from different households, only allowing it in workplaces which have had to stay open to supply essential goods and services, the UK government is now following Trump’s lead and “encouraging” millions of people to return to workplaces in which “we have been working to establish new guidance for employers to make workplaces COVID-secure” (i.e.: in which we haven’t yet established any such guidance), and in many of which it will be plain impossible to keep physical distance from fellow-employees. As it will on public transport, on which millions are dependent for travel to work, particularly in London and other big cities. It’s clear enough that the “encouragement” will be swiftly followed by economic coercion if they think they can get away with it, with the “furlough” scheme by which the state pays 80% of wages for people laid off being tapered down, something which has already been floated. Those “encouraged” to go back to work will be the first casualties, but the whole point is that the more infections there are, the more everyone is at risk.
The leaders of the opposition parties, and of the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have all reacted with some mixture of scepticism, scorn and dismay. (Johnson’s speech contains the lie that he has consulted with them and that there is consensus across the UK – they learned of the abandonment of the “Stay Home” message in favour of “Stay Alert”* by reading about it in the Sunday papers.) The devolved administration leaders have all made clear they intend to stick with “Stay Home”. But if the UK government winds down the “furlough” scheme, it’s not clear how long they could maintain their opposition in practical terms.
*”Stay Alert – your country needs Lerts!”. Presumably the idea is that if you see the virus – you know, that green soccer-ball thing with red pins sticking out of it – you should run away.
Here’s a revealing comment from a Grauniad opinion column, from a commenter with the nym robertowendavidson:
Unbelievably, the Johnson government still has more Brits approving than disapproving of its overall performance on Covid-19, although on specific questions about PPE, testing, and the delay in starting lockdown, responses are predominantly negative.
Wow! That’ll scare Trump! You recall how pleased he was to report that all his medical tests had come back positive :-p
Armed demonstrators march through downtown showing off weapons, flags: A group of what looks like about a dozen idiots marched through downtown Raleigh, NC displaying their weapons. Among the weapons were a rocket launcher (supposedly inert). https://www.wral.com/armed-demonstrators-march-through-downtown-showing-off-weapons-flags/19091601/
“Early Monday morning, Saudi Arabia announced a slew of austerity measures to cope with the fiscal impact of the coronavirus pandemic and oil price rout, tripling its value-added tax and cutting a cost-of-living allowance for government workers:…”
Moscow Times – “Putin Eases Nationwide Virus Lockdown as Russia Becomes 3rd Most-Infected Country”:
And here’s a link to the May 11 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From the Guardian liveblog, re Russia:
April Ryan tweeted last night:
If this turns out to be accurate, my guess would be Pence or Stephen Miller.
Axios – “Top Navy chief self-quarantining after exposure to coronavirus”:
HuffPo – “CEOs, Farm Bureau President Told To Remove Face Masks Before Meeting With Mike Pence”:
Great thread: “Raise your hand if you knew that in May 1937 the New York Times did a gauzy profile of Hitler, painting him as a ‘Bohemian’ with an ‘artistic temperament’?…”
Screenshots and link atl. These puff pieces are discussed in Despina Stratigakos’ Hitler at Home.
Sorry – this is the link to the thread @ #192 above.
Imagine being a frontline medical worker in this area and seeing this video.
My god.
Yes, those CDC guidelines were buried by the White House.
Link
They got caught letting political interests get in the way of implementing scientifically-sound guidelines. Team Trump partially walked back their stupidity only because they were caught, because the press outed them as the dunderheads they are.
Lots of states already started their re-opening procedures without benefit of the CDC guidelines. Now Trump wants to fast-track some CDC guidelines for approval? The virus is running free in some states … and now Trump wants to fast-track talks about closing the barn door?
Trump seriously wants to censor or to silence his critics.
Link
Follow-up to comment 197.
From the readers comments:
Trump Goes Wild With ‘Obamagate’ Conspiracy Theory After Obama Slams Flynn Case Withdrawal
TPM link
Axios
Nearly 2,000 DOJ alumni call on Barr to resign over Flynn case
Fadel Allassan
@ 200
Do those about-2000 signatories have the power to actually DO anything if Barr refuses to resign?
No.
Then it’s a useless publicity stunt.
More re Russia from the Guardian – “‘He is failing’: Putin’s approval rating slides as Covid-19 grips Russia”:
Follow-up to comment 199.
From the readers comments:
A 60 Minutes exposé provided details about Trump de-funding NIH Pandemic Research because the head of that research wouldn’t go along with his China conspiracy theory.
From Brit McCandless Farmer:
CBS News link
Video available at the link is really must-see reporting.
Excerpt from CBS’ coverage in text:
The reporting enraged Trump:
Empty Wheel – “Bill Barr Did Not Provide the Most Important Exhibit to His Mike Flynn Dismissal Motion: The Call Transcripts”:
A quote in this post was I think the first I’ve read of the Shea filing. Wow, is it bad.
In the Grauniad, Nicola Jennings on Boris Johnson’s new coronavirus strategy (cartoon):
@ #201
Publicity stunt? To what end? No one has the power to make Barr resign. Does that mean no one should object to what he is doing? To my mind, the more noise made about it, the better.
TPM – “WH Adviser Belittles Media Coverage Of Staggering Unemployment As ‘Pity Party’”:
Midwesterners were already doubting Trump. Covid could seal his political fate:
One item not mentioned in this editorial is the continuing drumroll of condemnations (e.g., tomh@200) also inflicts damage and doubt, even if (as per Akira MacKenzie@201), the statements / condemners are unable to directly “do” anything. One problem, of course, is nothing “gets done” until 2021; and then, in any case, there’s a tremendous amount of damage to undo — with perhaps the must difficult to undo — and also an obstacle to other problems being fixed — being the huge number of thug-approved lunatic federal “judges” being appointed & confirmed.
tomh @ #207, also, as your quote includes and you highlight, “It also asked the judge overseeing the Flynn case to reject the government’s motion to throw out the charges.”
It’s directed at the public and the judge who does have the power to make decisions here.
Tweet o’ the day.
“The View’s Sunny Hostin to Shelley Luther, the Texas salon owner briefly jailed for violating restraining order by keeping hair salon open: Didn’t you receive $18,000 in PPP funds before your court date?
Luther: Yeah, but I didn’t know what to do with the money.”
Video atl. WTAF?
LOL.
Most† of France left lockdown today. I myself have no idea what the situation is like, due to a mixture of bad weather‡ and sleeping-in all day, but found this report “interesting” (as an individual who notoriously neither shaves nor gets haircuts), From lockdown, to ‘locks off’: Hair salons fully booked as France reopens for business (video): “French hairdressers reopened on Monday after eight weeks under lockdown, ready to welcome an onslaught of clients. Around 60 percent of French people say they will book an appointment for a haircut within the first week, with some salons already fully booked for the next three weeks. They are required to put health and safety measures in place including protective masks, regular cleaning and prohibiting comforts such as magazines and hot drinks.”
† The exception is Mayotte, a French overseas department )in-between Madagascar and Africa), where the Covid-19 infections are still increasing.
‡ Locally, there seems to usually be a big dump of rain late(-ish) in the Spring before Summer. All this week the forecast to be rain (except tomorrow, Tuesday) — there was a yellow flood alert in effect yesterday — which I presume is this characteristic last-of-the-Spring rains.
From today’s spectacle: “Giroir points out the scary syndrome among children. Asked about it, Trump says, ‘it’s a very small percentage’. He tries to get backup from the admiral, who says, ‘yes sir, but it’s a very serious and sometimes fatal condition’. Trump not happy.”
Ian Dunt’s thread livetweeting Johnson in the Commons earlier today.
“…Well that’s done now. Dreadful shambles.”
“Question: What is the crime exactly you’re accusing Obama of
Trump: You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read a newspaper except yours”
Video atl.
@183 KG:
“If you See Something, Say Something”?
“Ahead of an armed rally planned for the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, this coming Thursday, groups are promoting violence against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Facebook, in violation of the social media company’s policies….”
Examples at the link.
G liveblog:
In addition to the racism and everything else, it doesn’t make any sense.
Video of #220 above.
Josh Marshall: “It was overshadowed by Trumps gross response to @weijia. But her question raised a critical point. Trump treats each metric as a competition with other countries. We are doing more tests than many other countries. But it’s not a competition. We want fewer people to die in the US.”
Yamiche Alcindor:
Solidarity.
Sarah Cooper:
southpaw:
SC @217, Ha! Even Trump doesn’t really understand what he is accusing Obama of this time.
SC @219, and Trump thinks they are all fine people. He said so.
SC @220, at least the reporters held their ground long enough to make Trump realize that he should exit the stage instead of digging the hole he was in even deeper. He never did answer the question about testing.
From NBC News:
That’s what they should have done a month ago.
From Politico:
Popehat: “What a petulant sniveler he is.”
Carol Leonnig:
WaPo link atl. He wanted to go to a Pennsylvania PPE factory.
Not obviously Covid-19 pandemic related, Nashville NAACP head finds target on his lawn: ‘It’s an act of intimidation’:
There’s an image of the target at the link. Fortunately, it’s not a silhouette-style target, but a classic archery-style concentric circles.
† Taking a lead from Mr Caldwell, I’ve declined to set this “police” statement in ; they might actually be doing something…
From the Grauniad’s current States pandemic live blog:
The Detroit Metro Times report is quite good, Gov Whitmer becomes target of dozens of threats on private Facebook groups ahead of armed rally in Lansing (Metro Times edits are in {curly braces}):
There are images — with names — of many of the quoted threats, etc., at the Metro Times report.
(I may have seriously depleted the world’s supply of glyphs typesetting the above excerpts!)
Big China has prevented Island China from joining WHO — Island China has been relying on the States (at least) for communications with WHO — and now Big China is not helping itself, Island China, or anyone else (except hair furor’s baseless blame-mongering against Big China) with the latest antics (from the Grauniad’s current main pandemic live blog):
I have no idea if the States will be attending the WHA — hair furor and his dalekocrazy are also baselessly blaming WHO, and (e.g.), recently,
US blocks vote on UN’s bid for global ceasefire over reference to WHO (8-May-2020): “Security council had spent weeks seeking resolution but Trump administration opposed mention of organization”. That is not the States only antics over WHO due to hair furor’s baseless blame-mongering against WHO. (I’m uncertain, but it appears the WHA this year (it’s an annual(?) meeting) will be virtual.)
As an aside — I just happened to notice this — John Hopkins is reporting 84,011 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Big China, which is about the same as the number of deaths in the States (80,682; total confirmed cases 1,347,881). There are 4,367 deaths in Big China.
Lunatics on parade in Canada:
Anti-Lockdown Protesters Block Ambulance Bay at Vancouver Hospital, Lead Chants Against Healthcare Workers
Video clips at link.
On Tuesday, 5/12, at 10:00AM (EDT) the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments by telephone on the Trump financial records cases– the subpoenas from two House committees and the subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney. You can hear the arguments live on CNN, CNBC, and probably others.
More background on the kinds of anti-lockdown protestors in Canada
Link
Workers at Cargill’s Alberta Meat Plant Were Offered Special ‘Bonus’ Pay For Perfect Attendance During Pandemic
The UK government has now issued guidance on safety at work, but (a) this does not seem to have been discussed with unions or other representatives of employees in the relevant sectors, and (b) it clearly needed to be available some time before employers re-open their workplaces, to give them time to implement the guidelines. Meanwhile the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, evaded the question when asked whether worers were legally entitled to refuse to go into work if they felt it was unsafe, and a number of sources have warned that the return to work is likely to lead to a new upsurge in Covid-19 cases.
From Maddow last night:
“Something Appears To Be Wrong With Donald Trump”:
“Significant Financial Secrets At Stake For Trump In SCOTUS Case”:
Videos at the links.
So today:
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Trump financial records cases (see tomh @ #235 and also #239 for more) at 10 AM ET.
Fauci, Hahn, Redfield, and Giroir will testify remotely before a Senate committee – CNN – “Fauci to warn Senate of ‘needless suffering and death’ if country reopens too quickly”:
The hearing is also at 10 AM ET!
There’s a special election in CA25 to replace Katie Hill, who resigned, for the rest of her term. NPR – “Democrats Fear Losing U.S. House Special Election In Southern California.”
Sarah Cooper – “How to #ObamaGate.”
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Coronavirus Cases Surge Past 230K as Putin Eases National Lockdown”:
Here in France, the lockdown ended yesterday (Monday May 11th), except in Mayotte (see @214). So teh eejits in Paris eejited, Paris bans drinking by the Seine after crowds celebrate lockdown-easing:
What makes this idiotic behaviour especially stooopid is Paris is one of “Red” areas, where there are more restrictions — most set by the local authorities — then the “Green” areas, due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus actively circulating or the hospitals are still under some pressure.
Images at the Grauniad’s link, and at France24, Paris police bans alcohol along Seine river as crowds revel in new-found freedom. As an aside, it was teh eejits in Paris (mostly) who forced the government to move from a somewhat permissive lockdown to the much more restrictive lockdown. (Paris is a large expensive city with tiny apartments, and — in the central area — good public transport, so it’s perhaps not too surprising teh eejits seem overrepresented there.)
Locally, in the S.France Mediterranean seaside village where I live, I still don’t know what the situation is like outside, as I haven’t left the lair… yet (not-leaving was easy to do yesterday because it was raining all day, but today is sunshine (perhaps the only day this week, according to some forecasts)). This is a “Green” zone, and the village council seems to be moving fast — perhaps a bit too fast? — announcing the outdoor markets will reopen in about a week, and are coordinating with the regional authorities on opening up the beaches. They might be able to enforce social distancing on the beaches, but only one of the markets does that seem to maybe be possible. The other markets are hemmed-in with not much room to “avoid” people. I wouldn’t be surprised if masks are made mandatory in the markets, but that simply isn’t going to be sufficient unless they somehow separate the traders / stalls (maybe by increasing the surface area of the markets, reducing the number of traders / stalls, and/or vectoring away the traffic (keeping the traffic further away would be a good idea anyways)). We’ll see…
Here’s a link to the May 12 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Bradley Moss slipped through the Fox reality filters.
NBC – “Unreleased White House report shows coronavirus rates spiking in heartland communities”:
Much more atl.
Fauci just gave his opening statement. I don’t think it included the part about “needless suffering and death,” but I guess he’ll talk about that in response to questions. He discussed the various treatment/vaccine trials they’re focusing on.
Here’s Fauci’s full message to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the NYT.
“In the past 24 hours, the president of a country told his government agency a broadcaster should fire a prominent journalist and suggested the journalist should be prosecuted.
He then baselessly accused another prominent journalist of murder.
That country is the United States.”
RFE/RL – “Media Identify Russian In Alleged Plot To Poison Czech Officials With Ricin”:
Fauci just shot down an attacking Rand Paul (who looks terrible, by the way – I point this out not to insult him but because he’s not exactly a walking advertisement for taking the virus lightly).
I find this somehow reassuring.
Yesterday, Wife and I went shopping (a local store has whole beef tenderloin at $4.99 a pound and I can’t say no to that). We stopped to get fuel ($1.69.9 a gallon and I can’t say no to that). A guy walked in without a mask. The cashier asked him to put a mask on. He said, “No. I will not wear a mask. No one can make me.” He paid for his gas, walked out, and began pumping the prepaid fuel into his massive pickup truck. I asked the clerk why he still served him even though he was breaking the rules. The clerk said, “I don’t want to get shot.”
Sigh.
Bullies always win. Every fucking time.
It’s interesting that even Sen. Roberts from Kansas is emphasizing what a hard time the state is having right now. Rand Paul won’t acknowledge similar problems in Kentucky, which he’s supposed to be representing.
More re #212: “On Fox & Friends, TX salon owner Shelley Luther acknowledges that she did receive PPP funds two days before her court date, but she was too confused about what it was, where it came from, or how to spend it’.”
Video atl. She had to apply for this money, including commitments to her workers. But she says the stylists are independent contractors who rent chairs and not employees. Luther getting picked up for fraud would be the perfect outcome of this nonsense.
More re Peskov:
G liveblog:
“Rand Paul: ‘In rural states we never really reached any sort of pandemic levels in Kentucky and other states … outside of New England, we’ve had a relatively benign course for this virus nationwide’. (More than 81,000 Americans are dead.)”
Rep. Don Beyer: “Warren County, Kentucky – where Rand Paul lives – has more COVID-19 cases per capita than 51 of the 67 counties in New England states.
Senator Paul is wrong and the ignorant message he is peddling is dangerous. There is no special immunity to this virus based on where you live.”
“‘The president is not to be treated as an ordinary citizen’.
Jay Sekulow, president Trump’s attorney, said this twice arguing before the Supreme Court.”
Apropos of nothing much, the sunshine proved too tempting and I went out for a stroll about the village, telling myself that I would “just” get some bread, albeit by taking the long route, and that would be that. Yeah, yeah, “plans” don’t survive contact with the nice weather… I did get some bread. And fresh pasta. And vin. And, perhaps most significantly, some hand sanitiser gel to carry with me (albeit some shops now have hand sanitising stations, which hasn’t been the case until last-ish week). And a few more fresh vegs… And… and…
Unsurprisingly, a reasonable number of people were out and about. Social distancing was good, with four exceptions: Teenagers, parents with small children, queues at ice cream stands, and one particular low-cost shop where — for reasons which baffle me (there’s adequate room to form a properly-distanced queue) — the queue waiting to get in always seems to be a mob with not only almost no internal distancing, they also seem to insist on blocking the (pedestrianised) street.
Mask-wearing seems to fall into four-ish types: No mask (includes me), mask below chin (useless!), mask covering mouth-only (not the nose / nostrils), and mask covering both mouth and nose (albeit not always firmly fixed). All the masks I did see seemed to be serious affairs, not (e.g.) the transparent cotton(?) gauze “masks” I’ve seen advertised on the ‘Net (for feck’s sake, if you can see though the mask’s material, there’s no barrier at all to a virus!).
At most 50% of the restaurants are offering take-away (and, in some cases, delivery), most(?) only lunch. A bar specialising in artisanal beers is offering take-away / delivery. In all(?) cases, orders are placed in advance via the web, assorted social apps, or by phone.
Traffic was light, but much heavier than during the lockdown, when cars seemed to be a rarity. Didn’t see any police about at all.
G liveblog:
Trump is making America an obstacle in the global fight against Covid-19:
Follow-up of sorts to me@259, Covid-19: French food guide launches list of best takeaways:
† There’s a lot of locations in France named Place de la Résistance (or similar). And yes, “fooding” is an actual term (a neologism), not only the name of a gastronomic magazine(?).
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, writing in the Grauniad, If I were Donald Trump’s speechwriter, this is the team talk I would suggest:
: Trump foreshadows how he could undermine presidential election:
White House tries to halt gov’t fund investment in Chinese stocks:
I’m actually a bit surprised TSP is even allowed to invest in non-USAian markets / funds. Being allowed to do so is potentially a good thing; an example is CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) which has a reputation for shareholder activism.
Whenever the Supreme Court is hearing arguments and making decisions I remember Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and sit in stunned silence at the thought that this person is one of the justices.
G liveblog:
Have they said Pence continues to test negative, like they usually do? If not,…
A follow-up to me@243, The village council has announced how the local outdoor markets will operate when they reopen in about a week’s time. The one market where social distancing could work will operate essentially as normally. The other markets, where that simply isn’t possible, will reduce the number of traders / stalls by half, by dividing them into two groups, A and B. Group A will be present one day, group B the next time, alternating back-and-forth. This will allow the traders / stalls to spread out, which is one of the possibilities I speculated might happen in @243. No word on mandatory masks or hand sanitising stations, however, or other details, so I suspect the plans will be refined some.
And apparently the plan to open the beaches fell apart; there’s not much agreement with other locales or the regional authorities on how to do it. So the local village’s new plan is to propose a “motion beach” were people will be allowed to walk, jog, &tc, but not be “static” (i.e., no sundrying). No mention of swimming or otherwise feeding the kracken.
There’s also apparently some sort of a glitch with boating. Previously, the council had said the 100km rule applied to boats / yachts as well. However, it seems the regional(?) authorities have prohibited a boat from coming within 300m of land, which means a boat can neither leave nor enter the harbour! They™ are now trying to get this straightened out… (I may be slightly misunderstanding the problem.)
Greg Sargent:
re blf @263: If The Orange Toddler-Tyrant tried to speak those words, his tongue would catch on fire. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has mistaken the idiot in the White House for a reasonable human being. That speech also sounds like something that would come from the likes of Obama if he were in a similar situation.
.
re blf @264: The contrast between the hope of KA-J from above and the reality of The Orange Toddler-Tyrant in this comment is starkly revealing. I have real fear about what will happen if he does lose in November and before he leaves office (or more likely is forced to leave) in January.
From NBC News:
Trump lied, and he used numbers to lie:
Link
Trump lied some more. And he used numbers (again) to lie.
Link
Wed, 5/13, the Supreme Court will hear arguments that will presumably settle the “faithless electors” question, whether electors for the President and Vice President have the right to vote as they wish, or must follow the popular vote. Oral argument starts at 10:00 (EDT) and will be streamed live on CNN among others.
For an anlaysis of the issues, Amy Howe, at Howe on the Court, Justices to weigh constitutionality of “faithless elector” laws is good.
Interestingly, if 10 electors had switched their votes, it would have changed the result in 5 of the 58 presidential elections.
Zoe Tillman:
Josh Marshall re the declassification of the names of the people involved in “unmasking” Flynn: “as far as i know, this was all revealed three years ago and i do know it’s a complete nothingburger but will be played a big scandal by lying to people. the whole us intel community is now overseen by a pro-trump troll.”
Not only was it revealed then – they spun it up into some bullshit scandal then, and it went on for days until it ran out of steam because everyone acknowledged that there hadn’t been anything improper about the “unmasking.” Was this stupidity what was in the mystery briefcase Grenell took into the WH several days ago (potentially exposing himself to the virus) in a Fox stunt several days ago? Gah.
“NEW: Jerry Falwell Jr just fired the entire Philosophy Department at Liberty University.
In addition, the school is dissolving the Philosophy Department on June 30th.
‘There was no advanced warning’ according to Professor Mark Foreman – who posted about his firing on Facebook.”
“Donald G. McNeil Jr: The CDC ‘is a great agency but it’s incompetently led, and I think Dr Redfield should resign’.”
Video atl. Watching Cuomo’s press briefings vs. these WH appearances, the differences are incredibly stark. Obviously, Trump is unfit, ignorant, and incompetent and can’t answer basic questions about the response. And a Senate committee hearing shouldn’t be the only time people are answering questions like this in weeks or months. The CDC should be doing daily briefings with health reporters. But in any event, they (with the exception of Fauci) simply rattle off numbers and talk about how they’re “developing” this or “energetically working on” that (they have like twenty such terms and phrases), making more promises on top of those already unfulfilled and unable to articulate any larger strategy or how precisely all of this is getting done.
In contrast, Cuomo’s team can respond to reporters (who ask good questions) in granular detail about various aspects of their plan and how they fit together. “We’re getting that online by 7 tonight.” “We will have these four testing sites up and running this week and these four next week.” “We can have the data for you tomorrow.” “We can’t do that for this reason.” “Here’s why this policy is important.” “Here’s how we’re working with other states.” There’s nothing remotely close to that at the national level, even though they have vastly more resources and institutional knowledge. Same in the UK. It’s criminal.
Update to #s 194 and 195 above: the Department of Health has closed the restaurant and the owners’ license to operate a restaurant has been suspended indefinitely.
Yahoo – “EXCLUSIVE: In court filing, FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 hijackers”:
Much more atl.
WaPo:
U.S. judge puts Justice Department’s move to drop charges against Michael Flynn on hold
By Spencer S. Hsu and Carol D. Leonnig
May 12, 2020 at 8:50 p.m. PDT
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Coronavirus Cases Surge Past 240K, Becoming World’s 2nd Most-Infected Country”:
Al Jazeera – “Brazil’s Bolsonaro ‘caught on video’ pushing to swap police chief”:
Reuters – “Brazil’s coronavirus cases pass Germany’s as Bolsonaro fights to open gyms”:
Here’s a link to the May 13 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Video of Romney’s remarks during yesterday’s Senate hearing.
“While we’re at [declassifying], can we get the Flynn-Kislyak phone call declassified and made public @RichardGrenell?
Kislyak knows he was recorded. Flynn says he didn’t lie.
Let’s get everything out in the open so the people can judge what happened and we can get to the bottom of this.”
Endorse.
“Sen Chris Murphy: Trump Admin. Coronavirus Guidance Is ‘Criminally Vague’”:
3-minute video atl. Unfortunately, the clip ends before the part where Murphy talked about how no states that are opening up can do so in compliance with the federal guidelines because the federal government hasn’t made it possible for them to have sufficient testing, contact tracing, etc.
“U.S. @SecPompeo disembarks in Israel – with an American flag mask… Also, Embassy Spokesperson says [US ambassador to Israel David Friedman] ‘is experiencing mild upper-respiratory symptoms. He was tested for COVID-19 and the result was negative. Nevertheless, he will not be in proximity with Sec Pompeo’.”
Photo atl. Everything is so stupid.
“Maxine Waters confirms her sister died from coronavirus”
“News: AOC will be serving on Biden’s climate policy committee. ‘She believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system. This is just one element of the broader fight for just policies’, a spokeswoman said.
More from AOC’s spokeswoman: ‘She made the decision with members of the Climate Justice community – and she will be fully accountable to them and the larger advocacy community during this process’.”
JFC.
re SC @291: WOW! Tucker Carlson saying that someone is offering “buffoon level advice” screams the level of his lack of self-awareness.
More re #290: AOC will co-chair the Biden climate task force with John Kerry. The list of who’s on the task forces is at the link. Pramila Jayapal is co-chairing the health task force with Vivek Murthy.
“@fshakir told me Sanders spent hours deciding who would go on the task forces and didn’t pick any ‘shrinking violets’ but also chose people who will actually compromise. He said the Biden campaign seems to be taking progressive input seriously with these panels.”
“Tonight Rachel Maddow covered Indivisibles from Arizona, Florida and Texas who had a message for their Governors about reopening their states before they were ready and putting lives at risk.”
Yes, I forsee the possibility that without a fully-effective vaccine (about which I’m pessimistic at least over the next few years) the world will divide up into “coronazones”, with membership determined by the prevalence of the virus, and (eventually) of susceptible individuals, and determining who can travel where. There will be a “coronafree” zone (China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand…), a “lockdown” zone where the battle to contain the virus is still ongoing, a “coronaraging” zone (probably including the USA, Russia, Brazil, maybe UK…) where it has been abandoned, health services are swamped, and bodies are piling up in the streets, and eventually, assuming infection does confer a reasonably high degree of immunity for a significant time, a “coronaendemic” zone, derived from the “coronaraging” zone, where the virus is present at a low level, but enough people have already been infected to produce herd immunity. Anyone (outside the international elite) wanting to visit the “coronafree” zone from outside it would probably have to spend at least a month in an official quarantine hotel at their own expense, and be repeatedly tested – as would those from that zone who ventured out of it then returned – I think that governments in coronafree countries will become increasingly wary of allowing even small outbreaks, due to their economic and political costs. The “lockdown” zone would allow in those from the “coronafree” zone, but apply similar constraints on those from “coronaraging” and “coronaendemic” zones. People from “coronafree” and “lockdown” countries could visit “coronaendemic” countries in reasonable safety, but would be at high risk if they visited “coronaraging” countries.
.
Watergate was over 35 years ago, and Whitewater was over 25 years ago. His lawyers want to say that these cases are “too recent” to set a precedent? For the more legally informed here, are his lawyers just shoveling the bovine excrement or is this a legitimate argument?
Follow-up to comments 291 and 292.
And why does Tucker Carlson think that these facts condemn Dr. Fauci: “Tony Fauci has never been elected to anything! He’s had the same job for forty years!”
Evidence is mounting against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients.
Politico link
Additional details, (from Steve Benen):
Link
Trump learned nothing.
“Rep. Steve King says @GOPLeader has agreed to restore his committee assignments after he was kicked off last year for making remarks that were […] racist.”
(I ellipsed out the reporter speak.)
White House Pressures CDC To Monkey With COVID Numbers
TPM link
And … we are once again in “what the heck has gone wrong with Dr. Birx” mode.
I’ve hit my dystopia limit for the day.
Follow-up to comment 300.
Comments from readers:
I wonder if Dr. Birx really wants to be seen as having done a good job when she worked on the Coronavirus Task Force. The number of people in the USA who have died from coronavirus does not look good for her. Neither does the months-long lag in providing adequate testing. (Birx has been trying to explain that away for some time.) Unfortunately, if management of the coronavirus pandemic makes Trump look bad, she thinks it also makes her look bad. She has, in other words, lost her integrity.
Perhaps she only had a tenuous hold on her personal integrity before all this. She worked well in other situations, but in a Trump-dominated situation she is lost.
About Jared Kushner’s latest stupid remark, and his attempt to walk it back, (sorry, SC, more dystopian news):
TPM link
It is not up to Jared. He has no say. He has no fucking clue.
All of Trump’s best people are getting out of prison.
Manafort gets early release from prison after Cohen’s release rescinded
Teh mostest importanter question about Covid-19 has now been resolved by decree, ‘La Covid’: coronavirus acronym is feminine, Académie Française says:
Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg:
IIRC, they seem more concerned about false negatives, but I’m not sure. This is another tool favored by the WH, in addition to wishful thinking, lying, covering up, hydroxychloroquine, Russian fire-hazard ventilators, and ingesting disinfectant.
Ezra Klein at Vox – “We don’t have a president, or a plan”:
Much more atl.
The three countries with the most cases today are the US, Russia, and the UK.
#308 might be confusing. I meant that on MSNBC’s list of the countries with the most recorded total cases, Russia and the UK have moved into the second and third spots. Brazil will likely be there soon.
SC@308/309, A good site for fairly up-to-date Covid-19 statistics is John Hopkins’ Covid-19 Dashboard. It’s recently added county-by-county States data / map, etc. What it does not have, to the best of my (current) knowledge, are statistics / comparisons with testing; e.g., confirmed or false-positive or -negative, or percentage of population or suspected tested, etc, etc.
Wow. Wow.
blf @ #310, thanks. Yes, I check the Johns Hopkins site all the time.
I also check Worldometer for the general outlines.
I’m still concerned about Turkey, Chile, and Mexico and keeping an eye on Saudi Arabia and India.
SC @308: “The three countries with the most cases today are the US, Russia, and the UK.”
Yep. Look at the guys who are at the top of the administrative pyramid. Blame them. Shame them.
SC @311, OMFG.
In other news: Anti-Vaxxers Have a Dangerous Theory Called “Natural Immunity.” Now It’s Going Mainstream
SC # 308
My, how the mighty haver fallen.
French court scraps farmer’s conviction for helping migrants cross border:
Justin Amash disingenuously promoting some ’50s-ass notions of what science is and who does it.
From Wonkette:
Link
The mildly deranged penguin is eager to help, ‘Just eat cheese’: French dairy producers’ plea after sales slump:
https://twitter.com/JohnRossMD/status/1260018173547384833
From Wonkette:
Link
SC @284 regarding the combusting Russian ventilators
Eh what?? How could they be this stupid to not know that the US (and Canda) uses 110 volt AC while most ot ter rest of the world uses 220 volt AC? This is more a case of high doltage than one of voltage. At least this incompatibility miight have prevented a fire.
“The Darkest Winter,” a statement from Rick Bright:
Follow-up to comment 324.
Washington Post link
Oh, FFS.
From R.R. Reno, the editor of the conservative religious magazine First Things:
Commentary:
Link
Experts’ 7 best ideas on how to beat Covid-19 and save the economy.
Link
How can Trump look past the slaughter of mothers and babies in Afghanistan?
Washington Post link
Well, it appears the other open thread is closed for comments, so I’ll put this here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-14/art-tour-guide-galleries-museums-racism-colonialism-exclusion/12241850
SC… @ # 282: Russia is now the second most-affected country in terms of infections …
Does anybody have any idea what the hell is going on with Putin? The man is neither dumb nor lazy, he’s surely well-informed on how half-assed c-virus measures have blown up in (e.g.) Trump’s & Johnson’s faces, he has no personal qualms or opposition to hold him back on grounds of “personal liberty” – but by all reports he’s letting Russia swirl down the public-health drain by emulating Trump’s do-nothing/blame-the-local-governments non-strategy.
Putin should be just as capable of cracking the whip and making the bureaucracy dance from his dacha as was Stalin. Why isn’t he?
WaPo Live Updates (Free)
Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down governor’s coronavirus stay-at-home order
Raging Against ‘Mere Life,’ The Federalist Has Declared War On Public Health Orders
More at the link.
Pierce @330, probably, Putin’s priority is to stay in power, rather than to be benevolent.
Most plausible inference (given your own claim that he is “neither dumb nor lazy”) is that, regardless of what he decrees, bad consequences will nonetheless ensue; thus, divorcing himself from responsibility from such bad consequences is the way to go. Especially as that stance contradicts the narrative that he’s autocratic.
Another aspect is that, if things do go down the drain, it is then that he can step in as a saviour.
John Morales @ # half-a-beast – Mebbeso, except your hypothesis still contradicts my premise that Putin is not stupid…
U.S. judge asks if ex-Trump aide Flynn should be held in contempt
Jan Wolfe, Sarah N. Lynch
MAY 13, 2020
Evidence that the virus was manufatured by vengence-seeking Nazis hiding under the Himalayas or on the far side of the moon???
I’m sure everyone has seen this or will see it soon.
This is one of the most dismaying things I’ve seen so far about this pandemic.
It’s very likely to kill a lot of people.
It’s also not going to do a whole lot for the Wisconsin economy.
Even in the few states with no lockdown orders, they are de facto lockdown because businesses are closed and people aren’t moving around much.
People are good at calculating their risks and adjusting their behavior accordingly.
They don’t want to die or be permanently disabled, after infecting their families so they can take them with them.
It’s also likely to make this pandemic last longer.
Wisconsin could become a plague focus for the rest of the USA and Canada.
After all the failures of the GOP, which is morphing into the party of corruption, incompetence, and death, this GOP far right person in California still won an election in a House district held by Democrat Katie Hill.
Trump still has a huge amount of support and no matter what happens it will always vote for him.
It’s entirely possible that Trump and the GOP will be reelected in November, 2020.
I don’t have an explanation for this.
At some point, you stop trying to explain it and start making plans to survive in a dystopian, seriously failing former superpower.
When the USSR collapsed, average lifespans in the USSR dropped sharply as a lot of people ended up dead.
People are starting to call Covid-19, the polio of the 21st century.
The vast majority of infected don’t die so there is a tendency to not worry too much about the virus.
It’s not that simple.
A lot of the survivors are showing varying levels of permanent organ damage, mostly lung but also heart and kidneys. Since so much is happening, we are just now getting around to looking at this.
The permanent organ damage is not yet too well measured.
Based on simple math, 20% of patients are hospitalized.
Let’s say 80% of those patients have organ damage.
So 16% of Covid-19 patients have organ damage.
US cases as of today are ca. 1,400,000 so as of now, 224,000 people with some acquired disability.
This is going to be a huge issue going forward, after we all get over trying not to die.
Rick Bright is testifying right now. See #s 324 and 325 above for more.
Here’s a link to the May 14 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Add this is for organ damage.
Add in the known heart damage.
I’m sure other organ systems will also show varying levels of damage.
Even if you don’t die for Covid-19 virus, you still have a much higher chance for permanent health problems.
We in the USA aren’t worrying about this now, but we will eventually have to deal with it.
These patients need followup care and cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation.
Right now CP-Rehab is all shut down because it requires physical closeness. It’s usually done in mass groups in health care facilities and that is out right now.
This virus is a dangerous one and it is permanently altering the way we live in the USA.
When you don’t see a hearing for a while, you can forget how painfully stupid the Republicans in the House are. A national embarrassment.
Interesting graphic on COVID symptomology in a recent issue of Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01023-2
Moscow Times:
“Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News” (May 14 liveblog):
“As the Coronavirus Contagion Grows in Russia, Putin’s Strongman Image Weakens.”
Pierce R. Butler @ #330, I’m fascinated by this question. I do think there are psychological characteristics common to a particular type of authoritarian and to the movements backing them that could help to explain it. I’m hoping to post something about it later today.
CNN – “Bolsonaro’s March visit with Trump was a ‘corona trip,’ says Brazil’s former health secretary”:
Owen Jones in the Guardian – “The real message behind ‘stay alert’: it’ll be your fault if coronavirus spreads”:
CNBC – “Sen. Richard Burr steps down as Senate intel chair during coronavirus stock sale probe”:
“Lindsey Graham announces broad probe into how the Russia probe got started and whether Mueller was needed. ‘The Judiciary Committee will begin holding multiple, in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to Crossfire Hurricane starting in early June’.”
Emoluments update:
Unable to help himself, Trump denies Russia backed him in 2016
Trump still denies the findings from his own country, rejects his own administration’s intelligence, and ignores the conclusions drawn by his own party.
OMFG.
Trump was watching Fox News again.
NYT – “Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case”:
Are Trump and William Barr going after Senator Burr as retaliation for the “Russia interfered” report that came from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee?
Link
Some details from Dr. Rick Bright’s testimony:
Link
“Bottom line message from Dr. Bright:
‘We don’t have a single point of leadership right now for this response and we don’t have a master plan for this response’.”
From Matthew Yglesias: “Get ready for a second wave of economic pain.”
If Congress doesn’t act, state budget crises and unemployment insurance cuts will hammer the economy.
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/12/21254481/v-shaped-recovery-unlikely
More at the link.
From the Guardian world liveblog:
Trump demands Obama be made to testify in the Senate
Trump seems to be ordering Sen. Lindsey Graham to put Obama through a kind of show trial.
Wait. Using federal law enforcement to go after one’s enemies is what Trump does. Projection much?
“Vice President Mike Pence has not arrived at the White House as of 1 pm and he has no events on his public schedule today. The President just departed the White House for a day trip to Pennsylvania to tour a PPE distribution center.”
From Wonkette: “GOP Demands To Know Who Listened In As All Our Foreign Adversaries Secretly Chatted Up Michael Flynn”
Highlights from Dr. Rick Bright’s testimony:
Washington Post link
Benjamin Wittes on the Flynn “unmasking” list.
David Corn: “So it turns out that the Trump cult’s release of the unmasking requests related to Flynn suggest that Flynn was engaged in OTHER suspicious activity beyond what’s publicly known. Good work, guys.”
CNN is reporting that Jennifer Santos, in charge of implementing the Defense Production Act, has been removed from her position at the demand of the WH and with no explanation given. She’s being transferred to another position in the Navy. Her boss wasn’t aware this was planned.
“NEW: LANCET study reveals 30-fold increase of Kawasaki-like disease in Italian province over past month. Strongest evidence yet linking pediatric inflammatory syndrome to #coronavirus. Authors predict outbreak of Kawasaki-like disease in other countries:…”
A few UK items.
It turns out that even before Johnson’s “Get back to work, slackers!” speech, thousands of low-paid call centre workers in far-from-essential sectors were being obliged to continue work, without any serious attempt to protect them. In England (unlike in Scotland, I don’t know about the other 2 parts of the UK) there was no legislation mandating employers to provide PPE, make physical distancing possible, etc.
More on the scandal of the outsourced PPE stockpile. It was stored for some time in a smoke-damaged warehouse where asbestos dust had been found. Of course, we are assured blah blah blah… And the army had to be called in to actually distribute the stuff when it was needed, despite the firm’s contract making clear it could be required to send anything it held anywhere in the UK at any time.
Finally, a light on the government’s “post-pandemic” plans (assuming we ever get there). This is from the last section of “Our Plan To Rebuild: The UK Government’s Covid-19 Strategy”:
Never let a good crisis go to waste! The impudence of claiming the credit for the performance of the NHS (and the courage and dedication of its frontline staff) for the government (it is not, in any sense, part of the government) is the most immediately outrageous part of this. But the text indicates that Dominic Cummings intends to use the crisis to advance his vendetta with and politicisation of the civil service, and the words “across the entirety of the United Kingdom”, which look oddly unnecessary, suggest an assault on the powers of the devolved administrations, which currently have much of the responsibility for public health.
LOL.
Follow-up to comment 358.
Lindsey Graham responds to Trump’s tweet/order:
TPM link
From the comments by readers:
Follow-up to comments 358 and 367.
President Barack Obama responded with a single-word tweet: “Vote.”
Lynna#368 Talk about the high road…
From The Atlantic: “Trump Has Lost the Plot”
Link
FYI. tonight Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s Last Word, is having Joe Biden on as his guest, and they will be later joined by Stacey Abrams. Inquiring minds want to know…
From Susan B. Glasser, writing for The New Yorker:
More at the link.
“Trump: ‘When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases’.”
I think it was Rachel Maddow who was saying a few days ago that she feared this was something he actually believed. He suggested that testing might be “overrated.”
I’m not shocked by the things he says so much as by the party and followers who continue to support him.
I’m behind in the thread here, working too hard to follow the news much, but… Obamagate??!?
Is Trump’s actual position that he, as president, has absolute authority to do what he wants, and absolute immunity from prosecution and even investigation, but also that Obama should be in jail for the things he did as president?
How can any brain hold two such completely contradictory positions at once. I get a headache just thinking about it.
Former presidents going to jail for stuff they did in office is such a bad stupid idea for a criminal president to champion.
The Obama tweet mentioned by Lynna @ #368 is the tweet o’ the day.
“For the second week in a row, Kentucky leads all other states in the number of unemployment claims filed since March 1 as a percentage of February’s labor force.
It’s at 35.9 percent—twenty percentage points higher than the U.S. overall.”
Wow.
This exactly: “The less bad numbers we’ve been seeing this week are the product of our behavior 2-5 weeks ago, i.e., in April. In June, we’ll find out the consequences of what we’re doing now.”
Edward Luce in FT – “Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown”:
“McConnell: I was wrong, they did leave behind a plan so I clearly made a mistake in that regard.”
Fox video at the link.
Sarah Cooper – “How to more cases than anybody in the world”
The vase. Beautiful vase.
NBC – “Brazil’s coronavirus crisis, Bolsonaro’s response and the failure of authoritarian populism”:
Here’s a link to the May 15 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
The Guardian on Sarah Cooper (see #s 79, 141, 241, and 382 above) – “The comedian going viral for lip-syncing Trump: ‘People really hate him'”:
Laura Spinney in the Guardian – “Grassroots movements can rise during this crisis – Italy’s Sardines group shows how.”
LOL.
G liveblog:
“After Brazil’s latest health minister steps down, the pots and pans erupt in my Rio street. In response, a Bolsonaro fan is blaring out the national anthem. Brazil in 2020.”
@SC 380
“Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff.”
This reminds of something. Eddie Lampert encouraging infighting in Sears.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously
Apropos of basically nothing — and not really political, either — today was the first day in eight or so weeks I was not mostly in the lair. The morning was spent stocking up on supplies (I can now probably outlast anything except a nuclear holocaust or the mildly deranged penguin eating all the cheese), and then, due to the great weather and a poor sense of navigation (apparently, I’m out of practice from being in the lair essentially all of the preceding two months), spent a surprising amount of the afternoon wondering around wondering where teh feck a certain shop was. (Finally found it after consulting my mobile and discovered I’d been going in circles amongst all the twisty little streets in the village… duh!) Oh well, sore feet and lots of exercise out in the sun.
And, also for the first time in two months, just had a professionally-prepared dinner, take-away from one of my favourite restaurants. Still working on the nice local vin rouge (hey! this is France!), but the canard went down without any problem. For me, that is, it was quacking quite a lot, albeit I’m not sure about what (the mildly deranged penguin is refusing to translate).
Plus confirmation I’m a Really Cool Individual. I finally got a thermometer today, and it said my temperature is slightly below normal. Within a safe range — nothing to worry about — but a bit cooler than “average”. Of course, the mildly deranged one was nearby, and, well, penguins are not noted for being particularly warm…
Locally, a bit more on the boating problem previously mentioned: Apparently, the regional authorities have said something like a boat cannot leave port, but the maritime authorities have said boating is Ok (albeit the 100km rule applies, i.e., you cannot go more than 100km from port without special authorisation). The local village council is clearly exasperated, and trying to get some agreement / consistency. They’ve also started grooming the beaches — the local Mediterranean beaches are basically artificial and need to be rebuilt after the winter storms — though there is not yet any agreement / rules for opening them.
Trump wants criminal prosecutions of his former presidential rival, his presidential predecessor, and his current presidential rival – among others.
Commentary:
Link
Trump’s talk of bare cupboards isn’t doing him any favors
Trump keeps repeating “the cupboards were bare” line, thinking it makes him look better and Obama look worse. In reality, that’s backwards.
Oh, FFS.
Seizing opportunity, DeVos directs coronavirus funds to private schools
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to “throw a lifeline” to the private schools she’s long championed.
From the Washington Post:
From Wonkette:
‘The ship is sinking’: Bolsonaro battles to block foul-mouthed cabinet video (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
The taped meeting sounds rather like a typical fox report that mentions President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Clinton, the EU, the UN, the WHO, scientists, Muslims, Latinos, Africa, the Moon, Venus, reality, or anything in the Universe.
Team Trump aims at Obama’s pandemic playbook (but misses)
Team Trump claims it’s replaced Obama’s “flimsy” pandemic playbook with a “robust” alternative. It’s like a Veep script gone awry.
@Lynna #397
I think the most likely possibility is that “Dr. Ronny” was corrupted by Trump. That’s what he does. He gets people to lie or commit crimes for him, and then they belong to him.
This doesn’t mean he was necessarily an outstanding person to begin with, but that is what Trump does, make everything and everyone worse.
Excerpts from Daniel Dale’s coverage of remarks Trump made today.:
Czech @400:
True.
“I call it the super duper missile.”
An actual quote by the sitting president of the United States.
https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1261368930834112512
NYT:
DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools
May 15, 2020
By Erica L. Green
Lynna @ #403, in that video he seems to have regressed to like the age of four.
TPM – “COVID Is Spreading Deeper Into Areas With High Trump Support, Data Shows.”
CDC director Robert Redfield: “CDC tracks 12 different forecasting models of possible #COVID19 deaths in the US. As of May 11, all forecast an increase in deaths in the coming weeks and a cumulative total exceeding 100,000 by June 1.”
re Lynna @401:
My emboldening. The Orange Toddler-Tyrant DOES NOT HAVE ANY FRIENDS. If someone he knows has died, I am sure that he would not care one fucking bit about it. The “very small percentage” of people that die because of his misdeeds do not concern him in the least.
Aaron Rupar:
Video atl.
“The office presently headed by Richard Grenell now has in hand the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election for a declassification review.”
The Lancet took Bolsonaro to task earlier this week (see #128 above). Now they’re hitting Trump:
“Reviving the US CDC”:
“President Obama will be televised in prime time on every network (including Fox) on May 16 giving a commencement speech to the entire high school graduating class of 2020. For an full, uninterrupted hour.
The juxtaposition is going to be terrible for Trump. Just terrible.”
NYT – “U.K. Coronavirus Testers Pay Price for a Day of Triumph”:
ABC – “Trump fires IG said to be investigating Pompeo, involved in impeachment probe”:
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Coronavirus Cases Rise By 9,200, Signaling Potential Slowdown”:
Here’s a link to the May 16 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
G liveblog:
Infuriating.
re SC @412: I am surprised that The Orange Toddler-Tyrant hasn’t tried to intervene in Obama’s commencement address from being shown on all the major networks (yet). There are still a few hours where he might still try to do something to interrupt it.
.
I agree that the contrast will be stark between Obama’s smooth and intelligent style and the rambling incoherence of 45. I hope the ratings are through the roof for it!
The Atlantic has launched a series/project about conspiracy theories called “Shadowland”:
Here’s one thorough (if somewhat depoliticizing) article from the series – “The Prophecies of Q”:
johnson catman @ #419, I saw someone yesterday – I believe it was Jen Palmieri – saying a billion people are expected to watch Obama’s speech!
More information from Deadline – “How To Watch Barack Obama & ‘Graduate Together: America Honors The Class Of 2020’ Online & On TV”:
There’s an HBCU event beginning at 2 ET (more information about that at the link, too).
G liveblog:
<
blockquote>accusing the [Russian] authorities of under-counting by blaming virus-related deaths on other causes. – SC quoting Moscow Times@416
“Ha! This man had dandruff! Obviously, that’s what killed him, not the Covid-19.”
From text quoted by SC in comment 422:
Yeah, I suspect that is true. Russia is probably fielding misinformation campaigns in every democratic nation. Ditto for amplifying any campaign that will increase divisiveness.
Coronavirus is a prime opportunity for Russia to use social media to weaken the USA, Germany, U.K., etc. As an added bonus for Putin, protests in democratic nations will lead to crowds, which in turn leads to more deaths. That’s one way to fight a war.
And we make it all too easy for them.
From text quoted by SC in comment 410:
With Trump’s lickspittle Richard Grenell in charge we can expect to see the release of a “declassified” version that cherry-picks the information in the report in a way that makes Trump look better, that makes the Russians look less evil, and that casts doubt on the conclusion that the Russians interfered in order to help Trump win the election.
Maybe Grenell can have William Barr present the newly revised, redacted, propagandized version.
This is how is works in Germany, where some kids are going back to school:
NY Times link
Thanks to Trump, that is not how things will work in the USA.
Another Private Jet Company Owned by a Trump Donor Got a Bailout—This One for $20 Million
The two private jet companies are among the first 96 airline companies disclosed as recipients of taxpayer funds under the CARES Act.
Cartoons
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/amp-stories/trump-brings-a-different-kind-of-test-to-the-supreme-court/
Have the Record Number of Investors in the Stock Market Lost Their Minds?
Excerpts from an article by John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker:
“Rick Bright and the Pandemic Path Not Taken,” written by Amy Davidson Sorkin.
Excerpts:
As was already noted up-thread, when Congressional hearings are aired on TV, we are reminded how stupid and narrow-minded many of the Republicans are.
WaPo Live Updates (Free)
Lawmaker claims Hitler was not a white supremacist, defends comparison of covid-19 guidelines to concentration camps
By Candace Buckner
On April 30 I said: “MSNBC during the day has a list of the five countries and five US states with the most confirmed cases. The UK has moved quickly onto the list, and I imagine will shortly be followed by Russia and Brazil (and later Mexico and possibly Turkey, Chile, and Peru). It’s plausible that we’ll see a similar pattern with US states, especially as some with Republican governors reopen.”
Today: “#Brazil has now reported 233,142 confirmed #coronavirus cases, more than Italy and Spain, and the fourth highest number after USA, Russia and UK. Brazil added 816 new deaths in the last 24 hours for a total 15,633 deaths, the sixth highest toll in the world.”
This is criminal. It didn’t have to be this way.
Behind North America’s Lowest Death Rate: A Doctor Who Fought Ebola
I am so privileged to live in a jurisdiction with a prudent and sensible government and having a Health Officer who has the depth of experience for this specific crisis.
#431:
Is that the next iteration of “economic anxiety”?
Thanks for posting that, Trickster Goddess @ #433. It seems like every day I see new evidence of the importance of institutional knowledge and experience making the difference. I believe I posted a link last month to the April 6 episode of Johns Hopkins’ Public Health on Call podcast, “Lessons from Liberia: What the US Can Learn from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak” (scroll down to find). (A public health expert tweeted the other day about how some African countries appear to have a handle on the virus, but most people’s explanations for their success point to everything other than effective public health measures, despite the fact that many of these countries have deep, extensive experience with and knowledge about addressing contagious diseases. US experts took part in these past efforts and learned from them like Henry did, but they’ve been tossed aside.) I can’t find it now, but I also linked to an article about the South Korean public health leader whose agency had made major mistakes in fighting earlier epidemics and learned from them. There are worrying signs of Bill de Blasio in New York sidelining experienced public health experts. Trump, of course, has done and continues to do the opposite of what’s necessary.
Here’s a link to the May 17 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
South America is heading into winter.
Guardian – “US and UK ‘lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs'”:
SC@437 quotes the Grauniad as writing, “Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly” (my added emphasis).
Uh, no. Last I heard, Big China is still refusing to let Island China — despite the protests of many (including Japan, New Zealand, UK, the States, and others) — attend, Taiwan must accept Chinese status to attend WHO, says Beijing (15-May-2020):
Guardian – “As lockdown consensus unravels, Boris Johnson divides nation and party”:
blf @ #438, it seems to still be up in the air. The last paragraph of the article I linked to reads: “The invitation of Taiwan to the assembly, which has been blocked in recent years by China, has also triggered a dispute. Taiwan has a lot of support from countries including the US that say its handling of Covid-19 has been exemplary and it could teach the world a lot. Beijing, however, is pressuring other countries to block Taiwan, arguing it can only be represented if it accepts it is part of China.”
Jake Tapper, CNN:
Barack Obama:
Video of his 7-minute graduation speech atl.
CNN – “Chinese ambassador to Israel is found dead in his home, Foreign Ministry says”:
Mitt Romney:
Politico – “13 USS Theodore Roosevelt sailors test positive after recovering from Covid-19”:
Rep. Engel, yesterday: “Today I launched an investigation into President Trump’s firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. @SenatorMenendez and I requested that administration officials preserve all records related to the firing & turn info over to the committees by Friday, May 22.”
Letter atl.
Cuomo just got tested for coronavirus live during his press briefing to show everyone how easy it is.
Great.
Carole Cadwalladr: “How are you? I’m feeling furious all over again this morning. 60,000 people are dead. And there’s been no reckoning, no accounting, no acknowledgement. Just denials & lies. And same scientists who warned us before are not being listened to all over again”
Infuriating video atl. I’m sure Johnson’s “big, defining” speech will help.
Barack Obama delivered two commencement speeches. One was to the nation’s 101 historically Black colleges and universities.
Video available at the link.
Excerpt from the speech:
“This video of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić addressing supporters virtually is…wow…”
Video clip atl. I’m having a hard time getting information about Belarus (I did see they had almost a thousand new cases yesterday, in the wake of the parade they held last week) or Chechnya. There are some numbers coming out, but how accurately they reflect reality is another question. Little on-the-ground reporting that I’m seeing, at least in English.
The fake “Obamagate” scandal shows how Trump hacks the media
He is “flooding the zone with shit.” And it’s working.
Oh, FFS.
Donald Trump Jr.’s Baseless Attack Calling Biden a Pedophile Is a Preview of the Dirty Campaign Ahead
Link
“Loved watching #Gogglebox as they tore into Boris Johnson’s statement. It’s just what we were all thinking. #StayAlert”
5-minute video atl.
Eric Trump claims coronavirus is Democratic hoax, will ‘magically’ vanish after 2020 election.
Washington Post link
European Leaders Tell Citizens To Steel Themselves For Life Without COVID Vaccine
Talking Points Memo link
Follow-up to comment 456.
From the comments posted by readers of the article:
From Elizabeth Warren:
More from the readers comments:
Endless scream.
Salon’s Matthew Rozsa has an overview of Russia’s c-virus situation, with the honesty to point out “we know so little about what’s going on in Russia”.
Short version: economic response maybe not quite so bad as in the US, medical response possibly worse, political response terminally short-sighted at best.
Ironically, the SNP is highly centralist within Scotland – every year since the last Scottish election, which left them just short of a majority at Holyrood, the Scottish Greens, sometimes with support from other opposition parties, have fought to obtain increased funding for local councils in the annual budget.
A Georgia cop encouraged the two accused killers to play pretend cop with Ahmaud Arbery.
Link
Follow-up to comment 450.
Asked about Obama’s comments, [Trump said to reporters], “Look, he was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent.”
Judge denies ‘delusional’ Martin Shkreli request to be released from prison to study coronavirus treatment.
The Hill link
Follow-up to comment 455.
Link
The results are in. Trump’s miracle drug is useless.
Washington Post link
Link
Moscow Times – “Russia’s Coronavirus Cases Surpass 290K as New Infections Slow Down”:
CNN – “As hospitals in Brazil teeter on the brink of collapse, Bolsonaro does pushups with supporters”:
In one of the photos from the pro-Bolsonaro/virus rally in Brasilia yesterday, a woman stands next to him on the platform wearing a “Make Brasil Great Again” t-shirt.
Here’s a link to the May 18 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
Also in the Guardian today (support the Guardian if you can!):
“Germany’s AfD thrown into turmoil by former neo-Nazi’s expulsion”:
Hatice Cengiz – “The Saudi regime murdered my fiance. It can’t be allowed to buy Newcastle United”:
“‘Instead of doctors, they send police to kill us’: locked-down Rio faces deadly raids”:
“Ah, there it is. ‘[T]he fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year’.”
WaPo link atl.
“we’re less than six months out from election day and the incumbent president is making attack videos about his own party”
Video attacking Romney atl.
CNN – “Former Australian PM calls out the ‘Murdoch mafia'”:
SC @468, that makes the charge that Pompeo “made a staffer walk his dog, pick up his dry cleaning and make dinner reservations for Pompeo and his wife, among other personal errands” look less important. It’s important that people like Pompeo NOT use taxpayer-paid staffers to run their errands, but it doesn’t compare to Trump and Pompeo going around Congress to pursue arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
From Steve Benen:
Link
Well, this is good news, even if it is a bit confusing:
In other campaign news, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg “is plotting a massive spending blitz to back Joe Biden’s quest for the White House” according to CNBC.
And here’s an update on the Joe Biden/Tara Reade story:
Why the GOP’s ‘war on voting’ will reach a new level in 2020
This year will feature the first presidential election since 1984 in which Republicans can approach “ballot integrity” issues without court restraints.
This scenario makes Stacey Abrams’ involvement more crucial. She is great at fighting for voting rights.
Trump accuses news organizations of ‘illegally smearing’ him.
Everything Trump dislikes is “illegal.” This is going to keep William Barr busy.
GOP’s Ron Johnson offers unfortunate defense of Trump’s IG firing
“[…] inspectors general are independent watchdogs, but they shouldn’t expect to be independent of Trump.”
They can’t let it go. The Trump administration is in a hole and still digging when it comes to the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China. No, it wasn’t. That’s wrong.
That’s one bit of misinformation.
That’s two bits of misinformation.
That’s three bits of misinformation
Link
Dr. Rick Bright was on “60 Minutes” last night. Trump, predictably, didn’t like that.
Link
From Wonkette: “Trump Maybe Fired State Department IG To Cover Up Way More Than Mike Pompeo’s Dog Poop”
From Geoff Bennett:
More from Wonkette:
Okay, now what the heck is going on here? “$500 billion Treasury fund meant for coronavirus relief has lent barely any money so far.”
Washington Post link
Trump probably thinks the “slush fund” is his … his alone.
From Paul Waldman, writing for the Washington Post:
Link
G liveblog:
Lynna @ #474, given Trump’s propensity for projection, his ramping up the rhetoric of illegality suggests to me that he’s also ramping up his own crimes and that he’s worried about what might be revealed if his financial documents are turned over.
Quoted in Lynna’s #480 above:
The report @ #479 could indicate that he’s deliberately keeping funds from businesses to force them to reopen fully as quickly as possible, based on the magical thinking that this will get the economy going again. Once again sabotaging real recovery efforts based on cruel delusions.
CDC research letter – “Cluster of Coronavirus Disease Associated with Fitness Dance Classes, South Korea”:
Probably lying about this, just like everything else.
WaPo Live Updates (Free)
Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine, dismisses safety concerns
By Felicia Sonmez and Toluse Olorunnipa
tomh @482, yeah, I too think he is lying. As a doctor on MSNBC noted, it is hard to imagine any doctor writing that prescription.
SC @482:
Yeah, that could well be true. I still wouldn’t put it past Trump and Munchin to still be working out how they could keep more of that money for themselves, (as well as trying to force businesses to open). It’s a lot of money, but it reminds me of the slush fund Trump managed to create and use when he accepted donations for his inaugural expenses.
Bits and pieces of other news:
Link
Follow-up to tomh @482: The FDA warnings against taking hydroxychoroquine say that patients should NOT take the drug outside of a hospital or clinical trial setting.
A tell from Trump: he expanded his lie to include front-line workers. He claims they are taking the drug. There’s no evidence for that. We do have evidence that whenever Trump tells a lie, he tends to embroider it in a way that ropes in other people.
OMFG! and YIKES! a thousand times.
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1262253165711372292
Yep, worst campaign season ever … and not because of coronavirus.
Link
Trump throws Pompeo under bus, runs over him, backs up, runs over him again.
Link
For anyone keeping up with the Flynn case, this is Judge Gleeson’s response to his appointment by Judge Sullivan as amicus curiae, in which he was asked to (1) present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss, and, (2) whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt hearing for pleading guilty to a crime of which he now claims to be innocent. Gleeson’s resonse is here. Presumably Judge Sullivan will agree.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pelosi-slams-trump-taking-hydroxychloroquine-calls-him-morbidly-obese-n1210136
.
This can get good! It is not a given that The Orange Toddler-Tyrant is taking hydroxychlorquine because practically everything he says is a lie. But with Pelosi advising him to NOT take it, he may be prompted to REALLY take it because he isn’t going to take advice from HER!
Here’s a link to the May 19 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog
Their summary:
Bloomberg – “Covid Patients Testing Positive After Recovery Aren’t Infectious, Study Shows”:
Sarah Cooper – “How to hydroxychloroquine”
“Candidate Trump would have absolutely torched President Trump for allowing a Saudi citizen with longstanding ties to al-Qaeda into the United States…. and onto a US military base, where he killed three American sailors in December.”
They’re going to these great lengths to exclude and expel refugees, children, scientists, people fleeing persecution and they let an AQAP guy planning a terrorist attack onto a fucking military base.
Reuters – “Senator Rubio chosen as acting Intelligence Committee chairman”:
CBS12 – “Woman who designed Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard has been removed from her position”:
This ties in with SC above about Florida lying about its Covid-19 cases.
This is a GOP Red state thing.
So did Georgia.
They really don’t care how many people they kill.
A judge in a rural county in Oregon tossed out all of Oregon’s rules and laws to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
A judge in a county with 16,000 people is now running the Covid-19 pandemic response for a state of 4.3 million people.
Or rather not running it because he abolished it.
For a few hours anyway.
The Oregon Supreme court stayed his ruling pending further consideration.
They could still abolish the state government’s ability to do anything about the Covid-19 pandemic, as happened in Wisconsin.
The GOP is so predictable.
They really don’t care how many people they kill.