Coronavirus, Wages, Healthcare
The really nasty thing about this particular virus is that it is very contagious and sometimes the symptoms are not very bad; someone can infect others even if they don't realize they themselves are infected. The death rate for this virus is terrifyingly high, but lots of infected people do not get very sick.
If you've got a job without paid sick leave then when you feel bad you have to decide whether this is bad enough to give up a whole day's pay. Given that jobs without benefits don't tend to pay that much to start with, people living hand to mouth, it is a certainty that many will decide to go to work. And as their co-workers catch the infection they will do the same thing. The company's cheapskate policy of making people work when they are sick can cause a destructive infectious cascade. First the company is going to collapse and then the surrounding community will be overtaken in ever-widening circles of infection.
If that company had had a sick leave policy, maybe they would have had to pay for some days off over the years, but the impact on the company as a whole would be buffered in an emergency. You can't realistically tell employees to live without money, but it is good for the company to have a policy that keeps people from coming in when they are contagious.
Similarly, consider the millions of Americans who do not have good health insurance. It costs hundreds of dollars to be tested for coronavirus, never mind being treated if it turns serious. Who do you know that is going to reach into their pocket for cash to pay for that test? To the individual it doesn't matter what kind of virus you have, it's a respiratory infection with fever, and if it turns into pneumonia or super-high fever you're going to have to be treated in the hospital no matter what germ it is. If it doesn't, you don't have to go to the hospital and it doesn't matter to you personally what particular virus you had. People won't spend their savings on medical expenses unless it's justified. The result is that your ordinary American without good health insurance is not going to be diagnosed and will not be isolated. Maybe you'll be okay, but two percent of the people you pass the virus to are going to die from it. Ever-widening circles add up to a lot of people.
In the meantime, while people avoid medical costs the authorities will not be able to assess how widespread the epidemic is. Without diagnoses there will be no statistics, no tracking, without engagement of doctors there will be no insights for how to control it. Scientifically, it will be like the Dark Ages again, the Black Death.
Some smarty on Twitter yesterday described us as a "country where a key source of healthcare is GoFundMe." If we had universal coverage then cases could be diagnosed, quarantines and treatment could be implemented rationally, the progress of the epidemic could be monitored, and catastrophic damage could be kept to a minimum. But when people pay their own medical bills the fact is that they are not going to spend thousands of dollars on something that might seem like a bad cold to them, even though it might kill the next person.
This is a case where we are all interdependent. Anyone you pass close to, anyone who has been in a room before you or handled something that you pick up, can spread the virus to you, no matter how good your health insurance is. It is in your personal best interest to be surrounded by strangers who can be diagnosed, treated, and isolated as appropriate, in a rational and well-coordinated manner.
You might be one of the lucky ones, and you might not be. We don't know who will get sick and who will die. But we are all safer in a society where everyone has paid sick leave and full access to comprehensive healthcare. The cost is shared, and the payoff is shared.
If you've got a job without paid sick leave then when you feel bad you have to decide whether this is bad enough to give up a whole day's pay. Given that jobs without benefits don't tend to pay that much to start with, people living hand to mouth, it is a certainty that many will decide to go to work. And as their co-workers catch the infection they will do the same thing. The company's cheapskate policy of making people work when they are sick can cause a destructive infectious cascade. First the company is going to collapse and then the surrounding community will be overtaken in ever-widening circles of infection.
If that company had had a sick leave policy, maybe they would have had to pay for some days off over the years, but the impact on the company as a whole would be buffered in an emergency. You can't realistically tell employees to live without money, but it is good for the company to have a policy that keeps people from coming in when they are contagious.
Similarly, consider the millions of Americans who do not have good health insurance. It costs hundreds of dollars to be tested for coronavirus, never mind being treated if it turns serious. Who do you know that is going to reach into their pocket for cash to pay for that test? To the individual it doesn't matter what kind of virus you have, it's a respiratory infection with fever, and if it turns into pneumonia or super-high fever you're going to have to be treated in the hospital no matter what germ it is. If it doesn't, you don't have to go to the hospital and it doesn't matter to you personally what particular virus you had. People won't spend their savings on medical expenses unless it's justified. The result is that your ordinary American without good health insurance is not going to be diagnosed and will not be isolated. Maybe you'll be okay, but two percent of the people you pass the virus to are going to die from it. Ever-widening circles add up to a lot of people.
In the meantime, while people avoid medical costs the authorities will not be able to assess how widespread the epidemic is. Without diagnoses there will be no statistics, no tracking, without engagement of doctors there will be no insights for how to control it. Scientifically, it will be like the Dark Ages again, the Black Death.
Some smarty on Twitter yesterday described us as a "country where a key source of healthcare is GoFundMe." If we had universal coverage then cases could be diagnosed, quarantines and treatment could be implemented rationally, the progress of the epidemic could be monitored, and catastrophic damage could be kept to a minimum. But when people pay their own medical bills the fact is that they are not going to spend thousands of dollars on something that might seem like a bad cold to them, even though it might kill the next person.
This is a case where we are all interdependent. Anyone you pass close to, anyone who has been in a room before you or handled something that you pick up, can spread the virus to you, no matter how good your health insurance is. It is in your personal best interest to be surrounded by strangers who can be diagnosed, treated, and isolated as appropriate, in a rational and well-coordinated manner.
You might be one of the lucky ones, and you might not be. We don't know who will get sick and who will die. But we are all safer in a society where everyone has paid sick leave and full access to comprehensive healthcare. The cost is shared, and the payoff is shared.
posted by JimK at 9:36 AM
204 Comments:
JM Rieger✔
@RiegerReport
Trump earlier today on coronavirus:
“It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better, could maybe go away, we’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.”
Video
8:27 PM - Feb 27, 2020
"Scientifically, it will be like the Dark Ages again, the Black Death."
yeah, it will be just like that
except that the bubonic plague had a 93% mortality rate and coronavirus has a mortality rate of 2% so far and will likely be lower in the US
oh, and the virus has been isolated, with a vaccine expected to be available within 90 days
but, admittedly, this story is very convenient to shift attention away from the train wreck called the Democratic party nomination process
"Some smarty on Twitter yesterday described us as a "country where a key source of healthcare is GoFundMe.""
actually, the key source of healthcare in America is employer-provided health insurance
"If we had universal coverage then cases could be diagnosed, quarantines and treatment could be implemented rationally, the progress of the epidemic could be monitored, and catastrophic damage could be kept to a minimum."
actually, that's exactly what is going to happen
"You might be one of the lucky ones, and you might not be. We don't know who will get sick and who will die. But we are all safer in a society where everyone has paid sick leave and full access to comprehensive healthcare. The cost is shared, and the payoff is shared."
keep in mind, this disease arose and spread in a government-controlled society where healthcare and sick leave are provided by the People's Republic
just like the kind of society presumptive Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders wants to impose on us
"Hope is not a method"
neither is panic
if you feel a sense of deja vu, it's because the panic Dems are trying to stir is much like the way they exacerbated the recession in 2008 by undermining public confidence in order to get Sir Barack Obama nominated
"JM Rieger✔
@RiegerReport"
Rieger, you're an ass
“It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better, could maybe go away, we’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.”
sounds about right
"Scientifically, it will be like the Dark Ages again, the Black Death."
this is what he lunatic fringe calls "teach the facts"
Only dumdumrump thinks a border wall will keep out the coronavirus at our borders.
And his idiot gun fanatic son said, "The playbook is old at this point. But for them (Democrats) to try to use a pandemic, and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump's streak of winning, is a new level of sickness."
And President Huckabee said, "The left & media (but I repeat myself) hate @realDonaldTrump more than Coronavirus. If he personally sucked the virus out of the lungs of all 62K ppl affected & swam to bottom of ocean to spit it out, they'd complain he polluted the seas! "
Maybe they should warn people like the CDC does:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Trump administration's proposed 2021 budget includes cuts to the CDC's activities related to chronic disease.
SNOPES: Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team? TRUE
They should have kept the Pandemic Response Team together instead of sending unprotected Homeland Security personnel to escort infected citizens.
Wash your hands regularly. Cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze. And when you’re sick, stay home from work or school and drink lots of fluids.
The CDC recommends washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds after using the bathroom, before eating and after blowing your nose or sneezing. It also advises not to touch your eyes, nose and mouth and to clean objects and surfaces you touch often — a common household cleaner will suffice.
Former President Barack Obama did something this weekend that he's been unable to do so far in the Democratic primary race: Call former Vice President Joe Biden and offer his congratulations.
The call from Obama on Saturday night came after Biden's victory in South Carolina. But the words of praise for Biden's commanding finish in the contest did not change the fact that Obama still plans to stay on the sidelines and not insert himself into the primary fight as it intensifies.
A person close to Obama told CNN that the former president's view has not changed: He has no plans to offer an endorsement of Biden as the nominating contest heads into Super Tuesday
Washington state confirmed Sunday that a second person has died from a novel form of coronavirus behind a major outbreak worldwide.
Seattle officials said Sunday evening that a man in his 70s died at a Kirkland, Wash., hospital — the same location where the first death from the disease reported in the U.S. occurred a day earlier, according to The New York Times.
Three other cases were confirmed in the county on Sunday, according to the Times. Two other patients are currently in critical condition from the disease's symptoms in the county.
Tens of thousands of people worldwide have been sickened by the disease, with the most deaths and cases occurring in China, where the disease was first reported.
Health officials have warned that a large-scale outbreak in the U.S. is possible, while President Trump has largely insisted that the disease is under control.
Sunday also marked the first confirmed case of the virus in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said that a woman in her late 30s had been confined to her home after reporting symptoms.
“There is no reason for undue anxiety -- the general risk remains low in New York,” Cuomo said Sunday. “We are diligently managing this situation and will continue to provide information as it becomes available.”
Six people have now died in the state of Washington as a result of the coronavirus, health officials announced on Monday. March 2. Five of the victims died in King County and one in Snohomish County, according to authorities. In King County, health officials said at a press conference there have been 14 cases in the county, which is home to Seattle, and of those, five people have died. Authorities had previously confirmed two deaths and said three more patients died on Monday.
“The risk for all of us of becoming infected will be increasing, and although most of the cases will be mild or moderate, the infection can cause serious illness and there’s a potential for many people to become ill at the same time,” King County public health director Dr. Jeff Duchin said at the press conference.
Officials said they were in the final stages of purchasing a motel to house coronavirus patients in isolation in an effort to keep them away from other people who are hospitalized. Modular units that had previously been purchased as part of homelessness reduction efforts will also be used for COVID-19 patients, officials said.
The latest update comes after officials announced Sunday a second person died from COVID-19 in King County and there were a total of six cases from the Life Care Center as of March 1, Q13 Fox reported. There are 13 cases in the state total, which you can read more about in the last section of this article.
...
https://heavy.com/news/2020/02/coronavirus-covid-19-cases-deaths-updates/?utm_source=OneSignal
A federal judge Monday granted a request from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sit for a sworn deposition to answer questions about her use of a private email server to conduct government business.
Clinton has argued that she has already answered questions about this and should not have to do so again -- the matter did not result in any charges for the then-presidential candidate in 2016 after a high-profile investigation -- but D.C. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in his ruling that her past responses left much to be desired.
The judge said that while Clinton responded to written questions in a separate case, "those responses were either incomplete, unhelpful, or cursory at best. Simply put her responses left many more questions than answers.” Lamberth said that using written questions this time “will fail to capture the full picture, thus delaying the final disposition of this case even further.”
The ruling comes after Judicial Watch revealed at a December 2019 status conference that the FBI released "approximately thirty previously undisclosed Clinton emails," and that the State Department "failed to fully explain" where they came from.
Two years, $7 million, 800 pages later, GOP Benghazi report lands with a thud
We shouldn't be shocked at the evangelical embrace of totalitarianism - their entire worldview is "obey me or be tortured forever". What else could we expect their politics to be?
I confess, I read the headline at least three times to figure out its meaning: “UK: Trans ‘Man’ with ‘Non-Binary’ Partner Gives Birth Using ‘Female’ Sperm Donor.”
The article then “clarified”: A female-to-male trans “man” and their “non-binary” partner have had a baby in Brighton, England—assisted by a trans doctor and a male-to-female trans “woman” sperm donor.
Over 40 words to say how a baby came into the world! And though you—as I did—may have figured it out, I wager we will never understand it. As you can see, traditional views of sexuality—and even parentage—are being twisted in our culture more and more. And those who hold those views—that’s you and me—are being targeted, intimidated and silenced for speaking out.
That’s why Family Policy Alliance—representing pastors, policy advocates, statesmen and business leaders across the nation—is working in alliance as your voice in state capitals, Washington, D.C., and the public square.
You may say, “That headline is from England. How does that affect me and my family here?”
Fair question.
A recent NBC online post proclaimed, “A Very LGBTQ Decade: Gay Marriage, Trans Rights and a ‘Rainbow Wave.’ ” The post extolled the LGBTQ “gains” made in such a short time. So, here are just a few examples about how this ideology affects you, your children and grandchildren—right here at home:
“Don’t tell your parents!” Teachers across the nation are being told to withhold information from parents about required sexually explicit books and classroom discussions about normalizing transgender identity and behavior.
Or, a girl in middle school being told that a boy—who feels like he is a girl—is allowed to change for PE class in the girl’s locker room, and if the girl didn’t like it, she had to change in the nurse’s office. Rightly outraged, the girl’s parents moved her to a nearby traditional private school. But what about the kids who don’t have that opportunity?
And further, more and more trans “women” (men who say they are women) are competing in women’s sports and winning! So much for women’s rights!
In fact, we were introduced to a courageous high school student-athlete named Tanner who is a state champion in track. Tanner wasn’t asked first before she was forced to run against a male student who identifies as a female. Tanner beat that biologically male competitor, but she pointed out that at least one girl was prevented from competing because a male was permitted to race against girls—and that this will affect all girls’ and women’s sports. And she’s right.
That’s why Family Policy Alliance and our policy allies are working in multiple states to ensure biological boys cannot compete against girls in girls’ sports, and vice versa. We’re also working on the ground and behind the scenes to ensure schools are protected when they enforce fair competition through boys’ and girls’ sports teams.
Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, also known as Alexa, was shot and killed in Puerto Rico, becoming at least the second transgender person killed in the United States this year.
The killing is being investigated as a potential hate crime, said Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced at a press conference on Feb. 24.
"The murder of Alexa is going to be treated with total rigor so that those people who committed and participated in this cruelty are brought to justice," the governor said in a tweet in Spanish with the hashtag “Her Name Was Alexa.”
Ruiz was found dead in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, earlier that morning. The day before police received a call from a McDonalds in the area reporting that Ruiz was using the women’s bathroom — but misgendering her as a “man who was dressed as a female.”
CBS news correspondent David Begnaud reported in a video posted to social media that another woman using the bathroom accused Ruiz of using a mirror to look into the stalls.
Police spoke to Ruiz, who told them she was homeless, and no charges were filed after the police determined there was no evidence against her.
Soon, "vulgar, homophobic, transphobic and inaccurate" posts on social media repeated the accusations, said Begnaud. The posts have now been deleted. Then, just before 4 a.m., police found Ruiz’s body.
Police are reportedly investigating a video posted online that appears to show her killing. At least two men can be heard in the video mocking and threatening someone, believed to be Ruiz, before the sound of gunfire.
Telemundo Puerto Rico reported on Feb. 25 that police are looking for four teenagers in relation to her killing. Other videos and photos have also emerged on social media appearing to show Ruiz up to a year earlier, homeless.
Garced said on Twitter that police were investigating cell phones in connection with her death.
"The [Puerto Rico Police Department] will work with the diligence and sensitivity this case merits. We encourage people who have information to cooperate with the various investigations that are carried out," she said in Spanish.
Police say they have reached out to her family, but have not been able to contact them.
Hundreds of tweets and social media posts have condemned her killing under the hashtags "Her Name Was Alexa" or, in Spanish, "Se Llamaba Alexa." Transgender people in Puerto Rico face the same discrimination as those across the country, but in recent years the territory has made strides to improve LGBTQ+ protections.
Still, the FBI has reported a 34 percent increase in hate crimes against transgender people between 2017 and 2018. Transgender people also face high rates of homelessness, as many are not accepted by their families or friends.
“She had dreams, hopes, hobbies and did not deserve to have her life taken from her. HRC has heard that Ruiz was experiencing homelessness, further highlighting the ways a toxic mix of transphobia and misogyny conspire to put the transgender community at risk of extreme violence,” a spokesperson for the Human Rights campaign said in a statement.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A measure prohibiting homicide defendants from claiming a defense based on panic over a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity has been passed by lawmakers in Washington state.
Nine states — California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey New York and Rhode Island — have legislatively banned the use of gay or transgender panic as a legal defense.
The Washington measure, passed by the Senate on a bipartisan 46-3 vote Wednesday, is named after Nikki Kuhnhausen, a transgender teen who was killed last year, The Columbian reported.
Kuhnhausen, 17, disappeared in early June and her remains were discovered Dec. 7, southeast of Battle Ground. A Vancouver man has been charged with second-degree murder and malicious harassment, which is a hate crime in Washington.
Authorities say the Vancouver teenager was strangled after her assailant learned she was transgender. He has pleaded not guilty. There was no immediate indication if he will attempt to use a “panic” defense.
The bill, which passed the House earlier this month on a 90-5 vote, would block a defendant from using a defense based on discovery or disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation and would prevent a claim of “diminished capacity” because the defendant did not fully comprehend the nature and gravity of the alleged crime.
The legislation now goes to Gov. Jay Inslee for his signature.
"Still, the FBI has reported a 34 percent increase in hate crimes against transgender people between 2017 and 2018"
so, from 3 to 4?
Hate crime murders in the U.S. reached a 27-year high in 2018, according to data released Tuesday by the FBI. Hate crime murders totaled 24, which includes the 11 worshipers slain last year at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest anti-Semitic crime in U.S. history.
The 24 hate crime murders above do NOT include all of the known trans people murdered in 2018 - there are at least 24 known murders of just trans people in 2018, but they weren't all counted as hate crimes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_transgender_people
To put this into perspective, there are around 6 million Jewish people in the US - that's the low end of the estimate range - other numbers put it at around 12 million:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country
That's around 2 to 4% of the US population, depending on how you count them.
In contrast, trans people make up about 0.58% of the population in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
In 2018, the 11 Jewish people murdered at Tree of Life made up 46% of the entire year's worth of classified hate crimes.
With 24 murdered trans people in the US 2018, the comparative murder rate is roughly (24/11 * 2%/0.58%) = 7.5 times higher for trans people people than it is for Jewish people in the US.
As for the 34% increase, that comes from this data (at URL for name above):
"Crimes targeting the LQBTQ community increased about 6% from 2017, and the FBI reports a significant increase in hate crimes motivated by gender identity bias. The FBI said 184 hate crime offenses in 2018 were motivated by bias against transgender or gender non-conforming people — 157 motivated by anti-transgender bias and 27 motivated by bias against gender non-conforming individuals. In 2017, 118 were anti-transgender and 13 were anti-gender non-conforming."
Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday night:
A lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and/or virus. So you just can’t do that. So, if you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better.
actually, Trump is exactly right
most people who get the disease will suffer a mild cold and not think twice about it
the focus should be on protecting the elderly and people with conditions that make them vulnerable
he didn't, btw, tell them to go to work
he noted that many will
Chief Justice John Roberts publicly chastised Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday over comments Schumer made outside the Supreme Court as the justices were hearing a case on abortion rights.
Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that President Donald Trump's court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, "won't know what hit" them if they vote to uphold abortion restrictions. He spoke during a rally on the sidewalk in front of the court building.
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price," Schumer said.
In a highly unusual written statement issued late Wednesday, Roberts said, "Statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous."
"All members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter," Roberts said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts clashed Wednesday in an extraordinary public dispute over the independence of America’s judiciary, with Roberts bluntly rebuking the president for denouncing a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”
There’s no such thing, Roberts declared in a strongly worded statement contradicting Trump and defending judicial independence.
The pre-Thanksgiving dustup was the first time that Roberts, the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has several times blasted federal judges who have ruled against him.
Before now, it has been highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism. And a chief justice’s challenge to a president’s comments is downright unprecedented in modern times.
It seemed a fight that Trump would relish but one that Roberts has taken pains to avoid. But with Roberts’ court feeling the heat over the president’s appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts and several of his colleagues have gone out of their way to rebut perceptions of the court as a political institution divided between five conservative Republicans and four liberal Democrats...
Roberts had refused to comment on Trump’s earlier attacks on judges, including the chief justice himself. But on Wednesday, after a query by The Associated Press, he spoke up for the independence of the federal judiciary and rejected the notion that judges are loyal to the presidents who appoint them.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” Roberts said.
You've likely heard about the Coronavirus (officially called "2019-Novel Coronavirus" or "COVID-19") in the news. While there isn't a vaccine yet and the immediate health risk remains low, Medicare is still here to help.
Your Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) covers a test to see if you have Coronavirus. This test is covered when your doctor or a health care provider orders it, if you get the test on or after February 4, 2020. You usually pay nothing for Medicare-covered clinical diagnostic laboratory tests.
To prevent the spread of this illness or other illnesses, including the flu:
-Wash your hands often with soap and water,
-Cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze,
-Stay home when you're sick, and
-See your doctor if you think you're ill.
Visit The Centers for Disease Control website for information on the Coronavirus.
DO NOT GO TO WORK TO SPREAD YOUR VIRUS GERMS TO YOUR COWORKERS AND CUSTOMERS.
"DO NOT GO TO WORK TO SPREAD YOUR VIRUS GERMS TO YOUR COWORKERS AND CUSTOMERS."
NO ONE SAID YOU SHOULD
YOU FALSELY SAID TRUMP SAID THAT
BUT YOU'RE A LYING SACK OF IT
WASHINGTON — Facebook will immediately remove Trump reelection campaign ads on its social media site that civil rights groups and Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, complained looked like official Census forms.
“There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. Census and this is an example of those being enforced,” said a Facebook spokesman.
The move came just hours after Pelosi criticized Facebook for not stopping Republicans from posting ads that she said could mislead people.
“This is on the part of Facebook a robust, unacceptable interference in the Census,’’ Pelosi said a press conference.
Vanita Gupta, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted the organization "worked hard with Facebook to put a robust census interference policy in place. Trump’s ads clearly violated that policy & should have been removed immediately."
With only days until most households start receiving an invitation to participate in the 2020 Census, members of Congress are increasing efforts to encourage people to respond by mail, online or by phone.
Leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a press conference Thursday, calling it a priority to make sure communities of color are accurately counted. They argue those communities have historically been undercounted, costing them millions in federal funds.
Pelosi said Republicans have posted information on Facebook that make it appear that people are clicking on official Census documents.
“It’s an absolute lie, a lie that is consistent with the misrepresentation policy of Facebook. But now they’re messing with who we are as Americans,’’ she said. “I know the profit motive is their business model, but it should not come at the cost of counting who is in our country.”
“It’s causing quite a stir,’’ Pelosi said.
Democrats, civil rights groups and others have complained about efforts to undermine the count and mislead citizens. They point to mailers sent to households by the Republican National Party that appear to look like an official Census form.
Facebook and other social media companies have said they would work to make sure misleading information about census, elections and other issues would not be posted.
But Democrats pointed to the Facebook posts as the most recent problem.
As first reported by technology newsletter Popular Information, the Trump Make American Great Again Committee, one of the president’s reelection fundraising committees, bought ads on Facebook through the Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence Facebook pages to promote an “official 2020 Congressional District Census.”
Some of the ads include a picture of Trump making a thumbs-up while a “2020 census icon” flashes on screen, urging voters to “help shape president Trump’s winning strategy” and “take the survey.”
The text of the post tells Facebook users “President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today.”
Clicking on the survey takes users to a website for the “Official 2020 Congressional District Census.” Although the website is labeled “Certified Website of President Donald J. Trump,” a box on the upper left hand corner of the screen says “for Official Use Only” and displays a “Survey ID.”
The survey then asks users about their opinions of Trump and his policies.
“Do you think Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left are putting their personal anti-Trump agenda ahead of what’s best for the American people?” one of the questions reads.
Census officials said they have tried to counter any misinformation and disinformation, through community partners and in advertisements.
“I hope the people won’t be fooled,’’ said Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nevada, head of the Congressional Black Caucus Census Task Force, asked the Trump administration to stop the practice.
“We know that there’s a deliberate disinformation campaign underway to discourage communities of color from participating in the census,’’ he said.
Rep. Judy Chu, head of CAPAC, said Democrats and community groups are particularly concerned about what will happen when the count is fully underway.
“That’s why we’re being so proactive … talking about what is really on the census and to pay attention to any fraudulent or misleading kinds of mail that is sent out,’’ said Chu, a Democrat from California.
Earlier Thursday, Gupta, called the Facebook posts "unacceptable."
Documents show $157,000 in additional payments by Secret Service to Trump properties
Eric Trump, the Trump Organization’s executive vice president, said last year that the company charges “like, 50 bucks.” Receipts show the company charged taxpayers $396.15 per night for rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
President Trump’s company charged the Secret Service $157,000 more than was previously known — billing taxpayers for rooms at his clubs at rates far higher than his company has claimed, according to a new trove of receipts and billing documents released by the Secret Service.
Many of the new receipts were obtained by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which spent three years battling the Secret Service over a public-records request from January 2017.
When added to dozens of charges already reported by The Washington Post, the new documents show that Trump’s company has charged the Secret Service more than $628,000 since he took office in 2017.
The payments show Trump has an unprecedented — and still partially hidden — business relationship with his own government. The full scope of that relationship is still unknown because the publicly available records are largely from 2017 and 2018, leaving huge gaps in the data.
BALTIMORE — Three Maryland residents have tested positive for coronavirus/COVID-19, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced Thursday evening.
All three people with the virus live in Montgomery County — a married man and woman in their 70s and a woman in her 50s. All three are quarantined in their homes right now, are in good condition, and their symptoms are abating.
All three cases are also travel-related. The patients returned home from a trip overseas on February 20. Health officials would not say Thursday evening where they traveled to.
The patients did travel to a hospital to be tested for the virus, but health officials would not say which facility that was. Their specimens came back positive Thursday.
An investigation is underway to determine who the patients may have had contact with and where they traveled in the period of time between when they arrived back in the United States and when they developed COVID-19's flu-like symptoms.
Hogan has declared a state of emergency to fast-track the response efforts and mobilize resources faster, but he stressed that Marylanders should remain calm and go to work and school as they normally would, while also taking reasonable precautions.
“The public should be assured that our state’s preparedness builds on decades of planning, experience and expertise gained from previous and on going health events," Hogan said during a press conference Thursday night.
As of Thursday afternoon, two coronavirus tests were pending results in D.C. and three were pending in Virginia (two in Central Virginia and one in Northern Virginia), according to health officials.
Fourteen were pending in Maryland as of Thursday afternoon, and the state's website has not yet been updated to reflect the confirmed cases the governor announced Thursday evening.
Montgomery County Public Schools released the following statement Thursday evening:
"Dear MCPS Community,
Tonight, we learned that the first 3 cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19) that were identified in the state of Maryland are from Montgomery County. The patients are identified as a married couple in their 70s and an individual in their 50s. They contracted the virus while traveling overseas. State officials have shared that they do not believe these individuals have had contact with MCPS students. As you know, we have been preparing for this situation through our interagency coordination with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services and Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. At this time, we are following guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services and our schools will remain open. As we move forward, we are preparing for the possibility of school closures in the future should this become necessary. We encourage all MCPS families to remain vigilant through this situation and consult your health provider if you are experiencing symptoms that you may believe are related to the coronavirus.
We will continue to provide updates as this situation develops. Visit the coronavirus webpage to stay up-to-date on the latest information.
Sincerely,
Montgomery County Public Schools"
Worldwide, more than 90,000 people have been sickened by the virus and more than 3,100 have died. The number of countries hit by the virus has reached at least 70.
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 11 on Wednesday with a patient succumbing in California — the first reported fatality outside Washington state.
Health officials have a team of disease experts working round the clock on this and they hope to have more answers to 7 On Your Sides specific questions during the press conference about where exactly did these 3 people go during those key 12 days.
“We want to understand during the time when they returned from travel and when they had symptoms, flu-like symptoms, we want to understand exactly where they went, who they interacted with so we can conduct this investigation," health officials told ABC7.
Transgender students attending public school in Virginia can expect more comprehensive safeguards against harassment from peers, teachers and administrators under a measure signed Wednesday by Gov. Ralph Northam (D).
The legislation, which mirrors policies adopted by roughly a dozen other states, requires the Virginia Department of Education to develop and publish rules regulating the treatment of transgender students in elementary, middle and high schools. The guidelines will span topics including bullying, dress codes, school record-keeping and the use of bathrooms.
The department must finalize and publish its guidance by the end of this year, and school boards throughout the state must adopt the rules by the start of the 2021-2022 school year.
“In Virginia, we fully expect our schools to treat transgender students — like all students — with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Northam said. “This bill represents an important step towards making Virginia more welcoming and inclusive of all.”
The measure, proposed in the House by Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) and Del. Joshua G. Cole (D-Fredericksburg), is the latest in a string of landmark LGBTQ rights measures to pass the General Assembly this year, landing on the governor’s desk with the backing of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate — a level of dominance Democrats have not enjoyed for a generation. The vote on the measure split along party lines in both chambers of the General Assembly.
On Monday, in another victory for LGBTQ advocates, Northam signed a bill banning conversion therapy for minors.
In pushing for the transgender regulations, students, parents and activists argued that a lack of statewide guidance has led to significant variation in how transgender children fare in Virginia schools.
Some students are treated well, allowed to use the bathroom matching their gender identity and to swiftly alter their name and gender as recorded in school documents, such as their high school diploma. But others, families and activists say, are suffering — pain that has sometimes preceded suicide attempts.
Research suggests there are roughly 4,000 transgender teenagers in Virginia, and studies have shown that transgender youth are far more likely to try to take their own lives.
“Kids are at enormous risk,” Robert Norris Rigby, a Virginia high school teacher and president of Fairfax County Public Schools Pride, said in December.
The case of Virginia student Gavin Grimm — a transgender student who was barred by school officials from using the boys’ restroom — received national attention in recent years. Grimm sued, and his suit ascended to the Supreme Court. It was later returned to a lower court, where a judge ruled in August that Grimm’s rights had been violated.
In the years since Grimm’s case, some school districts sought on their own to improve the experience of transgender students: Between 15 and 20 systems, out of more than 130 in Virginia, passed regulations to protect transgender students.
But at least two school systems stipulated that students must use facilities that match their biological sex. Policies such as these seem likely to conflict with the forthcoming Education Department guidelines.
The bill sponsored by Simon and Cole passed the House 60 to 39, with almost every Democrat (one did not vote) and six Republicans in favor. The Senate passed it 22 to 18, with every Democrat and one Republican voting for the measure...
CHICAGO (AP) — Saying he would do more if he were in Congress today to support LGBTQ rights — which he opposed when he served — former Illinois U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock came out as gay Thursday in social media and web posts.
In the postings on Instagram and a webpage, the 38-year-old also describes his anguish at being rejected by members of his deeply religious family, including his mother, after they learned last year he was gay.
The longtime Republican laments that he opposed gay marriage while representing his conservative congressional district in central Illinois, noting Democrat and fellow Illinoisan Barack Obama once held a similar position.
"That fact doesn’t make my then position any less wrong, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that it was leaders of both parties who for so long wrongly understood what it was to defend the right to marry," he writes.
Aaron Schock's instagram statement...
He adds: "The truth is that if I were in Congress today, I would support LGBTQ rights in every way I could."
The one-time rising GOP star and prolific Republican fundraiser garnered national attention after appearing on the cover of Men’s Health showing off his six-pack abs. He successfully marketed himself during six years in Congress as an unwavering fiscal conservative...
Schock now understands, he said, that he is indebted to those activists who supported rights he opposed for so long.
"I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not," he writes.
Schock starts the postings on both Instagram and the webpage with the words: "I am gay."
He said he began driving to his mother's house from Los Angeles to tell her that last year. But she had learned of it before he arrived and when he spoke with her on the phone en route, "She told me to turn around and go back to LA."
"I’ve come to terms with the fact that it might take my loved ones more time than I would like," he writes. "And I realize some might never come around."
He said he still receives occasional emails from family members "trying to sell me on conversion therapy," the widely debunked notion that someone who is gay can — with therapy — become heterosexual.
Schock described growing up in a conservative Apostolic Christian Church where members even considered "watching TV to be sinfully idle." He said he doesn't think he was aware there were other gays in his midst.
"I understood that the teachings of my upbringing were pretty clear on the matter," he said.
The ambitious Schock began buying real estate in high school, became a member of the local school board at 19 and an Illinois legislator at 23, then entered the U.S. Congress at just 27.
He said the fact he is gay wouldn't be a revelation for many who know him, adding that coming out publicly as gay is “just one of those things in my life in need of explicit affirmation … to finally validate who I am as a person.”
“In many ways," he writes, "I regret the time wasted in not having done so sooner.”
Divided Democrats can agree on one thing: The other guy would be a disaster.
“In 30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with so much doom and gloom,” Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way said after Bernie Sanders’ big win in Nevada.
Progressives share an equal level of doom and gloom around the prospect of former Vice President Joe Biden winning the nomination.
“Very often, we are told — by people on television and in political media, perhaps by the people in our social circle and our families — that Joe Biden is the only way that Democrats can win in 2020,” laments New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister. “But when I look at these last decades, I don’t actually see how much we’ve won with a party run by Those Guys. I see how much we’ve lost.”
Biden’s 2020 campaign, fellow New York Magazine contributor Jonathan Chait predicts, “is going to end in a disaster for the whole party.”
Super Tuesday’s super-fast consolidation of the Democratic presidential field has appropriately been framed as a two-man race between Bernie’s progressive revolution and the moderates’ plan to play-it-safe with Uncle Joe. There’s no question that Biden vs. Bernie is another battle in the ongoing “struggles for the soul of the Democratic Party.”
The nasty ideological fight is far from Democrats’ only problem. Here are five big challenges facing Democrats in 2020.
1. Democrats are equally divided along generational lines.
For a half-century, moderates have battled liberals for control of the Democratic Party. That’s not new. This time, that split is also reflected in Democrats’ age. According to an ABC News/Washington Post exit poll, nearly 60% of Democrats between the ages of 18 to 29 years old voted for Sanders on Super Tuesday compared to 17% for Biden. At the other end, voters 65 and older went 48% for Biden and 15% for Sanders.
The age gap creates problems for how Democrats communicate, the style and tenor of campaign messages and what’s considered civil in political discourse. Young progressives, frustrated by the Establishment, relish the chance to match President Trump’s brash style and in-your-face tone. They see moderate Democrats as weak pushovers. Yet, that style is what’s driving independent older voters away from Trump. It won’t be easy for Democrats to reconcile those radically different approaches.
2. Democrats are overestimating the power of anti-Trump sentiments to drive turnout.
Democrats clearly are banking on Trump to be the main driver for their “get out the vote” efforts. That worked to great effect during the 2018 midterms, which showed incredible strength for Democrats in turning out their base. But in the social media age, four years is a long time to sustain the resistance, and there are signs Trump might be losing his power to motivate Democrats to vote.
In contrast, he is generating unprecedented enthusiasm among GOP voters in an uncontested primary. According to Rolling Stone, “In New Hampshire, Trump received 129,696 votes, which is more than double what Obama got in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004.”
3. Enthusiasm among women is down.
Trump’s 2017 inauguration was answered in an unprecedented way with the Women’s March on Washington. That enthusiasm was channeled into progressive meet-up groups. The #MeToo movement seemed to add more motivation for women to take action and become politically engaged.
What happened to all that energy and enthusiasm among women? Democrats started the race with a promising field of six female candidates: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marianne Williamson. Now, it’s down to two rich white men who represented mid-Atlantic and New England states, respectively, in the U.S. Senate.
“No matter which person or party wins now, the historical grid at the back of my son and daughter’s Little Presidents board book will be getting yet another white male face,” writes Vogue contributor Michelle Ruiz. “It’s a cruel and frankly outrageous bill of goods that women and girls are sold: to be bombarded by bedazzled ‘Who Run the World?’ T-shirts and ‘Girl Power’ buttons, only to be told by the general electorate over and over again that the best you can hope for is vice president (maybe) or first lady.”
4. Young voters aren’t showing up.
The drop in the youth turnout among Democratic primary voters is a big concern for Bernie’s chances to secure the nomination. “Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? The answer is no," Sanders told the press after Super Tuesday’s mixed results.
It should terrify all Democrats in advance of November. In North Carolina, overall turnout was up 17% but youth turnout was down 9%. According to the Washington Post, “Youth turnout compared to 2016 is either flat or down in a majority of states that have voted.”
5. Will the two billionaires take their ball and go home?
Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg effectively bankrolled the Democrats’ 2018 midterm campaigns. The latter spent more than $100 million to aid candidates in swing congressional districts. The former kicked in another $123 million to build the “Biggest Political Machine You’ve Never Heard of.”
To put those numbers in perspective, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $84 million during the 2018 cycle. Bloomberg and Steyer’s combined spending was nearly three times as much. Both billionaires’ largesse was driven, at least in part, by their 2020 presidential ambitions. Democrats should be concerned that both of them might temper their spending in the lead-up to November.
As Joe Biden climbed out of his political grave, CNN anchors were so excited they wriggled like puppies about to wet the carpet and called him "The Comeback Kid."
Biden did make a spectacular comeback on Super Tuesday. But what about Bernie Sanders?
With 60 percent of Democratic Party delegates still up for grabs, with the Democratic Media Complex in lockstep with Biden, what should Bernie do?
If Sanders truly wants to fight for the Democratic nomination and not roll over for the establishment as he did in 2016, then he, too, should call Biden the Comeback Kid.
But Bernie should say it loudly in Ukrainian:
Povernennya Dytyny.
According to Google Translator, anyway. I hope that's right and it doesn't mean "creepy old guy who sniffs women's hair without asking" or "lying dog-faced pony soldier." If you can't trust Google, what's the news business coming to?
Joe's son Hunter Biden should know how to pronounce Povernennya Dytyny. Hunter had that $50,000-a-month no-show job with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, when his daddy was the Obama administration point man in Ukraine leveraging the firing of prosecutors against U.S. loan guarantees. And Hunter scored big in China, too, because his name was Biden.
But Hunter's too busy to teach conversational Ukrainian. He's probably boning up on natural gas jargon before he's called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., the committee chairman, wants Hunter as a witness to get to the bottom of that swampy Ukrainian business.
If you dare mention Hunter and Ukraine, the Democratic establishment pols start frothing at the mouth. So, I'll light a candle and pray Donna Brazile doesn't tell me to "go to hell." It's Lent, Donna. C'mon, man.
.
If Bernie Sanders wants to really fight and draw a contrast between himself and Biden, he should go to that Ukrainian business. Yammering about Biden and Social Security won't cut it.
Joe Biden is a swamp creature and his family has scored off Joe's political leverage, just as if Joe were mayor of Chicago in the old days. Bernie is not a swamp creature. He's an ideologue of the left and the Democratic establishment hates him.
It's not policy. They're all going the same direction. This is about control. If the Democratic establishment had a choice between losing elections or losing control of the party, they'd lose elections. Without control of the party they have no leverage to make their deals. The Republican establishment was the same in 2016. They would have rather lost the White House than have President Donald Trump run their party. But Trump rushed them and fought in the mud and the blood and the beer, biting ears off and giving no quarter.
Sanders didn't fight against Hillary Clinton as if it were a battle to the death. He let her off the hook on that scandal about her unsecured email.
With the Democratic establishment and the Beltway media in lockstep against him, Bernie, too, must fight in the mud and bite off an ear. Slaps won't do it. No one ever won a fight with little policy slaps.
That wasn't a little slap that Sen. Elizabeth Warren used on billionaire Mike Bloomberg in the Democratic debates. She ripped out Bloomberg's spine and held it aloft like she was an avatar from Mortal Kombat. It helped Biden.
Bloomberg spent half a billion dollars to win American Samoa on Super Tuesday before dropping out and endorsing Biden. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete dropped out before Tuesday and endorsed Biden. And Warren? She came in third in her home state of Massachusetts and took Sanders' votes.
Bernie has something else to learn besides mastering political cliches in Ukrainian. It's the 25th Amendment. Sanders better get to it quick, before Biden and the Democratic establishment rip it out of the Constitution.
The 25th Amendment -- which provides for the removal of a president if incapacitated -- was the purple unicorn in the fever dreams of Republican establishment Never Trumpers and of the Democrats, remember? It was just a few years ago. The idea was that Trump wasn't mentally capable for the job.
It wasn't discussed as a crazy fever dream. Many cable news types (and print types) discussed it in rational terms. OK, then, so what about Biden?
Have you been watching him lately? Biden began gathering momentum just as the media stopped focusing on him, giving us Sanders' defense of Fidel Castro instead. That was the story they wanted to tell. But Biden is losing it.
Team Biden must hope you don't pay attention, because their man is fading before our eyes. Think of Biden just a few years ago in debate, he was quick and devilish. But Biden isn't that way now, is he? The Democratic bosses must know this, they see Biden thinning. Joe is just too little butter spread out over too much bread. But they don't care.
If he wins, his choice for vice president could be running the country by next spring. And then the 25th Amendment would be a real thing, not some drug-induced political fantasy. If he were my father, I'd take him away from all this, take him fishing, take him anywhere but a presidential campaign.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident," Biden said during a campaign stop in Texas a few days ago. "All men and women created by -- you know, you know, the thing."
The thing, Joe. That thing that shaped America, and deals with how we're endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. You know, Joe, the thing
Chris Lu✔
@ChrisLu44
So what does it mean when you have 4 Chiefs of Staff in 3 years and 2 months? https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/156829591267328000 …
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
· Jan 10, 2012
3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why @BarackObama can't manage to pass his agenda.
A total of six former college wrestlers have now accused Donald Trump defender Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) of knowing about sexual abuse by the team doctor when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State University, CNN reports.
The six told CNN they were present when Jordan either heard or responded to sexual misconduct complaints about university doctor Richard Strauss. Eight others told the network that the physician’s conduct was an open secret in the university’s athletic department and that Jordan couldn’t have not known.
Jordan has repeatedly denied knowing anything about sexual abuse of his athletes when he was assistant coach from1987 to 1995.
The university stated in its annual crime report last year that Strauss committed at least 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes during his 20-year tenure. Strauss was never charged and died by suicide in 2005.
Former OSU wrestler Tito Vazquez, now a public school teacher, told CNN: “When these complaints come and he [Jordan] pretends now that he had no knowledge of it, that’s betrayal in the highest level.” Vazquez said that Jordan’s repeated denials that he knew about the sexual abuse convinced him to come forward. He said when he complained to Jordan, he said: “I have nothing to do with this.”
Onetime wrestling captain Adam DiSabato warned last month that things would “get worse” for Jordan as others would come forward to accuse him of doing nothing once he knew of the misconduct.
DiSabato said on MSNBC last month that Jordan called him repeatedly to plead with him to contradict DiSabato’s own brother’s account in 2018 that he told Jordan of sexual abuse. Not only did the behavior affect his brother, but the sexual abuse was “blatant knowledge throughout our wrestling team,” DiSabato said.
DiSabato testified before the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee last month that Jordan was not only aware of allegations of sexual abuse but that the congressman begged others to cover for him. He said then that Jordan “called me crying, groveling ... begging me to go against my brother,” adding: “He’s a coward.”
WATCH: "Jim Jordan called me, begging me to change my story. To go against my brother. I had to get my lawyer to tell him to stop. That's the kind of cover up it is. He's a coward."
DiSabato testified as the state House of Representatives considers a bill that would lift the statute of limitations for Strauss’s victims and clear the way for them to sue OSU.
Jordan told CNN: “The idea that I wouldn’t stand up for these athletes is ridiculous. I feel sorry for these guys, the fact that they aren’t telling the truth.”
Several athletes have filed lawsuits against the university for ignoring allegations of sexual abuse. One suit cites instances of Strauss “drugging and raping athletes,” and claims Strauss preyed on underage boys who participated in athletic events on campus.
A referee stated in a lawsuit filed late last year that Strauss masturbated in front of him in a shower after a wrestling match at the university — and that he reported the encounter to Jordan. “Yeah, that’s Strauss,” Jordan and then-head coach Russ Hellickson responded, according to the lawsuit.
OSU announced on Friday that it had reached a monetary settlement with sex abuse survivors in 11 out of 18 pending cases.
Sen. Mitt Romney, who has an ax to grind against Donald Trump, has ended his effort to impede the investigation next week into former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter.
The Utah Republican said Friday that he'll support his fellow members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and authorize a subpoena as part of an investigation into conflicts of interest from Biden's tenure in office.
On Friday, a spokeswoman said that Romney and Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, reached an accord that made Romney support the investigation.
"Senator Romney has expressed his concerns to Chairman Johnson, who has confirmed that any interview of the witness would occur in a closed setting without a hearing or public spectacle," said spokeswoman Liz Johnson. "He will therefore vote to let the chairman proceed to obtain the documents that have been offered."
Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have been seeking interviews with witnesses and documents about Hunter Biden for several months. They've contacted the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and a political consultancy, Blue Star Strategies — among others — with requests for responses.
Johnson and Grassley, who is not on the homeland security committee, have said they haven't gotten satisfactory responses to their formal requests, which is why Johnson's committee is expected to begin issuing subpoenas.
Johnson wants to subpoena records and an interview from Andrii Telizhenko, a former consultant for Blue Star. The Wisconsin senator says he wants to find out more about accounts that Blue Star, which represented Ukraine, sought access to Hunter Biden in order to gain access to Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time, and to influence the State Department.
The committee's latest actions putting the Biden investigation back into the spotlight have followed Joe Biden's successes in the Democratic primaries, reviving his prospects of becoming the party's presidential nominee.
Hunter Biden made lucrative business connections at a time when Joe Biden was handling key foreign policy matters for President Barack Obama.
The younger Biden was paid as a member of the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, and also received payments and, reportedly, gifts from Chinese business counterparts.
The Bidens traveled together to China aboard Air Force Two during the time Joe Biden was vice president. Johnson and Grassley also have asked DHS, which oversees the Secret Service, whether it has records about other trips they might have made.
Joe Biden's campaign has been embarrassed by the revelations.
Trump's desire for Ukraine to launch an investigation into the Bidens' activities was the bogus basis for for which he was impeached last year and then acquitted earlier this year.
Despicably, Romney cast the lone GOP vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment in Senate.
I thought you guys said trump is a Russian agent.
What's your explanation for this?
Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova on Friday blasted the $28.9 billion budget proposed for the Pentagon's nuclear modernization program, along with the additional $15.6 billion earmarked for the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration's efforts to revamp the U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal. Among the weapons being developed and deployed is the W76-2, a nuclear warhead with lower yields that Zakharova and others contend could make them a more readily-available option in the event of a conflict.
"We note that Washington is not just modernizing its nuclear forces, but is striving to give them new capabilities, which significantly expands the likelihood of their use," Zakharova told a press conference.
"Of particular concern in this regard are U.S. actions to increase the range of low-power assets in its nuclear arsenal, including the development and deployment of such munitions for strategic carriers. This clearly leads to lowering the 'threshold' for the use of nuclear weapons," she added.
Mitt Romney is a religlious man, not a pussy-grabbing New York thug like Rump.
The Lincoln Project — a group of anti-Trump Republicans ― on Friday hit the president with a montage of his most insulting, offensive and ridiculous gaffes.
The group — of which prominent Trump critic George Conway is a member — released the supercut that contrasts Trump’s speeches to those of previous presidents in response to a similar GOP attack on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over his own gaffes.
“Every day is a new chance for Trump to debase himself further and embarrass Americans of all political stripes,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote in a fundraising email featuring the footage.
Wilson said “the hardest part” of making the ad was fitting all of Trump’s “own gaffes, abuse of the English language, insults, lies” and “crazy talk” into “30 or even 60 seconds.”
“We will not allow Trump and his propaganda machine to gaslight America into believing he’s anything other than the most unserious, indecent, least inspiring president we’ve ever had,” he concluded. “Do not let a single lie stand.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB5vmhZjIqM
"Mitt Romney is a religlious man, not a pussy-grabbing New York thug like Rump."
Romney is a self-seeking liar who changes his position based on whatever he perceives will be to his political benefit.
When he ran for President, TTF demonized him as an out-of-touch elitist who served the banking industry.
"The group — of which prominent Trump critic George Conway is a member —"
Conway is a truly despicable individual
to embarrass his wife the way he does serves no purpose
there are plenty of other Trump critics out there and he doesn't add anything particularly special that would compel his disloyalty to his marriage
the guy is trash
Poll: Trump trails generic Democratic candidate in general election matchup
President Trump is trailing a generic Democratic presidential candidate by 7 points with a little under eight months to go before Election Day, according to a Hill/HarrisX poll released Friday.
Forty-six percent of registered voters in the poll said they would vote for the Democratic nominee compared to 39 percent who said they'd support Trump. Another 15 percent were unsure...
Among independents, Trump currently trails by 8 points against a generic Democratic nominee, 30 to 38 percent, while the poll found that more than a third of independents are still unsure who they will vote for in the fall.
The poll also found that women were more likely to support the Democratic nominee than men, with 52 percent of female voters choosing the Democratic candidate compared to 41 percent of male voters.
Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster and partner at ALG Research, pointed to the gender gap as a potential warning sign for the president.
"Trump continues to struggle with women voters, and if he is not able to close that gap he is going to have a very difficult time in his reelection," she told The Hill....
------------------------
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/National.html
General Election: Trump vs. Biden
RCP Average 2/5-2/29 Biden (50.0) Trump (44.5) SPREAD: Biden + 5.5
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders
RCP Average 2/5-2/29 Sanders (49.6) Trump (44.9) SPREAD: Sanders + 4.7
If you have traveled to one of the affected areas or have been in contact with someone that has been diagnosed with Coronavirus in the last 14 days and are experiencing ANY of the following symptoms:
Fever
Cough
Shortness of breath
Symptoms of respiratory illness
Please DO NOT come into doctor's offices and expose other patients. You should call ahead to one of the Emergency Rooms listed below to be evaluated for Coronavirus. Most doctors' offices ARE NOT equipped facilities to test or treat this virus.
Holy Cross Hospital-
Call ER department 301-754-7500
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Call ER 301-896-3880
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Call ER 301-315-3030
"if Rump is innocent, why did he stonewall the investigation instead of proving his innocence"
if you're talking about Donald Trump, America's overwhelming choice for President in 2016, he had already fully cooperated with a three-year investigation based on false accusations that the loser in 2016 paid a foreign spy to concoct
the truth is, no facts were in dispute in the impeachment "trial", only interpretation of the law
the majority of our lawmakers in the Senate agreed with Trump
also, the President's approval rating rose during the impeachment proceedings
Americans didn't seem to have any strong feelings that Trump didn't act properly during the trial
as for Biden, unanswered questions of fact abound
"President Trump is trailing a generic Democratic presidential candidate by 7 points with a little under eight months to go before Election Day,"
"General Election: Trump vs. Biden
RCP Average 2/5-2/29 Biden (50.0) Trump (44.5) SPREAD: Biden + 5.5
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders
RCP Average 2/5-2/29 Sanders (49.6) Trump (44.9) SPREAD: Sanders + 4.7"
historically, polls always show the Dems winning until a few days before the election
one can speculate about the reason, but it's a fact
also, we don't elect by popular vote mob vote but use an electoral system that protects the rights of less densely populated states
finally, these polls are of "registered voters"
Dems's strongest constituencies tend to not show up on election day
Obama was the exception because of the historic nature of his candidacy
nothing like that favors Biden
the big question remaining is who will be humiliated by Trump
the senile bumbling VP whose family sells access to him or a socialist who praised Fidel Castro
People all over the world are worried about the coronavirus. Here at home people are worried too – but the Trump-haters are more focused on how this disease outbreak could hurt the president.
Trump’s opponents have taken to the media to predict that he will no doubt mishandle America’s coronavirus response and are predicting this will become the scandal that leads to his defeat in the November election.
New York Times columnist Gail Collins has gone so far as to label the coronavirus “Trumpvirus.”
As Donald Trump Jr. has said, it’s almost as if those working to stop his father from being reelected actually want the coronavirus to devastate the American people because the worse it is, the more the president will get blamed.
Democrats dreaming of their party winning the White House in November seem to be hoping that the president’s coronavirus response will be his “Katrina moment” – a reference to the hurricane that hit New Orleans and the surrounding region in 2005 and sparked sharp criticism of President George W. Bush for problems with the federal disaster response.
But Trump’s opponents – including their left-wing media allies – don’t realize that the president was made for this crisis. There is nothing he loves more, or is as good at, as taking personal charge of a crisis and bulldozing his way through the bureaucracy to a solution.
"if you're talking about Donald Trump, America's overwhelming choice for President in 2016, he had already fully cooperated with a three-year investigation based on false accusations that the loser in 2016 paid a foreign spy to concoct"
And black is white, right?
That's some premium GOP bald-faced lying, right there.
Claiming executive privilege and not allowing testimony is about as far from full cooperation as possible.
Meanwhile, in the RW, "Trump is mentally unfit to hold office — any office, but especially the presidency.
Trump’s statements about the coronavirus, filled with self-congratulations, inanities, falsehoods and non sequiturs, remind us that he is unable to cope with reality; his sole aim is to elevate himself (although his antics make him look ridiculous). He wants a cruise ship to stay offshore so the number of reported cases in the United States will remain artificially low? That’s just nuts, and worse, it is dangerous.
Over the past month, President Trump has regularly sought to downplay the coronavirus threat with a mix of facts and false statements.
Trump seems to believe that he “knows more about” everything (energy, medicine, diplomacy, nuclear weapons, intelligence, law enforcement, trade, etc.) than anyone, and yet his gaping ignorance and refusal to learn the basic facts imperil the country and the economy.
Trump thinks North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un loves him, so Trump gives up leverage that might force North Korea to denuclearize. Trump trusts the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community’s, so Trump refuses to secure America’s elections and tries to extort Ukraine, a U.S. ally. Trump is obsessed with Barack Obama, so he tries to wreck whatever bears his predecessor’s name or is associated with Obama’s legacy, despite his own failure to devise a better alternative (e.g., the Iran deal, Obamacare).
It is not simply that Trump is an ignorant narcissist; rather, the concern is that his ignorant narcissism poses a risk to the country — one that brings us to the brink of war with Iran, emboldens Russia and leaves the United States vulnerable to a pandemic, which in turn may bring on a recession.
Perhaps some voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2016 did not realize how bad he would be once in office, or they had bet on the Republicans restraining him. Maybe they deeply loathed Hillary Clinton. Now there is no excuse to keep him in power."
"And black is white, right?
That's some premium GOP bald-faced lying, right there."
actually, as is so often the case, you, who accuse, are the liar
either that, or you have an advanced degree of ignorance
probably some of both
"Claiming executive privilege and not allowing testimony is about as far from full cooperation as possible."
Trump provided all documents requested and instructed his aides to fully cooperate with the Mueller investigation
"Meanwhile, in the RW, "Trump is mentally unfit to hold office — any office, but especially the presidency."
that you think the MSM spin is the RW shows how far gone you are
in the RW, most Americans know the MSM is extremely biased
and Trump is not only fit for office, he is spectacularly successful
his economy is lifting our poorest citizens and his criminal justice reform is reducing the institutional racism of our judiciary
"Trump’s statements about the coronavirus, filled with self-congratulations, inanities, falsehoods and non sequiturs, remind us that he is unable to cope with reality;"
he has not panicked, the MSM would be responsible if they followed his lead
"his sole aim is to elevate himself"
resisting the false characterizations of the MSM is not self-serving
"(although his antics make him look ridiculous)."
as opposed to the MSM, treating a bad version of the flu like it's the plague
"He wants a cruise ship to stay offshore so the number of reported cases in the United States will remain artificially low? That’s just nuts, and worse, it is dangerous."
an irrelevant offhanded comment
"Over the past month, President Trump has regularly sought to downplay the coronavirus threat with a mix of facts and false statements."
as opposed to the MSM, which has regularly sought to hype the coronavirus threat with a mix of facts and false statements
"Trump seems to believe that he “knows more about” everything than anyone, and yet his gaping ignorance and refusal to learn the basic facts imperil the country and the economy."
there's little evidence of that
"Trump thinks North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un loves him, so Trump gives up leverage that might force North Korea to denuclearize."
the only thing that might deter KJU is sanctions and Trump has not lifted them
Obama the incompetent sat around doing nothing while NK developed a nuclear capability that threatens the continental US
there's not a lot that we can do now
Trumoo has had more influence over KJU than any other President
"Trump trusts the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community’s,"
Trump is manipulating Putin, like he does everyone
"so Trump refuses to secure America’s elections"
our elections are secure
false facebook ads are free speech
we can handle it
"and tries to extort Ukraine, a U.S. ally."
all Presidents have used our power to influence foreign leaders
calling that "extortion" is risible
"Trump is obsessed with Barack Obama, so he tries to wreck whatever bears his predecessor’s name or is associated with Obama’s legacy, despite his own failure to devise a better alternative (e.g., the Iran deal, Obamacare)."
Obama was dictatorial and treated the Constitution with contempt
Trump promised to fix what Obama broke and he has kept his prommises
"It is not simply that Trump is an ignorant narcissist; rather, the concern is that his ignorant narcissism poses a risk to the country"
promoting this vague and unsubstantiated assertion is the only slim hope the Dems have in
November 2020
meanwhile, freedom of speech and religion is under attack in the Commonwealth nation to our north, run by a racist and entitled little twerp:
Canada’s federal government has introduced new legislation to criminalize LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government moves to moves to ander to the lunatic gay fringe.
The proposed amendments to Canada’s Criminal Code include offenses such as causing a person to undergo conversion therapy, advertising and profiting from conversion therapy and removing a minor from Canada.
Conversion therapy is any practice designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, to change a person’s gender identity to one that matches the sex assigned at birth, or to reduce non-heterosexual sexual attraction or behaviors, according to the legislation.
The bill also amends the Criminal Code to authorize courts to order disposing of or deleting advertisements for conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy often uses talk therapy techniques, and this form of speech would be criminalized.
Time for sanctions on Canada...
It’s clear that the Democrats see the coronavirus outbreak as an opportunity rather than an epidemic.
Having failed to bring down President Trump with ridiculous conspiracy theories involving Russia and Ukraine, they are desperately attempting to convince the public he is somehow exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, for example, issued a joint press release Sunday that included the following fiction: “President Trump continues to manufacture needless chaos within his administration and it is hampering the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.”
Predictably, Pelosi and Schumer fail to provide any objective facts to support this claim.
This is just the latest in a series of irresponsible assertions by the Democrats.
The purported front-runner for their party’s presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden, falsely claimed during a debate in late February that the Trump administration had hampered the federal response to COVID-19 by cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH): “We [the Obama–Biden administration] increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget.… He’s wiped all that out.… He cut the funding for the entire effort.” This balderdash was too much for the fact checkers at AP, who were quick to debunk the falsehood. The AP report also undermines the “needless chaos” assertion made by Pelosi and Schumer:
The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House.… Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.
If you go to the CDC Foundation website you will discover that Dr. Schuchat’s reputation is such that her work is the subject of a feature film, Contagion, in which she is played by Kate Winslet. It’s pretty difficult to visualize doctors Schuchat and Fauci presiding over “chaos” in response to coronavirus.
It is far more likely that, by the time the election rolls around next November, the actual effect of the outbreak will be known and it will probably have been far less severe than predicted.
The voters will by then be aware that the current Democratic rhetoric was a grotesquely cynical ploy to mislead and frighten the public for the usual tawdry political purposes.
This will render Democrats clinging to House seats in “Trump districts” even more vulnerable than they are at present.
There are 31 Democratic representatives who occupy seats in districts that Trump won in 2016. Of the 18 districts the Republicans need to flip in order to regain their House majority, the president won 16 by five points or more. These Democrats are particularly vulnerable after the impeachment debacle because they explicitly promised their constituents during their 2018 midterm campaigns that they would eschew hyper-partisan politics and work with Republicans on issues that mattered to real people. Predictably, most of these “moderate” Democrats forgot that pledge immediately after they migrated to the swamp. Only two kept their word.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is targeting the majority who betrayed their constituents.
"Conversion therapy often uses talk therapy techniques, and this form of speech would be criminalized."
Conversion therapy is only practiced by religious ideologues who have no idea what real medical practices are, and they shouldn't be allowed to practice anything even close to medicine.
Case in point, Jim Bakker (yeah, the convicted religious fraudster Jim Bakker):
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has ordered “televangelist” Jim Bakker to stop claiming that a product sold on his website can cure coronavirus.
On the 12 February episode of The Jim Bakker Show, the man who once told viewers “only saved people can love Trump” asked guest Sherrill Sellman, a “naturopathic” doctor, if his product, Silver Solution, could treat coronavirus.
“Well,” said Sellman, “let’s say it hasn’t been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it’s been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate within 12 hours.
“Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it.”
Though medical teams around the world are working toward a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, neither a cure nor a vaccine for Covid-19 has been found.
On Bakker’s website, a 16oz bottle of Silver Solution cost $40.
Sellman went on to say the solution also “boosts your immune system”.
“You want a vibrant immune system as well as an ability to deactivate these viruses,” she said.
The US health department says evidence supporting health-related claims about silver is lacking and it may be dangerous to people’s health.
Last week, James sent a letter addressed directly to Bakker saying the “show’s segment may mislead consumers” and could be considered false advertising, which is against New York law.
The letter also advised Bakker to include a statement on all Silver Solution products that any claim he makes about the effectiveness of his product has not been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration.
We have laws to protect people from religious charlatans like this guy. But apparently 4 years in prison wasn't enough for him to learn the lesson.
"Conversion therapy is only practiced by religious ideologues who have no idea what real medical practices are, and they shouldn't be allowed to practice anything even close to medicine."
homosexuality isn't a physical illness, it's a mental one
medicine is therapy for physical ailments
speech is therapy for mental ailments
speech is free in these here parts
A new Gallup poll finds congressional Republicans with a higher approval rating than Democrats in the wake of President Trump's impeachment and acquittal in the Senate.
The Gallup poll found that since October, shortly after Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry, the approval rating for Republicans in the Gallup poll has gone up six points, from 34 percent to 40 percent. Democrats saw their approval rating fall over the same period from 38 percent to 35 percent.
The disapproval rating in the Gallup poll for Democrats rose, from 57 percent to 62 percent
"homosexuality isn't a physical illness, it's a mental one"
Only religious ideologues believe that, and it's not something that can be "cured."
This is why groups like Exodus International have shut down, and some of their leaders have apologized:
In 2012, then Exodus International president Alan Chambers renounced conversion therapy, saying it did not work and was harmful. The following year, Chambers closed the organization and apologized for the "pain and hurt" participants of their programs had experienced.[5] Several other prominent former members, including John Paulk, have made similar apologies.
In June 2007, Bussee issued an apology for his involvement in promoting orientation change through Exodus. Also apologizing were Jeremy Marks, former president of Exodus International Europe, and Darlene Bogle, the founder of Paraklete Ministries, an Exodus referral agency. The apology stated in part "Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families."[44] Bussee stated, "In the almost 40 years since I started Exodus International, I can honestly say that I have never met a gay person who became heterosexual through conversion therapy or ex-gay programs. Yes, some stayed celibate for a time. Some even married and said they were happy. But most of those marriages ended with very painful divorces."[45][46]
Even free speech has limits - you can't yell "fire" in a theater unless it's actually on fire, and you can't call in a bomb threat when there actually isn't one. There are laws against that to protect the public.
If you're sick enough to try and harm people with your "free speech," you deserve the appropriate punishment. If you keep trying to harm people on a regular basis, you may be a sadist, or have other emotional problems, in which case, you're the one who needs the therapy.
"Only religious ideologues believe that, and it's not something that can be "cured.""
there is no evidence homosexuality is a physical characteristic
as for whether the mental illness is curable, we don't stop trying to cure AIDS just because it is incurable
"Even free speech has limits"
this isn't one of them
no one is killed by thinking they should stop committing homosexuality
if you don't believe it, so what?
that's free speech
"If you're sick enough to try and harm people with your "free speech," you deserve the appropriate punishment."
some think that letting people wallow in homosexuality isn't helping them
"harm" is in the beholder's eye
A founder and former leader of a South Carolina faith-based conversion therapy program has come out as gay.
McKrae Game, 51, is speaking out in a new interview after he announced he was gay in June, about two years after he was fired from Hope for Wholeness, the conversion therapy program he founded in 1999. Like other conversion therapy programs around the U.S., the program aimed to rid a person of their LGBTQ identity through counseling.
Game has disavowed the program’s practices since coming out publicly (though a biography still listed for him on Hope for Wholeness’s website claims he had “lived as a gay man for three years” before founding his ministry.)
“Conversion therapy is not just a lie, but it’s very harmful,” he told The Post and Courier. “Because it’s false advertising.”
As a practice, conversion therapy has been widely discredited by health organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association. Attempts at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are linked with mental health trauma, including thoughts of suicide.
Though roundly condemned by medical professionals, conversion therapy remains in practice in much of the U.S. About 698,000 LGBTQ adults in the U.S. have received conversion therapy, according to a 2018 study from UCLA’s Williams Institute. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C. currently ban conversion therapy for minors, according to the think tank Movement Advancement Project. South Carolina, Game’s home state, is not among the ones that ban the practice.
Game is now trying to apologize for his work in suppressing other people’s identities. His coming out follows similar declarations from other former conversion therapy leaders. Earlier this year, David Matheson, a well-known former Mormon conversion therapist, said he was gay.
On Facebook, Game has written several posts about his experiences since coming out and expressed sorrow for the harm he’d caused to others. “I know that creating creating the organization that still lives was in a large way causing harm,” Game wrote in a post in September.
Later, he told the The Post and Courier: “I was a religious zealot that hurt people. People said they attempted suicide over me and the things I said to them. People, I know, are in therapy because of me. Why would I want that to continue?”
virtually every type of criticism could cause someone to get suicidal
encouraging anyone to better themselves could cause suicidal thoughts if they fail
smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, pedophilia, liberalism, et al
if people tried to overcome these undesirable traits and failed, that could cause them to get depressed and, even, suicidal
free speech includes even speech that might upset a nut
otherwise, there really is no free speech
kind of like in Bernie Sanders's dream society
"Eighteen states and Washington, D.C. currently ban conversion therapy for minors,"
a temporary matter until it reaches the Supreme Court
they don't appreciate states violating the Constitution
"harm" is in the beholder's eye"
You're an idiot – the saying is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The only time "harm is in the beholder's eye" is when it's the bruised and swollen eye socket of a domestic violence victim. But then it's physically in their eye and not some mis-applied aphorism.
"some think that letting people wallow in homosexuality isn't helping them"
And some people believe that God or Jesus will heal them and their children - but that belief is demonstrably causing harm:
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/newborn-dies-because-religious-parents-dont-believe-in-medical-care-now-theyre-headed-to-jail
It was around 8:45 on March 5, 2017, and the Clackamas County official was responding to a report of a dead newborn.
The child had not been delivered in a hospital. She wasn’t attended to by doctors and nurses. The baby died amid the murmured prayers of friends and family. But Tonsfeldt knew that this was a familiar occurrence with members of the Followers of Christ Church, a faith-healing sect numbering around 1,000 members.
Tonsfeldt found the newborn’s mother, Sarah Elaine Mitchell, cradling the dead child in a blanket. The child’s father, Travis Lee Mitchell, was also in the room, as was Sarah’s father, Walter White. Tonsfeldt would say that when he questioned the individuals in the room about the death, the answers were “stilted and forced.” No one would make eye contact. Eventually, he learned the baby – Ginnifer – had been born around 2:55 p.m. Hours later, the baby stopped breathing, dying around 7 p.m. As Tonsfeldt examined the child, he noted Ginnifer was 3 pounds, 6 ounces. The baby was premature at 32 weeks.
Only then did the family tell Tonsfeldt about the twin born alongside Ginnifer. When Tonsfeldt inspected Evelyn, he told the family the surviving child was “at medical risk” and must go to the hospital.
On Monday, Ginnifer’s parents Sarah and Travis Mitchell both pleaded guilty to criminal negligent homicide and criminal mistreatment, Clackamas County District Attorney John S. Foote announced.
The Mitchells are the 5th set of parents from the Church to face criminal charges after failing to secure medical attention for their children in the past 9 years. In 2009, Sarah Mitchell’s sister Shannon Hickman delivered a premature baby boy in the same room where Ginnifer died, according to the Oregonian. The child passed away eight hours after his birth; both Hickman and her husband were convicted of second-degree manslaughter.
“They believe that God heals, which all Christians believe, but they take it a step further, thinking that God always heals,” religion columnist Jonathan Merritt told The Washington Post in 2015.
But those practices in Oregon have led to deaths – and drawn scrutiny.
“They have their own graveyard, and it’s just full of children,” Myrna Cunningham, a former Followers of Christ Church member told the Oregonian in 2017. “There shouldn’t have been that many children who died. It’s terrible.”
Oregon law initially protected church members from legal consequences related to the deaths, according to KGW8. But beginning in 2008, prosecutors began filing charges against parents. That year, Raylene and Carl Worthington were charged after their 15-month-old died from pneumonia and a blood infection. The father was convicted of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment.
The death of 15-year-old Neil Beagley from a urinary tract blockage in 2008 resulted in the conviction of his parents Jeffery and Marci Beagley of criminally negligent homicide.
In 2011, Rebecca and Timothy Wyland were convicted of criminal mistreatment after their daughter suffered a serious growth on her eye that resulted in permanent damage to her vision.
In the statement released following the Mitchells’s sentencing, Foote acknowledged that his office has pursued the criminal charges against these parents not only to get justice for the victims but also “to convince The Followers of Christ congregation that they must stop this misconduct.”
Michael Taylor — the GOP mayor of Michigan’s fourth-largest city, Sterling Heights — is all in for Joe Biden.
The longtime Republican officially endorsed Biden in the 2020 election (should Biden secure the Democratic presidential nomination) in a Chicago Tribune article published Monday.
“I think Joe Biden is the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats, and he’s the candidate who can appeal to moderates and Republicans like me who don’t want to see four more years of President Trump,” said Taylor, who was elected mayor in 2014.
Sterling Heights is located in Macomb County, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 11.5 percentage points.
Taylor described the 2016 election as a nationwide “referendum” on Washington politics and recalled “thinking this Trump thing is insane, but when it was down to him and Hillary (Clinton), I kind of said, ‘Well, you are a Republican, and yeah he’s nuts, but maybe he’ll get better and you know he’s going to lower taxes.’”
“I slowly talked myself into it,” Taylor explained. “’He can’t seriously be this deranged once he gets in there, and he’s even more deranged now than I thought then. So, I take the blame. I voted for him.”
Taylor repeated his criticism of Trump in a subsequent interview with The Washington Post, in which he also took aim at the president’s haphazard tackling of the coronavirus crisis.
“I’m not proud of my vote for him,” he said. “I’m not satisfied with his leadership. I don’t think the country’s heading in the right direction. I think he’s incompetent. I think he’s divisive. I think he lacks moral character.”
“We have a president who, in the middle of what could be a global pandemic, is really more concerned about his reelection than coming up with a plan,” Taylor added. “People want to get back to some sense of normalcy. They’ll look to Biden and say, ‘Things are going to go back to the way they were before.’”
"You're an idiot – the saying is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The only time "harm is in the beholder's eye" is when it's the bruised and swollen eye socket of a domestic violence victim."
actually, harm is in the eye of the beholder when it's a verbal "harm"
to say anything else would be to eliminate free speech all together
"And some people believe that God or Jesus will heal them and their children - but that belief is demonstrably causing harm:"
well, those who hold to false doctrine and don't use medicine cause harm
but all traditional bible-believing churches would hold these false teachers accountable
and the liberals would call churches that condemn false teaching intolerant for doing so
“I think Joe Biden is the candidate who can unify all of the Democrats,"
Biden has run many times before
the first primary he ever won was a couple of weeks ago in South Carolina
I've got news for you:
no person who spent as long as Biden did in the Senate has ever been elected President
Biden spent 37 years in the Senate
also, no person who spent 20 years in the Senate has ever been elected President
also, no person who spent 15 years in the Senate has ever been elected President
Americans really don't like people who make a career out of the Senate
while we're at it, the truth is only one person has ever served as VP, went to private life, and then become President
that was Richard Nixon
when you add in the inroads Trump as made into minority voters, Biden really has no hope
“We have a president who, in the middle of what could be a global pandemic, is really more concerned about his reelection than coming up with a plan,”
the administration is doing fine
Trump has good people on it, and he has delegated to them
like any good leader would
meanwhile, his steady calm will contrast nicely with Dem panic and alarmism, come November
"actually, harm is in the eye of the beholder when it's a verbal "harm"
to say anything else would be to eliminate free speech all together"
No it wouldn't. It is entirely possible to have laws against slander, false accusations, and even hate speech without "eliminating free speech all together."
Germany highly restricts pro Nazi propaganda for good reason. The only people complaining about it are Nazis and Nazi sympathizers - but we all know that their rhetoric ultimately leads to horrible consequences, and there are enough right-wing fascists around that some of them think it's a good idea.
"to say anything else would be to eliminate free speech all together"
Is an example of the "False Dilemma/False Dichotomy" logical fallacy:
This fallacy has a few other names: “black-and-white fallacy,” “either-or fallacy,” “false dichotomy,” and “bifurcation fallacy.” This line of reasoning fails by limiting the options to two when there are in fact more options to choose from. Sometimes the choices are between one thing, the other thing, or both things together (they don’t exclude each other). Sometimes there is a whole range of options, three, four, five, or a hundred and forty-five. However it may happen, the false dichotomy fallacy errs by oversimplifying the range of options.
The false dilemma fallacy is often a manipulative tool designed to polarize the audience, heroicizing one side and demonizing the other. It’s common in political discourse as a way of strong-arming the public into supporting controversial legislation or policies.
Only conservatives are stupid enough to believe this logical fallacy serves as a viable argument.
PANDUMBIC
He will not learn. He doesn’t want to learn. He made that clear long before he became president:
He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I already had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”
Trump said he is skeptical of experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.” He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: “A lot of people said, ‘Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.’ ”
[…]
Trump’s approach goes beyond the chief executive manner of Reagan or the younger Bush. “We’ve had presidents who have reveled in their lack of erudition,” said Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University, citing Warren Harding and Lyndon Johnson as leaders who scoffed at academics and other experts. “But Trump is really something of an outlier with this idea that knowing things is almost a distraction. He doesn’t have a historical anchor, so you see his gut changing on issues from moment to moment.”
One day last month, Trump had a visit from a delegation of prominent executives in the oil, steel and retail industries, and one of the executives told Trump that the Chinese were taking advantage of the United States. “He said, ‘I’d like to send you a report,’ ” Trump recalled. “He said, ‘I’d love to be able to send you’ — oh boy, he’s got a lengthy report, hundreds of pages. . . . I said, ‘Do me a favor: Don’t send me a report. Send me, like, three pages.’ ”
Trump said reading long documents is a waste of time because he absorbs the gist of an issue very quickly. “I’m a very efficient guy,” he said. “Now, I could also do it verbally, which is fine. I’d always rather have — I want it short. There’s no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is.”
We are now living through the consequences of electing such a man to the most powerful job in the world.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html
General Election: Trump vs. Biden
RCP Average 2/13-3/8 Biden (50.6) Trump (44.1)
SPREAD: Biden + 6.5
Gay couples have less stress in their marriages than their heterosexual or lesbian counterparts, according to a team of researchers who studied the issue, while lesbian couples report less marital stress than women married to men.
Women in a different-sex relationship reported the highest levels of distress in their relationship. Straight men and women in a same-sex relationship registered about equally, and male same-sex couples had the least.
Related: Having a gay friend makes you a better person according to science
Michael Garcia, the study’s lead author, told the New York Times that while it’s long been recognized that women were likely to report the most marital strain, in reality, that’s only women in opposite-sex relationships.
Gay couples have an advantage when it comes to lowering stress levels according to the study. They divide household chores more equally, have more in-depth conversations about their sexual relationship, and lifelong gender roles tend to give men more “emotional autonomy and independence.”
University of Texas sociologist Debra Umberson says women go “all in” and try to read their partner’s emotional physical needs. They have been socialized to believe that providing emotional support is their responsibility.
“But this plays out very differently when a woman is in a relationship with another woman compared to one with a man,” Professor Umberson told the newspaper. “With two women, there is a lot of reciprocity in care work — with each spouse aware of the other’s needs and preferences, and responding actively to those.”
Women’s husbands “tend to take care work for granted, are often unaware of the care work their wife provides and commonly fail to recognize her needs for emotional support.”
Gay men, Umberson says, are more “low-key” about emotional care and offer it when it’s needed instead of “treating it like a routine obligation.”
Gender roles also play into household chores, with women expected to do the bulk of the care work around the home. Same-sex couples, however, tend to split “feminine” and “masculine” chores more equally based on individual preferences rather than relying on outdated gender roles.
74 percent of same-sex couples share child care duties compared to only 38 percent of heterosexual couples, where the woman is generally assumed to bear responsibility for being the primary caregiver. Same-sex couples of both genders also spent more time with their children than straight couples.
Gay men are also more likely to have an in-depth discussion surrounding emotional and sexual needs and expectations than straight couples or lesbians. The study notes that while the number of open relationships among gay men is exaggerated, those couples are more likely to allow for extramarital sex than the others and frequently have detailed agreements on what is or isn’t allowed.
Interestingly, gay men have more volatile dating relationships, but once they formalize the relationship, they tend to have unions as stable as male-female couples and more stable than female-female relationships.
"Only conservatives are stupid enough to believe this logical fallacy serves as a viable argument"
fortunately, the Supreme Court is chock-full of stupid conservatives who don't try to rationalize away the Bill of Rights
if you like freedom of speech being subject to popular vote, move to Germany
maybe you could open a cabaret in Berlin.....
"PANDUMBIC"
Trump slowed the progress of the disease by banning travel from China
Europe didn't and now we need to take the same step with Europe
"We are now living through the consequences of electing such a man to the most powerful job in the world."
because of Trump, we have more resources and economic strength than most countries to fight the pandemic
"General Election: Trump vs. Biden
RCP Average 2/13-3/8 Biden (50.6) Trump (44.1)
SPREAD: Biden + 6.5"
so sad
when will you morons realize that America doesn't elect Presidents by popular mob vote?
protecting the rights of farmers and ranchers, we use an electoral college system
btw, Trump leads Biden in both Florida and Wisconsin
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Too bad it's by less than 1% in both of those states.
You must be so proud.
Meanwhile Biden leads by multiple points, sometimes even double digits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Maine.
More facts:
On January 20, 2017 the Dow average was 19,827.25
In November 2018, the average was 24,289.95.
Obama took office with the Dow 7,949.09
He left office with the Dow at 19,732.
To equal Obama’s performance Trump will need close to a Dow of 50,000.
"Wow, FL and WI huh? said...
Too bad it's by less than 1% in both of those states."
that's the two battleground states where Trump is ahead
he's close in all and, historically, non-incumbent Dems need to be ahead significantly to win
there are multiple reasons for that, but, regardless, it's a fact
"You must be so proud."
why?
I'm not his brother, or even a big fan
but if the other choice is Biden, it's no contest
"Meanwhile Biden leads by multiple points, sometimes even double digits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Maine."
and, by "sometimes", we're talking Minnesota
land of the anti-woman Al Franken
"More facts:
On January 20, 2017 the Dow average was 19,827.25
In November 2018, the average was 24,289.95.
Obama took office with the Dow 7,949.09
He left office with the Dow at 19,732.
To equal Obama’s performance Trump will need close to a Dow of 50,000."
your concern for the wealthy investor class is touching
but here's a much more relevant fact:
opportunity and wages have grown for our most disadvantaged citizens under Trump
minority unemployment is the lowest ever
Dems' hysteria has hurt them with the public multiple times: Russia hoax, Kavanaugh, Ukraine
now, the Coronavirus
the voters currently favor the generic Republican in Congress
""Meanwhile Biden leads by multiple points, sometimes even double digits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Maine."
and, by "sometimes", we're talking Minnesota
land of the anti-woman Al Franken"
Says the supporter Rump who has bragged about feeling entitled to grab women's pussies and who would love to date his own daughter.
Sad
Biden also leads by double digits in Maine, land of former Governor Paul LePage and soon to be former Senator Susan Collins.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/Maine.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/senate/me/maine_senate_collins_vs_gideon-6928.html
RCP Average 2/10-3/3 Gideon 45.0 Collins 42.5
Spread Gideon + 2.5
House Democrats Unveil Broad Package To Help Americans Affected By Coronavirus
The legislation would grant workers 14 days of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave.
Senate GOP Blocks Emergency Paid Sick Leave Bill From Moving Forward
The legislation put forth by Democrats would guarantee 14 days of paid leave for workers affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
"Biden also leads by double digits in Maine, land of former Governor Paul LePage and soon to be former Senator Susan Collins."
YIKES !!!
Biden leads by double digits IN MAINE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can see why you think he's going to win
you're a moron
Sad
"Says the supporter Rump who has bragged about feeling entitled to grab women's pussies and who would love to date his own daughter."
Biden is famous for putting his hands all over women
"Joe Biden's woman-touching habit. Vice President Joe Biden left some observers in and out of Washington aghast with his whisper-in-ear embrace of new Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's wife Stephanie at Carter's swearing-in Tuesday."
at least he has the decency not to brag about it in public
oh, that's right
neither did Trump
he was secretly taped having a private conversation
"he was secretly taped having a private conversation"
Uh huh, Just like Bush was "secretly taped" calling Adam Clymer a "major league asshole" and Cheney was "secretly taped" replying "big time."
Hot mic moments AKA "microphone gaffes" happen to people who work around microphones but you can make up your own rump-was-intentionally-secretly-taped hoax if you want. Maybe the Russians will pick it up and spread it around for you.
Rump is well known for his insults of women as well as his expressions of sexual interest in his own daughter like:
"I don't think Ivanka would do that [pose nude] inside the magazine. Although she does have a very nice figure. I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her." Donald Trump, 2006, The View
and
"Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father ..." Donald Trump, 2015, Rolling Stone Magazine.
A Democratic congresswoman secured a commitment for free coronavirus testing from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday after she peppered him with questions about the importance of testing and the cost of treatment.
‘"Dr. Kadlec, for someone without insurance, do you know the out-of-pocket cost of a complete blood count test?" Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., first asked Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, at the House Oversight Committee hearing on coronavirus preparedness.
Kadlec said he did not immediately know. Porter then went through, step-by-step, how much she estimated various tests and an emergency room visit would cost for an uninsured American -- pulling out a whiteboard as she did her math.
“This is like ‘The Price is Right,’” she commented as she went through the costs.
She eventually came to the figure of $1,331 and said it could be another $4,000 if that included a period of isolation in a hospital.
"Fear of these costs are going to keep people from being tested, from getting the care they need and from keeping their communities safe," Porter said. "We live in a world where 40 percent of Americans can't even afford a $400 unexpected expense."
She then turned to Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, and asked if he wants to know who has the coronavirus: "Not just rich people, but everybody who might have the virus?"
When Redfield said he did, she cited a statute she said allows the CDC director to authorize payment for treatment for certain people subject to quarantine and isolation and asked if he would commit to use that authority to pay for testing for every American, regardless of insurance.
"Well, I can say that we're going to do everything to make sure everybody can get the care they need,” Redfield started, before being cut off by Porter, who said his answer was “not good enough.”
She continued to grill Redfield as he said CDC was working with HHS to “see how we operationalize” getting testing for all Americans and asked him to commit to free testing.
“Doctor Redfield you don’t need to do any work to operationalize, you need to make a commitment to the American people so they come in to get tested,” Porter shot back. "You can operationalize the payment structure tomorrow."
"I think you're an excellent questioner, so my answer is yes," Redfield said eventually.
"Excellent. Everybody in America hear that, you are eligible to go get tested for coronavirus and have that covered, regardless of insurance," Porter said.
Trump has no policy on any issue because his mental impairment means he cannot think strategically or in abstract terms. He cannot weigh options, assess risk, or foresee consequences.
Concepts like fairness, justice, honour, and integrity quite literally do not register. You can see this in every interview or press encounter. He never states an abstract thought or idea. Instead he falls back on simple adjectives: disgraceful, horrible, low-intelligence, perfect, innocent, nasty, stupid, fake, etc. He's driven by negative emotion, often paranoid and insulting, vulgar and vitriolic.
Lots of Trump voters wanted to blow up the system by putting a crazy man in charge. They got what they wanted - the economy is crashing and health care is in crisis.
I hope they're happy.
Trump’s response to the coronavirus has been worse than even his harshest critics could have imagined. He has treated a dire threat as a public relations problem, combining denial with frantic blame-shifting.
His administration has failed to deliver the most basic prerequisite of pandemic response, widespread testing to track the disease’s spread. He has failed to implement recommendations of public health experts, instead imposing pointless travel bans on foreigners when all indications are that the disease is already well established in the United States.
And his response to the economic fallout has veered between complacency and hysteria, with a strong admixture of cronyism.
* * *
Trump also reportedly wants to provide aid to specific industries, including oil and shale — a continuation of his administration’s efforts to subsidize fossil fuels.
Democrats, by contrast, have proposed a package that would actually address the needs of the moment: free coronavirus testing, paid sick leave, expanded unemployment benefits and an increase in federal matching funds for Medicaid programs, which would both help states meet the demands of the crisis and sustain overall spending by relieving the pressure on state budgets.
Notice, by the way, that these measures would help the economy in an election year, and therefore arguably help Trump politically. But Democrats are willing to do the right thing anyway — a stark contrast to the behavior of Republicans after the 2008 financial crisis, when they offered scorched-earth opposition to anything that might mitigate the damage.
The White House, however, is having none of it, with an official accusing Democrats of pushing a “radical left agenda.” I guess sick leave equals socialism, even in a pandemic ...
Former Judge Resigns From the Supreme Court Bar
In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, he's detailed why he's lost faith in the court.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Things Trump has done to make this worse (feel free to add to the list) -
1. eliminated WH task force that dealt with pandemics
2. delayed CV testing for weeks
3. refused to use WHO test that was available
4. China tariffs raised price of personal protective barriers needed for epidemic/pandemic
5. Repeatedly cut CDC funding
6. Diverted money to build a stupid wall
7. Refused to listen to the experts
8. Put "loyal" people in charge instead of the experts
9. Refused for several weeks to declare state of emergency, blocking access to increased Medicaid funds for states
10. Lied about the epidemic, giving people a false sense of security.
11. Put Putz Pence in charge of dealing with CV19
"The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst."
glad to see this guy has deselected himself so we don't have to impeach him
he clearly never belonged in the judiciary and we won't let him come back
btw, some of those "established precedents— more than forty years old" were reversing precedents that, at the time, were a century old
"Things Trump has done to make this worse (feel free to add to the list)"
so sad that all Dems can do during this crisis is whine about what Trump should have done
voters are watching and polls show most recognize that Dems are doing this for political reasons not to be constructive
truth is, our economy is so vibrant and robust during the Trump administration that we can absorb this hit
had Obama been President when this situation arose, we'd be looking at long-term problems
Joe Biden had a big night on Tuesday. The mainstream media is all over that story.
Just as big of a story is what is happening in the Republican primaries in 2020. Unbelievable numbers of voters are turning out for President Trump.
Skeptics will note that Mr. Trump has token opposition in the Republican primary contests. That is exactly my point. There is no real reason to come out in mass as the president does not face a credible opponent, yet they are turning out.
In New Hampshire, Mr. Trump received 129,734 votes. When Barack Obama faced no real opposition in 2012, he received 49,080 votes in the New Hampshire primary. hahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!!!!!!! That is a huge gap.
This was also true in a number of other states. In Alabama, Mr. Trump received 695,469 votes compared to then-President Obama’s 241,167 votes in 2012. In Arkansas, it was 240,789 for Mr. Trump compared to 94,936 for Mr. Obama. In Texas, Mr. Trump’s total vote count of 1,889,006 was more than Mr. Obama (520,410) and more than the combined votes for Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!
So why are Republicans turning out in such large numbers for the president in primary races when the outcome is not in question? They are ticked off.
Republicans are ticked off at the partisan impeachment process. They are ticked off at the biased mainstream media. And they are ticked off at the hysteria of the left. Republicans don’t typically protest, so the way they express their frustration is by voting.
A same sense of fairness is at work in the primaries for president. Instead of protests, Republicans are showing up to vote. They are motivated. Along with the general feeling by many Midwest independents that the impeachment process was not fair is why Mr. Trump is on track to win in November.
"voters are watching and polls show most recognize that Dems are doing this for political reasons not to be constructive"
Voters who are not trapped in a bubble of belief saw that Pelosi's House and the President came to agreement while the GOP Senate voted and earlier version of the House bill down.
They also saw and heard the idiot say our coronavirus tests had been "perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" -- the rough transcript of his conversation with Zelensky so voters know who exactly is trying to politicize this.
Our initial response to the coronavirus was far from perfect. Rump's magical thinking that this pandemic will just go away -- without killing plenty of Americans first -- is dangerous to every American citizen.
Rump himself was exposed to coronavirus at Mar a Lago and his handshaking of the CEO's at his Friday afternoon presser was a foolish and dangerous demonstration of his inability to process important information.
We need to flatten the curve, not Rump's mistaken magical beliefs.
Thank goodness for Nancy Pelosi:
"The House passed sweeping legislation Saturday to respond to the coronavirus outbreak battering the nation, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote to expand access to free testing, provide $1 billion in food aid and extend sick leave benefits to vulnerable Americans.
The bill's bipartisan passage, 363-40, was virtually assured when President Donald Trump backed the measure — largely hammered out by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — and urged Republicans to support the bill.
Trump's tweet, just before 9 p.m., capped several days of whiplash as Democrats and the White House appeared, at times, inches from a deal only to see it yanked away amid technical disputes and inconsistent signals from the president. Trump's backing, though, was essential to ensure support from congressional Republicans for the multi-billion dollar plan.
Democrats put the bill on the floor shortly after midnight under an expedited process and passed it in the early hours of Saturday morning, sending it to the Senate, which is expected to take it up as early as Monday.
The bill is the product of a painstaking effort by Pelosi to pass a measure with bipartisan support rather than a doomed Democrat-only bill that the Senate would have immediately spiked.
"[W]e thought it would be important to show the American people, assure the American people, that we are willing and able to work together to get a job done for them," Pelosi said. "So we thank our Republicans — those who will be supporting the bill. We appreciate the president joining us with his tweet."
Pelosi said the final bill came together slowly because of a laborious review process in the executive branch, which required approvals from multiple agencies and officials. Pelosi praised Mnuchin for his cooperation, and she acknowledged she never directly spoke with Trump about the bill. "There was no need for that," she said..."
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had finally taken a test for the coronavirus, after he was near multiple people who had tested positive for it.
Trump said he took the test Friday evening but does not yet have results.
“I also took the test last night,” Trump said. “I decided I should based on the press conference yesterday ― people were asking did I take the test.”
The news, announced at a press briefing on the coronavirus response, contradicted a memo from White House physician and Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley released just before midnight Friday, which said that Trump did not need to self-quarantine or be tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Before the press briefing on Saturday, the White House also said that it will check the temperatures of anyone who comes in close contact with Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.
“Out of an abundance of caution, temperature checks are now being performed on any individuals who are in close contact with the president and vice president,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told reporters.
Reporters found out about the new temperature check practice on Saturday after an individual from Conley’s office took their temperatures, according to a pool report.
Trump told reporters that he had his temperature checked before the briefing as well and it was “totally normal.”
The president has previously strayed from experts’ advice on how to avoid contracting the coronavirus. On Friday, at a press conference announcing new steps to combat the spread and impact of the virus, he shook hands with other speakers, touched a microphone others had touched, and was in close proximity to a number of people.
Trump’s actions all contrasted with the “social distancing” advised by experts in order to stem the spread of COVID-19. This means avoiding close contact and large crowds, particularly for individuals in high-risk groups, such as older adults. (The president is 73 years old.)
When asked about his behavior, Trump said it was a matter of habit, but he said perhaps the coronavirus outbreak will reduce handshaking in the future.
“Getting away from shaking hands is a good thing,” he said. “And possibly that’s something that comes out of this. Maybe people shouldn’t be shaking hands for the long-term because it does transmit flu and other things.”
Trump had previously repeatedly downplayed the need to be tested, insisting he hadn’t been in close contact with Fabio Wajngarten, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary, who tested positive for the virus after spending an evening with Trump and Pence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, days before Wajngarten was tested.
Another individual tested positive for the virus after visiting Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a Trump campaign fundraiser, according to the campaign, although that individual was not in contact with the president.
Conley’s Friday memo said another individual at the Brazilian delegation dinner with Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus. That individual was in closer proximity with the president than Wajngarten was, according to the memo.
Trump’s messages to the country. A timeline:
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9: “This blindsided the world.”
March 13: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Trump has handled the situation pretty well. As of right now, the virus isn't that widespread but action needs to be taken to prevent that. Which is what's happening. The timing is about right. Dems have irresponsibly tried to sow panic. What they are sowing is the seeds of their defeat in November.
Remember how the media has accused Trump of encouraging violence among his supporters. Wonder why they don't care when Biden does that...
On Tuesday, Twitter was, well, atwitter with clips of Joe Biden’s confrontation with a union worker in a Detroit auto plant. The man in a hard hat told Biden, “You are actively trying to end our Second Amendment rights and take away our guns.” To which the former vice president responded, "You’re full of s---!" and the conversation went downhill from there. Nothing about the exchange was particularly flattering for Biden, who not only mangled the facts but threatened to “slap” the voter for good measure.
To hear the media tell it, this was great moment for Biden. In order to make that confounding claim, the media chose ignore the substance of what Biden said and his angry behavior, and skipped right to talking about the “optics” of the confrontation, which involves a lot of tendentious meta-analysis of how they think the event might be perceived by other voters. This is not reporting -- it’s spin.
MSNBC anchor Joy-Ann Reid went so far as to declare, “Biden in this clip was forceful but composed, quite the opposite of what his foes have been depicting him as.” She was just one of a bevy of reporters and commentators who rode to Biden’s defense.
Defending Biden in this instance would be bad enough, but excusing his outbursts is becoming a habit with the media. Biden was asked a perfectly legitimate question by a voter about how his son -- who has a checkered personal history that involves drug addiction, taking bribes from Chinese businessmen, and fathering children with adult entertainers -- got a no-show job with a Ukrainian gas company to the tune of a million dollars a years while Joe Biden was overseeing Ukraine affairs for the White House. Biden responded by not just calling the voter a “damn liar,” he called him “fat” and challenged him to take an IQ test.
The media, if it wants to retain any bipartisan credibility, can’t seriously be defending physical threats and gratuitous insults -- but that’s exactly what they’ve done. CNN political reporter Maeve Reston wrote of the Iowa exchange, “In a human moment defending his son, Biden showed the authenticity, emotion and readiness for a fight that appeals to so many Democrats as they look for someone who can take on Trump.”
There has been no shortage of reporting on the business dealings of Trump’s children and son-in-law. Can anyone imagine Trump dismissing questions about his adult children with personal insults and a CNN reporter turning around and saying it was a “human moment” showing “authenticity”? What about Biden’s threat to “slap” the union worker while pointing a finger at him in close quarters? If Trump did that, would the media describe him as “forceful but composed”?
Similarly, the media are anxious to defend Biden this time around by bowling right over the facts. ABC News’ chief political analyst Matthew Dowd said the exchange over guns with a union worker was a “net plus” because "voters are sick of the typical political speak ... Voters want somebody that they can trust, and is genuine, and has believability.”
It’s telling that Dowd is simply asserting his views, not making an argument on the merits that the exchange proves Biden is trustworthy. At one point, Biden referred to “AR-14s” when he clearly meant to say “AR-15s.” Then Biden asked the worker, “Are you able to own a machine gun?” The worker rightfully noted, “Machine guns are illegal.” Biden seemed to think he had the man. “That’s right. So AR-15’s illegal," he said. The worker incredulously – and quite correctly – responded, “That’s not a machine gun. It’s a semi-automatic." The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America – Americans own somewhere between five to ten million of them – so not knowing anything about it makes it hard to take Biden seriously on guns.
As for Biden’s denial that he wants to confiscate anyone’s guns, this, too, is a reasonable concern that demands a far better answer than “you’re full of shit.” Biden’s official campaign policy on guns is a reinstatement of the so-called “assault weapons ban” and “calls for a voluntary buyback program of assault weapons, stopping short of candidates and advocates who are calling for a mandatory gun buyback,” according to the Washington Post.
However, Biden has recently said he would appoint former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke his “gun control czar,” after O’Rourke dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden. O’Rourke is famous for declaring at a Democratic debate, “Hell, yes, we are going to take your AR-15.”
Biden himself seemed to tell CNN’s Anderson Cooper that gun confiscation is not out of the question. "To gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden administration means they’re going to come for my guns,” asked Cooper. Biden responded, "Bingo. You’re right, if you have an assault weapon … They should be illegal, period.”
Perhaps Biden is against gun confiscation, but that’s open to interpretation, and his policy position borders on the incoherent. Voters are hardly out of line to question him on this on this issue.
Instead, what we get out of this episode is facile analysis such as CNN’s Chris Cillizza saying, “Why Joe Biden's confrontation with an auto worker in Detroit is probably a good thing for him.” According to Cillizza, Biden’s outburst is excusable because there’s “a huge double standard. When Trump tells people where they can stick it, his fans say he's being tough and standing up for America. When Biden does the same, he's unhinged.”
There’s a double standard here all right – but it’s not what Cillizza thinks it is. No one cares about the fact that political partisans are hypocritical -- that’s obvious, and almost expected. The media, on the other hand, are supposed to assess events with at least a minimum level of professional detachment and objectivity. Yet, when Trump acts addled and insults people, the media has no trouble clearly saying what happened. When a 77-year-old Joe Biden, who was gaffe-prone back in his prime, mangles the facts, gratuitously insults, and physically threatens an ordinary voter whose only crime is asking a pointed question – the media have an obligation to tell it straight – not try and spin an embarrassing episode into a political victory.
David Wallace-Wells
@dwallacewells
·
Mar 13
A single Chinese billionaire is providing more testing kits to Americans than the CDC and the entire federal government has managed—and not just a few more, more by many orders of magnitude.
Jack Ma Foundation
@foundation_ma
Through a donation of 500,000 testing kits and 1 million masks, we join hands with Americans in these difficult times.
Ma said he hopes the donations will help Americans fight against the epidemic.
Over the past few weeks, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation have collaborated to source and donate much-needed materials to afflicted areas in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Italy, Iran and Spain, to help them combat COVID-19.
"This crisis presents a huge challenge to all humankind in a globalized world. The pandemic we face today can no longer be resolved by any individual country," said Jack Ma on Twitter. "Rather, we need to combat the virus by working hand-in-hand."
"mangles the facts, gratuitously insults, and physically threatens an ordinary voter whose only crime is asking a pointed question – the media have an obligation to tell it straight – not try and spin an embarrassing episode into a political victory."
Why? That's how Rump got into office in the first place - apparently conservatives love that kind of crap. He's obviously appealing to the Republican base who love the "strong man" image that doesn't waste time being "politically correct."
Looks like he's going for votes from both sides of the aisle.
"Why? That's how Rump got into office in the first place - apparently conservatives love that kind of crap. He's obviously appealing to the Republican base who love the "strong man" image that doesn't waste time being "politically correct."
Looks like he's going for votes from both sides of the aisle."
here we have a clear confirmation of the hypocrisy of TTF
the leftists always have had violent tendencies
they get frustrated because no one agrees with their unworkable ideas
How quickly you forget the Unite the Right rallys, "Jews will not replace us," and a long history of right wing terrorists like Timothy McVeigh blowing up buildings, and armed cattle ranchers taking over US land by force.
Right wingers have been far more deadly than the left over the years.
But that's to be expected - you don't see left wingers showing up at protests and rallies dressed in camo and armed to the teeth with handguns and assault rifles.
AUG 05, 2019
After this weekend, right-wing terrorists have killed more people on U.S. soil than jihadis have since 9/11. So why is the government’s focus still on Islamic radicalism?
When a white supremacist gunman killed more than 20 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart on Saturday, he claimed a dubious honor for his cause: Right-wing terrorism is once again responsible for more deaths on U.S. soil (107) than jihadi terrorism (104) since 9/11, according to data collected by New America. (In fact, right-wing violence had been responsible for more deaths for most of this period, but jihadis had been responsible for more since the Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016.)
Patrick Crusius’ attack itself was especially bloody, the most lethal right-wing attack since Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people. But the El Paso killings were a continuation of a bloody series of attacks in recent years, including the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the 2015 attack on a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed 11 and nine people, respectively. And such high-profile attacks are few compared with regular incidents of low-level harassment and violence against blacks, Jews, Muslims, and other minorities.
The rise in white supremacist violence, and the lower-than-anticipated levels of jihadi killing, does not accord with U.S. counterterrorism officials’ post-9/11 focus on jihad. This varied response explains the relative success of anti-jihadi efforts and the problems stopping right-wing violence.
No single factor explains the recent rise of right-wing violence, which has a long and bloody history in the United States, mostly directed against black Americans. It’s not that the causes themselves have changed dramatically. Many Americans have long been concerned about immigration, opposed to gun control, and critical of protections for minorities. Most of those who hold these beliefs would condemn violence and those who use it.
But right-wing terrorism itself is changing. Part of it is 9/11 itself. The attacks highlighted fears of Muslims and gave far-right groups more credibility in their claims to be defending Christian civilization. Each jihadi attack, including highly publicized attacks abroad like the 2015 Paris killings by ISIS, bolstered their claim and created a cycle of recruitment and radicalization.
The rise of Trump both reflected the greater radicalization of right-wing voices and heightened it. Trump rode to power in part on anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. At the same time, he elevated these concerns, with a regular track record of racist statements and hostility to Mexicans and other immigrants. Many white supremacists embraced Trump. Radicalization expert J.M. Berger found that the top hashtag for the alt-right is #MAGA.
In contrast, jihadi terrorists do not have an ideology linked to any large political movement in the United States. There is no “Americans for sharia,” and those arrested for jihadi-related violence are not associated with any large movements. The American Muslim community is hostile to violence and regularly cooperates with law enforcement.
At the same time as it has claimed a champion in Trump, the white supremacist movement has globalized. In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in Norway, mostly youths associated with a left-leaning political party. Before his shooting spree, Breivik posted a manifesto warning of the dangers posed by Muslims and liberals, among other enemies. In March 2019, Brenton Tarrant killed 51 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. Like Breivik, he posted a manifesto and even livestreamed his attack in an attempt to gain internet immortality. Both killers drew on “thinkers” and grievances from other countries and causes, presenting themselves as defenders of global European white civilization...
...Much of what explains why right-wing terrorism is so deadly while jihad at home is less bloody than expected is because of the government response and that of other important actors. The FBI devotes far fewer resources to right-wing terrorism than it does jihadi terrorism, and programs for countering violence extremism also focus largely on jihadis. Most social media companies are aggressive in trying to get jihadis off their platforms. They are far more cautious, however, when it comes to white supremacists, fearing political backlash. Legally, federal counterterrorism officials have far more power to go after those associated with international terrorist groups than they do for domestic terrorist groups, no matter how lethal. However, as terrorism expert Clint Watts points out, there is far more political attention in Congress to black identity movements and the left-wing antifa—neither of which pose remotely the danger of white supremacists—because of their political orientation.
Giving the FBI more resources, passing new laws that target domestic terrorism, and otherwise stepping up the fight against white supremacist violence and other right-wing terrorism would have a dramatic impact, as many of the individuals and groups are not used to operating in a clandestine environment. Politically, instead of playing up racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, leaders could try to calm these roiled waters. Unfortunately, Trump has not changed his tune in response to past right-wing attacks, and there is little reason to expect a new course until a new administration comes to power.
"Right wingers have been far more deadly than the left over the years."
tell that to Steven Scalise
how many liberal Congressman have been shot playing baseball?
how many Dems needed a police escort to their office when voting for a Supreme Court nominee?
how many teens wearing pussy hats had conservatives on TV talking about how they had a "very punchable face"?
how many pro-choice organizations had their security guard shot like what happened at the Pro-Family Research Council?
think about the Symbionese Liberation Society, Squeaky Fromme, the Unabomber...
think about Joe Biden and Chris Cuomo...
On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are "overreacting' to coronavirus, the national response is "their next attempt to get Trump," and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon.
It's dangerous, irresponsible, anti-science, and selfish.
David A. Clarke, Jr.
@SheriffClaarke
GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW!
If government doesn't stop this foolishness ...STAY IN THE STREETS.
END GOVERNEMNT [sic] CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION OF A CRISIS.
3:30PM Mar 15, 2020 Twitter for iPad
Twice as many Democrats (60%) are changing plans or taking precautions than Republicans (31%). 88% of Republicans are satisfied with the government's response. Among Democrats? 11%. It’s even worse among Fox News viewers, only 9% of which are “extremely concerned” about the virus! These are the same people who live in mortal fear of an “illegal” coming an murdering them. The big difference? They will definitely end up knowing about someone who died of the novel coronavirus, while those mythical hordes of undocumented murderers only exist in the imagination of the network’s most bigoted hosts.
It might be funny or material for easy partisan points, except people are dying, and a lot more will die before scientists find a vaccine. And while we could be taking efforts to mitigate the carnage, both in human and economic terms, we have an entire half of the country’s divide refusing to accept our new reality, and demanding we pretend all is well, nothing to see here, please carry on, preferably at your local pub or cruise ship.
It’s staggeringly irresponsible. The final culmination of an ideology so divorced from reality, that it will literally kill, disproportionately, the older and rural people that form its base. And—this is legitimately ironic—it is liberals trying to save their lives.
-Latest from Italy:
- 24 747 infected.
- 1 809 dead.
- 7.3% death rate.
Pray for Italy
And us too: States begin imposing harsher measures to contain coronavirus as U.S. cases rise sharply
"...Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus jumped by nearly a third in just 24 hours — to 2,900 by Sunday, Vice President Pence announced. In Europe, Italy recorded its deadliest 24-hour period since its first cases emerged in late February — 368 deaths, up 25 percent from the previous day. That country’s death toll now exceeds 1,800.
Despite such alarming trajectories, and a new recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Americans cancel or postpone events of 50-plus people for the next eight weeks, some Republican lawmakers still shrugged off the urgent warnings.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a close Trump ally, encouraged Americans to go out dining or drinking, directly contradicting public health officials’ admonitions for social distancing to slow the rate of infection...."
U.S. stock futures nosedive as emergency Fed action fails to mollify investors
Wall Street braced for more carnage Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average projected to shed more than 1,000 points at the open as investors were spooked by the Federal Reserve’s move to slash interest rates to nearly to zero to protect the economy against a coronavirus-fueled recession.
The Dow’s projected decline was steep enough to trigger the New York Stock Exchange’s “limit down” freeze on futures, which is meant to guard against emotional or chaotic trading at open.
After an emergency meeting, the Federal Reserve announced Sunday that it would slash the benchmark interest rate to between zero and 0.25 percent (down from a range of 1 to 1.25 percent) and buy $700 billion Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed also said it would revive the crisis-era program of bond purchases known as “quantitative easing," in which the central bank buys hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds to further push down rates and keep markets flowing freely.
The Fed intervention was its most dramatic since the 2008 financial crisis, and it comes as central banks around the world are making dramatic moves to keep the global economy running as travel grinds to halt, businesses shut their doors and people stay home to limit the spread of the virus that has killed thousands of people worldwide and been detected in dozens of countries and nearly every state. But the steep futures declines suggest that investors are scared the central bank might now be out of tools to guard against a recession.
“There can be no denying the Fed’s commitment to action but its dramatic move will initially stoke further debate as to whether the monetary medicine will work, on the economy or markets or both,” Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, wrote in commentary Monday.
More people have now died from the coronavirus outside of China than inside, a worrying sign of how quickly the virus has spread beyond the country where it first emerged. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called for the cancellation or postponement of any gathering larger than 50 people for the next eight weeks. As of Sunday night, about 3,500 coronavirus cases had been reported in the United States, though experts believe the true number is much higher...
"tell that to Steven Scalise
how many liberal Congressman have been shot playing baseball?"
All of them are still alive - only the shooter died, but you make a compelling case for enacting reasonable gun control laws. Who knows, maybe then the 6 people who died during the Gabbie Giffords attack would still be alive.
"how many Dems needed a police escort to their office when voting for a Supreme Court nominee?:
I noticed you didn't mention the extra security Ilhan Omar needed:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/459243-omar-shares-anonymous-death-threat-speaks-out-against-hate-and-need-for
Or the death threats that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gets - like the one from a police officer, or the Photoshopped images of her being violently raped circulating on a secret Facebook group for Border Patrol agents:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-threatened-police-officer/1793131001/
"how many teens wearing pussy hats had conservatives on TV talking about how they had a "very punchable face"?
How many people were run over by a car like Heather Heyer?
"think about the Symbionese Liberation Society, Squeaky Fromme, the Unabomber"
Symbionese Liberation Army: 2 murders
Squeaky Fromme: 1 attempted assassination
Unabomber: 3 murders, 23 injured (attempted murders)
6 murders total for the group and people you listed.
Dylann Roof: 9 murders, 3 attempted murders
Robert Gregory Bowers: 11 murder, 6 wounded
Timothy McVeigh: 168 murders
Right wingers have been far more deadly than the left over the years.
Correction: 5 murders for the group and people you listed.
According to accounts by Bowers's coworkers of 20 years ago, and analysis of his recent social media posts, his conservatism became radicalized as white nationalism; at one point Bowers was fascinated by radio host Jim Quinn. At a later time he became a follower of "aggressive online provocateurs of the right wing's fringe."[66] He was deeply involved in posting on websites such as Gab and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories through such social media sites.[67]
Gab has been described as "extremist friendly"[68] to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right.[68] Bowers registered his Gab profile in January 2018 under the handle "onedingo"; he described his account by the following: "Jews are the children of Satan (John 8:44). The Lord Jesus Christ [has] come in the flesh." The cover picture was a photo with the number 1488, which is used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists to evoke David Lane's "Fourteen Words" and the Nazi slogan Heil Hitler. Bowers published posts that supported the white genocide conspiracy theory, such as one that said, "Daily Reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person".[69] Bowers said that supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory were "deluded" and being tricked.[70][71][72]
Bowers was active in posting his own offensive remarks and re-posted content by other similarly minded users, such as Patrick Little and /pol/, who expressed anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi, white nationalist/supremacist thoughts and were Holocaust deniers. Bowers reposted comments in support of the Southern California-based alt-right fight club Rise Above Movement (RAM), who had attended the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and were later arrested by the FBI and convicted at trial for violence against counter-protestors. Bowers posted support of the "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys (led by Gavin McInnes), who were arrested for violence the same month against Antifa outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City.[73][74][75][76][77][78] His posts included criticism of US President Donald Trump for being a "globalist, not a nationalist"[79] and for supposedly being surrounded by and controlled by Jews.[80] Bowers also attacked African Americans through racial slurs and images related to lynching, and attacked women who have relationships with black men.[81] He used his online accounts to post conspiracy theories regarding philanthropist George Soros.[82] The Times said that security sources had alleged that Bowers had links to the far-right and neo-Nazis in the United Kingdom.[83]
On CNN on Sunday morning, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged people to stop going out to eat and drink. “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars,” he said. “Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see.”
The same morning, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) appeared on Fox News with an almost diametrically opposed bit of advice. “If you’re healthy — you and your family — it’s a great time to go out and go to a local restaurant. Likely you can get in easy,” he said, adding: “Go to your local pub. ”
Nunes said he didn’t want the lack of work to harm the employees of those establishments, and that’s a legitimate concern as the stock market tumbles. But Fauci indicated that the bigger concern right now is the spread of a deadly disease.
And even as officials like him have increasingly urged people to socially distance themselves and take coronavirus seriously, a number of top allies of President Trump like Nunes have pressed forward with very different messages. Some of them have even floated conspiracy theories. While Trump’s own commentary on the virus has routinely been more optimistic than that of health officials, these allies seem to have taken his cue and gone quite a bit further in stoking doubts about the whole thing.
Among them Sunday was a man Trump recently pardoned, former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik. Kerik said on Twitter: “Why do I feel this hysteria is being created to destabilize the country, and destroy the unparalleled and historic economic successes of President @realDonaldTrump?” He then compared the death toll of the virus (which is still climbing rapidly) to other causes of death worldwide...
Another outspoken Trump-supporting former police chief, former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, was even more conspiratorial. In a series of tweets, he suggested that the alleged hysteria was being pushed by liberal billionaire George Soros — a common subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories — and urged people to take to the streets.
“Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s involvement in this FLU panic,” Clarke said. “He is SOMEWHERE involved in this. ”
Early in the Trump administration, Clarke said he accepted a top post at the Department of Homeland Security, then abruptly withdrew that acceptance. He, like Nunes, also urged people to disregard the advice to stay away from crowded places. He told his 917,000 followers, in fact, to take to the streets as a form of protest.
“GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS,” he said. “Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools reopen. NOW! If government doesn’t stop this foolishness … STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN? THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION OF A CRISIS. ”
Twitter has taken down other Clarke tweets in accordance with its policy against tweets that encourage self harm, including one in which he urged people to “defy the order” to not go to restaurants and bars and another in which he referred to the idea that “we have to err on the side of caution” using an expletive.
In case you’re wondering what the audiences are for these tweets, look at what else both Kerik and Clarke were tweeting about Sunday. Both, in fact, tweeted approvingly about a potential Trump pardon for Michael Flynn, which Trump floated Sunday morning...
Large swaths of the country clearly aren’t heeding the warnings from people like Fauci, and they’re having their doubts confirmed by some of the president’s top allies. Even if the president doesn’t subscribe to any of these individual ideas of conspiracy theories, it’s the kind of moment in which you might expect him to clear the air.
Certain Trump allies such as Newt Gingrich, who is in hard-hit Italy, and Rush Limbaugh fill-in host Mark Steyn are being much more forceful in urging people to take this seriously. To this point, though, Trump has opted not to join in that effort.
New ad going after Trump on lying about #COVID19
For weeks, Fox News’s most popular hosts downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, characterizing it as a conspiracy by media organizations and Democrats to undermine President Trump.
Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham accused the news media of whipping up “mass hysteria” and being “panic pushers.” Fox Business host Trish Regan called the alleged media-Democratic alliance “yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
But that was then.
With Trump’s declaration on Friday that the virus constitutes a national emergency, the tone on Fox News has quickly shifted.
On his program on Friday, Hannity lauded the president’s handling of what the host is now, belatedly, referring to as a “crisis.” [....what Rump had called a "hoax" just a few weeks earlier.]
“Tonight, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention,” he said. “A bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership. . . . The federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”
In all, it has been a complicated dance for a network whose hosts are among Trump’s most ardent boosters and defenders — an increasingly challenging position to take as the crisis grew in magnitude. Trump, meanwhile, has long looked to Fox News and its personalities for guidance and approval, a dynamic that may have been pivotal this week after host Tucker Carlson reportedly visited with the president in person to urge him to take the coronavirus seriously.
Until then, Trump’s allies on Fox News were inclined to take the same stance that the president himself promoted for several weeks — that this coronavirus was no worse a threat than the seasonal flu.
Just a week ago, Hannity shrugged at the pandemic. “So far in the United States, there’s been around 30 deaths, most of which came from one nursing home in the state of Washington,” he said last Tuesday. “Healthy people, generally, 99% recover very fast, even if they contract it.”...
In late February, Ingraham called Democrats the “pandemic party” and displayed photos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) alongside enlarged images of coronavirus molecules. “How sick that these people seem almost happiest when Americans are hurting,” she said...
By Wednesday, after Trump announced a travel ban on people from the European Union, Ingraham had started calling the pandemic “this dangerous health crisis.”..
Regan’s on-air speculation at the start of last week that coronavirus was merely another impeachment gambit for Democrats drew widespread pushback. Clearly the mood was changing at Fox by the time the network announced late Friday that her discussion-and-commentary program on Fox Business would leave the air indefinitely...
Fox insiders said that Regan’s removal from air showed that only some hosts — those with the biggest ratings — are protected at Fox News. “If you put Trish’s comments up against Laura [Ingraham’s], you can’t honestly tell me that Trish is off the air” because of her coronavirus commentary...
Alone among his prime-time colleagues [and in line with MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS], Tucker Carlson hasn’t minced words about the virus, calling it “a major event”... [and] also complained that “none of our leaders helped us to take it seriously. . . . People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem. It’s just partisan politics, they say. ‘Calm down. In the end, this is just like the flu and people die from that every year. Coronavirus will pass, and when it does, we will feel foolish for worrying about it.’ That’s their position. . . . But they’re wrong.”
A Connecticut man was arrested and charged last week for threatening to murder Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led the prosecution in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Robert Michael Phelps, 62, was arrested Friday and later released on a $25,000 bond, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Connecticut said in a Monday press release.
Prosecutors allege Phelps sent a death threat to Schiff via the congressman’s website on Nov. 12, 2019, the eve of the first public impeachment hearing. Phelps allegedly said in his message that he wanted to visit Schiff “so I can spit in your face and I want to kill you with my bare hands and smash your sick little round fat lying face in.”
Phelps later admitted to investigators that he’d sent the message, but “did not see the message as threatening,” according to a criminal complaint.
“Phelps stated he had a right to contact members of Congress and defend ‘his president,’” Daniel Heether, an FBI special agent, said in the complaint.
Trump repeatedly attacked Schiff during and after the impeachment proceedings.
In January, the president lambasted Schiff as “corrupt” and said the congressman had not yet “paid the price” for his role in the impeachment trial.
Prosecutors said Phelps was charged with threatening to assault and murder a U.S. official, which carries a maximum prison term of 10 years, and with making interstate threats, which carries a maximum jail term of five years.
As The New York Times noted, Phelps is at least the third person who’s been charged with threatening Schiff’s life.
"Who has been politicizing coronavirus??"
liberal Democrats
"Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham accused the news media of whipping up “mass hysteria” and being “panic pushers.” Fox Business host Trish Regan called the alleged media-Democratic alliance “yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
But that was then."
it's also now
it's not that the virus isn't a threat
it's the Dems have not really been helpful but made a bunch of scurrilous accusations instead of supporting our leader in times of crisis
Trump's timing on this has been admirable
the one tactic proven successful so far was banning travel from China early
European countries who didn't because they were bullied by the press have suffered horrific consequences
we still have a chance to avoid the worst and it's because of Trump's foresight and leadership
"it's the Dems have not really been helpful but made a bunch of scurrilous accusations instead of supporting our leader in times of crisis"
Only obsequious sycophants could support a leader of such staggering ineptitude.
Trump’s 7 worst statements on the coronavirus outbreak:
The president has misled the public on the number of testing kits, the virus’s death rate, and a possible vaccine.
...Perhaps most concerning has been Trump’s instinct to outright contradict the facts and statements of the government’s top infectious disease experts as his administration has struggled to contain the outbreak. Here are seven of his coronavirus lies.
1) Trump’s Wednesday address to the nation
Trump’s statement to the nation Wednesday evening was his most serious treatment of the outbreak to date. He “injected gravity and even a sense of crisis into a topic that he and right-wing media have downplayed for weeks,” making it a “critical step in the right direction,” Vox’s Kelsey Piper explained.
Unfortunately, it was also deeply flawed. Several of his statements, like a trade restriction with Europe along with his travel ban, had to be swiftly walked back by White House officials. Trump was unclear about exempting American citizens and permanent residents from the ban, leading to panicked crowds congregating in enclosed spaces at many European airports like Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France.
Perhaps most egregious was his claim that major insurance companies would cover treatment for Covid-19 free of charge, when in actuality they had agreed only to coronavirus testing without a co-pay.
While Trump’s speech Wednesday evening finally sent a signal to the American public that the novel coronavirus is very serious, the mixed-up details undermined the endeavor.
2) Death rate hunch
In a phone interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump contradicted public health experts’ estimates of the death rate for Covid-19 — based on a “hunch.”
To be sure, a precise death rate for Covid-19 is difficult to measure, in part because testing hasn’t been done on a large enough scale to measure accurately. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization had the death rate pegged at about 3.4 percent. Many experts think that number may be too high, given the struggles with adequate testing, putting the true number likely closer to 1 percent.
Trump, however, told Fox viewers that the death rate was even lower — a “fraction of 1 percent” — based on his “hunch.” Here’s the rest of the quote:
"Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild... So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent."
Trump may have sought to downplay the mortality risk of Covid-19 in order to reassure nervous Americans and a jittery economy, but instead created a much more dangerous situation where people weren’t taking the virus seriously enough. It’s true that the risk of dying is highest for elderly people and immunocompromised people (the US has plenty of both), but as Vox’s Dylan Scott and Eliza Barclay explained, “the speed at which the outbreak plays out matters hugely for its consequences”:
What epidemiologists fear most is the health care system becoming overwhelmed by a sudden explosion of illness that requires more people to be hospitalized than it can handle. In that scenario, more people will die because there won’t be enough hospital beds or ventilators to keep them alive.
So not taking the virus seriously — at the bureaucratic and individual levels — means fewer people taking suitable precautions, and possibly more cases and more deaths.
3) “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”
On February 28, Trump said that coronavirus will “disappear” like a “miracle” while speaking at a press conference for his coronavirus task force. On Tuesday, he told reporters on Capitol Hill that coronavirus “will go away.” In late February, he speculated that warm weather would kill the virus and stop its spread. None of these statements are backed by science or infectious disease experts within his own administration. (Though some diseases — like the seasonal flu — do diminish in warmer seasons, there is currently no evidence the novel coronavirus will behave this way.)
Experts all along have predicted that without drastic measures to prevent outbreaks from growing bigger or the rapid development of a vaccine, the novel coronavirus will likely continue spreading and become endemic, a regular disease like the common cold.
4) “Anyone who wants a test can get one”
On March 7 while visiting the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump said that anyone who wants a test for Covid-19 can get one.
As countless viral Twitter threads, local news stories, and more have recounted, that promise has not rung true. Take the “Kafkaesque” story physician’s assistant Julie Eaker told Vox’s Brian Resnick and Dylan Scott about trying to get one patient tested in California:
First, Eaker called her local health department and was told her patient didn’t qualify for testing since they hadn’t traveled to China, per the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time. After the CDC relaxed its testing criteria, the patient was still sick, so Eaker called again. “I didn’t receive a phone call back,” she says.
The patient thought they had pneumonia and asked to be tested for peace of mind. Finally, last week, after Eaker ordered some test kits herself from a private lab, she got a call back. “The health department told me I was not allowed to use those test kits — that I ordered — without their permission!”
Eaker was horrified. So she called the CDC to confirm if the local health department was correct. “I did not get through,” she says. “I spent hours and hours and hours on hold. … So I thought I would just call the White House and talk to Vice President Pence, who is in charge of the coronavirus task force.“
She didn’t get Pence, but a White House switchboard operator told her to call the CDC.
“Somebody has got to help us,” she says, exasperated. “We’re out here on the front lines trying to take care of people.”
But the problem has been bigger than that. The administration had promised to quickly deliver 1 million testing kits to private labs. But on March 6, the White House announced that it would fall far short of that goal for testing kit distribution.
According to virologists, the best way to prevent an outbreak of a highly contagious virus like coronavirus is through aggressive testing. Knowing who is infected and when they became infected allows traditional measures like quarantines to work more effectively. If people don’t know they have it, they aren’t able to take their own steps to prevent spreading it to others.
In that, the administration has failed. So far, the US only has a limited capacity to process coronavirus tests every day, meaning we likely don’t have accurate numbers for the scale of this virus’s spread. The CDC has recommended that hospitalized patients displaying Covid-19 symptoms, as well as those who belong to at-risk populations, should get priority for testing, but anecdotal accounts of people with symptoms being denied a test have begun popping up on social medial.
At first, Trump blamed an Obama-era FDA rule for its slow response in distributing test kits, but experts have since revealed that claim to be false.
5) The flu is worse
During that March 4 call with Hannity, Trump also compared coronavirus with the flu. He mentioned that the flu kills anywhere between 27,000 and 77,000 people every year, implying that coronavirus isn’t as serious of a threat to public health as Influenza.
Trump’s own infectious disease experts have said that idea is wrong. Dr. Fauci told Congress on March 11 that “the mortality of [Covid-19] is multiple times what the seasonal flu is.”
The reason why lies in the numbers. The CDC estimates that the seasonal flu has resulted in between 9.3 million and 49 million illnesses in the US each year since 2010, putting the flu’s death rate at about 0.1 percent. Even if WHO’s 3.4 percent death rate for coronavirus is high due to inadequate testing capacity, using other public health expert’s estimations of around 1 percent would mean that Covid-19 could be as much as 10 times deadlier than the seasonal flu.
If 49 million Americans were to be infected with the coronavirus, a 1 percent death rate would cause 490,000 deaths, much more than the flu.
6) A vaccine will be available soon
On February 25, Trump promised that a vaccine would be available soon. “Now they have it, they have studied it, they know very much, in fact, we’re very close to a vaccine,” Trump said during a state visit to India. That simply isn’t possible even if development of a vaccine were prioritized and pushed through the regulatory process as fast as possible — as pharmaceutical executives explained to Trump himself.
Dr. Fauci estimates that it would be at least a year or a year and a half before a vaccine would be available to the general public. Several potential vaccine solutions for coronavirus are in early development in China, but Daniel O’Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, told Trump that those are only now entering clinical trials. It’s likely that a vaccine will eventually be developed and available to the general public, but it’s not going to save us from this current outbreak.
7) The US was “most prepared country in the world”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the US was the most prepared country in the world. This is, frankly, Trump’s usual political bluster. The reality is that his administration, with the help of a Republican-controlled Congress, hampered the country’s ability to fight pandemics like Covid-19, as explained by Vox’s Matthew Yglesias:
That’s part of a broader pattern of actual and potential Trump efforts to shut down America’s ability to respond to pandemic disease.
Trump’s first budget proposal contained proposed cuts to the CDC that former Director Tom Frieden warned were “unsafe at any level of enactment.”
Congress mercifully didn’t agree to any such cuts, but as recently as February 11 — in the midst of the outbreak — Trump proposed huge cuts to both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.
Perhaps because his budget officials were in the middle of proposing cuts to disease response, it’s only over this past weekend that they pivoted and started getting ready to ask for the additional money that coping with Covid-19 is clearly going to cost. But experts say they’re still lowballing it.
In early 2018, my colleague Julia Belluz argued that Trump was “setting up the US to botch a pandemic response” by, for example, forcing US government agencies to retreat from 39 of the 49 low-income countries they were working in on tasks like training disease detectives and building emergency operations centers.
Instead of taking such warnings to heart, later that year, “the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure,” according to Laurie Garrett, a journalist and former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In fact, the Trump administration remains committed to cutting funding to fight potential pandemics. When confronted in a congressional hearing about a 15 percent cut of $1.2 billion to the CDC and a $35 million decrease to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund’s annual contribution in the White House’s proposed 2021 budget, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought defended the proposed cuts.
Dems keep claiming that Trump made this crisis worse
this is untrue
above, the TTFer tries to substantiate this by using statements where he tried to calm public fears
so they argue with words, not actions
oh, and the big one:
he tried to cut the CDC budget but wasn't able to
hard to see how that has any effect
you repeatedly cite Dr Fauci, but he has said many times that he agrees with the actions taken by Trump, which have left America with a better chance to beat the virus than the European nations, who didn't close borders (although the Europeans have now followed Trump's lead)
Americans need to stop listening to Dems and their PR branch, he mainstream media
they need to listen to experts, like Dr Fauci
six months from now, when the aftermath is clear, Trump's decisive actions will get him re-elected
"oh, and the big one:
he tried to cut the CDC budget but wasn't able to"
No, that wasn't the big one, idiot.
Try it without the selective omission this time:
In early 2018, my colleague Julia Belluz argued that Trump was “setting up the US to botch a pandemic response” by, for example, forcing US government agencies to retreat from 39 of the 49 low-income countries they were working in on tasks like training disease detectives and building emergency operations centers.
Instead of taking such warnings to heart, later that year,
====> “the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure,” <====
Left to his own devices, Rump would have cut the CDC budget.
It is consistent with the long-running Republican plan to "to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
"Congress mercifully didn’t agree to any such cuts, but as recently as February 11 — in the midst of the outbreak — Trump proposed huge cuts to both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health."
Only a moron would even consider defunding the crucial work of the CDC and NIH at the beginning of a pandemic. Congress saved us from Rump - this time.
"six months from now, when the aftermath is clear, Trump's decisive actions will get him re-elected"
Unlikely. Covid-19 has a bad habit of being the most deadly to old people - one of Rump's major voting blocs.
But please keep going to his political rallies - his "rallies are very big. They're very big rallies..."
He can really use your support at his very big rallies. You won't be disappointed - he's a very stable genius and he has the best words.
And don't forget to visit all your friends in nursing homes - they could use some of your optimism in times like this!
"Americans need to stop listening to Dems and their PR branch, he [sic] mainstream media"
Dude, these days right-wingers are so delusional that even basic facts are part of a vast liberal and mainstream media conspiracy to get rid of the Rumpster.
It's only in the past few days that SOME conservatives are coming to grudgingly consider that PERHAPS all the concern about the coronavirus should be taken seriously, and it might be something besides “yet another attempt to impeach the president."
President Trump, as he often does when he has made a mistake or revealed his ignorance, changed course to claim that he knew all along that we were facing a pandemic.
As a preliminary matter, this is a lie...
The president has consistently downplayed, denied and misled the public about the seriousness of the threat. Moreover, since the first cases appeared in China in late December, he took few steps to prepare the country for the pandemic before it inevitably reached our shores. We are to believe that he knew there was a pandemic but willfully allowed the crisis to get worse.
There are two possibilities here. The first is that he was ignorant, buying into the Fox News disinformation loop. (Disclaimer: I am an MSNBC contributor.) The second is that he was thinking of his election — which he thinks is tied to the economy — so he refused to take action that would have spooked stock markets. (It’s not logical because the pandemic would eventually hit, but it would be emblematic of Trump’s short-term thinking.)
I am agnostic about which scenario is true. However, what is inescapable is that had the president not frittered away valuable time that could have been spent deploying tests (which could have been obtained from the World Health Organization), building up medical equipment and facilities and preparing for a series of escalating steps to promote social distancing, he might have reduced the strain on our health-care system and saved lives.
This is the biggest blunder in presidential history. Former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem writes for the Atlantic: “With little guidance from the federal government, governors — along with mayors, CEOs, university presidents, and leaders in the sports and entertainment businesses — have taken it upon themselves to try to slow the spread of the virus before it overwhelms the medical system’s capacity to respond.” She adds that “a 50-state strategy has emerged to fill the vacuum left by an administration that is still unable to distribute enough testing kits, is still focused on closing borders, and was slow to tell the American public to just stay home.” In essence, Trump’s delinquency has turned the governors into rivals for scarce resources.
Trump did not show any real recognition of the magnitude of the problem until his administration got hold of a study from Britain. “The Imperial College London group reported that if nothing was done by governments and individuals and the pandemic remained uncontrolled, 510,000 would die in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States over the course of the outbreak,” The Post reports. Even if we now institute uniform, serious measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, we would “reduce mortality by half, to 260,000 people in the United Kingdom and 1.1 million in the United States.”
We have lost the window of opportunity that Singapore had, for example, to enact severe measures to test and quarantine infected persons. As The New York Times reports, “Early intervention is key. So are painstaking tracking, enforced quarantines and meticulous social distancing — all coordinated by a leadership willing to act fast and be transparent.” It is not clear whether we were capable of undertaking the swift measures Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong took; but had we begun any efforts at suppressing the virus, the task of now mitigating its damage likely would have been made more manageable. (Singapore acted as swiftly as it did not only because of its invasive surveillance, which might not have been acceptable in the West, but because it “has spent years building a public health system that includes designated clinics for epidemics and official messaging urging the public to wash their hands or sneeze into tissues during flu season.”)
Trump shares the blame for failing to develop an infrastructure to fight pandemics (and removing structures put in place by the Obama administration). But, to borrow a phrase, “he alone” made the crisis infinitely worse by doing nothing for so long when leaders around the world were responding forcefully.
"No, that wasn't the big one, idiot.
Try it without the selective omission this time:
In early 2018, my colleague Julia Belluz argued that Trump was “setting up the US to botch a pandemic response” by, for example, forcing US government agencies to retreat from 39 of the 49 low-income countries they were working in on tasks like training disease detectives and building emergency operations centers.
Instead of taking such warnings to heart, later that year,
====> “the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure,” <===="
oh, that was the big one?
I thought that was a joke since his team's response to the pandemic has been completely appropriate
he has closed borders at the right time and the governors have done closing at the right time
"Left to his own devices, Rump would have cut the CDC budget."
there you go again
arguing about something that didn't happen
if we are going to argue about what people wanted to do, why don't we point out that if we had not restricted visitors from China early on, the situation would be much worse?
and Dems didn't want to stop the Chinese from coming here
"Unlikely. Covid-19 has a bad habit of being the most deadly to old people - one of Rump's major voting blocs."
with the steps the government has taken, it's unlikely that enough old people will die to tip the election
but thanks for filling us in on the Dems' fantasy, you sick bastard
"But please keep going to his political rallies - his "rallies are very big. They're very big rallies...""
no one is holding any rallies now, you stupid jackass
"And don't forget to visit all your friends in nursing homes - they could use some of your optimism in times like this!"
nursing homes are all protecting their residents by banning visitors
but thanks for filling us in on the Dems' fantasy, you sick bastard
"Dude, these days right-wingers are so delusional that even basic facts are part of a vast liberal and mainstream media conspiracy"
yeah, "basic facts" like: Trump caused the virus by proposing cuts to CDC that didn't happen
any more "facts" like that one?
"It's only in the past few days that SOME conservatives are coming to grudgingly consider that PERHAPS all the concern about the coronavirus should be taken seriously, and it might be something besides “yet another attempt to impeach the president.""
oh me gursh
the last debate, they asked Biden what he would do if President
it was exactly what Trump did do
brilliantly, he didn't acknowledge that
"The president has consistently downplayed, denied and misled the public about the seriousness of the threat."
he has tried to prevent panic, no one faults that
"Moreover, since the first cases appeared in China in late December, he took few steps to prepare the country for the pandemic before it inevitably reached our shores. We are to believe that he knew there was a pandemic but willfully allowed the crisis to get worse."
how did he allow the situation to get worse?
you still haven't explained that
if Biden had been President, he would not have banned Chinese visitors and we'd already be like Italy
Trump, despite opposition from the Dems (aka the Socialist Party), saved lives by banning visitors from China
"I am agnostic about which scenario is true. However, what is inescapable is that had the president not frittered away valuable time that could have been spent deploying tests (which could have been obtained from the World Health Organization), building up medical equipment and facilities and preparing for a series of escalating steps to promote social distancing, he might have reduced the strain on our health-care system and saved lives."
right now, in addition to the border closings, he is explaining to Americans how to fight the virus
the health care system is holding so far
in addition to arguing about things that didn't happen, Dems also base much of the argumentation on what they think will happen
"This is the biggest blunder in presidential history" said...
of course it is
and, if you believe CNN (and looking at the ratings, few do), Trump also gave the worst presidential address in history last Wednesday night
"“he alone” made the crisis infinitely worse by doing nothing for so long when leaders around the world were responding forcefully."
really?
like who?
LOL !!!!!!!!!!
"any more "facts" like that one?"
That wasn't a fact - that was just more BS you pulled out of... where you usually pull "facts" from.
"he has tried to prevent panic, no one faults that"
Preventing a panic is good. Downplaying the issue and making stuff up and pretending it's no big deal, and then blaming Democrats and "the liberal media" for overreacting is foolish at best, and wasted precious time that could have been better spent preparing to save people's lives.
"how did he allow the situation to get worse?
you still haven't explained that"
OK simpleton, let me lay it out for you. Instead of pretending:
Jan 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China."
With so little testing done, that one person from China was probably just one of dozens coming from various places that came here infected and didn't even know it.
Feb 2: "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It's going to be fine."
And he said the based on what evidence???
Feb 25: "I think that's a problem that's going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine."
With luck, were only a year from a viable vaccine. The Rumpster obviously has no idea how long it takes to create a safe and workable vaccine. We have a system in place that makes new vaccines for the flu every year - but it's based on their best guesses as to those that will be most prevalent given the infection and mortality rates of the previous year's flu season. This isn't a secret. Any reasonably informed individual knows this.
Feb 26: "The 15 cases within a couple of days is going be down close to zero."
That number is now over 7760 people, and covers all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico. It has killed 140 already, and this is likely just the beginning of an exponential growth curve.
But Republicans have shown a chronic inability to do even simple math, like balancing a budget. I don't expect them to even know what "exponential" means.
We've had a massive shortage of tests for weeks, now. Companies have finally started to catch up with the demand, but now they are facing shortages of simple things like swabs to take the samples, and chemical reagents to complete the tests.
Instead of pretending the whole COVID 19 thing was a Democratic ploy to impeach the Rumpster again, Republicans could have been mobilizing all those companies they showered with tax breaks to ramp up for a major all-hands-on-deck effort to manufacture masks, medical equipment - including ventilators, chemical supplies, and even extra toilet paper.
They knew what was happening in other countries and it was only a matter of time before it hit us. But rather than deal with it like adults, Republicans created another conspiracy theory about the Democrats using it for another impeachment.
It shows Republicans really have no clue about how viruses work at all. They somehow think it is a political tool they can bludgeon Democrats with while they spin stories about how great they are.
COVID-19 doesn't follow your narrative, no matter how much you'd like to believe it.
"the health care system is holding so far"
Sure it is, for now.
The estimates are we are less than 2 weeks behind Italy in the infection curve. All we know now is that there are a lot more people infected than we know about because we're woefully behind in testing.
This virus has an exponential growth curve. It is very likely that in roughly 2 weeks we will exceed the number of people our health system can handle. There is no way we can build or buy enough equipment and facilities to cover that gap now.
"in addition to arguing about things that didn't happen, Dems also base much of the argumentation on what they think will happen"
Yeah, funny how we can look at what has already happened in other countries, compare that to what's going on here, and draw some conclusions based on similarities and differences between ourselves and those other countries. Throw in some math, epidemiology, and some computer projections and you can get a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Meanwhile, Republicans base much of their argumentation on what Rump thinks will happen. You guys are just plain idiots.
"“he alone” made the crisis infinitely worse by doing nothing for so long when leaders around the world were responding forcefully."
really?
like who?"
Like Korea:
March 18, SEOUL - In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station.
One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval.
Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at that point, “we were very nervous. We believed that it could develop into a pandemic,” one attendee, Lee Sang-won, an infectious diseases expert at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters.
“We acted like an army,” he said.
A week after the Jan. 27 meeting, South Korea’s CDC approved one company’s diagnostic test. Another company soon followed. By the end of February, South Korea was making headlines around the world for its drive-through screening centers and ability to test thousands of people daily.
South Korea’s swift action stands in stark contrast to what has transpired in the United States. Seven weeks after the train station meeting, the Koreans have tested well over 290,000 people and identified over 8,000 infections. New cases are falling off: Ninety-three were reported Wednesday, down from a daily peak of 909 two weeks earlier.
The United States, whose first case was detected the same day as South Korea’s, is not even close to meeting demand for testing. About 60,000 tests have been run by public and private labs in a country of 330 million, federal officials said Tuesday.
As a result, U.S. officials don’t fully grasp how many Americans have been infected and where they are concentrated -crucial to containment efforts. While more than 7,000 U.S. cases had been identified as of Wednesday, as many as 96 million people could be infected in coming months, and 480,000 could die, according to a projection prepared for the American Hospital Association by Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“You cannot fight what you cannot see,” said Roger Klein, a former laboratory medical director at the Cleveland Clinic and previously an adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on clinical laboratory issues.
How the United States fell so far behind South Korea, according to infectious disease experts, clinicians and state and local officials, is a tale of many contrasts in the two nations’ public health systems: a streamlined bureaucracy versus a congested one, bold versus cautious leadership, and a sense of urgency versus a reliance on protocol.
The delayed and chaotic testing in the United States will cost lives, potentially including those of doctors and nurses, many medical experts predict. Already more than 100 people have died overall, and fears of rampant spread have led to extraordinary restrictions on social interaction, upending the U.S. economy, schools, hospitals and everyday life.
“It makes me feel like I’m living in a farce,” said Dr. Ritu Thamman, a cardiologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Even hospital staff who may have been exposed can’t get a test, she said. “We are a rich country but we don’t have these kinds of things?”
Meanwhile, in the absence of enough kits, the CDC insisted for weeks on narrow criteria for testing, recommending it only when a person had recently been to China or other hot spots or had contact with someone known to be infected. As a result, the federal government failed to screen an untold number of Americans and missed opportunities to contain the spread, clinicians and public health experts say.
“There are always opportunities to learn from situations like this one,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who has been on the job only three months, told Reuters. “But one thing I will stand firm on: We cannot compromise on the quality of the tests because what would be worse than no tests at all is wildly inaccurate test results.”
In a statement, CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said, “This process has not gone as smoothly as we would have liked.” But he said “more and more state labs have come online, increasing our public health system’s ability to detect and respond to cases.”
Bombarded by criticism amid a re-election campaign, Trump vowed on Friday to ramp up production of test kits in partnership with private companies and to make the diagnostic tests more widely available at hospitals and in-store parking lots. This week, the FDA said more than 35 universities, hospitals and lab companies had begun running their own tests, under the agency’s revised policy.
But it may be weeks before enough tests are on hand to fill the need.
“The idea of anybody getting (tested) easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that,”Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy andInfectious Diseases told a House committee last week. “That is a failing. Let’s admit it.”
It’s a problem many Americans, accustomed to hearing they have the most advanced medical care in the world, find hard to fathom.
“I don’t know how we messed this up so badly,” said Ruth Blodgett, 65, whose husband of the same age couldn’t get a coronavirus test on Saturday in an urgent care clinic outside Rochester, New York, even though he was coughing and the doctor ordered one for him. ”We got caught flat-footed. For America, that’s unacceptable.”
As U.S. efforts faltered, South Korean officials cleared a test from a second company, Seegene Inc, on Feb. 12.
With many more tests in hand, health officials were well armed to attack a fast-moving virus and aggressively track down people who may have been exposed. This testing-backed offensive helped South Korea reduce the number of new cases over a matter of weeks, serving as a model for other countries grappling with the pandemic.
In mid-February, cases spiked at a secretive church in the southeastern city of Daegu. On Feb. 26, Daegu city officials said they would test every single member of the church, including those without symptoms.
As of March 10, Daegu said that it had tested almost all of the 10,000 members of the church in that area, and about 40% came back positive. The city, which now accounts for about three-quarters of total infections in South Korea, has seen new cases sharply drop. On Wednesday, officials announced 46 new cases compared to a peak of 741 cases on Feb. 29.
The country went from two approved test makers on Feb. 18 to five as of last week, according to the Korean CDC.
“To my surprise, test kit makers were able to boost production quickly,” Korean CDC’s Lee Sang-won said.
PLEADING WITH WASHINGTON
“We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of CDC for the vast majority of our member laboratories,” Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, and Grace Kubin, lab services director at the Texas Department of State Health Services, wrote to Hahn on Feb. 24 in a letter reviewed by Reuters.
In an interview, Becker, whose group represents more than 100 state and local health laboratories, called the letter a “Hail Mary” pass, an act of desperation.
“The entire lab community was really coming unglued. We knew we could develop tests and were very capable of doing that, but we felt hamstrung” Becker told Reuters.
He said labs wanted FDA to make more tests available so they could run more patient samples at a faster pace.
Two days after receiving Becker’s letter, the FDA commissioner said his agency was ready to approve new outside tests quickly - if its requirements for accuracy were satisfied.
Under increasing pressure, the FDA relented and removed many of the bureaucratic obstacles. On Feb. 29, the agency said public and private labs, including academic medical centers, could start using their own tests before the FDA had completed its full review.
That same day, the Trump administration confirmed the first death in the United States from the coronavirus, a man in his 50s in Washington state.
On March 2, Stenzel at the FDA’s diagnostic testing office hosted a webinar for lab test developers, highlighting additional challenges, including a shortage of viral samples needed for validation of test results. Some labs also have reported shortages of other key supplies and ingredients, as well as the need for more trained personnel.
As U.S. regulators rewrote their policies, South Korean municipalities were opening roadside testing facilities across the country, collecting samples in minutes while people sat in their cars.
In recent days, as the public criticism grew louder, Trump appointed a testing czar to improve coordination across agencies. The FDA launched a 24-hour hotline for laboratories needing help to accelerate testing, approved two company applications for higher-volume testing and granted states the flexibility to authorize new tests so labs can bypass the FDA.
Despite the new moves, Ruiz said he fears America is still weeks away from approaching what South Korea has accomplished. “I think months have been lost here,” Ruiz said. “Maybe we should look into purchasing South Korea’s tests.” that may happen. Both Kogene and SolGent Co, two of the COVID-19 test-makers approved in South Korea, said their companies have an eye on the U.S. market.
“The FDA asked us to proceed with applications quickly,” Kogene executive Myoah Baek said.
"The United States, whose first case was detected the same day as South Korea’s, is not even close to meeting demand for testing."
well, I agree that their approach has been successful
we're moving in that direction
but, so far, despite starting at the same point, our death toll, like theirs, is not too high compared to other countries
worth noting, as well, is that, with South Kore4a's proximity to China, the had more reason for initial alarm
the hysteria about how Trump has completely botched the response because of incompetence is misplaced
Dems here emulate and admire the policies of Western Europe, so we likely would be like Italy and Spain now if Biden had been President
as it is, we are unlikely to get that bad
and after this over, the focus of American policy should be to reduce China's rising influence in the world
this incidence has demonstrated clearly what a threat they are to global welfare
Which Country Has Flattened
the Curve for the Coronavirus?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronavirus-flatten-the-curve-countries.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
"Just a few weeks ago, China was overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan. Since then, it has drastically reduced the number of new cases, what is known as flattening the curve.
South Korea appears to be headed on a similar path.
These charts track the number of new confirmed cases each day. Each red line is the seven-day moving average, which smooths out day-to-day anomalies in how the data are reported by authorities. The number of cases in China had a big jump in mid-February because officials changed the way cases were counted.
Despite their close proximity to China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have managed to keep the number of cases down with some success, through vigilant monitoring and early intervention.
But recent spikes in those places suggest that they are still at risk. For example, 21 of the 23 new cases in Taiwan and at least 13 of the new cases in Hong Kong on Wednesday were people who had recently traveled overseas.
More countries are now implementing travel bans or mandatory quarantine for returning travelers, as the pandemic continues to ravage the world, sickening more than 210,000 people as of Wednesday evening.
In the United States and five other countries, the number of known coronavirus cases is still growing rapidly. They have all reported more than 4,000 new cases in the past week...."
NEW YORK TIMES IS NOW FREE TO ALL READERS ON CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE.
CLICK THE LINK ABOVE OR COPY AND PASTE THE URL TO YOUR BROWSER TO SEE TODAY'S WORLDWIDE DATA.
The data is pretty startling for what our President initially told us was a "hoax."
5 times Trump and US officials downplayed coronavirus as the administration struggled to prepare for the growing pandemic
Instead of limiting domestic travel like China did to flatten our curve, our President endangered us all for weeks.
https://www.facebook.com/GovLarryHogan/videos/257951838541640/
Maryland has 107 cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday morning, up 22 cases from Wednesday. One of those cases is a 5-year-old from Howard County — the first case of a child contracting the virus in Maryland.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced the state's first coronavirus death Wednesday night.
The patient was a Prince George's County man in his 60s who had an underlying medical condition.
As late as the weekend before last, Trump said at his infected Mar-a-Lago resort that: “They’re trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools — you know, destroy the country. And that’s okay, as long as we can win the election.”
As long as we can win the election. That’s what it’s all about for Trump. It’s always about winning — winning for Trump, by making him look good in each day’s reality-television production. It’s never been about the country.
Which is why Trump wanted a cruise ship with infected passengers to be kept offshore: “because I like the numbers being where they are.” And why Trump kept pretending the virus crisis wasn’t a crisis — to keep the stock market from tanking, to win an election.
But the way a president actually can make himself look good is by being a true leader. By seeing the truth clearly, telling it bluntly and acting on it promptly and skillfully — not by dissembling, preening and careening from day to day. By behaving like Donald Trump, the president has shown himself incapable of leading the country.
Trump’s abject failure of leadership brings to mind the words, borrowed from Oliver Cromwell, that British Conservative backbencher Leo Amery used in 1940 to bring down Neville Chamberlain, a prime minister of his own party: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
The nation needs a credible, competent president, now more than ever. The surest and best thing Trump could do to come to the aid of his country — to save lives — would be to go, as the hapless Chamberlain did. But that won’t happen. Because that would be taking responsibility, something Trump has never done and will never know how to do.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Wednesday acknowledged President Donald Trump was wrong to downplay the threat posed by the coronavirus.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Hogan said there was “no question” it was a mistake for the president to repeatedly claim the virus was under control and would soon go away.
Trump has in the last few days changed his tune, however, and on Tuesday claimed he’d “always known” it was a pandemic. The coronavirus has now sickened more than 219,000 worldwide, including 9,400 in the U.S. Trump has been widely condemned for his falsehoods and failures to confront the pandemic earlier.
Hogan recalled warning about the situation more than a month ago, explaining how Maryland authorities had at first urged people to limit social contact in bars and restaurants. But that advice was ignored, Hogan said, and the state was forced to “actually shut them all down.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHH53el0gM&feature=emb_logo
From Heather Cox Richardson's letter:
Today more than 80 national security professionals broke with their tradition of non-partisanship to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president, saying that while they were from all parties and disagreed with each other about pretty much everything else, they had come together to stand against Trump. “Our nation’s foreign affairs are in disarray; our alliances frayed, and our national prestige declining. Our approach to both friends and enemies abroad has been chaotic and unprincipled. Our credibility as a nation has been lessened. And, perhaps most importantly, our place in the world as a source of moral leadership has nearly been lost. As a country, we are increasingly less secure and less safe.” Trump has “created an existential danger to the United States, its place in the world, and the values we share. His reelection would continue this downward spiral, and will likely have catastrophic results. Democracy is at stake.”
while they were from all parties and disagreed with each other about pretty much everything else, they had come together to stand up for saving the deep state that created a society with huge income inequality that favored them
Khan Academy has put out a video showing some of the basic math associated with estimating COVID-19 infection rates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk
The US is woefully unprepared.
the US is no less prepared than any other country
so far, our experience hasn't been bad
Japan saw cases before the US, did not test widely, did not shut down businesses
and is fine
hospitals here are handling the cases so far quite well
and it is likely that the social distancing our free society has collectively embraced will flatten the curve enough for us to overcome this
Dems overall are starting to show some citizenship and trying to work with the rest of us in this crisis, for the good of all
unfortunately, there is a reprehensible element of the Dem party, disproportionately represented at TTF, who are irresponsible and a detriment to our society
you're a disgrace to humanity
The only thing helping the US right now is the fact that the average population density in the US is 87 people per square mile. For comparison, in South Korea it's 1,339 per square mile or more than 15 times more dense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
So "social distancing" on average, is far easier in the US than in South Korea, helping keep the new infection rate down.
Unfortunately, that's only an AVERAGE population density. The US has PLENTY of cities with a population density higher than that of South Korea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density
Unfortunately, thanks to the incompetence and willful minimizing of the dangers by the orange idiot in the White House, (as well as other Republicans saying people should ignore the health warnings because it's all a big liberal hoax), nowhere in America has anyone been able to do the testing and proactive isolation that worked so well in South Korea to minimize new infections.
It could be that the US gets through this relatively unscathed, thanks to some unknown higher immunity rate or perhaps previous exposures to similar viruses is enough reduce the severity of the effects. That is entirely possible. But so far no one has uncovered any evidence indicating that might be the case.
There is no hard evidence that the infection rate or mortality rate of US citizens is different than any other citizens of the world.
To presume otherwise is simply wishful thinking.
Will scientists come up with a vaccine for this? Maybe.
There still isn't a licensed vaccine for the SARS coronavirus, and that hit in 2003. Dr. Peter Hotez thinks he might have something that works for it sitting in a freezer. But it will take millions of dollars in testing to see if it's useful. He's spent over a decade trying to get funding for that and it's gotten nowhere. Who knows, it might be effective against COVID-19 as well, if someone decides we ought to test it out, but we've got to breed a bunch of genetically engineered mice first:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-close-coronavirus-vaccine-years-ago-then-money-dried-n1150091
MERS (another coronavirus) hit in 2012. The story there is a bit better - at least it has been tested in humans:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/wrai-mvi072319.php
But it still doesn't appear to be a licenced vaccine, and it will take testing to see if it is any use against COVID-19. Maybe we'll get lucky.
Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
There is nothing reprehensible or irresponsible about stating the facts, describing the infection models, and taking a sober look at how the course of this disease might run given the very limited information we currently have - especially since the US has done such a piss-poor job of testing.
The course of the infection in other countries indicates that our low numbers here are simply an artifact of irresponsibly scarce testing, and not any indication at all that we're going to get off easy.
Theoretically, it is certainly possible that the mortality numbers here will be low.
Statistically, right now at least, that's just wishful thinking.
Trump's lying about the global pandemic continues nonstop. At each White House daily briefing, he unfurls a multitude of falsehoods about the virus, the government's response, and his own previous comments on the crisis. We've never seen anything like this before from an American president during a time of national peril.
In recent days Trump has lied to an anxious nation about:
- Having disbanded the White House's pandemic team.
- The availability of a coronavirus vaccine.
- Americans being able to get tested.
- All Americans returning from overseas are being tested.
- U.S. infections would go down.
- Invoking the Defense Production Act.
- The virus being contained.
- Google creating a website to help people evaluate their virus symptoms.
- FDA approving chloroquine for use in coronavirus.
Yet where are the "Trump Lies About Pandemic" headlines, which would be completely accurate statements for news outlets to make without apology? Why don't we see them and hear them?
Some observers have suggested this is shocking behavior, even for Trump, considering the stakes are so high for the nation in terms of a sweeping national health crisis. And why on earth would Trump lie about that event? But pathological liars like Trump lie about everything. It's like breathing. And that's why D.C. press' refusal for years to label Trump a liar has not only been morally indefensible, but dangerous for the country.
Wasting nearly all of Trump's first term hiding behind claims that he was merely spreading "inaccuracies" or he was "misinformed," the press has allowed Trump pathology to become normalized.
Look at how the New York Times covered the story of Trump's transparent Google lie. According to the newspaper's weirdly creative language, Trump "oversold" the idea of the Google contribution, and "inflated the concept far beyond reality." Note that for anyone using normal, everyday descriptions for current events, that meant Trump just flat-out lied during a national briefing about a monumental health crisis in this country. And he lied about something that would be easily, and almost instantly, found to be false when reporters checked in with Google for confirmation. Trump did that because he makes no calculation about which lies to tell, whether he can get away with them, and if there are any occasions where he should refrain from lying. He just lies about everything, all the time.
And the press won't call him a liar.
...On March 8, when Mr. Frilot first went to urgent care, President Trump retweeted a joke from his White House social media director about Nero fiddling as Rome burned. The next night, Sean Hannity said on his prime time Fox News show that the virus was the media’s attempt to “bludgeon” Mr. Trump with “this new hoax.”
After Ms. Frilot shared her husband’s experience, she saw social-media musings about the virus as a liberal plot to tank the stock market come to a halt, toilet-paper jokes no longer rack up likes. Several people have called her “to pass on to me that everyone has been awakened,” Ms. Frilot said. “Because everyone knows Mark.”
Comments of disbelief, sorrow, promises of prayers rolled in almost immediately. A friend urged her to share her story more widely. Ms. Frilot was normally intensely private, but wasn’t that the point? That nothing was normal anymore? She made the post public.
"Heaven Lapeyrouse Frilot, March 14, 2020
I have been seeing a lot of posts about people taking this virus lightly and joking about it. I am telling you this very private information because I care about my friends. Please be extremely caution and smart during this time. This virus has been in our community a while now without us knowing.
Mark has tested positive for the Coronavirus. He was misdiagnosed last weekend and told he had the flu. As of this Thursday he is in EJ ICU with the virus and double pneumonia. He is fully sedated and paralyzed and intubated no longe breathing on his own. He is quarantined so I cannot even be there for him to help him get through t his. It can happen to anyone. Ethan and I have been and remain quarantined to our house.
He is making small improvements but this is going to be a long recovery.
Due to misdiagnosis, we have exposed it to others unknowingly. For that I am truly sorry.
Prayers from everyone are very much appreciated during this difficult time.
Please take care of yourselves. If you have a fever 101 or above with shortness of breath or a cough please seek immediate treatment."
Cheryl Pitfield, 61, a close friend and former co-worker of Ms. Frilot’s in the oil and gas industry, remembered reading it for the first time. “I just got chills,” she said. For Ms. Pitfield, before seeing her friend’s post, it didn’t seem as if there was a face to the virus. “Now there is.”
She quickly sent a screenshot to friends in a group chat. “Oh my gosh,” Ms. Pitfield summed up the reaction, “this is real.”
Ms. Pitfield lives in Metairie, about 10 minutes from Kenner. Like many in the area, which is represented in Congress by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, she is a supporter of President Trump. She, and many of her friends, she said, believed that the coronavirus was a political stunt and media-induced hysteria.
“We kept kind of joking about it, like, ‘Oh, this is crazy! This is not going to affect us, why is everyone so wigged out about it?’ And then it did,” she said. Reading about Mr. Frilot, she added, put it into perspective for her.
On Facebook, Kathy Perilloux shared a similar conversion. Before March 16, Ms. Perilloux’s page was almost solely posts questioning the severity of the virus. March 10: “Hurricane Corona …. HYPE …. sigh,” she wrote. (“I stole that from Rush, but I was thinking the same before he said it!!!!!” she added in a comment.)
Then Ms. Perilloux commented on Ms. Frilot’s post: “Your story puts a real face on a real danger, that’s what had been missing.” She hasn’t posted anything else about the pandemic.
Since Friday, March 13, Mark Frilot has managed just two breaths on his own.
Now we know why Republican politicians have been downplaying COVID-19 risks:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is calling on Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to explain why he sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million in stock after receiving advanced briefings on the looming coronavirus threat.
And if he can’t, Carlson said Burr must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.
“He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn’t warn the public,” Carlson said, adding:
He didn’t give a prime time address. He didn’t go on television to sound the alarm. He didn’t even disavow an op-ed he’d written just 10 days before claiming America was, quote, ’better prepared than ever for coronavirus.′ He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money. And then he stayed silent.
Carlson said there could be an honest explanation for Burr’s actions, and of so, the senator needed to provide it immediately. Otherwise, he should resign and face prosecution.
“There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis, and that appears to be what happened,” Carlson said.
Since the allegations against Burr surfaced, it’s been revealed that several other senators also sold stock ahead of the coronavirus crisis.
"Unfortunately, thanks to the incompetence and willful minimizing of the dangers by the orange idiot in the White House"
it's still an open question whether the deaths and suffering due to the economic damage will be greater than those who would have died without the shutdown of activity
NEW YORK (AP) — Most Americans who rent their home, many of whom have lost their jobs in the sudden economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak, will not be eligible for eviction protections, despite what President Donald Trump said this week.
Under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan released Wednesday, foreclosures and evictions would stop for 60 days on single-family homes with loans through the Federal Housing Administration. That would apply to roughly 8 million units, according to HUD. Only FHA homes lived in for at least a year can be rented out.
That’s compared with the roughly 43 million households who rented in 2019, according to the U.S. Census. Roughly half of renters rent their home from an individual investor, while the other half rent from a business or multi-unit property owner. The ones renting from a business will not receive any protections according to HUD’s proposal.
"That’s the problem with (HUD's proposal). It only impacts a very small amount of people. We need big-scale solutions," said Andrea Shapiro of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a New York-based housing advocacy organization.
Furthermore, HUD has no power to protect renters in public housing authorities located across the country. HUD Secretary Ben Carson said this week on Twitter that the agency is working with Congress to get that authority to protect renters in public housing authorities.
“HUD has been in contact with every Public Housing Agency in the country to ensure the millions of low-income Americans we serve continue to have a roof over their head,” Carson said.
The rules are in contrast to comments made by Trump this week, who said renters would get “immediate relief” as part of his administration’s plan.
Housing advocates called the White House's proposal an “important first step" but said there are limitations to the policy that need to be addressed.
“America’s lowest-income renters were already struggling to pay rent and make ends meet before this latest disaster, and people were experiencing homelessness. Congress must implement a national moratorium on all evictions and foreclosures,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Renters tend to be more economically vulnerable than their homeowner counterparts. They have generally lower incomes and cannot tap into the equity in their homes as a line of credit in case of an emergency. A disproportionate number of renters are black, Hispanic and other minorities.
Some cities and states, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, New York state and Kentucky, have imposed their own eviction and foreclosure moratoriums in response to the coronavirus. But the majority of states and localities have yet to step in to stop people from losing their homes.
Shapiro said the best solution at the moment would be a national moratorium on both rental payments and mortgage payments.
“Everyone needs protections right now,” she said.
WASHINGTON — White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items,” according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17.
Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists’ communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has become popular with neo-Nazis. In the conversations, the white supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement agents and “nonwhite” people with attacks designed to infect them with the coronavirus.
“Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves,” reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24. “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it should any of them contract the virus.”
The Federal Protective Service, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is a law enforcement agency responsible for protecting buildings owned or leased by the federal government.
The intelligence brief, marked for official use only, noted the white supremacists “suggested targeting … law enforcement and minority communities, with some mention of public places in general.” According to the document, the extremists discussed a number of methods for coronavirus attacks, such spending time in public with perceived enemies, leaving “saliva on door handles” at local FBI offices, spitting on elevator buttons and spreading coronavirus germs in “nonwhite neighborhoods.”
The February document appears to show that at least some white nationalists were already taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously at a time when some in government were downplaying the threat. On Feb. 26, President Trump said that he expected the cases to go down to zero in the United States in “a couple of days.”
Because of Trump’s negligence, the United States lost two months of response time — precious days that should have been used to test the population, produce more N95 masks and ventilators, and build new hospital beds. This past week, the Pentagon finally announced that a Navy hospital ship would be heading to New York — but it will take at least two weeks to get ready. Why wasn’t the deployment order given sooner? Even now, with the crisis upon us, Trump hesitates to use his full authority to order wartime production of ventilators needed to keep thousands of patients alive.
Utterly lacking in empathy, Trump is incapable of rallying a shell-shocked nation. When asked on Friday, “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?,” Trump launched into a tirade against the reporter who asked the question. Like the snake-oil salesman that he is, his version of reassurance is to tout miracle cures that have not been verified by medical science.
We all knew Rump would be a bad president — but no one expected him to be Herbert Hoover-level bad. In a way, you almost can’t blame Trump for his epic incompetence: He is who he is. He didn’t deceive anyone. I blame the voters who elected him — and the senators who refused to impeach him. They should have known better. Because they didn’t, we will all pay a fearful price.
"Because of Trump’s negligence, the United States lost two months of response time"
right now, the death rate in America is about 1 in a million
this is a small fraction of the rate in Italy, Spain, Iran, France, UK, Belgium
it's half the rate in China, Sweden, and South Korea, TTF's shining example of competence
it's a little less than Germany and Portugal
do you people ever know what you're talking about?
more important do have any purpose in your single-minded hatred of the President during this time of national crisis?
right now, Dems, Republicans, corporations, small businesses, and countless individuals across America are making sacrifices and focusing their energies to defeat a common enemy
TTF obsesses on how we can blame this global crisis on Donald Trump
what a bunch of trash you are...
TTF is it's own kind of virus
it represents a sickness in our society
"right now, the death rate in America is about 1 in a million"
That's only because the spread started later here. We are on an exponential growth path already and it's too late to stop it:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Our best hope is to slow it down and desperately try to keep the new infection rate below where it will overwhelm our hospitals. But we're probably too late for that as well.
Unless extreme measures are taken, the cities with the densest populations will take the brunt of the new cases in the next few weeks.
"do you people ever know what you're talking about?"
Yes. At this point it's about the exponential growth rate of viruses in unprotected populations. It's all but a mathematical certainty.
The time to impact exponential growth problems is at the very beginning of the infection - or even before you expect it to start. Every mitigation after that takes exponentially more effort.
The problem is you have absolutely no grasp of exponential growth.
Here is a simple explanation that might help you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem
"more important do have any purpose in your single-minded hatred of the President during this time of national crisis?"
More important, don't you have anything better to do than be an apologist for an incompetent fool who should be on a sex-offender registry who wasted two solid months of critical preparation time minimizing the predictable harm of this virus and pretending it would go away by itself -- and that it was just another politically motivated impeachment hoax?
"TTF obsesses on how we can blame this global crisis on Donald Trump"
Some of us are desperately trying to explain stuff in very simplistic terms to conservative morons who steadfastly refuse to believe anything that might come out of science, math, epidemiology, or historical precedent as anything more than a vast liberal conspiracy against their anointed St. Trump.
"TTF is it's own kind of virus
it represents a sickness in our society"
Now that's plainly obvious that this virus is going to have a serious effect on people's lives - and deaths - isn't it time to recognize the damage fools like you have done to minimize efforts to take this pandemic seriously?
And even if you can't admit your mistake - conservatives never do - isn't it at least time to *STOP* trying to minimize it, perhaps even do something useful?
Trump still isn't handling this situation properly. Pointing that out isn't obsessing over Trump - it's just stating the obvious. Americans have every right to criticize their political leaders - especially when they fail. Criticizing American citizens for that is frankly, un-American.
"TTF obsesses on how we can blame this global crisis on Donald Trump"
No one here is blaming the global crisis on Rump. We all know it originated in China. And we recently found out that Rump was getting security briefings in January that China was publically minimizing the dangers and spread of COVID-19.
They're blaming him for his incompetent, misleading, and dangerously late response to the virus arriving here in the US.
If you weren't so desperate to try and prop up his chances for winning in November, maybe you could see that.
You've said repeatedly here that Russia isn't a threat to the US, China is. Here was a perfect opportunity to put China on the defensive and show how dangerous they are - and prepare and protect the US population at the same time.
Rump blew it.
Apparently his best response is to blame the Dems for "another impeachment hoax."
We'll see how that works out.
March 19, 2020
"Could've been stopped, it could've been stopped, pretty easily, if we had known -- if everybody had known about it."
January 22, 2020:
"We have it totally under control. It's one person...It's going to be just fine."
February 2, 2020:
"We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
February 7, 2020:
"I just spoke to President Xi last night, and, you know, we're working on the -- the problem, the virus."
February 26, 2020:
"We're going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time."
February 27, 2020:
"It's going to disappear. One day -- it's like a miracle -- it will disappear."
March 10, 2020:
"...and we're prepared, and we're doing a reat job with it. It will go away,just stay calm, it will go away."
March 19, 2020
"Could've been stopped, it could've been stopped, pretty easily, if we had known -- if everybody had known about it."
TRUMP KNEW.
HE FAILED.
As of March 20, 2020 CDC: COVID-19: U. S. at a Glance:
Total cases: 15,219
Total deaths: 201
As of 3/22/2020, 1:42pm
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Coronavirus Cases: 38,138
Coronavirus Deaths: 396
Recoveries: 178
Above numbers are for the U.S.
"They're blaming him for his incompetent, misleading, and dangerously late response to the virus arriving here in the US"
if it was such a dangerously late response, why is our death rate so low compared with other Western democracies?
you have no point
for the most part, he's done what he did when he should do it
the other day, I asked you people who has done better
you said South Korea
they have twice the death rate per million we do
maybe we'll catch up but our first case happened the same time as them so he must have done something right
the point about how he "lied" because he told people not to worry is truly offensive
if they'd been around in the forties, they'd have said FDR was lying when he said we only need to fear fear itself
Now that's what I call faith
in a false idol, THE ALL POWERFUL DONALD J. TRUMP.
"The United States and South Korea each reported their first confirmed case of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization on Jan. 20.
Two months later, the U.S. has nearly 9,000 more confirmed cases than South Korea, according to Johns Hopkins University. And while cases in South Korea are on the decline, the number of cases in the U.S. is growing at a faster rate than any other country in the world as of March 19, according to Hopkins’ research.
The difference, health experts say, is in the response.
South Korea saw a spike in cases in late February, which peaked at 909 new cases on Feb. 29, according to a report from Business Insider Magazine. After that, South Korean officials immediately took action, testing nearly 300,000 people to date, which represents the highest testing rate in the world, according to Fortune Magazine.
The rapid-fire testing allowed South Korea to quickly isolate those who tested positive for the coronavirus, and identify who they’d had contact with, according to sciencemag.org.
By contrast, the U.S. has tested just over 135,000 people, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which has compiled state-level data. As a result, U.S. officials don’t have a complete picture of how many Americans are infected or where the cases are concentrated, according to Reuters.
In projections compiled for the American Hospital Association, as many as 96 million Americans could be infected in coming months, and 480,000 could die, according to Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Reuters reports.
As of Friday, there were more 19,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. and almost 250 deaths. South Korea has more than 8,600 confirmed cases and 94 deaths.
South Korea has a population of about 39 million; the U.S. has over 320 million residents..."
STOP YOUR FUCKING GOP LIES !!!
So since Friday, South Korea has had 10 more deaths, from 94 on Friday to 104 today.
Today we have 114 dead in New York alone.
And since Friday, the US has gone from "almost 250 deaths" to
114 (NY) + 94 (DC -- just like South Korea on Friday!) + 28 (CA) + 23 (GA) + 20 (LA) + 16 (NJ) + 13 (FL) + 8 (MI) + 6 (CO) + 6 (IL) + 5 (CT) + 5 (TX) + 4 (IN) + 4 (OR) + 4 (WI) + 3 (KY) + 3 (MD) + 3 (MO) + 3 (OH) + 3 (PA) + 3 (SC) + 3 (VA) + 2 (KS) + 2 (NV) + 2 (OK) + 2 (VT) + 1 (AZ) + 1 (MN) + 1 (MS) + 1 (PR) + 1 (SD) + 1 (TN)
"they [South Koreans] have twice the death rate per million we [Americans] do"
"if it was such a dangerously late response, why is our death rate so low compared with other Western democracies?"
That's easy - 2 reasons:
1: Most western democracies (i.e. Europe) are much closer to the epicenter, and got dosed before they really knew what was going on. That's not a reasonable comparison.
2: Your inability to do basic math.
A more reasonable (but still unequal, due to the different population densities) comparison would be Canada - modern, stable Western democracy in this hemishpere:
At this moment:
Canda: 20 deaths, population of 37.59million: 0.532 deaths per million
USA: 400 deaths, population of 327.2million: 1.22 deaths per million
USA: 38,757 cases that we know of, because we've been woefully short on tests, is currently 3rd in the world for total CV-19 cases.
Canada: 1,426 cases, is 17th in the world
Right now, it's safer to be in Canada - they have less than half the death rate we do.
"maybe we'll catch up but our first case happened the same time as them so he must have done something right"
He didn't test 300,000 citizens where coronavirus was detected and separate sick people from healthy. The South Koreans did.
Let's compare numbers again every Sunday.
"He didn't test 300,000 citizens where coronavirus was detected and separate sick people from healthy. The South Koreans did."
and, yet, our death rate per million is lower
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/
Dr Fauci credits Trump with closing borders early, probably preventing a Western Europe type situation here. You need to listen to the experts, not CNN.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-us-not-necessarily-on-same-trajectory-as-italy-due-to-travel-restrictions/ar-BB11xCOI
55-43, Americans approve of Trump's management of the crisis
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/coronavirus-upends-nation-americans-lives-changed-pandemic-poll/story?id=69696172
his overall approval rating is way up over the last week
https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID19-Axios-LIveStream.pdf
the drug Trump discussed and the media has attacked has shown promise and has been used and safe for decades
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethpfeiffer/2020/03/22/one-patient-dodges-a-covid-bullet-is-she-a-harbinger-or-outlier/#593714235b84
3/22/2020 7:24PM
Deaths in Japan: 36
Population of Japan: 126.8 million
Death rate in Japan: 0.284 deaths / million
Deaths in US: 414
Population of US: 327.2 million
Death rate in US: 1.265 deaths / million
Death rate in US: 4.457 times worse than Japan
"his overall approval rating is way up over the last week"
No one gives a damn what is approval rate is moron.
People are dying here.
Get. A. Clue.
Plane with 5 passengers on board: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, The Pope and a 10-year-old schoolboy. The plane is about to crash and there are only 4 parachutes.
Trump says I need one: “I’m the smartest man in the USA and am needed to make America great again.” Takes one and jumps.
Johnson says, ‘I’m needed to sort out Britain’. He takes one and jumps.
The Pope says, ‘I need one as the world needs the Catholic Church.’ He takes one and jumps.
Angela says to the ten year old: “You can have the last parachute. I’ve lived my life, yours is only just starting.”
The 10-year-old replies: “Don’t worry, there are 2 parachutes left. The smartest man in the USA took my school bag.”’
Interactive map:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
"Why is the US so much worse than Japan?"
actually, Japan is doing much better than the rest of the world and no one knows why
all the Asians countries near China are
South Korea; which TTFers said last week was the model that Trump should have emulated, actually has a higher death rate per million than us
but the probable reason is these countries were heavily impacted by SARS a few years back and the population knows how to deal with this type of thing
they are unlikely to be taking Spring break in Clearwater or cavorting in Nice
also, why are you comparing Japan to the US?
the US is doing better than most of the Western democracies
"No one gives a damn what is approval rate is moron.
People are dying here.
Get. A. Clue."
well, you, and CNN, the Democratic party's PR branch, seem to think Trump has somehow shown tremendous incompetence in dealing with this crisis
most Americans disagree
you might want to pause and think about why you are trying to undermine public confidence, without any justification, at a time when we need it to get through
People are dying here.
Get. A. Clue.
maybe instead of sending you a check for your services this month, Vladimir Putin can let you come live with him in Moscow
they say they have no coronavirus there
"Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk said...
Plane with 5 passengers on board: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, The Pope and a 10-year-old schoolboy. The plane is about to crash and there are only 4 parachutes.
Trump says I need one: “I’m the smartest man in the USA and am needed to make America great again.” Takes one and jumps.
Johnson says, ‘I’m needed to sort out Britain’. He takes one and jumps.
The Pope says, ‘I need one as the world needs the Catholic Church.’ He takes one and jumps.
Angela says to the ten year old: “You can have the last parachute. I’ve lived my life, yours is only just starting.”
The 10-year-old replies: “Don’t worry, there are 2 parachutes left. The smartest man in the USA took my school bag.”’"
how old are you?
this same joke, with different people for Trump, Johnson, and Merkel, has been around for at least 50 years
pathetic
"JHU Coronavirus map said...
Interactive map:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html"
fascinating...
what an internet sleuth
only you, and all the search engines that put this on their home page, have seen this
The coronavirus epidemic is shaking humanity and turning the world upside down. Quick, somebody alert the media.
The Washington press corps is covering one of the largest, continuing stories in recent history the same way it has covered the Trump administration since Day One.
The formula is simple: Whatever the president does is not just wrong, it’s borderline evil. Details at 11.
In the real world, events are unfolding at a pace and scale impossible to comprehend. But at too many news outlets, the aim is not to inform. It’s to render the harshest possible judgment on the man journalists love to hate.
Already The New York Times has twice called the White House response “calamitous,” including once in a supposedly straight-news article.
This is beyond shameful. When antagonists like Sen. Chuck Schumer finally are working with Trump and when the Democratic governors of New York and California swap praise with the president over their partnerships, the media ought to take a hint that this time is different and there is no place for biased journalism-as-usual.
Instead, after failing to bring down Trump with Russia, Russia, Russia and impeachment, they’re now putting their chips on the narrative that he’s bungling the public health crisis.
To get there, they’ve had to reverse themselves on a key allegation. For three years the same media told us Trump was a fascist and a budding Hitler, but now his refusal to rule with an iron fist is also cause for condemnation.
Suddenly, the man whose “Authoritarian style is remaking America” (Washington Post), and whose “Authoritarian Ambitions” were exposed by impeachment (New York magazine), foolishly refuses to use the powers of the Oval Office. As usual, other countries are doing it right and America is wrong.
When Trump advised people to stop unnecessary travel and avoid bars, restaurants and groups of more than 10, a Times headline moaned that the “Guidelines Fall Short of the Mandates in Other Countries.”
The Gray Lady’s latest complaints involve the Defense Protection Act, which gives the president the authority to commandeer private industry. But he’s a lousy authoritarian because, as the Times put it Friday, “Trump Resists Pressure to Force Companies to Make Coronavirus Supplies.”
Behind every complaint is a roster of anonymous sources and Obama administration grousers.
Meanwhile, because of its one-track agenda, the media are missing one of the biggest stories — the sense of unity against the epidemic being forged across America.
Even Dem presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders largely slipped out of sight, a welcome sign that they realize now is not the time to try to score political points.
And the public, despite the media, gets it that the president is doing his best against an unprecedented and invisible enemy. Polls reflect a belief that, after a slow start, Trump is mobilizing an enormous national response involving both the public and private sectors and is committed to victory.
An ABC News/Ipsos survey released Friday finds 55 percent approve of the president’s leadership, while 43 percent disapprove. Those figures are a reversal from a week earlier, when 43 percent approved and 54 percent disapproved.
Of course, to recognize this shift in the national mood would mean the media would have to give Trump credit, and that is forbidden. Stark polarization is what the media like and want — and refuse to see anything else.
Tellingly, the more information and access Trump gives the White House press corps, the angrier the members get. The president and his team provide daily updates, announce new efforts and take numerous questions.
While many of the questions try to flesh out details, virtually every day there is also an obvious “Gotcha” effort. Frustrated by Trump’s refusal to surrender to their superior intelligence, his inquisitors, graduates of the Jim Acosta school of journalism, end up berating and arguing with him.
One day there were repeated assertions thinly disguised as questions about why the president continues to call the virus the “Chinese virus.” Doesn’t he realize that’s racist?
His answers were to the point: “That’s where it came from” and “Everybody knows it came from China.”
As some commentators noted, the questions parroted a talking point of the Chinese Communist Party. That makes this a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome with a coronavirus twist.
It’s also a clear case of China trying to meddle in our elections. Once upon a time, the media cared about that.
Friday’s briefing featured Trump scolding NBC reporter Peter Alexander, with others in the room defending Alexander.
The sequence was revealing, with Alexander firing off questions faster than Trump could answer. Alexander first tried to drive a wedge between the president and Dr. Anthony Fauci, suggesting they were at odds over whether new treatment drugs could represent a breakthrough.
As Trump downplayed any differences, Alexander fired an insult posing as a question, saying, “Is it possible that your impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope?”
Again, Trump answered, saying “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so,” only to be interrupted with another Alexander question. Alexander finally let Trump answer, then changed course again, asking “So, what do you say to Americans who are scared, I guess? Nearly 200 dead and 14,000 who are sick and millions as you witness who are scared right now, what do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”
Trump finally had enough, saying “you are a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question. I think it’s a very bad signal that you are putting out to the American people. They’re looking for answers and they’re looking for hope. And you’re doing sensationalism . . .”
Naturally, that became a big story for CNN and the other usual suspects. Mission accomplished.
There is much talk that the coronavirus epidemic will permanently alter aspects of American life. Let us hope that a new and improved journalism is among the changes
"and, yet, our death rate per million is lower"
We are currently in the exponentially expanding part of the curve, and are now being told to expect to lock-down for 10-12 weeks. Better late than never!
The South Koreans have managed to move to much lower new infection rates by immediate mass testing and quarantining sick people.
Learn something from Science magazine, it's non-partisanCoronavirus cases have dropped sharply in South Korea. What’s the secret to its success?
"We are currently in the exponentially expanding part of the curve,"
we reached that stage later than S Korea because we took steps to stop people coming from China
our big mistake was to not ban European visitors sooner
the exponential rise in the last few days was mainly due to wider testing
within a few weeks we'll be where S Korea is now
we started later because the virus spread slower here, due to the China ban
"and are now being told to expect to lock-down for 10-12 weeks. Better late than never!"
medical people are saying that
as soon as supplies of masks and ventilators are adequate and testing is more widely available, the lockdowns will end
that won't take 10-12 weeks
Trump is handling this well
not perfect, but clearly better than a Dem would have
they were all calling Trump xenophobic for closing borders
right now, the latest is the media is screaming that Trump should take over factories
but businesses, large and small, have all offered to do whatever asked
remember when they said Trump was a dictator?
now, they want him to take over everything even when everyone is cooperating
"The South Koreans have managed to move to much lower new infection rates by immediate mass testing and quarantining sick people."
well, we are moving in that direction once it's possible, but infection rates are much less significant than the death rate and South Korea's is higher than ours
sure, there's a placed for learning from other countries' experience
but the shrill, hysterical attacks on Trump by the lunatic liberal fringe is not constructive
what a bunch of trash you are...
TTF is it's own kind of virus
it represents a sickness in our society
"now, they want him to take over everything even when everyone is cooperating"
No moron, they don't want him to take over everything.
They want a leader that can organize and plan the logistics necessary to tackle a problem like this - making sure the federal government is getting enough medical supplies in the pipeline to address the needs, and that they get fairly distributed.
What they DON'T want is Rump telling all the states to go get their own supplies and then have the federal government out-bid them for it:
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) told Trump during a video conference on Thursday that his state three times lost out to the federal government on purchases of critical supplies.
So not only is Rump not helping the states, whatever he's doing is getting in their way.
Pointing out how ridiculous and incompetent this strategy is, and calling for the President to do better isn't part of some "derangement syndrome" his desperate sycophants have made up, but common sense.
Obama had to deal with the H1N1 virus just a few months after he got into office, and later ebola. Too bad Rump didn't learn anything from him.
"No moron, they don't want him to take over everything."
everyone knows that, you imbecile
they are just saying that
they are just going to whine no matter what he does
as trump has explained repeatedly, he has called these corporations and they are all willing to do everything asked
"Pointing out how ridiculous and incompetent this strategy is, and calling for the President to do better isn't part of some "derangement syndrome""
his strategy is working fine
the hyperbole is part of the Trump derangement syndrome
everyone knows that
"Obama had to deal with the H1N1 virus just a few months after he got into office, and later ebola. Too bad Rump didn't learn anything from him."
we weren't too close to the Ebola outbreak and it wasn't a contagious respiratory disease
it was only spread through body fluids, mainly a threat to healthcare workers
so, there wasn't much to learn
Obama certainly didn't organize and plan the logistics necessary to tackle it
he didn't have to
but what a racist Obama was to refer to the disease by the name oF an African river !!!!!!!!!!!!
"the hyperbole is part of the Trump derangement syndrome"
Keep telling yourself that. But denying there's a problem isn't going to help fix it.
Meanwhile, some republicans who have somehow managed not to drink the orange Kool-Aid had this to say:
A conservative website denounced President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for repeatedly lying about the availability of coronavirus tests.
The two leaders said millions of tests were being sent out, but states complained they weren’t arriving, and when the tests did come, they were missing crucial elements.
In response, The Bulwark published a supercut of Trump and Pence promising tests side-by-side with numbers showing what really happened:
https://thebulwark.com/where-are-the-tests/
The failure to test suspected cases has made it impossible to determine how many people have the infection and how fast it’s spreading. A lack of testing also makes it difficult to know if and when measures to slow COVID-19 have worked.
Business have closed. Untold millions have been laid off. Many people who still have jobs are working from home while trying to care for children, whose schools and daycares are shuttered. Nothing is the same . . . except for Donald Trump.
Confronted with a looming pandemic, the Trump administration wasted its most valuable asset—time. From the moment the outbreak took hold in China, Trump should have made the ramp up of a testing regime his top priority, because the single most effective—and cost effective—weapon against pandemics is aggressive testing.
Instead, Trump spent the interregnum between the outbreak in China and COVID-19’s arrival in America lying to the public about what was happening.
And now that he can no longer deny the existence of the pandemic, he’s lying to us about the availability of the tests he didn’t procure in order to keep America safe.
WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.
The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2007 and 2011. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”
Zhu and the other sources said the American expert, Dr. Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier.
No other foreign disease experts were embedded to lead the program after Quick left in July, according to the sources. Zhu said an embedded expert can often get word of outbreaks early, after forming close relationships with Chinese counterparts.
Zhu and the other sources said Quick could have provided real-time information to U.S. and other officials around the world during the first weeks of the outbreak, when they said the Chinese government tamped down on the release of information and provided erroneous assessments.
Quick left amid a bitter U.S. trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September, the sources said. The U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31.
""We are currently in the exponentially expanding part of the curve,"
we reached that stage later than S Korea because we took steps to stop people coming from China"
We only *appear* to have reached that stage later.
The truth is we do not know how many of us have coronavirus.
Unlike South Korea, we have not been testing citizens and quarantining sick ones.
Today, March 23, 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams begged Americans to stay home while warning that the situation is “going to get bad” in the coming days.
Also today, March 23, 2020, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "The pandemic is accelerating. We need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics."
Tedros said Monday that it took 67 days to confirm the first hundred thousand cases, 11 days to confirm the second hundred thousand cases and just four days to confirm the third hundred thousand cases.
Exponential growth
"The failure to test suspected cases has made it impossible to determine how many people have the infection and how fast it’s spreading. A lack of testing also makes it difficult to know if and when measures to slow COVID-19 have worked.
Business have closed. Untold millions have been laid off. Many people who still have jobs are working from home while trying to care for children, whose schools and daycares are shuttered. Nothing is the same . . . except for Donald Trump.
Confronted with a looming pandemic, the Trump administration wasted its most valuable asset—time. From the moment the outbreak took hold in China, Trump should have made the ramp up of a testing regime his top priority, because the single most effective—and cost effective—weapon against pandemics is aggressive testing."
I know you only read Dem propaganda so you aren't aware of this, but influenza testing is notoriously unreliable. 30% of tests are wrong. Since this is a new virus, it would probably be higher.
What we're doing now, until test and equipment are available will be effective.
"Today, March 23, 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams begged Americans to stay home while warning that the situation is “going to get bad” in the coming days."
it's already bad. that will just be documenting. new transmissions are likely already being largely prevented
"Also today, March 23, 2020, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "The pandemic is accelerating. We need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics."
Tedros said Monday that it took 67 days to confirm the first hundred thousand cases, 11 days to confirm the second hundred thousand cases and just four days to confirm the third hundred thousand cases.
Exponential growth"
that's globally
obviously, Europe was too slow to close its borders
"I know you only read Dem propaganda so you aren't aware of this"
The quote was from The Bulwark - here are some of the ways it describes itself:
"Charlie Sykes and guests discuss the latest news from inside Washington and around the world. No shouting, grandstanding, or sloganeering. Conservative, conscientious, and civil."
"We face a twofold challenge today: not merely resisting the pressures of the Left, but also a conservative movement that is being driven by grifters and mountebanks into a dark hole of nativism, protectionism, isolationism, and fabulism."
One of its writers worked for Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz. Another worked for Ron and Nancy.
Another was communications director for Jeb Bush and spokesman for the RNC.
They don't do "Dem propaganda."
The problem is you've gone so far through the looking glass that you don't even recognize where reality is any more. Even when *republicans* criticize Rump it's now "Dem propaganda."
But please, stay in your conservative bubble with all of your conservative friends - make sure you spend LOTS of time with each other during this pandemic hoax started by the Dems to impeach the president!
You can make millions selling hand-sanitizer door-to-door.
"obviously, Europe was too slow to close its borders"
Obviously, Europe didn't have a world ocean between itself and China. It was long, expensive plane trips that limited the initial exposure of the US to the infection from the epicenter.
Europe didn't have that luxury.
Order of the Governor of the State of Maryland, Number 20-03-23-01, dated March 23, 2020, Amending and Restating the Order of March 19, 2020, Prohibiting Large Gatherings and Events and Closing Senior Centers, and Additionally Closing All Non-Essential Businesses and Other Establishments
"this pandemic hoax started by the Dems to impeach the president"
no, the hoax is that Trump has been singularly incompetent in his response
there's no basis for that
"Obviously, Europe didn't have a world ocean between itself and China. It was long, expensive plane trips that limited the initial exposure of the US to the infection from the epicenter.
Europe didn't have that luxury."
seriously?
there's a huge land mass called Siberia and the hugest mountain range in the world called the Himalayas between Naples and Bejing, which is 17 hours away by plane
it's 11 hours from San Francisco to Bejing
Europe is in trouble because their leaders aren't as competent as Trump
"Order of the Governor of the State of Maryland, Number 20-03-23-01, dated March 23, 2020, Amending and Restating the Order of March 19, 2020, Prohibiting Large Gatherings and Events and Closing Senior Centers, and Additionally Closing All Non-Essential Businesses and Other Establishments"
didn't change much
most businesses that were open yesterday still are tomorrow
"no, the hoax is that Trump has been singularly incompetent in his response"
Did you think no one would notice you trying to rewrite history?:
"Dems' hysteria has hurt them with the public multiple times: Russia hoax, Kavanaugh, Ukraine
now, the Coronavirus"
"On March 8, when Mr. Frilot first went to urgent care, President Trump retweeted a joke from his White House social media director about Nero fiddling as Rome burned. The next night, Sean Hannity said on his prime time Fox News show that the virus was the media’s attempt to “bludgeon” Mr. Trump with “this new hoax.”
"there's a huge land mass called Siberia and the hugest mountain range in the world called the Himalayas between Naples and Bejing"
Obviously, geography isn't your forte either. There's no need to go over the Himalayas to get to Europe from China - unless you really WANT to visit India or Pakistan first.
You do realize that there are at least 3 time zones west of Beijing in China, right? They are WAY closer to Europe.
"Europe is in trouble because their leaders aren't as competent as Trump"
Evidence begs to differ. As of 7:13PM today...
USA: CV-19 cases: 43,449
Deaths: 545
Recovered: 295
Germany: CV-19 cases: 29,056
Deaths: 123
Recovered: 453
Compare South Koreas curve of coronavirus deaths by country to the US's.
South Korea, who did widespread testing and contact tracing, does not double coronavirus cases every week anymore but the US more than doubles coronavirus cases every week, approaching doubling coronavirus cases every 3 days.
The contagion has a weakness: clusters
Though a few people catch the virus from random strangers, many more cases are arising within clusters of family members, friends and work colleagues. No one knows yet why this is so, but the experts see it as an opening.
“You can contain clusters,” Dr. David L. Heymann said. “You need to identify and stop discrete outbreaks, and then do rigorous contact tracing.”
Easier said than done, though: “Doing so takes intelligent, rapidly adaptive work by health officials, and near-total cooperation from the populace.”
"Did you think no one would notice you trying to rewrite history?"
by proof of which, you offer some interview on FOX
I have noting to do with FOX, and don't often watch it
right now, CNN and TTF are pushing the narrative that Trump somehow was singularly incompetent
there's no basis for that
"Obviously, geography isn't your forte either. There's no need to go over the Himalayas to get to Europe from China - unless you really WANT to visit India or Pakistan first."
what a jackass comment
you either need to go through Siberia or over the Himalayas
but, it's irrelevant
Wuhan is closer to the US west coast than it is to Italy
you are embarrassing yourself by claiming otherwise
"USA: CV-19 cases: 43,449
Deaths: 545
Recovered: 295
Germany: CV-19 cases: 29,056
Deaths: 123
Recovered: 453"
your cherry-picking to attack your own country is pitiful
yes, Germany is doing better than the rest of Europe but their death rate per million is similar to ours
while we all strive to learn from each other, the TTF panic to find something to make Trump look spectacularly incompetent is fake news and. given the circumstances, anti-social
what a bunch of trash you are...
TTF is it's own kind of virus
it represents a sickness in our society
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/
January 22, 2020:
"We have it totally under control. It's one person...It's going to be just fine."
February 2, 2020:
"We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
February 7, 2020:
"I just spoke to President Xi last night, and, you know, we're working on the -- the problem, the virus."
February 26, 2020:
"We're going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time."
February 27, 2020:
"It's going to disappear. One day -- it's like a miracle -- it will disappear."
March 10, 2020:
"...and we're prepared, and we're doing a reat job with it. It will go away,just stay calm, it will go away."
March 19, 2020
"Could've been stopped, it could've been stopped, pretty easily, if we had known -- if everybody had known about it."
TRUMP KNEW.
As of March 20, 2020 CDC: COVID-19: U. S. at a Glance:
Total cases: 15,219
Total deaths: 201
As of March 23, 2020 CDC: COVID-19: U. S. at a Glance:
Total cases: 33,404
Total deaths: 400
it's up to 46K today
our death rate is still low compared other Western democracies
Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.
Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States.
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.
“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”
"President Donald Trump said during a press conference that he was considering easing social distancing guidelines after March 30.
“We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem,” Trump said, noting how badly virus-induced measures have impacted businesses and workers."
It's an idea he got Sunday night from a FOX News segment with a England's Steve Hilton.
See: Trump Repeats Latest Bonkers Fox News Coronavirus Claims In Midnight Rant
The president hints at cutting back on protective measures: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”
But the truth is: Top Public Health Expert: Lifting Coronavirus Restrictions Now Could Kill Millions
"A top public health expert on Monday cautioned U.S. officials against prematurely lifting restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, saying that doing so could result in millions of deaths.
The warning from Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, came as President Donald Trump said during a press conference that he was considering easing social distancing guidelines after March 30.
“We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem,” Trump said, noting how badly virus-induced measures have impacted businesses and workers.
But Inglesby, in a series of tweets, laid out just how bad the problem could get.
“Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that,” Inglesby wrote. “COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the yr ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country.”..."
"your cherry-picking to attack your own country is pitiful"
First, showing basic stats isn't an attack on my country. We've become quite used to you twisting our words and making up what you think our motivations are to attack us. Pointing out Rump's flaws isn't an attack on the country. And Republicans had absolutely no qualms with attacking Obama for 8 years. I never claimed you were attacking the US.
You should stop to consider some time that you simply can NOT read the minds and motivations of the people that post them.
You do this because you can't cope with even simple basic facts contradicting your propaganda - so instead you launch into an ad-hominem attack - your favorite pastime. But we expect nothing more from you.
Second, just because only one example was provided out of several, doesn't mean it was cherry picking. You can sort by deaths per 1M column on the page you linked to and find that there are several western democracies and European countries that have a lower death rate per 1M than the US. Since you provided the link to that page, that should be obvious. Just because I didn't post all the data doesn't mean it was cherry picking; anyone can see the data any time they like. I suspect many people are checking these sites hourly, and I even provided a link for one of them, for which you didn't pass up an opportunity to mock.
But we expect nothing more from you.
Third, whatever you ascribe the reason to, the US got a later start on this infection than Europe did. We are 1 to 2 weeks behind Europe in the infection cycle. They are closer to their peak levels than we are now. It is no surprise that some European countries have a higher rate than we do. Many of them have a higher average population density than we do as well, exacerbating their infection problem. We see that effect here, with the largest expanding number of cases occurring in urban areas.
Fourth, you have no awareness that focusing only on the death rate per 1M while ignoring, dismissing, and minimizing the other data that folks post here is... guess what... cherry-picking.
But we expect nothing more from you.
"while we all strive to learn from each other, the TTF panic to find something to make Trump look spectacularly incompetent is fake news and. given the circumstances, anti-social"
No one has to try to MAKE Rump look spectacularly incompetent.
He does that quite well enough himself.
Coincidentally, he himself is the single most bigly creator of fake news since Baghdad Bob.
Criticizing his missteps simply isn't anti-social. But keep trying to throw the attack spaghetti against the wall and hope something sticks.
But your unquestioning fealty to him no matter what he does certainly makes it looks like he's created a cult of personality, along with the requisite blind followers to adore him.
We can tell how sincere Rump is about calming people down by his decision to tout some BS midnight Sunday night FOX News idiot -- he is not serious at all.
Sunday morning, Trump tweeted what might be the most offensive tweet of his offensive presidency. “Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News…shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!”
That’s the Signal: In what is shaping up to be one of the biggest crises in American history, and the biggest public health calamity in a century, Trump is still fiddling while Rome begins to burn. After two months in which he ignored the warnings of his public health experts, his intelligence agencies, and presumably the State Department, the Pentagon, and everyone else in government with an ounce of common sense—time that could have been spent building up stockpiles of medical supplies—now this moral midget is turning on the governors. These men and women, who by default have become the nation’s political first responders, stand accused by the American president of “failing,” should their medical systems become overwhelmed by a surge of critically ill patients.
The Trump administration’s response to this crisis continues to be a combination of ineptitude and criminal lack of concern for the most vulnerable.
Some particularly awful highlights, on the malign-ineptitude front: The president continues to peddle snake-oil cures that his own infectious diseases specialists then have to pour cold water on. The latest: his notion that anti-malaria drugs, in combination with an antibiotic, will cure coronavirus. It’s one thing to project optimism in a time of crisis; it’s another thing entirely when a national leader spouts nonsense that flies in the face of expert opinion. There is a world of difference between Churchillian defiance in the face of grim news, and sheer hucksterism.
Also on this front: Trump has triggered the Defense Production Act, allowing the government to compel private industries to produce medical supplies. But, inexplicably, he neglected to actually order the mass production of masks, protective clothing, and ventilators. The Feds, he said dismissively, aren’t shipping clerks. Instead, he urged states and cities to simply scramble for products however they could, setting up an insane competition among them.
On the criminal-lack-of-concern front: The State Department ordered the immediate return of all Peace Corps volunteers, which makes some sort of sense. But it then followed up by announcing that they would all immediately be fired instead of being placed on paid leave. These 7,300 brave men and women, who have been volunteering for health campaigns, innovative agricultural and environmental work, and other development projects vital to global well-being, aren’t even eligible for unemployment checks.
What a perfectly Trumpian action: Use the cover of the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to neuter America’s most successful soft-power program, one that he has sought to eviscerate from his first months in office.
Trump continues to talk about bailing out the airlines, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. But the administration has done nothing to protect the thousands of airport workers who are being summarily laid off without any severance, many of them after years of employment. One couldn’t find a better example of the lack of empathy and solidarity at the core of this administration.
Last week, thousands of doctors publicly urged ICE to empty its detention facilities, fearing that otherwise the tens of thousands of impoverished, often medically fragile immigrants being held in them would succumb en masse to the virus. To no one’s surprise, despite these frantic entreaties, the administration has made no move to release the detainees...
The world is facing a cataclysm, but the plastic man, our reality-TV president, is still more interested in posturing and preening, in beating up on his favorite targets, than doing the hard work of navigating through this crisis.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
@RevDrBarber
I’ve been reading Exodus 5-7 about the plagues in Egypt: 3 things about Pharaoh:
1. Rather than listen to wisdom, he only cared about money & people working to build his wealth, even when the work was hard on them.
1:18 PM · Mar 24, 2020
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
@RevDrBarber
Replying to @RevDrBarber
2. Every time there was a little relief, Pharaoh would go right back to his mean, lying & oppressive ways.
3. Rather than deal with the cause of the plague that was made worse by his action, Pharaoh & his admin became worse & was exposed for all to see.
Family
silver lining time:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/transgender-surgeries-postponed-indefinitely-amid-pandemic/ar-BB11G9A2?ocid=spartandhp
according to Gallup today, Americans approve of Trump's handling of the Wuhan virus, 60-38?
NY has the biggest problems
more than half of all deaths and new cases in the US are there
wonder why the media thinks Cuomo is doing such a great job?
Because Cuomo is doing a great job pointing out what he needs the federal government to do instead of pitting states against each other for medical supplies.
Trump is the President of all 50 states and none of them have enough ventilators or coronavirus test kits yet.
Probably because he isn't trying to gaslight America by saying things like:
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 23: “We have it very much under control in this country.”
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”
Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”
March 10: “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
Meanwhile, here in the real world, as of 12:48PM on 3/25 in the US:
60,642 cases
817 deaths
379 recovered
The exponential time constant is roughly 3 days.
That means if the trends continue as they have for the past 3 weeks, we can expect all of these numbers to double in about 3 days.
"That means if the trends continue as they have for the past 3 weeks, we can expect all of these numbers to double in about 3 days."
but trends shouldn't continue because the country has been mitigating for a week and a half
the only caveat is NYC, where the state government didn't act decisively enough, and didn't make sure they had adequate supplies so the hospitals wouldn't get overwhelmed
meanwhile, Andrew's violent brother, Fredo, is covering for him on CNN
of the 61,000 cases in US, 31,000 are in NY
the state in second place is New Jersey with 3,700
Cuomo will answer to the voters after this is over
Cuomo will go down in history with Benedict Arnold and Vlad the Impaler
"but trends shouldn't continue because the country has been mitigating for a week and a half"
It would be wonderful if that happened. Unfortunately, due to the lack of CV tests here, the number actual cases is undercounted. Some reports put the undercount at a factor of 10 to 11.
If that is the case, starting mitigation 10 days ago is too little, too late. That should have started when the first cases in WA showed up - at the latest. The Rumpster knew this was coming in January, and wasted time for two months claiming this was all another impeachment hoax.
We'll know in 3 days.
In the meantime, you should go to a big MAGA rally and support the president.
"It would be wonderful if that happened. Unfortunately, due to the lack of CV tests here, the number actual cases is undercounted. Some reports put the undercount at a factor of 10 to 11."
you're right
increased testing accounts for much of the increase, rather than new infections
Cuomo is saying today that he sees things starting to slow down in NY
"If that is the case, starting mitigation 10 days ago is too little, too late."
actually, some mitigation was already occurring before the last 10 days
"That should have started when the first cases in WA showed up - at the latest."
no one, including Dems, would have supported the shutdowns at that point
they would have said it was an over-reaction
"The Rumpster knew this was coming in January, and wasted time for two months claiming this was all another impeachment hoax."
he took action to prevent it, closing the borders
the mistake was trusting Europe to take effective action
"We'll know in 3 days."
try toward the end of next week
"In the meantime, you should go to a big MAGA rally and support the president."
they always outdrew the dull Biden events
btw, what happened to Joe Presidential?
Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon said that he hopes the Senate passes a stimulus bill as soon as possible, casting it as a much-needed immediate boost for a nation reeling from the impacts of the coronavirus.
The former vice president said he has been in frequent contact with congressional leaders, as well as governors and mayors around the country, and has offered some of his feedback about the legislation.
“I think the Democrats in the Senate got as much of what needs to be done in as they could possibly get,” Biden told reporters during a 30-minute virtual briefing on Wednesday afternoon. “You can’t wait it out longer.”
He said there would need to be another round of economic aid and suggested he would push for spending on environmental policies that would fit within his version of the Green New Deal.
“We’re going to need new infrastructure going down the road here,” he said. “And it’s a way to generate economic growth. That’s going to be, I think, the next round we have to be looking at.”
Biden addressed reporters from his TV studio in the basement of his home, and the Democratic presidential candidate appeared to be remembering the days when he was a senator able to have an impact on legislation.
“I have to tell you, I find that just like anybody who cares about this, I’m chomping at the bit. I wish I were still in the Senate, being able to impact on some of these things,” he said. “But I am where I am. I hope to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. And I hope I’m able to get my message across as we go forward.”
Biden also warned that Trump’s timeline of getting the country back to normal by Easter was unrealistic and could have devastating impacts.
“Now he’s suggesting he wants to get the country opened — back open by Easter,” Biden said. “Look, we all want to get back to normal as quickly as possible, but we have a lot to do to make that possible. We have to do it in a smart way, not meet some arbitrary or symbolic timeline.”
“It would be a catastrophic thing to do for our people and for our economy if we sent people back to work just as we were beginning to see the impact of social distancing take hold only to unleash a second spike in infections,” he added. “That’d be far more devastating in the long run.”
When asked what his message was to investors who are worried about a teetering economy, Biden said they need to “think about the science.”
“Not the science of Wall Street,” he said, “the science of medicine.”
General Election: Trump vs. Biden
RCP Average 2/13 - 3/19 -- -- 50.9(BIden) 43.9(Trump) Spread: Biden +7.0
https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton
March 27, 2016
Hillary ahead by 13
Yeah, well Rump had all that Russian help and Hilary did receive nearly 3 million more votes than Rump did.
But Rump sure is a big winner now:
A RECORD 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits
"Yeah, well Rump had all that Russian help and Hilary did receive nearly 3 million more votes than Rump did"
as even a jackass like you knows, the Russian assistance was irrelevant
many other players, both domestic and foreign, did more for both sides
Russia mostly favored Trump because he tends toward isolationism
a view held by many Americans
Hillary lost because the founding fathers required our President to enjoy broad support across the country not just piling up votes in a couple of densely populated pockets
they were brilliant
she failed
"Woo hoo! New record set by Rump! said...
But Rump sure is a big winner now:
A RECORD 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits"
you won't hear even Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer go here
you really are trash, aren't you?
A Louisiana pastor continues to defy the state’s orders prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people by holding church services, the latest of which he claimed had over 1,000 attendees.
The Rev. Tony Spell, who claims that congregants at Life Tabernacle Church in the city of Central City, about 15 miles northeast of Baton Rouge, have been cured of cancer and HIV, said that coronavirus is “politically motivated.”
Spell claims that around 1,000 churchgoers, who the church has bused in from five different parishes in Louisiana, have attended his church every Sunday despite state recommendations against mass gatherings. Additional services on Tuesday, he added, attract an additional few hundred churchgoers.
"If they close every door in this city, then I will close my doors," Spell told CNN. "But you can't say the retailers are essential but the church is not. That is a persecution of the faith."
Earlier this month, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a ban against gatherings of over 50 people, which he then expanded by issuing a statewide stay-at-home order for nonessential workers and businesses.
He called the state’s case count, 1,795 cases and 65 deaths as of Wednesday, “sobering” and said that the state’s trajectory has not changed since its first cases.
A recorded livestream of the church’s hourlong services on Sunday shows congregants breaking social distancing guidelines sitting and singing close together.
President Donald Trump issued guidelines earlier this month advising against groups of 10 or more people, but has since considered lifting the social distancing limits by Easter.
SUCH IS THE BEHAVIOR OF THE SCIENTIFICALLY CHALLENGED
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