There Are More Important Things Than Living
I have long held a view of the Republican party as a bunch of rich people who are able to convince uneducated white losers to support policies to make them, the rich guys, richer. Mostly they did this by stirring up fear that some minority or other is going to take over the country and destroy "our" way of life. Republican voters are easily manipulated and there are enough of them to win elections sometimes. It still requires making sure that not everyone gets a vote, still requires some lying and cheating, but basically if you can keep the rednecks stirred up about how the threat of [insert group here], you can stay in power. Especially when the gazillionaires can directly lobby government and influence the media with their money.
In this deadly pandemic, the government has failed us but the American people have been very good about quarantining and social distancing. We've got our masks, businesses are shut down, it's strange but it's what we've got to do. The US already has the most deaths of any country and there is no sign that the virus is running out of steam, even with this drastic change to our lifestyle. It is terrible to think how much worse it could have been, if we were not quarantined and shut down like this.
Last week, the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, backed by the wealthy DeVos family, organized a protest in Lansing. In traditional Republican form, the billionaires sent around some propaganda and the streets of Lansing were jammed with pickup trucks sporting confederate flags and Trump stickers. They shut down traffic trying to get to the trauma hospital. Pretty soon old Tea-Party groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity were in on it, the Kochs and their allies backing protests to "reopen" the country.
And suddenly this is a thing. We even had a protest in Annapolis.
These are people (sometimes referred to as "Covidiots") protesting the fact that the pandemic has inconvenienced them. They want to live like they used to, they want businesses to open up, bars, sports events. The president supports these protesters, urging them to "liberate" blue states. There is some muttering about the second amendment, oh and it's religious persecution when churches, like everybody else, are prohibited from assembling crowds. This is a movement that believes if you close your eyes the virus will go away.
Nobody disagrees that this is a question about the relative importance of the economy versus people's lives. It is not clear why a bunch of working people in MAGA hats care about the economy so much, but those rich people know how to get them stirred up. The lieutenant governor of Texas had a pretty good way to put it on Fox News this week: "There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us."
His assumption seems to be that other people's lives can be sacrificed so that his family can maintain their comfort level. I doubt he means that there are more important things that his own children's and grandchildren's lives. But maybe he does, maybe these rich Republicans are that hardcore about it.
Last week a Republican Congressman, Trey Hollingsworth, who by the way is worth of $50.1 million, the 12th wealthiest member of Congress, said, "It is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter." It makes sense to him to choose the loss of American lives, to maintain the status quo. Especially somebody else's lives, not him and his family.
I cannot understand why anybody in their right mind would be taking to the streets for the right to catch a deadly illness and spread it to others.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 had a similar phenomenon. Businesses were closed, there were laws requiring masks to be worn, and by November 1918 the epidemic was declared ended in San Francisco. They had a big celebration and went back to business as usual. But then the second wave hit a few weeks later, even harder, and people did not want to go back into quarantine. A group called The Anti-Mask League formed and held big demonstrations and the city declined to close movie theaters and businesses, and from December to February the number of deaths in the city doubled.
Kentucky had one of these stupid protests last Wednesday and Sunday the state had 273 new cases, the highest one-day spike in the state since the pandemic began. You hate to wish ill of anyone, but there is a little bit of Darwin Effect in some of this. They were protesting for the right to be exposed to infection and the right to spread it to others, and there ya go.
I think in some ways these insane demonstrations are a kind of warm-up or test of the rightwing propaganda machine. They are setting up the communications networks and preparing the slogans, the Facebook groups, to spring into action as the November elections near. At this point in time they are able to get hundreds of people to literally go out and conduct kamikaze protests. Maybe the rich folk who run the Party will be able to get them to vote for Trump again.
In this deadly pandemic, the government has failed us but the American people have been very good about quarantining and social distancing. We've got our masks, businesses are shut down, it's strange but it's what we've got to do. The US already has the most deaths of any country and there is no sign that the virus is running out of steam, even with this drastic change to our lifestyle. It is terrible to think how much worse it could have been, if we were not quarantined and shut down like this.
Last week, the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, backed by the wealthy DeVos family, organized a protest in Lansing. In traditional Republican form, the billionaires sent around some propaganda and the streets of Lansing were jammed with pickup trucks sporting confederate flags and Trump stickers. They shut down traffic trying to get to the trauma hospital. Pretty soon old Tea-Party groups like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity were in on it, the Kochs and their allies backing protests to "reopen" the country.
And suddenly this is a thing. We even had a protest in Annapolis.
These are people (sometimes referred to as "Covidiots") protesting the fact that the pandemic has inconvenienced them. They want to live like they used to, they want businesses to open up, bars, sports events. The president supports these protesters, urging them to "liberate" blue states. There is some muttering about the second amendment, oh and it's religious persecution when churches, like everybody else, are prohibited from assembling crowds. This is a movement that believes if you close your eyes the virus will go away.
Nobody disagrees that this is a question about the relative importance of the economy versus people's lives. It is not clear why a bunch of working people in MAGA hats care about the economy so much, but those rich people know how to get them stirred up. The lieutenant governor of Texas had a pretty good way to put it on Fox News this week: "There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us."
His assumption seems to be that other people's lives can be sacrificed so that his family can maintain their comfort level. I doubt he means that there are more important things that his own children's and grandchildren's lives. But maybe he does, maybe these rich Republicans are that hardcore about it.
Last week a Republican Congressman, Trey Hollingsworth, who by the way is worth of $50.1 million, the 12th wealthiest member of Congress, said, "It is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter." It makes sense to him to choose the loss of American lives, to maintain the status quo. Especially somebody else's lives, not him and his family.
I cannot understand why anybody in their right mind would be taking to the streets for the right to catch a deadly illness and spread it to others.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 had a similar phenomenon. Businesses were closed, there were laws requiring masks to be worn, and by November 1918 the epidemic was declared ended in San Francisco. They had a big celebration and went back to business as usual. But then the second wave hit a few weeks later, even harder, and people did not want to go back into quarantine. A group called The Anti-Mask League formed and held big demonstrations and the city declined to close movie theaters and businesses, and from December to February the number of deaths in the city doubled.
Kentucky had one of these stupid protests last Wednesday and Sunday the state had 273 new cases, the highest one-day spike in the state since the pandemic began. You hate to wish ill of anyone, but there is a little bit of Darwin Effect in some of this. They were protesting for the right to be exposed to infection and the right to spread it to others, and there ya go.
I think in some ways these insane demonstrations are a kind of warm-up or test of the rightwing propaganda machine. They are setting up the communications networks and preparing the slogans, the Facebook groups, to spring into action as the November elections near. At this point in time they are able to get hundreds of people to literally go out and conduct kamikaze protests. Maybe the rich folk who run the Party will be able to get them to vote for Trump again.
posted by JimK at 9:52 AM
258 Comments:
Sunday’s edition of The Boston Globe contained a shocking visualization of the coronavirus pandemic: page after page after page of death notices.
The obituary section in Sunday’s print edition spanned 16 pages. This time last year, there were seven. The increase is a stark illustration of the devastating toll the pandemic is having on Massachusetts and New England.”It’s literally showing it in black and white how deadly this virus can be,” said Jaclyn Reiss, the Globe’s digital editor.
And while Reiss noted there was no immediate way to determine how many of the death notices that filled pages A-13 to A-28 came from coronavirus victims — death notices don’t always say how the person died — several of them mentioned a battle with the virus.
The section has “been growing every Sunday since the coronavirus pandemic has been surging here in Massachusetts,” Reiss said, adding that the previous Sunday, the paper ran 11 pages of death notices.
Reiss explained that besides the increased death toll — 1,706 people have died as of Monday afternoon — the uptick in death notices could be because families aren’t able to hold wakes and funerals now. With no time constraint to publish a death notice before a scheduled memorial service, families could be submitting their death notices to be published on Sunday when the paper gets higher readership.
The Globe, of course, isn’t the only paper to mark an increase. Newspapers in other hot spots around the country are seeing a drastic rise in the number of obituaries and death notices they are publishing.
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In today's @NOLAnews, we had just over 8 pages of death notices. It's been like this the last few Sundays, which is the biggest day of readership. We used to consider 4 pages a lot. All of these beloved family members and friends for so many. And no funerals.
“On the same weekend last year, there were about four pages devoted to obituaries,” according to an article in the Advocate. There were approximately 25,000 cases and 1,328 deaths in the state as of Monday afternoon.
========================
The Hartford Courant has 12 pages of obituaries today. The state has about 18,000 cases and 1,127 deaths.”It’s more than I’ve ever seen. On a Sunday, you’d see at the most three, maybe four pages, so it was about triple what we normally do,” said Rick Green, the Courant’s assistant managing editor.
The index on the left usually runs 1/4 or 1/2 way down the page.
[Today it's two columns that run the entire length of the page.]
============================
The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, published 109 obituaries across nine pages of its April 12 edition, A year earlier, there were 17 obituaries on one and a half pages, according to nj.com.
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there's actually no evidence that lockdowns improve the rate of death from coronavirus
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/
as Deborah Birx said yesterday, we have to find creative ways to adapt
we can't lockdown until a vaccine is developed
it's about more than comfort
economic depression leads to poverty which leads to death
for the forseeable future, we'll be wearing masks and keeping a distance from strangers and avoiding large gatherings
but continuing the lockdown simoly puts that off
time to get started
remember when we used to think of Patrick Henry as a hero?
be brave
It has been 88 years since Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis developed the idea of states serving as “laboratories of democracy.” But even that great thinker probably couldn’t have imagined states serving as actual laboratories, experimenting with the spread of infectious diseases in their populations. Now several Republican governors, with Trump’s encouragement, are racing to reopen during the pandemic, using their constituents as lab rats to see what happens when you relax virus containment.
Talk about poor modeling. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has opened many retail stores and lifted restrictions on beaches. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida will take reopening recommendations from a task force that includes Disney and Universal Studios. Texas, Tennessee and others are joining the race to become death destinations.
But nobody is as far out there as Kemp. Jimmy Carter, who served as Georgia’s governor before becoming president, may have been a peanut farmer. But Kemp is an actual nut. Earlier this month, when he announced one of the last stay-at-home orders in the nation, he stated that he hadn’t known “until the last 24 hours” that asymptomatic people could spread the coronavirus. This had been known for a couple of months to anyone paying attention.
But Kemp is not without guile. As Georgia’s secretary of state, he purged half a million names from voting rolls — then beat his opponent for governor by only 55,000 votes. Now he seems to have embarked on a new purge: inducing his constituents to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Perhaps he should abandon all pretense and turn his reopening into a parade and festival?
there you go again
the experiments have already been done
based on the evidence, states that didn't lockdown did no worse than those that did
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/
what America is doing right now, is a grand experiment with the Green New Deal
that hasn't gone well
From LA to London, the lockdown is helping give the planet a much-needed breath of fresh air, with air pollution levels dropping dramatically in major cities worldwide. A shame there is no one much around to enjoy that–neither travelers nor locals, with their moves so severely restricted by lockdown measures.
With a massive amount less traffic on the roads, thousands of airplanes on the ground, about 20% of the world in lockdown, and factories shut, the positive fallout on the environment of the COVID-19 crisis can be seen. Drops in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions from all these activities of 30% to 60% are being recorded in many European cities including Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Rome according to the European Environmental Agency.
The findings it says come from hourly air quality data from more than 3,000 monitoring stations all over Europe. Other factors other than the lockdown, such as weather conditions, may weigh in on pollutant levels.
Many are talking of “silver linings”. But not health officials. The “damage is already done” for patients, warns the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), the continent’s leading NGO for health advocacy. This as evidence snowballs of a strong link between coronavirus mortality and chronic air pollution.
A Harvard study has found that long-term exposure to air pollution may significantly increase the risk factor for many of up to 240,000 Americans predicted to die from COVID-19. From a survey of over 3,000 U.S. counties it found people who have lived for decades in a place with high levels of fine particulate pollution are 15% more likely to die from the disease. “If you’re getting COVID, and you have been breathing polluted air, it’s really putting gasoline on a fire,” said the study’s lead author, Francesca Dominici, a Harvard biostatistics professor.
How do we ensure the benefits for the environmental crisis go beyond the global health one? Why should it be just pie in the sky to want the slumps in air pollution to extend beyond COVID-19? Pessimists or realists, whichever way you want to put it, some experts don’t believe the cleaner air gains will last, and point to China as an example. In early March, when the country was still deep in its corona crisis, levels of nitrogen dioxide, were down by as much as 30% NASA said, but have reportedly since bounced back
Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with long-term solutions to the stinky air problem, which seriously undercuts the quality of life for people in big cities, both locals and tourists, while costing thousands of lives.
Speaking of New York’s cleaner air, Jacqueline Klopp, from the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, called the pollution drop "a really important learning moment." Scientists from the Institute have been monitoring Manhattan air, and found 10% drops in carbon dioxide and methane, and an “astounding” 50% less carbon monoxide, due largely to less exhaust fumes.
Post COVID-19, Klopp argues for greater investment in electric vehicles and renewable energy. “When we’re ready to reconstruct, we should make sure we’re investing in things that can give us a better future ...A lot of money is going to be put into getting the economy going again, and if we just put it back into the same polluting industries, people will continue dying.” U.K. climate website Carbon Brief meantime, believes COVID-19 could trigger the “largest ever annual fall in CO2” this year....
Conservatives want to reopen the country because “the cure is worse than the disease.” When you’re talking about a potentially fatal illness, this is a difficult argument to understand. The fatality rate they keep throwing around is 2%, which they say is an acceptable risk to rescue the economy.
I’ve got news for them. The fatality rate in my county (Macomb County, Michigan) is 9%. Four hundred three people have died in my county out of 4,425 identified cases. The fatality rate for Wayne County (where the most cases have been identified) is 8%.
That is probably not accurate — we haven’t had access to enough testing to arrive at an accurate fatality rate. But I’m not even in the worst county in Michigan, which isn’t the worst state in the country.
That 2% rate is more comfortable to talk about, so I’ll use it for the rest of this argument.
The idea that 2% of people infected will die becomes even easier to consider if you’re sure that you won’t be one of them. If you think that you, your family and your friends are pretty much safe, it’s even easier.
The people who die will be … them, the other.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the reopen movement started after it became widely known that minorities, people of color, are much more vulnerable to the virus than white people. That gives your average conservative white person some reassurance that they are not at significant risk.
The argument that people always die, so a 2% risk of fatality is acceptable is only valid if you, personally, are OK with being one of the 2%.
Are you willing to die to save the economy? Are you willing to die to make sure Jeff Bezos doesn’t drop to second richest guy in the world? Will you fall on your sword to be sure Exxon doesn’t suffer red ink?
Here’s a thought problem to pose to anyone defending the “open up now and take the consequences” protests.
The protest in Michigan blocked access to hospitals and endangered the lives of critically ill people. So, would the protesters be OK with calling out the National Guard and having them shoot live ammunition into the crowd — as long as they agreed to stop as soon as 2% of the protesters were dead?
I didn’t think so.
It’s easy to say fatalities are a reasonable cost for saving the economy if you think that the dead people won’t be people you know or care about.
The problem with accepting casualties as the cost of doing business is the decision may be made by someone who doesn’t know you and doesn’t give a damn about you.
The counter argument is: Dead people don’t spend money. Dead people won’t revitalize the economy.
Tuesday, Apr 21, 2020 · 5:07:34 PM EDT · elsaf
Just an update on the statistics I used here. As of this afternoon, Macomb County, Michigan has had 445 deaths and the fatality rate has updated to 10%. This is a big jump (from 403 deaths and 8%) but it mostly comes from a correction in the state’s reporting process. Still, as I said above, there is no way to know the real fatality rate because there hasn’t been enough testing.
The liar tweets tonight
"Conservatives want to reopen the country because “the cure is worse than the disease.” When you’re talking about a potentially fatal illness, this is a difficult argument to understand."
It is? Well, here's something to help you overcome your lack of intelligence: there are many other communicable diseases that are potentially fatal and there always have been.
"The fatality rate they keep throwing around is 2%, which they say is an acceptable risk to rescue the economy."
Who does? Stanford conducted a study after testing for antibodies in the Silicon Valley and calculates the mortality rate at between .12% and .2%. The flu, which we haven't shut down over for last century, has a mortality rate of .1%.
"I’ve got news for them. The fatality rate in my county (Macomb County, Michigan) is 9%. Four hundred three people have died in my county out of 4,425 identified cases. The fatality rate for Wayne County (where the most cases have been identified) is 8%."
This is similar to the infamous remark by the now discredited "Do the Math" that numbers show 1..6 million in America will die by May 1.
It's clear that the data is insufficient so why bring it up? To give your fellow morons a talking point to spread around and cause alarm?. "You know Astrid, in Michigan the rate is NINE PERCENT"
"That is probably not accurate"
so, why mention it?
"— we haven’t had access to enough testing to arrive at an accurate fatality rate."
the guys at Stanford thought they did:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/antibody-study-suggests-coronavirus-is-far-more-widespread-than-previously-thought
"But I’m not even in the worst county in Michigan, which isn’t the worst state in the country."
so, after conceding that what he said is "probably not accurate", this jackass tries to imply that it's actually probably worse than 9%
this is what TTF means by "do the math"
President Donald Trump bungled many aspects of the early coronavirus response.
To be sure, actions were being taken behind the scenes to begin getting the country ready — despite the president’s inattention. Some of the early failures were also due to bureaucratic problems and technical snafus. And the futile impeachment trial arguably distracted the president, and his entire White House, from getting serious earlier about the threat.
But Trump deserves credit that few seem ready to give him for his current approach to COVID-19. Some of the fault for this lies with Trump and his own bloviations, which are easy to mock and criticize. But it’s often more useful to consider what Trump does than what he says. And here are seven things he is doing right.
1. He's listening to experts. The president says he listens to his gut — but his gut seems heavily informed by his brain. The president is consulting a vast array of advisers, outside experts, business leaders and fellow politicians as he goes about making his decisions. Two of America's most expert doctors, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and State Department Ambassador-at-Large Deborah Birx, are helping lead Trump’s response and usually by his side at the daily White House briefings.
2. He's communicating with the nation. Trump shows he is knowledgeable about the state of play and the response, even amid misstatements and lies. Health experts, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and other officials, are always at some point able to deliver more sober accounts of the newest information. Meanwhile, the president takes questions and makes himself available.
3. He's keeping federal power in check. Trump in one briefing proclaimed his “authority is total” — exactly what the U.S. Constitution says it is not. But his detractors are still waiting for his seizure of total power, which they have been predicting since before he was elected. His response to the coronavirus has, in reality, been remarkably restrained. His resort to the Defense Production Act to force industries to help has been extremely limited, wielded, as he has noted, more as a threat than a cudgel. Instead, Trump has invested enormous time speaking with industry leaders to secure their assistance.
Meanwhile, the White House guidelines for reopening the economy leave decision-making power to the states, a judicious use of federalism that acknowledges the widely differing conditions in various regions. Note the White House wording — “guidelines,” not “directives.” Decisions are left up to the governors, and guideposts are firmly based in meeting health criteria, like a “downward trajectory of influenza-like illnesses reported within a 14-day period.” This document must be a grave disappointment to the shriller voices on the right demanding a quick reopening. It was, however, obviously written by health experts, not economists.
4. He's trying to balance health and economic concerns. All that said, the president is clearly eager to get the economy revived as fast as possible. Though he is regularly portrayed as impulsive, Trump is so far resisting his impulses. And his deep concern with the economic collapse is more than warranted. Trump’s concern is with the barbers, waiters, factory workers, store clerks and so many others who are facing a financial abyss they never bargained for or deserved.
5. He's staying positive. Trump was widely ridiculed for calling himself a “cheerleader for the country.” His can-do spirit will be needed to lead the country out of the crisis. Trump has celebrated health care workers, grocers, truck drivers and others now combating the pandemic, providing crucial moral support and showcasing for the nation its heroes. It’s an antidote he administers to his own self-centeredness.
6. He's helping the states. Yes, he picks fights with governors, but Democratic state executives from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to California Gov. Gavin Newsom have praised Trump for his accessibility and help. Trump is literally working seven days a week and is constantly on the phone with governors and world leaders, to coordinate the response to the pandemic.
7. He appointed Pence to lead the coronavirus task force. This was a vital step. Trump could have appointed a “coronavirus czar” or put an agency chief in charge. But a vice president has the power not to be ignored by the bureaucracy that must implement Trump’s policies. When the vice president, or someone working directly for him, calls, you answer the phone.
Trump’s mistakes and errors of judgment tend to get the greatest focus because he makes them so colorfully. But beneath the cacophony, there are meaningful benefits to his approach.
"This is similar to the infamous remark by the now discredited "Do the Math" that numbers show 1..6 million in America will die by May 1."
I see you can't stop lying about that.
You are truly desperate, and it shows.
no lie, whatsoever
and, honestly, this guy is doing the same thing
putting up calculated amounts he knows are false because they are based on incorrect assumptions and then hedging his bets in case he's called on it
that's just like you !!!!!
Many of the right-wing protests against state stay-at-home orders sweeping the nation have been organized or attended by white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, anti-government militias, members of a neo-fascist street gang, and other assorted extremists and scam artists.
The protests, largely coordinated on Facebook, have seen crowds of hundreds descend upon state and city government buildings, where participants flagrantly flout social distancing guidelines to demand that their respective governors reopen state businesses during a deadly pandemic.
Images of these often heavily armed protesters, screaming at health care workers and blocking ambulances from reaching hospitals, have gone viral, shocking a country where polls show a large majority support measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has already killed over 45,000 people in this country.
Yet the events — which present a clear danger to communities across the U.S., risking the further spread of a virus — have been promoted extensively by Fox News. On Friday, immediately after a Fox segment sympathetic to the rallies, the president tweeted out his support for the protesters.
“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” Trump wrote in a tweet-storm, directly contradicting the advice of the medical experts on his own COVID-19 task force.
It’s easy to see why footage of the protests might excite the president. They bear a striking resemblance, after all, to his own fascist campaign rallies, with attendees who are almost uniformly white, and who display a deep devotion to the president, donning red MAGA hats and waving Trump 2020 flags.
And like Trump’s rallies, the anti-shutdown protests are teeming with right-wing extremists.
A rally Monday in Augusta, the state capital of Maine, was organized in part by Larry Lockman, a white nationalist former state lawmaker who in 2017 warned that proposed immigrant welcome centers were tantamount to a “war on whites.”
According to Maine-based journalist Nathan Bernard, Lockman helped coordinate Monday’s anti-shutdown event on the “Mainers Against Excessive Quarantine” Facebook page, where he encouraged attendees to show up to the rally wearing MAGA gear. “This is about the loss of our civil rights and its impact on our businesses and religion,” he wrote in one post.
Bernard reported seeing Lockman coordinating a group of unmasked protesters at the rally Monday.
In Columbus, Ohio, two men were photographed at an anti-shutdown protest holding up an anti-Semitic sign depicting Jews as rats, calling them “the real plague.” The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism believes one of the men belongs to the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.
According to the ADL, this individual was photographed at a 2019 white power rally with Timothy Wilson, who was killed by federal agents last month during an attempted arrest over his alleged plot to bomb a Missouri hospital during the pandemic in order to attract attention to his white supremacist views.
A “Reopen Florida” protest scheduled for this weekend in Miami was organized by a leader of the neo-fascist street gang The Proud Boys, the Miami New Times reported this week.
Enrique Tarrio, a longtime Proud Boy, admitted to the New Times that he’d organized the rally, which he’s advertised as being “against the Democrat-driven unconstitutional lockdown.”
Proud Boys have also been spotted at anti-shutdown protests in Colorado, Nevada, Ohio and Michigan. At the rally in Lansing, Michigan, Proud Boys were allegedly among the attendees blocking ambulances from being able to reach a hospital.
Also in Michigan — as noted by reporter Jason Wilson in The Guardian — were members of the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page Wilson notes “features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.”
An April 19 rally in Olympia, Washington, was well-attended by other anti-government militia groups, including the Oathkeepers and Three Percenters, whose members have been implicated in multiple anti-Muslim terror plots in recent years.
Matt Marshall, leader of a state chapter of the Three Percenters, encouraged attendees ahead of the Olympia rally to wear Hawaiian shirts, a reference to the “Big Luau,” which is itself code for the “boogaloo,” a term used in white supremacist, militia and far-right circles to describe the bloody civil war they predict — and often hope — is coming to America.
According to the ADL, anti-shutdown protesters in Tennessee and New Hampshire have been spotted holding up signs invoking the boogaloo. “Liberty or Boogaloo,” the signs have said, and “Join my boog squad.”
In San Diego, an anti-shutdown protest this past Saturday was organized by Roger Ogden, who has previously held a series of far-right rallies in the city in coordination with the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.
“We do not believe that the COVID-19 bug represents such an immediate danger to others that constitutional rights should be curtailed,” Ogden told reporters at the San Diego rally, downplaying the virus as less severe than the flu. (COVID-19 is thought to be 10 times more deadly than the flu.)
And in Idaho, rally scheduled for this Friday outside the state capital building in Boise is being advertised by Diego Rodriguez, a pastor and former Republican candidate for the state senate.
Rodriguez recently held an Easter Sunday church service — in defiance of social distancing orders in the state — with Ammon Bundy, who led the militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.
Anti-vaccination extremists, a mainstay of Trump rallies and other far-right events in recent years, have been seen at multiple anti-shutdown protests.
An April 14 rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, was organized in part by an anti-vaccination activist named Ashley Smith.
“I am against mandatory vaccination,” Smith said in an email to The News & Observer. “That is a personal right and as a sovereign citizen I have the right to choose what medical procedures I and my children receive. Pandemic status/state of emergency doesn’t change that.”
Public health experts fear the anti-vaxx movement could, once a COVID-19 vaccine is developed, undermine a national inoculation program.
Owen Shroyer, a host on the conspiracy website Infowars, held a “You Can’t Close America” rally in the Texas state capitol last weekend, attracting hundreds of attendees.
When Infowars founder Alex Jones arrived with a bullhorn, fans swarmed around him and jostled to shake his hand as Jones declared that the pandemic — which has already killed over 500 people in Texas — is a hoax.
Investigations by The Washington Post and NBC News revealed that some of the largest Facebook groups organizing protests across the country were all founded by four brothers with a history exploiting far-right causes to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Dorr brothers — Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew — were the founders or administrators of the groups New Yorkers Against Excessive Quarantine, Minnesotans Against Excessive Quarantine, Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine, Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine and Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine.
According to NBC News, the groups started or administered by the brothers, which have amassed some 200,000 members, direct people to websites owned by the Dorrs, which then directs people to register their names and addresses, or to sign up as dues-paying members for organizations promoting pro-gun, anti-abortion, or pro-Trump causes.
But Republicans who have previously crossed paths with the Dorr brothers warn that such fundraisers have little to do with political organizing and more to do with lining the Dorrs’ pockets.
Minnesota’s Senate Republican Caucus earlier this year warned voters about these Dorr “scams.”
And Minnesota Citizens Concerned For Life, a prominent anti-abortion group, states on its website that the “Dorr brothers are established scam artists.”
“Nothing they say can be believed,” the website says, “and giving them your money will not advance the pro-life cause in any way.”
very fascinating, even if unclear how much hype there is in it
while not defending whatever abhorrent views an insignificant portion of the protestors have, if they are breathing human beings, they have a constitutional right to peaceably assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances
and there is not only one way forward
don't shoot down open discussion when we really need it
"One for the Lyin' King said...
The liar tweets tonight
April 22, 2020 2:39 PM"
btw, just to post something positive, for once, I thought this was some clever wordplay
"putting up calculated amounts he knows are false because they are based on incorrect assumptions and then hedging his bets in case he's called on it"
It is impossible to have all the right assumptions right now because no one has all the data. It may take years of forensic analysis to figure out the correct infection rate numbers to use, whether some strains are more virulent than others, how much air pollution or weather contributes to the fatality rate, how many initial infectors were in a given city spreading the virus before a breakout was detected, and many other variables.
That doesn't stop one from doing a simplified analysis, knowing the limitations, and see what information it tells you. They have to do the same thing every year when they decide which combination of virus elements to put in the flu vaccine every year. They don't have perfect info available, so they use what they have to estimate the most likely outcome and pick the strains most likely to provide the best protection.
It's not perfect, and you might even call it "hedging their bets." But until some very stable genius figures out a better way to do it, that's the best we've got - and it doesn't look like that will change any time soon.
Doing the math on the coronavirus has even more unknowns. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or that your gross misunderstanding of how its applied doesn't mean someone is "hedging his bets in case he's called on it."
Based on the numbers popping out of these calculations, some people are "hedging their bets" by being more careful and serious about social distancing, wearing masks and / or gloves, and deciding whether or not they should protest.
But that shouldn't stop you from joining your like-minded allies the Proud Boys, Alex Jones, the Three Percenters, et al outside for fun and MAGA hats.
"It is impossible to have all the right assumptions right now because no one has all the data."
oh, quite true
but we had enough data when you posted to say that 1.6 million Americans weren't going to die of the virus by May Day
it was virtually certain
and we have enough now to say the death rate isn't 9%
no thinking person would come to that conclusion
it's OK to think
give it a try
"but we had enough data when you posted to say that 1.6 million Americans weren't going to die of the virus by May Day"
Since you keep insisting on lying about what was said, I will repost it here so people can see for themselves:
"The math doesn't look good.
I did a regression analysis of the number of US deaths for the coronavirus using the data from here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
If you start from Mar 10th (call that day 1) and go to Apr 4th (day 26), the best fit equation is y = 17.331e^0.2465x with a correlation coefficient (R^2) of 0.9965. (This value being very close to 1 indicates a very good fit - the data and the estimate are right on top of each other.)
If the virus continues to take lives following the same exponential curve, the math predicts a total of 75,622 deaths next Sunday (the 12th), and 6,391,610 deaths at the end of April.
The only hopeful sign in the data is that for 4/2 through 4/4, the actual deaths are a bit below the estimated line. So performing the calculations again starting from 3/29 (because a few more points should give a better estimate of the trend), the best fit equation becomes y = 48.623e^0.1999x with a correlation coefficient of 0.9930. Not as good a fit, but the time constant is essentially 5 days rather than a little over 4 - this makes a huge improvement.
That line estimates a total of 43,508 deaths on the 12th, and 1,589,447 on the 30th.
Our best hope is that the small dip that has occured in the past 3 days means we are reaching the peak for the US. If that is the case, then we can look forward to the deaths being a lot lower.
If not, and this just reflects the deaths in New York going down in the last few days, and the rest of the country is still on the same trajectory, this could be very ugly.
If you're the kind of person who prays, you might pray the the social distancing and stay at home orders started soon enough.
Good luck."
APRIL 05, 2020 6:44 PM
[I will note here that thanks to shutdowns, the 43,508 estimated by the 12th, was passed sometime between the 20th and 21st - 8 to 9 days later.]
What I don't understand is why you keep insisting on lying when anyone can go back and check for themselves and see that the gross oversimplification you keep peddling is simply untrue.
"That line estimates a total of 43,508 deaths on the 12th, and 1,589,447 on the 30th."
there it is
you said the math indicated that
when I objected that the underlying data was not applicable, which was obvious, you said, about a week later, it was still the best estimate
why did you post it when you knew it was false?
when I asked you that, you said it was to encourage everyone to continue social distancing
just try speaking truthfully
"you said the math indicated that"
No. I said the math ESTIMATED that.
It was not a prediction or a certainty. It was an ESTIMATE based on expressly indicated limited data.
"when I objected that the underlying data was not applicable, which was obvious, you said, about a week later, it was still the best estimate"
No. I did not say it was the "best estimate."
I said: "Right now, it's not clear from the data if an actual slowdown has occurred. The exponential fit (unfortunately) is still the best one for the data."
In regression analysis, any of an number of curves can be used to fit the data - exponential, linear, polynomial, etc. When fitting curves, the "best fit" curve has a specific meaning and is the one whose correlation coefficient is closest to 1. At the time, the "best fit" for the data was the exponential curve, and that is precisely what my sentence indicated.
Through either your ignorance or maliciousness you have misrepresented that as "best estimate," for the death count. Just because a curve on a limited set of data is the "best fit" doesn't mean that it is the "best estimate" of the end - especially if conditions change - as I noted several times, but you keep ignoring.
"why did you post it when you knew it was false?
when I asked you that, you said it was to encourage everyone to continue social distancing"
There was nothing false about the regression analysis, and I was up front about the limited dataset I used, and even provided the link for it and the specific date ranges used. If you think there is something false in it, Do the Math yourself and tell me where I went wrong, very stable genius.
Reading between the lines however, it appears that you are unable to distinguish between the indicative mood and the subjunctive mood in English. My entire post was filled with subjunctive mood sentences, whereas you keep insisting that what I wrote were hard core, take it to the bank, actual predictions - i.e. indicative mood. They simply were not, were never intended to be, and yet you keep insisting they were.
In case other idiots out there who were homeschooled, and never learned the difference between indicative mood and subjunctive mood, here are a few videos to help explain the difference. Maybe you'll understand things better when the adults are talking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdmBd0NuoqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp_PPRbcsCQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ1n1r8eXmY
@MickJagger
The Stones were in the studio recording new material before the lockdown & one song - Living In A Ghost Town - we thought would resonate through the times we’re living in. It’s out at 5pm BST today and you can hear the track and interview on @Beats1 now! https://the-rolling-stones.lnk.to/MickBeatsSo
"That line estimates a total of 43,508 deaths on the 12th, and 1,589,447 on the 30th."
I'll ask again:
why did you post this?
what did that accomplish, in your mind?
I believe I answered that several days ago. Find it and repost it if you like.
But repost the whole thing - not just your out-of-context excerpts that you try to bludgeon people with.
"while not defending whatever abhorrent views an insignificant portion of the protestors have, if they are breathing human beings, they have a constitutional right to peaceably assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances"
Sure, racists right-wing Americans have the right to assemble peaceably.
If they want to give that impression, they should quit assembling armed with weapons of war.
https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/michigan-anti-quarantine-protest-05-gty-jc-200415_hpMain_16x9_992.jpg
https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/sdv0eSKZm6KRm8N2vKED3sBOUh8=/1400x932/smart/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JE2DILM2SVGUVJ3FYSMRZ3EWJ4.jpg
https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/04/NINTCHDBPICT000578283768.jpg
These racist right-wing white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, anti-government militias, members of a neo-fascist street gangs, and other assorted extremists and scam artists didn't start protesting for reopening states until it was reported that Covid-19’s devastating toll on black and Latino Americans was so much higher than for whites.
The motive of these racist right-wing groups is clear.
Spin your little heart out, it won't change the facts.
says it all, right therre
don't give up hope for "Do the Math"
we just need 1,550,000 more deaths over the next week and his ESTIMATE will right !
could happen (wink-wink)
No one is hoping for 1.55 million more deaths moron.
Why don't you go out and protest the lockdowns with your friends? I'm sure they're "very fine people."
"No one is hoping for 1.55 million more deaths moron."
Glad to hear it. When you posted something that had no chance of happening, we all worried that you seemed a little too excited about it.
Just over a month ago, when much of the nation went into lockdown closing schools and businesses while ordering people to stay in their homes, it was for a specific reason. The purpose of the lockdown, we were told at the time, was to slow the spread of the coronavirus and avoid overtaxing our hospital systems as we had seen happen in Italy. The good news is that it worked; the better news is that that success can now allow us to begin to reopen the nation’s economy.
Not only did our hospitals have enough capacity to handle the regional spikes in the virus, in cities such as New York, extra beds at the Javitz convention center and on the USS Comfort turned out to be unnecessary. Meanwhile, in many communities across the country hospitals sit empty, laying off workers because they are forbidden from performing many elective procedures.
Now that we have flattened and even started to turn the curve of cases downward, the goalposts on the lockdown are starting to move. Those who oppose reopening argue that we need extremely widespread testing before we can get back to work, and that we must have thousands of people hired to trace the contacts of people testing positive for the virus.
It’s important to note that until a vaccine is created, assuming one is, there is no way to stop the virus from spreading. The point of social distancing and staying at home was to slow the infection rate, which it appears to have done. If the new standard is that we have to stay on lockdown until there is no longer any threat of infection then we could be sitting in our houses for a year, which is simply not tenable.
This week in Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee some reopening is set to begin. By next week restaurants will be open for dine-in eating and movies theaters will be operating in some places. The governors choosing to open up have come under attack for putting their states’ citizens at risk, and in fact, no state has yet achieved the 14 days of decreasing cases that the White House guidelines suggest to begin phase one of reopening.
But as Trump has made clear, these decisions are being left to the governors and these three states will now be important test cases for other states weighing their own options. It’s a risk, the worst-case scenario, which is bad, would see a surge of cases that threatens hospital capacity, and which results in significant loss of life. While the governors understand that cases will inevitably increase with reopening, they are counting on that spread to remain low over all, allowing more business and amenities to open.
This is a sensible approach that is absolutely in line with the original purpose of the lockdown and social distancing. And even with the economy open there is no reason to believe people won’t act with caution, employing hand washing and disinfecting. Slowing the spread of the virus is not a zero sum game, it is worthwhile to begin to experiment with loosening restrictions that are wreaking havoc on the economies of communities across the country.
"let's be careful to aviod [sic] making the mistake that "Do the Math" made"
My biggest mistake was not stopping to consider that someone who couldn't reliably punctuate a sentence would have absolutely no idea how the subjunctive mood worked.
Looks like I'll have to use "Dick and Jane" sentences if I want to make sure conservatives can understand them.
don't be alarmed, FOLKS!
"Do the Math" is actually a lot smarter than you would think from reading these posts
no, no one could be this dumb!
I've seen 4th graders do better insults than that.
Try again.
oh, OK
Do the Math, who presented the case for 1.6 million American deaths by May Day, is trash and so is the guy who said the death rate is 9% in his area and "it's not even the worst place" in America
in the midst of an attack by folks in the mainland Chinese government, they are part of a slimy deviant subculture trying to demoralize our country
On January 28th, at a meeting of the World Health Organization, Xi Jinping said “the virus is a demon and we cannot let that demon hide.” An interesting turn of phrase for, as a matter of high government policy, the demon was driven from the shadows of a lab in Wuhan, China, and made to travel the world—most notably to the United States, where the virus would ravage the bodies of Americans many of whom would die as a result. That this attack might have a political purpose—to harm the United States and unseat Donald Trump—is, however, beyond the pale of respectable discourse. Nearly any other excuse is given for what might have happened in Wuhan. Most notable is the Chinese fashion of consuming exotic animals including bats and pangolins. Although they do such things and such things do have the potential to spread viruses, an accepted narrative is that this vector of transmission amounts to an honest mistake, the kind of thing that might happen at any old place at any old time. That there was a Level-4 virology lab in Wuhan is dismissed as mere coincidence, and to suggest that the virus might have escaped from there is something akin to racism or worse. Although the President has asked for this to be investigated, one must be careful, in the meantime, not to suggest that the Wuhan virus was a bioweapon designed for and purposely used to kill Americans. That charge brings with it the potential for nuclear retaliation, for American strategic doctrine would be to respond to an attack by a weapon of mass destruction with a weapon of mass destruction of our own. To suggest such a thing requires that one dismiss it immediately, so terrible would be the chain of events that would follow. But to do so is to engage also in a kind of self-deception about what coronavirus in fact has ended up being: a biological agent with the quality of a weapon spread from China to the United States by design—even if that design was normal international travel, and even if the virus was used not merely to run up the body count but to damage our economic and political health. Lest anyone doubt the political nature of the pandemic, the outbreak in Wuhan was built on Chinese deception from the very beginning and quite intentionally. Once it was clear that there was an outbreak of yet another coronavirus, the United States asked to be let into Wuhan to do our own analysis of their crisis. America has not been allowed to do so to this very day. What must U.S. policymakers have made of the rebuff? To suggest that it might have had a chilling effect is to put it mildly. The sensible response by President Trump, beyond halting the ability of foreign nationals to fly into the U.S. from China, was to match the real-world information his government was able to discern with what could possibly happen to the United States. The medical response to the crisis had to be built on a worst-case scenario: that the Wuhan Virus was radically more deadly than anything we had seen in modern times. To have done otherwise, given Chinese behavior and active measures to deceive the United States and the West, would have been irresponsible. And the result is also what might have been expected. Nearly 330 million Americans have been sheltering in place, stopping the largest and most powerful economy on earth. Almost thirty million Americans have lost their jobs despite emergency economic legislation. More will follow. Businesses large and small are making calculations about whether two or three months of economic support will be enough to survive this unprecedented shutdown. The actions taken by the government, seemingly necessary at the time, amount to a kind of nationalization of both major industries and small businesses. And, even after all this, there is massive pain being felt in America’s heartland over the economic uncertainty.
As thought experiments go, it is not far-fetched to consider the Wuhan Virus an attack against the United States. It is an elementary position of Chinese statecraft not to engage an enemy directly. What better weapon than one that looks for all the world like a painful mistake? At the same time, contrary to universal expectations about bioweapons, it is not as if the new coronavirus threatened to wipe out millions and millions of Americans. Although President Trump often states that 2.2 million Americans could have died, that would only have occurred had there been a full-scale societal breakdown where the infrastructure for transport and food supply, water, power, and sanitation had totally collapsed because of the severity of the virus. The steps the President took near immediately ensured that was not going happen. And, as we are now discovering, the virus is not as lethal or debilitating to as many as was once feared. So let us continue the thought experiment: if the virus was not going to kill us all, what was its purpose? Here the most obvious answer may well be the right one. The only reasonable response to a highly contagious novel coronavirus of unknown lethality is a lockdown of the national economy. As a goal, this outcome itself has a kind of strategic beauty. Because precautions could ultimately keep the death toll comparable to that of a bad flu season, the pandemic will hardly be seen to justify a great nation going to war. But the damage done has been immense. The question then becomes: why? That the United States is in an economic war with the People’s Republic of China seems rather obvious. At the heart of the Trump presidency is a defense of the American people from the economic predations of the PRC. The President’s Phase One Trade Agreement was designed to stop China’s theft of intellectual property, forced technology transfers, and unfair business practices. President Trump’s resolute stance was unprecedented. The hardline elements under Chairman Xi could not have been pleased with such a result. It was, however, not such a bitter pill for the Chinese since, as they signed Phase One on January 15, they knew that the virus was already spreading among an American population that would have to be locked down since, again, the U.S. knew neither what it was dealing with nor how to treat it. This Communist Party officials made sure of.
The resulting state quarantines have devastated the U.S. economy and demoralized those millions of Americans who were counting on President Trump to set things right with Communist China. Would the PRC have had any interest in all this? Indeed, are they sending a message to future American leaders that this is the cost of standing up to China? In this regard, what we have been calling the invisible enemy seems not so invisible. It appears rather clearly as the Communist Party of China and those within the People’s Republic who support it. This is worth stating, for there is a strategic and moral danger in failing to assign blame where blame is due. If you are asking men and women to make sacrifices necessary to remain free people, it is good to shoot straight with them about the true state of affairs. It is what is owed a free people. Also, failure to do so signals to Communist China a moral weakness: that the American citizenry is incapable of understanding the threats that they face and the responses that will be necessary for their continued freedom and prosperity. It is one thing for the Communist Chinese to deceive us. It is quite another to deceive ourselves. It is understandable that President Trump is hesitant as yet to denounce the Communist Chinese with the unremitting vitriol they deserve. To win this conflict requires diplomacy at the highest levels. But Trump’s approach will soon be tested, for there can be little doubt that what has occurred here was no accident. Even if the spread of the virus in the lab in Wuhan to a human was unintentional, the handling of the spread by Communist authorities appears to be well-calculated with a rather specific intent. The lengths to which the Chinese went to buy up the world’s supply of personal protective equipment in December and January only underscore this. Xi Jinping and the Communist Chinese are masters of deception and political manipulation. It is not possible to rule an empire of 1.4 billion people without it. When combined with the apparatus of a ruthless police state, a modern strategic arsenal, an intelligence service that can reach into any center of power on the globe, and a determination to reorder the world, they have presented themselves as a most formidable foe to the United States and the West. The American people need to understand this. It is now up to President Trump to hold the People’s Republic of China to account for what it has done—and up to us to make sure that nothing like it ever happens to us again.
More than a dozen governors extended their economic shutdown orders recently into May and beyond. Those officials should have publicly addressed the following questions first:
How many coronavirus deaths do you expect to avert by the shut-down extension?
What will your state’s economy look like after another month of enforced stasis?
How many workers will have lost their jobs?
How many businesses will have closed for good?
How many of your state’s young residents, seeking employment for the first time, will be unable to find it?
Instead, the announcements of the prolonged shutdown were representative of government decision-making during the coronavirus crisis: opaque, lacking in criteria for measuring success and failure, and bereft of any attempt to measure the benefits of mitigating one particular health problem against the costs—including other health problems.
New York’s tele-ubiquitous governor, Andrew Cuomo, for example, announced on April 15 that New York’s economy would now be shut down through May 15, instead of reopening on April 29, as previously scheduled. How did he arrive at May 15? It is a mystery. Other governors had just as inscrutably chosen May 3, May 4, May 8, May 20, or June 10 for their extensions.
Cuomo’s operating principle, he said, was to “do no harm.” Had harm to people’s livelihoods been factored into the extension decision? Viewers and voters were only left to guess. Cuomo’s press secretary has not responded to a query asking whether the governor had consulted with small business owners about their capacity to survive another month without customers.
Cuomo did reveal that his future decision-making would be guided by “data and science.” But all previous “scientific” estimates of the coronavirus toll—from the number of hospitalizations to the extent of equipment shortages and deaths—by Cuomo’s own admission, had proven wildly overinflated, sometimes by an order of magnitude of 10 times or more.
Instead of elucidating the criteria used in his extension decision, Cuomo offered a two-part “matrix” for deciding whether individual businesses will be allowed to reopen: First, in his words, “How important is a business to society, how essential is it?” Second, “How safely can the business operate?” It is not the role of a state bureaucrat to decide how essential an enterprise is. That is a judgment for consumers to make. To its employees, every business is essential. Perhaps the governor should let voters decide how essential the vast state bureaucracy is, how many staffers and diversity managers should be furloughed or fired during the current shut-down, and how many politicians should continue receiving their salaries.
The capriciousness of government decisions of business “importance” has already been patent in Michigan’s and other states’ shut-down orders. Residents of New York City still have access to the city’s great parks, probably because Mayor Bill DeBlasio uses one of them himself. (It is not the park that one might predict, however. Though New York’s mayoral mansion is within easy walking distance of Manhattan’s Central Park and is located within a smaller riverside park, DeBlasio is driven 24 miles most mornings to and from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for jogging, since that is his preferred venue.) De Blasio does not have a young child, so New York City’s children’s playgrounds are now boarded up. Ditto the schools.
It also helps in being designated “essential” to be part of the traditional big government portfolio. The construction of affordable housing, homeless shelters, and public housing projects may continue under the New York shutdown, but not garden variety commercial and residential building. Renewable energy projects to support those homeless shelters and affordable housing may also continue.
Cuomo’s latest shut-down order was statewide. As of April 16, 11 of New York’s 62 counties had no coronavirus deaths, and 31 counties had five or fewer deaths. Thirty-nine New York counties had death rates of five or less per 100,000 of population. For comparison, the national death rate from all causes was 723.6 per 100,000 in 2018, nearly 145 times greater than the five or fewer coronavirus death rate in New York’s upstate counties. The national death rate for heart disease in 2018 was 163.6 per 100,000, nearly 33 times the five or fewer per 100,000 coronavirus death rate in those 39 counties. New York City’s coronavirus death rate was 115 per 100,000—23 times the low upstate death rate. The overall New York State coronavirus death rate—71 per 100,000—is 14 times the low county death rate.
A large proportion of New York state coronavirus deaths (as elsewhere in the country) occurred in nursing homes and other congregate care facilities for the elderly: nearly 18 percent (representing 3448 deaths) of all coronavirus deaths statewide, as of April 19. Ninety-three percent of all coronavirus hospitalizations in the state have occurred in the southernmost part of the state—from Westchester and Rockland Counties, just north of New York City, to Long Island. Yet counties with minimal caseloads, no deaths, and/or no nursing homes now are having their economic lifeblood sucked out of them, though they bear no resemblance to New York City and its surrounding areas.
A day after Cuomo announced the moratorium extension, representatives from four upstate counties appealed to him for relief from his order. The combined population of Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego, and St. Lawrence counties is about 361,000 people, but those counties (located east and north of Lake Ontario) have had only 232 coronavirus cases among them, a handful of hospitalizations, and only one death. Constituents were inundating the officials’ offices with concerns about the “devastating impact” of the shutdown on the region’s economic vitality. “Why were upstate counties subject to the same restrictions as New York City?” voters asked.
Now that big manufacturing has exited upstate New York, small local businesses are the only thing keeping many communities alive. But many of those local businesses, already struggling, will have exhausted all their resources once the governor decides that they may, in theory, reopen. On April 21, Cuomo announced that state bureaucrats would start evaluating whether particular regions of New York could start to reopen before the downstate area, depending on whether their caseload had plateaued. This was a welcome concession to reality, even if Cuomo’s office provided no timetable for the reevaluation process.
The focus on saving “just one life” from the coronavirus, as Cuomo put it in March, to the exclusion of all other considerations likely will prove a catastrophic failure of policymaking. The devastation to individuals’ ability to flourish or even survive may soon become irreversible. Every scientific model used to justify these economic death sentences has been discredited. But even if those models were proven reliable, government decision-making must turn toward opening up. Officials must be made to justify, through a transparent analysis of costs and benefits, all further mandates to prevent people from working. Otherwise, there may be nothing recognizable as our economy to return to, with a resulting cost in human life and well-being that will match anything the coronavirus could inflict.
Folks in the Dem Party now want to dump Biden and go to the guy who governed over the worst viral outbreak in America. They always return to their suicidal instincts. We can always count on it.
A majority of Democrats want to nominate New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for president instead of Joe Biden, according to poll results shared exclusively with The Post.
The national poll found 56 percent of Democrats prefer Cuomo, with 44 percent wanting to stick with presumptive nominee Biden — a 12-point margin well outside the 4.8 percent margin of error for the Democratic sample.
Hispanic voters, young people, women and self-identified liberals are most likely to favor dumping the former vice president for Cuomo.
Cuomo denied last month that he wanted to run for president, but some Democrats still are clamoring for an alternative to Biden, who faded from public view during the coronavirus outbreak, which elevated Cuomo in daily press conferences.
Club for Growth vice president of communications Joe Kildea said that the results highlight Biden’s weakness as a candidate.
“With every major news event, Democrats realize more and more how bad of a candidate Joe Biden is, and that Democrats now preferring Cuomo is just another example,” Kildea said.
oh, look
pathetic Joe Biden finally found a way to get some attention
the voters in November will give him a little more attention than he bargained for
Joe Biden said Thursday that he believes President Donald Trump will try to delay the November election.
"Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can't be held,” the former vice president and apparent Democratic presidential nominee said during an online fundraiser.
"Imagine threatening not to fund the post office. Now, what in God’s name is that about? Other than trying to let the word out that he’s going to do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote," Biden said. "That’s the only way he thinks he can possibly win.”
Trump has not made any comments about delaying the Nov. 3 election, and he does not have the power to do so unilaterally.
An 1845 law sets the date for states to appoint presidential electors, "which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot," and nothing in the Constitution or by Congress grants the president the power to postpone an election, according to the Congressional Research Service.
"During previous episodes of war, pandemic, or other deadly crises in American history, the presidential election date has never been changed in response to an emergency," the research service said
that's right!
the voters are gonna give 'em a bargain
the weak, mindless, bumbling fool!
He's killing us with his inaction and now he's trying to get us to kill ourselves with his worthless Trump U medical advice.
There are laws against practicing medicine without a license.
The maker of Lysol and other disinfectants issued a warning against improper use of its products after President Trump touted their power to kill the virus.
The F.D.A. issued a warning against using anti-malaria drugs that Trump has touted.
The drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in coronavirus patients, and should be used only in clinical trials or hospitals where patients can be closely monitored for heart problems, the Food and Drug Administration warned in a safety communication issued on Friday.
“The F.D.A. is aware of reports of serious heart rhythm problems in patients with Covid-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, often in combination with azithromycin” and other drugs that can disrupt heart rhythm, the agency said. The statement also noted that many people were getting outpatient prescriptions for the drugs in the hopes of preventing the infection or treating it themselves.
The warning is based on a review of adverse events reported from multiple sources, the agency said, adding: “These adverse events were reported from the hospital and outpatient settings for treating or preventing COVID-19, and included QT interval prolongation, ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation, and in some cases death.”
There is no proof that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can help coronavirus patients. They are approved to treat malaria and the autoimmune diseases lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. But reports from France and China suggesting a benefit sparked interest in the drugs, even though the reports lacked the scientific controls needed to determine whether the drugs actually worked.
Mr. Trump has advocated their use repeatedly, sometimes combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic that is used to treat bacterial infections, not viral diseases. His repeated promotion of the use of the anti-malaria drugs is at odds with many of his top public health officials.
"Do the Math, who presented the case for 1.6 million American deaths by May Day, is trash and so is the guy who said the death rate is 9% in his area and "it's not even the worst place" in America"
Last time I checked, we still have free speech in this country, corpulent worm. And conservatives used it prodigiously and maliciously to undermine all of Obama's efforts to pull the country out of the Bush debacle, harming families all across the country while McConnell's senate shot down every attempt to help America get back on its feet - because he wanted to make "sure Obama's a one-term president." McConnell's cynical use of US citizens as pawns in his game is disgusting and borders on treasonous.
"in the midst of an attack by folks in the mainland Chinese government, they are part of a slimy deviant subculture trying to demoralize our country"
The walking disaster that is our president had months of warning from US security services that the virus was coming from China. For most of that time his biggest response was that it was another Democrat "impeachment hoax."
In Rump's efforts to undo anything and everything that Obama had ever done, he scuttled the US pandemic protection team, and pulled out American health monitors from China for his expensive trade-war tiff. Those people were there for one reason - to get first hand information on emerging diseases, as China's farming and market practices have been a petri dish for new biologic threats for decades.
Now that Rump's incompetence has given us more COVID-19 cases than anywhere else in the world (despite having only about 5% of the world's population) and doing at least as much damage as the last Republican president, who left us with the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression, sociopathic sycophants are trolling the web desperately trying to prop up the Orange Emperor with No Clothes by deflecting the blame to anyone and everyone except to where the buck stops.
Rump is so bad that even Republicans have built PACs and made ads to keep him from getting re-elected.
The guy who said this has no business giving medical advice:
“If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations: Your house just went down 75% in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, OK? Rrrrr, rrrrr... you know the thing that makes the... it’s so noisy."
Yes, it was the Orange one, and yes, he called wind turbines "windmills" because he doesn't know the difference between the two.
And no, wind turbines do not cause cancer.
This is the idiot in charge of the US pandemic response. And to think, people actually took medical advice from this guy.
I know I won’t be the only one who feels that this bit of video is utterly engrossing as we watch Dr. Birx’ thoughts and emotions wash across her face. Today was very probably the day that she realized she’s living in, and taking part in, and to some extent enabling a waking nightmare.
"Twitter user Daniel Lewis edited video of the briefing to zoom in on the reaction of task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx hearing Trump wonder if he might have made a medical discovery."
Daniel Lewis
@Daniel_Lewis3
Here is Dr. Birx's reaction when President Trump asks his science advisor to study using UV light on the human body and injecting disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.
[VIDEO]
8:35 PM - Apr 23, 2020
"Last time I checked, we still have free speech in this country,"
on this I agree with the monster trash called "do the math". even despicable creatures like him have a constitutional right to free speech, even though they reject the constitution
btw, his dastardly friend, who claimed the rate is worse than 9% is being outed by data
In early March, President Donald Trump was lambasted for saying that he had a hunch the coronavirus fatality rate, which the World Health Organization pegged then at 3 to 4 percent, was in fact much lower, under 1 percent. Many commentators pointed out that the beginning of a pandemic medical crisis was not the time to be floating hunches. But it looks now like the president might well have been right.
New data from random antibody tests conducted in New York State suggest that as many as 2.7 million people statewide have had the coronavirus. That along with the just over 15,000 deaths that have occurred leads to a fatality rate for the virus of .5 percent according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Here is what Trump said on March 4:
“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot 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. I think that that number, the WHO number, is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”
Democrats and media pundits blasted Trump for spreading “misinformation.”
While this data is preliminary, it is backed up by another study in Los Angeles that found 40 times more people had carried the virus then were previously known. This dropped the fatality rate in LA from 4.5 percent to .1-.3 percent.
It is difficult to stress how important these findings are. The 5-week lockdown that has destroyed the American economy was put in place by contemplating what looks to be rather absurd numbers by the WHO.
While the United States has nearly lost a terrible 50,000 lives to the virus, this radical shift in our understanding of just how deadly it really is should make us question not only the logic of the lockdown in the first place, but more importantly how much longer we are going to stay on this destructive course.
The fact of the matter is that back in early March, what Trump was saying made sense. We had conducted very few tests of asymptomatic people and consequently we were flying blind as to just what percentage of covid-19 cases were becoming critical or leading to death. If Trump’s informed “hunch” continues to be confirmed, it will require vast changes in how we are battling the virus.
For one thing, the idea of contact tracing, which Cuomo said yesterday would be led up by Mike Bloomberg in New York, comes under serious doubt with these new findings. For example, in New York City the sample suggests that about 20 percent or some 1.6 million people have already had the virus. At that rate of spread, tracing becomes a very dubious proposition.
It would be nice if Trump’s perspicacity on this issue led to the media giving him a little more respect on the Chinese Virus response, but that’s unlikely. Either way, the results are fantastic news. At a .5 percent fatality rate or lower, the coronavirus is not the killer we feared it was, and that should make everyone happy.
hey, "Do the Math"
do some regression analysis on that
LOL!!!!!!!!!!
Trump claims he was 'sarcastically' pitching disinfectant as COVID-19 cure
Though Trump now claims he was joking on Thursday, his remarks were concerning enough for the manufacturer of Lysol and other cleaning products to issue a statement urging people not to consume the products in any form.
“We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body through injection, ingestion or any other route,” the company, RB, said.
Americans took Trump’s remarks seriously, too, according to some state-level officials. The Maryland Emergency Management Agency sent out a tweet Friday morning, saying it had “received several calls regarding questions about disinfectant use and #COVID19.”
“This is a reminder that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route,” the agency said.
Ha ha, so funny, Mr. President.
NOT!
Rump has no problem endangering American to play his stupid ratings game.
"It would be nice if Trump’s perspicacity on this issue led to the media giving him a little more respect on the Chinese Virus response..."
Yeah, well the media knows that even a broken clock is right twice a day, which is at least 13 times more per week than the Cheeto Benito.
From the "Stupid is as stupid does" file:
Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MDMEMA)
✔
@MDMEMA
ALERT🚨: We have received several calls regarding questions about disinfectant use and #COVID19.
This is a reminder that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route.
13K
12:24 PM - Apr 24, 2020
Please be advised that all conservatives should ignore the above advice and do what Rump recommends instead.
"do some regression analysis on that"
If you knew anything about regression analysis, you'd know that there was nothing in that post to do regression analysis on!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ignorance is bliss - and funny!
if you didn't take yourself so seriously, you recognize a joke when you see it
btw, Chris Cuomo's wife cured COVID by bathing in Clorox
no joke
Right... because all the bleach in the bath water soaked into her skin, traveled through her blood vessels, and then killed all the coronavirus in her sinuses and lungs.
Stupid is a stupid does.
"if you didn't take yourself so seriously, you recognize a joke when you see it"
Pro-tip:
Jokes are supposed to be funny.
"Right... because all the bleach in the bath water soaked into her skin, traveled through her blood vessels, and then killed all the coronavirus in her sinuses and lungs.
Stupid is a stupid does."
well, she married into the Cuomo family, so how smart could she be?
"Pro-tip:
Jokes are supposed to be funny"
here's another:
people who teach the facts should know some!
Joe B is a lot like Hillary C without the pizazz
oh, and he doesn't have a spouse that's a sexual predator
Every time you think Donald Trump has lost his talent for making people’s heads explode, he somehow excels himself. His latest? Telling Americans that injecting disinfectant and shining UV light could cure COVID-19 patients. You’ll have seen the clip already, everybody has, but it is worth watching again.
This was a Trumpian masterpiece. I particularly enjoyed the way he turned to Dr Birx for validation, while his mouth trotted out the peculiar ideas. And I find it hilarious, even though I know we are all supposed to be horrified that the Commander-in-Chief, the leader of the free world, can sound quite so bonkers and incoherent. People might now die, the pundits gravely inform us, from stabbing disinfectant into their veins because they believe every word that comes out of the president’s mouth. What the pundits really mean: Trump fans are gullible, poor and idiotic.
Editorial teams across America will now be scouring the local news networks for stories of dumb MAGA-heads killing themselves by following Trump’s medical ‘advice’ — even though it wasn’t really advice — more a discursive spiel. Maybe they’ll get lucky. There are crazy people out there.
But this brings us back to that old journalistic chestnut about taking Trump ‘seriously, not literally’. In 2016, Salena Zito pointed out that Trump’s supporters took him seriously, not literally — while his enemies and the media did the opposite. It was a brilliant insight at the time, but perhaps missed the truth by an inch. Trump voters don’t necessarily even take Trump all that seriously — he’s just a brilliant and highly amusing weapon for irritating the elites they despise. The crazier he is, the crazier they go. It works every time.
So while CNN anchors will have spasms of apoplexy at the thought that the poorly educated might start injecting themselves with disinfectant, most Trump fans will just laugh. They know that Trump’s medical insights are not meant to be taken seriously or literally.
They also know that it may just take something mad-sounding to answer this awful virus. Trump does have an uncanny habit of being right, albeit often in a very roundabout way. We shall see. They do say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, isn’t that right, Deborah…?
Two conservative groups that are working to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election released online ads Friday attacking the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Lincoln Project, of which conservative attorney George Conway (the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway) is a prominent member, released this video asking which kind of American its viewers would like to be ― one, like Trump, who demands, or one who makes sacrifices.
Republicans for the Rule of Law, meanwhile, shared a minute-long video of Trump musing during Thursday’s task force briefing about injecting disinfectant to combat the virus. Trump claimed Friday he was being sarcastic.
“50,000 people have died. This is our president,” read the text at the start of the clip. It ended with the words: “Unfit. Unwell. Unacceptable.”
Both groups have in recent months released multiple spots condemning the president, members of his administration, and other prominent Republicans.
The Lincoln Project earlier this week even took the step of endorsing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In an ad titled “Ready,” it hailed him as “a bipartisan leader who puts good ideas ahead of party politics” and “the man for this moment.”
On its founding in December 2019, the group said it wanted to persuade “enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.”
David Frum, a former speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, thinks President Donald Trump and the GOP will suffer dire political consequences because of his administration’s slow, sloppy and widely criticized handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Frum, who is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, predicted on Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In With Ari Melber” that Trump is headed for a “historic political defeat” in the 2020 election.
He further warned that the Trump White House’s botched response to the public health crisis, which for weeks saw the president downplaying the threat of the contagion, in lockstep with multiple GOP lawmakers, would “likely take the Republican Senate down with him.”
The death toll in the U.S. ― now the epicenter of the virus ― currently stands at around 52,000.
Frum called on the scientists and public health officials on the White House coronavirus task force to do more to stop Trump “from doing harm” by spreading falsehoods and misinformation during the daily updates.
The president frequently uses his time at the lectern to attack journalists who report critically on his administration, or question his statements about the outbreak.
Frum also named what he believed will become “one of the most notorious moments” of Trump’s presidency. Namely, when Trump on Thursday pondered injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the coronavirus. He later walked back his comments, however, claiming he was being sarcastic — although many people did not buy the defense.
Rump constantly forgets WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
ATLANTA (AP) — As more states push to reopen their economies, many are falling short on one of the federal government's essential criteria for doing so — having an efficient system to track people who have been physically near a person infected with the coronavius.
An Associated Press review found a patchwork of systems around the country for so-called contact tracing, with many states unable to keep up with caseloads and scrambling to hire and train enough people to handle the task for the months ahead. The effort is far less than what public health experts say is needed to guard against a resurgence of the virus.
The result is a wide array of strategies and little national coordination. With few exceptions, most states reviewed by AP are going it alone. Many other countries dealing with the pandemic are taking a national approach to testing.
As late as Friday, the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said detailed guidance on contact tracing for states was “forthcoming.”
“We’ll not ever control the whole country unless we have the same strategy,” said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, a former CDC official. “Right now, that’s not what we’re doing.”
Contact tracing is a pillar of infection control and typically requires in-depth interviews with those who may have been exposed. The number of public health employees needed for the work throughout the U.S. remains up for debate, but some estimates are as high as 300,000 people.
Louisiana, which has been hit hard by the virus, had only about 70 people working on tracing contacts this week. By comparison, North Dakota, with less than a fifth of Louisiana’s population and no serious outbreaks, has 250 case investigators and will soon bring on an additional 172 staffers.
With more than 37,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, Pennsylvania is still working to determine how many people it will need in the field. In Texas, coordination will be left to individual counties.
Health experts worry that a scattershot approach will only prolong the crisis, and they urge a more coordinated strategy. In South Korea, for example, the national health agency oversees the effort, gathering and sharing data on the movement of confirmed cases with local health departments. The country has seen its case count plummet and remain low....
UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL
"UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL"
the hypocrisy is breath-taking...
You’d think the left would have learned from its boneheaded mistakes after the astounding presidential victory of Donald Trump in 2016. And boy, would you be wrong.
From Kentucky to Oregon, protests have been staged in recent days by angry Americans sick to distraction of corona lockdown. Wielding placards and scowls, some of them riding safely in cars — and a tiny few brandishing firearms — they’ve converged on state capitals and public spaces from Michigan to Montana and New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, anxious to achieve one common goal: getting back to work.
The reaction from the elite, mainly white, leftist media has been stunning, depressing. And familiar.
“At a string of small ‘reopen America’ protests across the country this week, mask-less citizens proudly flouted social distancing guidance while openly carrying semiautomatic rifles and waving American flags and signs with ‘ironic’ swastikas,” Charlie Warzel wrote in the New York Times Sunday, minimizing all protesters as fringe players and kooks unworthy of consideration.
“This week’s public displays of defiance — a march for the freedom to be infected — are the logical conclusion of the modern far-right’s donor-funded, shock jock-led liberty movement,” Warzel continued.
The Times is not the only media outlet to bash citizens and public officials who disagree with the paper’s wisdom, branding them as idiotic, gun-loving, Trump-supporting, abortion-hating, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic numbskulls.
In a Washington Post opinion piece provocatively titled “In Florida, we love our beaches. Thanks to our governor, now we can die for them,” journalist and professor Diane Roberts, an eighth-generation Floridian, accused the state’s Republican chief executive of encouraging the potential premature deaths of his constituents by opening some beaches for a few hours a day. While sunbathing and sand-sitting is prohibited, and social distancing is enforced by police, Roberts still believes folks in the Sunshine State haven’t got the brain power to protect themselves and others.
“This is the state where alligators regularly invade suburban swimming pools, where people get liquored up and compete to see who can toss a dead mullet the farthest, where pastel retirement communities report alarmingly high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and sometimes the ground that you relied upon to be terra firma simply collapses under your feet into a sinkhole, swallowing you up,” she wrote. It isn’t clear how these random and unrelated oddities justify calling millions of people ‘gator-bait or reckless do-do heads. As if on cue, #FloridaMorons started trending on Twitter.
The beach is back: Hundreds flock to sand as Florida coronavirus cases hit record
“I didn’t vote for DeSantis,” she wrote (shocker), “but I hoped that as a Yale grad, he would be smart, intellectually rigorous and committed to helping Florida get through the plague in one piece. I shouldn’t have been such a snob: An Ivy League degree is no guarantor of intelligence or leadership ability, as amply demonstrated by President Trump (Penn ’68).”
Academia has jumped with gusto on the stupid killer-conservative bandwagon. A study by four economists, one each from Harvard and the Universities of Chicago, Zurich and Warwick in the UK, concluded that watching Sean Hannity on Fox News, who downplayed the coronavirus threat early in the known pandemic (as did many others) before changing his tune, “leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.” Mind you, the pointy-headed professors could not ask victims if they actually watched Hannity or switched to CNN or the Food Network because they are, you know, dead. The paper has not been peer-reviewed or accepted for publication in a journal, but it was the subject of a credulous fake news story posted to Vox.
On Wednesday, Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Democratic governor, warned officials in both major parties, “This is no time to act stupidly. Period.” As leaders of states including Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alaska and Oklahoma have either joined Florida in allowing some businesses, nonessential health care facilities and recreation areas to reopen, or plan to do so in the next week or two, there was no doubt Cuomo was taking them on. He may regret his words.
Most people are not stupid or suicidal. They know the risks of coronavirus and are taking life-saving precautions. But for some folks, including single parents and those who labored near the poverty line, working from home is not an option. People are suffering, going broke, and are sick of being told what to do by elites who don’t share in the economic apocalypse. And as they did in 2016, the elites have reflexively behaved like schoolyard bullies, hurling insults at deplorables they consider inferior.
We all must be careful. But some of us have weighed the risks, and decided that getting back to some semblance of normalcy is preferable to endless lockdown.
This means another thing: four more years of a president they despise, a man eager to see his people start going about their business in a safe way. The left has learned nothing from defeat.
Earlier this month, a number of small Facebook groups around the U.S. called for protests against social distancing measures enacted to stop the spread of the coronavirus. They had only a few members, limited engagement and appeared largely uncoordinated.
Now, weeks later, anti-lockdown protests are in cities across the United States and have drawn national attention as they undermine public health officials urging citizens to stay home and experts who warn that such gatherings could cause a spike in COVID-19 cases.
What has changed in just a brief period of time is that a network of right-wing media outlets, powerful conservative activists and President Donald Trump have all championed the demonstrations and helped their organizers grow the movement ― giving relatively small and widely unpopular protests an outsized platform and influence.
The surge in protests is a recent trend, and most of the Facebook groups organizing the rallies didn’t exist even two weeks ago. Apart from in Michigan and Washington state ― where anti-lockdown protests drew a few thousand people ― the rallies have tended to attract only several hundred people.
The majority of Americans oppose the demonstrations and only around 23% support them, according to a recent CBS/YouGov poll conducted between April 20 and 22. A Yahoo/YouGov poll conducted between April 17 and 19 found similar results, with support for the protests at 22%. It also found only 7% of Americans, including 13% of Republicans, believe that Trump should encourage the protesters. Both polls showed that the majority of Americans are more concerned about opening the country too quickly than too slowly.
Outside of Fox News, far-right media activists directly helped plan protests and create anti-lockdown groups. Owen Shroyer, a host at conspiracy theory website InfoWars, was an early organizer and drew hundreds of people to a rally in Austin, Texas. Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh touted the protests to his millions of listeners, calling for the U.S. to reopen.
Fox News and other right-wing outlets’ early coverage of the protests gave an enormous platform to what were still fledgling groups at the start of last week, and that coverage was likely the catalyst for Trump’s tweets encouraging the demonstrations. Around two minutes after Fox News aired a segment on the protests in Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota on April 17, Trump posted a series of tweets that included “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA.” After Trump’s tweets, researchers monitoring Facebook groups promoting the demonstrations quickly saw a spike in activity.
“It took it to entirely new levels. All the pages we had been monitoring, they started ticking up in membership, ticking up in engagement,” said Diara J. Townes, a research reporter at First Draft, an organization that monitors online misinformation. The protests are overwhelmingly pro-Trump, and in recent days, the anti-lockdown Facebook pages have seen an increase in conspiracies that the social distancing measures are a ploy by Democrats to steal the presidential election.
The role of Fox News and conservative action groups in mobilizing these protests echoes the wave of Tea Party protests that emerged in 2010. Fox effectively acted as an advocacy organization for those protests, and the network’s coverage helped set the debate around the movement, while conservative political groups tried to stoke grassroots grievances for their own benefit.
Far-right extremist groups and armed militias have also attended or helped organize some of the anti-lockdown demonstrations, including at a rally in Maine where a white nationalist former lawmaker encouraged protesters to show up in MAGA gear, and a Florida protest created by far-right street gang The Proud Boys. Rallies have featured Confederate flags and anti-vaccine conspiracy signs, as well as threats of a second civil war.
But right-wing media’s coverage has ignored the powerful political groups and conspiracy theorists pouring gasoline on these protests, instead falling back on their common populist trope that somehow a corrupt group of elite Democrats and the media is ignoring the will of the people.
“Thank you for exercising your constitutionally protected rights as an American,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has condemned lockdown measures as “authoritarian,” told a rally organizer. “Bless you.”
there is no rationale for continuing the lockdown
the goal of the lockdown was never to reduce infections to zero
it was to avoid a surge that would overwhelm hospitals
the Trump administration did that and deserves the credit
until a vaccine is found, businesses can devise policies to maintain safe and healthy practices
the public will patronize those that make a good effort and the media will publicize those that don't
the Dems oppose this because they wish for as much economic devastation as possible to increase their scant chances in November
and, of course, lunatic fringe liberals pull their old routine out of the repertoire: everyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi
Americans haven't fallen for it yet, indeed the insult to traditional voters has lost them elections
you wonder why they keep it up
they appear to be deranged
As of Friday, the coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 50,000 people in the United States. That number is likely to be an undercount, and it's possible we will never have a true reckoning.
At almost every juncture, Donald Trump has made decisions about the coronavirus pandemic that have led to more death. His behavior is that of a person who has no care or concern for the health, safety and welfare of the American people. Nothing could epitomize that more perfectly than his grotesque suggestion this week that "injecting" disinfectants or household cleaning products might kill the coronavirus. This would seem comical, and entirely unbelievable, if it had not actually happened.
In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact. Obama officials also left their Trump counterparts a step-by-step guide on how to respond to a pandemic. Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance.
Last November, the U.S. military warned Donald Trump that the country was likely to be afflicted with a devastating pandemic originating in China.
In January 2020, the Trump administration was told by its own experts that the coronavirus would spread beyond China and become a global pandemic. Again, Trump chose inaction.
Trump has deprived Democratic-led regions of the country from receiving needed medical supplies. He also waited months to begin using the Defense Appropriation Act to compel American companies to produce more ventilators, masks and other emergency equipment.
Late last year, Americans working with the World Health Organization began to warn Trump and his administration about the coronavirus pandemic. These doctors and other medical professionals were ignored.
In these examples and many others, Trump and his inner circle ignored or purged experts and other truth-tellers, and lied about, misrepresented, deflected or denied the dire threat to the American people posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Considered in total, Trump and his regime have shown themselves to be incompetent, callous, malevolent and deeply cruel in their response to the coronavirus crisis (as well as to a plethora of other issues).
But to merely document the Trump regime's deadly failures in response to the coronavirus pandemic is to ignore the most important question: What were Trump and his advisers' underlying motivations?
This forensic question must be answered if we are ever to have a full accounting of the coronavirus, and see justice done for the sick, the dead and the dying as well as the damage done to the broader American community.
"In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact."
odd, then, that Obama depleted the stockpiles of PPE and didn't replace them
"Obama officials also left their Trump counterparts a step-by-step guide on how to respond to a pandemic."
really? where is that plan
odd, then, that virtually all other Dems opposed closing the borders when Trump did it
if it had just closed traffic from Europe at the same time he did that from China, this may not have happened
"Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance."
you haven't said what the guidance was yet
because you obviously don't know
odd, then, that you would make that statement
no, wait a minute, that's not odd
you're TTF trash
"Last November, the U.S. military warned Donald Trump that the country was likely to be afflicted with a devastating pandemic originating in China."
really? how often have they said that?
"In January 2020, the Trump administration was told by its own experts that the coronavirus would spread beyond China and become a global pandemic. Again, Trump chose inaction."
what experts? at the time, Fauci believed what the WHO and China was saying: it doesn't pass from humans to humans
"Trump has deprived Democratic-led regions of the country from receiving needed medical supplies. He also waited months to begin using the Defense Appropriation Act to compel American companies to produce more ventilators, masks and other emergency equipment."
it turned out not t be necessary
Jared Kushner ran a program that masterfully managed the stockpile and no state was without ventilators
we have an army of millions churning out masks, which were in short supply because China wiped out the world supply in January
"Late last year, Americans working with the World Health Organization began to warn Trump and his administration about the coronavirus pandemic."
no, they didn't
"This forensic question must be answered if we are ever to have a full accounting of the coronavirus, and see justice done for the sick, the dead and the dying as well as the damage done to the broader American community."
the evidence is mounting about China
the tricky thing will be to make them pay without starting a nuclear war
but that's Trump's specialty
"odd, then, that Obama depleted the stockpiles of PPE and didn't replace them"
Not odd at all when you think about it - the Republican Congress was trying to undermine Obama the whole time it was in power:
ProPublica found that the budget battles during Obama’s tenure after the Republicans won the 2010 election hurt the stockpile’s budget.
In early 2011, Obama’s administration released a budget request for $655 million for the stockpile, an increase of $59 million including to acquire new products. But Congress ultimately allocated $534 million for the 2012 fiscal year, a 10% cut from the prior year, ProPublica found.
Across-the-board cuts hit the CDC, which managed the stockpile at the time.
As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.
Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.
The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.
From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."
The NCMI report was made available widely to people authorized to access intelligence community alerts. Following the report’s release, other intelligence community bulletins began circulating through confidential channels across the government around Thanksgiving, the sources said. Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies.
Mulroy, who previously served as a senior official at the CIA, said NCMI does serious work that senior government leaders do not ignore.
"Medical intelligence takes into account all source information -- imagery intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence," said Mulroy, who hasn't seen the reporting. "Then there’s analysis by people who know those specific areas. So for something like this to have come out, it has been reviewed by experts in the field. They’re taking together what those pieces of information mean and then looking at the potential for an international health crisis."
The intelligence reports did not predict when the virus might hit the US or recommend steps that should be taken in response, the source said. The reports tracked the spread of the virus in China and then other countries, and warned that Chinese officials were minimizing the impact.
Within the administration, Trump's aides tried in vain to convince him of the virus's seriousness, according to the Post. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was unable to discuss the virus with Trump until January 18, at which point the President interrupted him to ask when sales of flavored vaping products would resume, senior administration officials told the paper.
Later in January, aides met with then-acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in an effort to convince higher level officials to monitor the virus -- with White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan asserting that if the White House did not seriously address the virus, an issue likely to be front and center for months, Trump could risk losing his reelection.
Mulvaney subsequently held regular meetings, though officials told the paper that Trump did not take the virus seriously because he did not think it had circulated extensively in the United States.
The President also seemed to deny the virus's threat in favor of believing information provided by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the paper reported.
""Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance."
you haven't said what the guidance was yet"
Yes I did, you idiot. You cut it off.
I wrote "In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact. Obama officials also left their Trump counterparts a step-by-step guide on how to respond to a pandemic. Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance."
Try to keep up even though reality is simply too much for you to grasp.
""In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact."
odd, then, that Obama depleted the stockpiles of PPE and didn't replace them"
What a crock of lies you tell!
Here's who depleted our PPE:
SNOPES: Did the Trump Administration Send 18 Tons of PPE to China in Early 2020? RATING: TRUE"
What are you doing on line?
Shouldn't you be outside demonstrating for your freedom to get COVID-19?
Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) on Friday pulled no punches with his withering assessment of President Donald Trump’s widely criticized handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jolly, in particular, called out Trump’s penchant for peddling falsehoods and touting unproven cures for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, during the White House’s daily task force updates.
On Thursday, Trump suggested injecting disinfectant to fight off the virus. Following widespread outrage, anger and disbelief among public health officials, he claimed Friday that he was just being “sarcastic” with his comments.
“The reality is the message from Donald Trump is dangerous,” said Jolly, a GOP member of Congress from 2014 to 2017.
“It conflicts with that of our public health officials, and the less we hear from the president the safer we are,” he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, noting how Trump has “spoken and tweeted more about his own approval ratings than he has about the 50,000 Americans who died under his watch.”
“So if we need an assessment of the president’s character as he has locked himself in his room, watching TV so he can make a self-assessment of his own ratings, perhaps we just go forward ignoring the guy,” he added.
Can we build a wall around 45, and make him pay for it?
"Across-the-board cuts hit the CDC, which managed the stockpile at the time"
Obama could decide what to cut. This should have been a priority, if he really gave the advice to Trump you said he did.
"As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting."
there have been multiple similar diseases. they didn't specify in January that this would be any different than SARS, which was hyped by them and came to not much.
"And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home."
Trump has no power to do this. the governors wouldn't without public support and, with the low level of cases, the public would never have gone along
"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event,"
they say that regularly about all kinds of things
"the sources described repeated briefings"
let us now when these cowards would willing t identify themselves
"All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January,"
Congress gets briefed as well. Unfortunately, the government was paralyzed by the impeachment hoax at the time.
"The intelligence reports did not predict when the virus might hit the US or recommend steps that should be taken in response"
exactly
"Within the administration, Trump's aides tried in vain"
most reports about what happens "Within the administration" turn out to be false
"Yes I did, you idiot. You cut it off.
I wrote "Obama officials also left their Trump counterparts a step-by-step guide on how to respond to a pandemic. Trump and his inner circle ignored that guidance."
Try to keep up even though reality is simply too much for you to grasp."
well, here's a reality we all grasp very well: you still haven't told what the guidance was other than say there was some
"What a crock of lies you tell!
Here's who depleted our PPE:
SNOPES: Did the Trump Administration Send 18 Tons of PPE to China in Early 2020? RATING: TRUE""
SNOPES has become propaganda
but you are contradicting the TTF line that Obama depleted the PPE because Congress cut funds to the CDC
I know that "Do the Math" really screwed up with his 1.6 million prediction but let's do the math again:
recent studies in NY and Calif show 15 to 20 percent of people there have been infected with COVID-19
let's lowball it and say 15
329 million Americans
that's 49 million
55K deaths
that's mortality of 0.11%
about the same as the flu
oh, you say, there are a lot of deaths not known
surely there are some
but if the numbers were significant, we'd have seen a spike in flu deaths, which we didn't
the lockdown was likely unnecessary and should end
just do the math
https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-should-drop-out-or-take-a-lie-detector-test_3327515.html
the woman who was raped by Joe Biden is corroborated by her brother, a friend, and her mother, who called the Larry King about it
the media can cover the rape up for Sleepy Joe no more
this could be a lucky break for Dems if they keep the Bern from coming back
then, they could turn to Andrew Cuomo
sure, Trump would have him for lunch but, at least, it wouldn't be embarrassing
With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs ands and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics.
The crisis now will hit the politicians and political Doctor Faucis who gullibly accepted and trumpeted what statistician William Briggs calls “the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time.”
An egregious statistical horror story of millions of projected deaths, suffused with incense and lugubrious accents from Imperial College of London to Harvard School of Public Health, prompted the pols to impose a vandalistic lockdown on the economy. It would have been an outrage even if the assumptions were not wildly astronomically wrong.
Flattening the curve was always a fool’s errand that widened the damage.
President Trump had better take notice. He will soon own this gigantic botch of policy and leadership. No one will notice that his opponents urged even more panicky blunders.
The latest figures on overall death rates from all causes show no increase at all. Deaths are lower than in 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015, slightly higher than in 2016. Any upward bias is imparted by population growth.
Now writing a book on the crisis with bestselling author Jay Richards, Briggs concludes: “Since pneumonia deaths are up, yet all deaths are down, it must mean people are being recorded as dying from other things at smaller rates than usual.” Deaths from other causes are simply being ascribed to the coronavirus.
As usual every year, deaths began trending downward in January. It’s an annual pattern. Look it up. Since the lockdown began in mid-March, the politicians cannot claim that their policies had anything to do with the declining death rate.
A global study published in Israel by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and Council on Research and Development, shows that “the spread of the coronavirus declines to almost zero after 70 days—no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.”
In fact, by impeding herd immunity, particularly among students and other non-susceptible young people, the lockdown in the U.S. has prolonged and exacerbated the medical problem. As Briggs concludes, “People need to get out into virus-killing sunshine and germicidal air.”
This flu like all previous viral flues will give way only to herd immunity, whether through natural propagation of an extremely infectious pathogen, or through the success of one of the hundreds of vaccine projects.
No evidence indicates that this flu was exceptionally dangerous. On March 20th, the French published a major controlled study that shows no excess mortality at all from coronavirus compared to other flues. SARS and Mers were both much more lethal and did not occasion what Briggs’ reader “Uncle Dave” described as “taking a hammer and sickle to the economy.”
We now know that the crisis was a comedy of errors. The Chinese let it get going in the raw bat markets of Wuhan. But together with the Koreans, the Chinese dithered and demurred and allowed six weeks of rampant propagation to create herd immunity before they began locking everyone up. Therefore, the Chinese and Koreans were among the first to recover.
The Italians scared everybody with their haphazard health system and smoking fogies. Crammed together in subways and tenements, the New Yorkers registered a brief blip of extreme cases. Intubations and ventilators turned out not to help (80 percent died). This sowed fear and frustration among medical personnel slow to see that the problem was impaired hemogloblin in the blood rather than lung damage.
The New York media piled on with panic, with bogus reports of rising deaths. “Coronavirus deaths” soared by assuming that people dying with the virus were dying from it and then by ascribing to the coronavirus other deaths among people with symptoms of pulmonary distress, even without being tested.
Now jacking up the case rate will be further pointless testing. As Briggs points out, “Fauci is calling for ‘tripling’ of testing, which can only boost these dailies [case totals]. And make it seem like there’s a genuine increase occurring. Oh my! The daily reported cases are up! It must mean the disease is spreading!
“No. It could also mean, and probably does given all the other evidence we now have from sampling, that the disease was already there, and we just now have measured it.”
The death rate rises with further reclassification of pneumonia and other pulmonary deaths. When we reach herd immunity, and nearly everyone has the antigen, nearly all deaths can be chalked up to COVID19. Hey, it will be Quod Erat Demonstrandum for the panic mongers.
In a fascinating open letter to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, epidemiologist Sucharit Bhakdi concludes that with the French study, corroborated by findings from a Stanford antibody seroprevalence study in Santa Clara county, “the case for extreme measures collapses like a house of cards.” Bhakdi says that since the virus has already spread widely in the general population, efforts to stop further spread are both futile and destructive.
So let’s stop pretending that our policies have been rational and need to be phased out, as if they once had a purpose. They should be reversed summarily and acknowledged to be a mistake, perpetrated by statisticians with erroneous computer models.
Perhaps then we can learn from this experience with the flaws of expertise not to shut down the economy again for the totally bogus “crisis” of climate change.
"I know that "Do the Math" really screwed up with his 1.6 million prediction but let's do the math again:"
I see you never did figure out the subjunctive mood, and you're left with lying about my posts. Your proclivity for lying probably explains your admiration of the Rumpster. He's gotten away with thousands of lies since he got in office. In fact, his lies about Obama's birth certificate helped him get there.
You must lead a very pathetic life... since so much of it revolves around lying. The insecurity that comes with that probably explains all the desperation in your posts trying to somehow make the Rumpster look better than the complete imbecile he is.
It's a good thing some adults in his administration have decided to remove him from the daily coronavirus briefings. Left to his own devices, he'd probably soon be recommending Tide Pod Chewables, and Lysol Vitamin Gummy Bears.
Can't wait 'till November when America can tell him where to put his UV light bulb.
As for the news about Joe, it seems like a clever ruse to get more conservatives to vote for him. Conservatives love an accused rapist they can rally behind, right Brett? ... and Don?
As for George Gilder's diatribe, I think we've heard enough "medical" info from unqualified right-wing pundits. I'll believe Fauci long before any supply-side evangelical that promotes "intelligent design."
"Either way, the results are fantastic news. At a .5 percent fatality rate or lower, the coronavirus is not the killer we feared it was, and that should make everyone happy."
Hey, let's do some more math!
The US population is 328.2 million people.
Assuming no shut downs, and the virus got to infect everyone it wanted to (not unreasonable considering how fast it spread,) a 0.5% fatality rate would mean 1.911 million people dead in the US.
I fail to see how that's "fantastic news," but it's not too far off from the 1.6 million you keep complaining about.
Funny how math works.
but, just like there was never any chance that 1.6 million will die, ther is no chance everyone in America will be infected
another blown math problem by the hilariously named "Do the Math"
At the time the regression analysis was done, deaths were doubling every three days, and new infections were going up at a commensurate rate.
If the lock down had not been put in place (idiot warning - this is another subjunctive mood case!) what exactly would have stopped everyone getting infected?
Prayers? UV light? Bleach? Holding your nose for a month?
Hydroxychloroquine?
LOL!!!!!
"At the time the regression analysis was done, deaths were doubling every three days, and new infections were going up at a commensurate rate."
but it was about two weeks after broad mitigation efforts had begun and we knew it would turn nationwide because of observing how mitigation efforts had worked in other places
indeed, the post acknowledged the turn had already started but feigned uncertainty over whether it would change
despite that, the Do the Math trash still try to alarm everyone
just despicable
that doesn't even take into account the fact that over half the cases, then and now, occurred in NY and NJ
"If the lock down had not been put in place (idiot warning - this is another subjunctive mood case!) what exactly would have stopped everyone getting infected?"
well, observation indicates that COVID-19 dies out within about 70 days after it starts
this happens pretty much everywhere, regardless of lockdowns
lots of possibilities on why
it's probably that the more people who get infected, the harder it is for the virus to spread is one
that's one of the reasons Do the Math's dummy buddy who said:
"The US population is 328.2 million people.
Assuming no shut downs, and the virus got to infect everyone it wanted to (not unreasonable considering how fast it spread,) a 0.5% fatality rate would mean 1.911 million people dead in the US."
is as stupid as Do the Math
the other is that the mortality rate is not .5%
it's at most, .11%
so, Do the Math and his dummy buddy engaged in the same malicious alarmism
when will Do the Math explain why he did it and apologize?
"I'll believe Fauci long before any supply-side evangelical that promotes "intelligent design."
Fauci was giving Trump bad advice when this all started because he believed whatever the WHO and China told him
his many mistakes are documented and easy to find
What are we waiting for?
The question can be posed in either a wild, irresponsible way — or a sane, measured way.
In New York, our “pause” will continue until at least May 15, and New Yorkers are asking, in a measured, sane way: What exactly are we waiting for?
In the beginning, we had a goal: to flatten the curve. We were warned that COVID-19 would overtake our hospitals and cause a health-system collapse. We were to stay home to give our medical heroes a fighting chance.
So we did, and thanks to the strength of our system, it worked. The Javits Center never filled up; the USS Comfort is sailing away. Three weeks ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was vowing to seize ventilators from upstate hospitals and send them to Gotham. Last week, we were dispatching our ventilators out to other states.
We did our part; we flattened the curve. So why is there no move to loosen regulations?
In February and March, expert and elite opinion seemed to understand that patience with lockdowns would at some point wear thin.
But not anymore.
Last week, Cuomo used a graphic in his daily presentation that listed the lengths of various wars and previous pandemics. The 1910 cholera outbreak lasted a year. World War II lasted six years. And so on.
The message: We haven’t been living through this that long, and our ancestors had it far worse.
But if we are looking at years of lockdown, we need to be informed of it, we need a debate — and we need a plan.
Otherwise, it isn’t relevant that the Vietnam War lasted eight years, and the governor has to stop shaming us for looking for a light at the end of this hell-tunnel.
It’s also becoming apparent that staying closed is some weird poke in the eye to President Trump.
Hyper-polarization means that if the president wants to awaken the nation from its devastating economic coma, it must mean that he and his cornpone followers are wrong.
Smart people — who tend to have lockdown-immune jobs in academe, government and media — must know better, and they have a license to mock and demean.
But it isn’t true, as they say, that those of us who want a roadmap to reopening play down the virus or minimize its deadliness. We lost a lot in New York.
We’ve watched our friends, family and neighbors succumb to this horrible disease. We understand what’s at stake.
But there is life beyond COVID-19, too. There are pro-life concerns on both sides. The pause has meant people are skipping cancer screenings. The lines at food pantries are scarily long. Last week, Cuomo admitted that domestic violence is on the rise. “Very bad.” But, he added, it’s “not death.” Maybe not yet. But these costs are very real, and they have to be tallied.
No one sane is pushing to return to “normal.” Normal won’t be back for a long time, and no one expects it to. If restaurants, bars or movie theaters opened tomorrow, people still wouldn’t flock to them. We are walking around in masks and sanitizing our groceries. We get it — we’re far from normal. We just want to start on the road back. We want to know the road exists.
It’s less that we need to know when this ends than we need to know how it ends. Are we waiting for deaths to fall below a certain daily number? What is that number? Are we waiting for hospitalizations to evaporate? For better treatment? For a vaccine? Antibody tests? Herd immunity? New Yorkers are tough, we can handle the truth.
But this uncertainty can’t last, or people will decide to leap into irresponsibility. We need a plan, and we need it now.
Maryland’s Larry Hogan reveals the real-world toll of Trump’s “sarcastic” suggestion about disinfectant and light.
(even the sarcasm is a lie like everything else that come out of Rump's cheeseburger hole)
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is urging Donald Trump to be more careful about what he says just days after the president claimed that light and disinfectant injected into the body could be possible treatments for the coronavirus infection.
“This has been important to me from day one, about communicating very clearly on the facts, because people listen to these press conferences,” Hogan said on “This Week” Sunday.
Hogan said people listen to his own news conferences as governor, so they certainly pay attention when Trump speaks.
“I think when misinformation comes out, or you just say something that pops in your head, it does send a wrong message,” he said.
One result of Trump’s comments: The Maryland Emergency Management Agency received hundreds of calls from people asking about Clorox or any other cleaning products. The agency then had to send a message warning “that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route.”
“We had to put out that warning to make sure that people were not doing something like that, which would kill people, actually, to do it,” Hogan said.
He also urged Trump to make sure information shared at future press conferences was “fact-based.”
Some on the right defended Trump after he made the suggestion on Thursday. Trump later claimed he was being “sarcastic” and suggested disinfectant and light treatments to the media “just to see what would happen.”
More corroboration that Joe Biden is a rapist:
A former neighbor of Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who has accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her when she worked in his office in 1993, has come forward to corroborate Reade’s allegation.
Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider in a report published Monday that Reade confided in her about the alleged assault in 1995 or 1996, when the two women lived in the same apartment complex in Morro Bay, California.
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it,” LaCasse told the outlet."
remember that Christine Blasey Ford couldn't get one person to corroborate her story but this women now has had multiple people do so
after all the Dems said then, how long will they be able maintain their hypocrisy before they crack?
it's not so bad, guys
if you can hold the socialist Bernie off, Andrew Cuomo or Gavin Newsome would make for a respectable loss
It wasn't enough that Schumer pushed impeachment on the nation's agenda, obstructing focus on the virus at the beginning. Now, he wants to waste everyone's with his petty horse crap!
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is planning to introduce legislation that would prevent President Trump from placing his name on any additional coronavirus stimulus checks.
The proposal, dubbed the No Politics in Pandemic Recovery Act, or No PR Act, would prohibit taxpayer money from having Trump or Vice President Pence’s name, likeness or signature. Schumer is pushing for the provision to go in the next coronavirus stimulus package.
"Trump unfortunately appears to see the pandemic as just another opportunity to promote his own political interests,” Schumer said in a statement. “The No PR Act puts an end to the president’s exploitation of taxpayer money for promotional material that only benefits his re-election campaign.”
The move from the New York Democrat follows the Treasury Department's decision to order Trump's name to be printed on the $1,200 stimulus checks going to millions of Americans impacted by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The checks are one of the products of the $2.2 trillion relief package Trump signed in March.
Trump's full name will appear on the memo line, the Treasury Department confirmed earlier this month. About 70 million Americans are expected to receive checks with Trump's name on them
Trump says he 'can't imagine why' there was a spike in calls to emergency hotlines in several states after he 'sarcastically' mused about injecting disinfectant to cure the coronavirus
anyone who would inject Lysol needs to be put away
it's not safe having them walk around
who knows what else they may take out of context
by the way, nice of Hillary to cheer us up during these stressful times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-biden-endorsement.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-nytimes&fbclid=IwAR2IzemUfij_SNmfESv0ujkyFnLEHroxtp5N9G9ud8zmaZe5GYkjhX4CloE
It's almost the end of April and it doesn't look 1.5 million Americans will die in the next two days.
The mortality rate for COID-19 is not 9%.
The big ventilator never happened. Jared ran the Federal program quite capably.
Doctors are saying hospitals are eerily quiet because they're half full.
And a state more populous than NY, and with more elderly, never closed its churches...and has done just fine.
A forgotten principle of public policy reform: focus on failure and you will get failure, focus on success and you will get success. Looking at the past two months of our state responses to the coronavirus, it is time to revive that idea.
There’s one state in America that has a larger elderly population than New York, that is more ethnically diverse than New York, and that has two million more people than New York.
Yet its death rate from COVID-19 is 5 percent that of New York.
That state is Florida.
The tale of these two states, New York and Florida, illustrates that perhaps the media should have been less adulatory of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and given Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis more attention.
Instead, the facts and statistics reveal the media got this backward.
In March, Florida was projected to be the second-worst state for COVID-19 deaths, with predictions of 174 per day and a total of nearly 7,000 by the end of the summer. Nothing like this has transpired and it will not come to pass.
Meanwhile, Cuomo’s daily press briefings have been covered in full, and he has been lauded as everything from “The Golden Governor” to “The Politician of the Moment.”
DeSantis, however, receives headlines such as “Florida Governor Issues Coronavirus Stay at Home Order After Heavy Criticism” and “Florida Governor Keeps Hitting New Lows In the Battle Against Coronavirus.”
Yet while New York kept chalking up bigger and bigger infection rates and deaths, Florida contained its problems early and without the heavy hand so many urged.
While one might be tempted to point out the ways in which New York and Florida are different, and there are differences, a few things of a comparative nature are not well-understood. As is well documented, the most vulnerable population for the coronavirus is in the 65-plus age group.
Only one state has a higher percentage of elder Americans living in it than Florida — Maine. In Florida, that population constitutes over 20 percent of the state. In New York, it’s just over 16 percent. Florida is also more ethnically diverse than New York. While 17 percent of Florida’s population is African-American and New York’s is just under 18 percent, Florida’s Hispanic population is 26 percent to New York’s 19.2. Florida is also a much more populous state than New York with about two million more residents.
But Florida has done well with the coronavirus, as the media is quiet to report, while New York has not.
Of the 55,425 COVID-19 deaths in America, New York (with over 22,000 deaths) is responsible for over 40 percent while Florida (with nearly 1,100 deaths) is responsible for just under 2 percent.
Yet, Florida shut down its state much later than New York, almost two weeks later. And there was much criticism for its delay.
The shutdown in Florida was also much less severe than New York’s.
Florida did not close churches and synagogues, nor did it order the shuttering of most of its beaches.
DeSantis was criticized for being late in his “shutdown.” Wrong: It wasn’t late, it was targeted to the vulnerable population, and was less restrictive overall.
What DeSantis did do was take a much more vertical approach to the virus than others, like Cuomo.
In early March, DeSantis put out targeted and preventative messaging to his elder population, advising them to stay at home.
In places like The Villages (home to over 125,000 retirees), DeSantis implemented golf-cart drive-through coronavirus testing. He deployed the National Guard to help institute testing in the state’s nursing homes where, unlike New York, older COVID-19 patients were not sent.
Early on, DeSantis suspended visitation and ordered staff screening at long-term care facilities. He also dispatched millions of masks and gloves and hundreds of thousands of face shields and gowns, also known as personal protective equipment, to nursing homes and other centers caring for the elderly. These actions, among others, led Florida to a 93 percent better per capita long-term care facility death rate than New York.
Florida’s worst day was nearly two weeks ago with 72 deaths, and its total deaths are seven times less than predicted.
Indeed, Florida has 94 percent less the per capita COVID-19 death rate than New York.
Still, DeSantis was being criticized for being late in his “shutdown.” Wrong: It wasn’t late, it was targeted to the vulnerable population, and was less restrictive overall.
Now, having been wrongly criticized for issuing orders “so late” in the coronavirus panic-passion play, DeSantis is working not on further clampdowns and shutdowns but, rather, reopening as much of the state as possible. Perhaps more in the media can open their gaze and more fairly assess his administration’s and state’s actions and record now, too.
For Florida, DeSantis was much more ready, and, as Shakespeare says, readiness is all.
TAMPA, Fla. - In Pinellas County, 40% of those whose death is attributed to COVID-19 were residents of long-term care facilities. In Manatee County, it’s 43%. In Sarasota County, it’s 44%.
All three counties have been hot-spots for coronavirus-linked deaths in nursing homes. Governor Ron DeSantis called them "ground zero" during a press conference in Tampa Monday.
“We have emergency response teams, and they’re now partnering with the Florida National Guard,” he said. “They’re going in offensively, proactively to test in nursing homes.”...
Of the state’s 1074 deaths, 311 are long-term care residents; that’s 29%.
While seemingly high, some states, like Delaware (58%), Massachusetts (55%), and Colorado (50%) have it worse.
DeSantis insists Florida is in much better shape.
“You look at the fatalities connected to long-term care facilities, Florida is 1.2 fatalities per 100,000 for long-term care,” he said, however, the state is not releasing information about how many residents in long-term care have been tested or the total number that have tested positive.
YOU NEED TO COLLECT THE DATA TO DO THE MATH
As American doctors watched their Italian counterparts deny ventilators to senior citizens with coronavirus earlier this year, they clamored for more devices and prepared to live out their greatest fear: denying a dying person the care they need because of a shortage.
But weeks after COVID-19 cases peaked in some of the hardest-hit U.S. states, doctors and administrators who spoke with USA TODAY say they are not aware that doctors turned away anyone for a ventilator. At the worst, some patients shared machines.
“There was a lot of discussion about what would happen if we got to a place like that,” said Michelle Hood, the chief operating officer of the American Hospital Association. “Clinical leadership teams went through the thought process of what would happen. To the best of my knowledge we have not had to make that rationing decision.”
Hospitals did not have to use the triage plans their states drew up to decide who gets ventilators during a shortage. Instead, clinicians used other devices to pump oxygen into gasping patients, to “prevent the vent” as University of Chicago doctors called it.
And, doctors say, the lockdowns and other measures to slow the spread of the virus helped hold down caseloads just enough to make it to the other side of the peak.
“It worked just in time in New Jersey,” said Shereef Elnahal, the CEO of University Hospital in Newark. “Had we (peaked) a week later or two weeks later, we would have seen an overwhelming overload of our healthcare system.
“The curve flattened just early enough for us to not have to make those agonizing decisions,” Elnahal said. “What it shows you, though, is that if we’re not vigilant, for example in the fall, about tracking these cases closely and taking action early … then we could face that easily.”
Now, as public health officials warn about a fall resurgence of the virus, the ventilator supply is getting bigger. A nationwide hospital association is helping hospitals share about 5,000 ventilators. And the federal government has ordered another 187,000, with the first batch coming by May 4.
Peaks were earlier and flatter
Hospitals in hard-hit areas needed fewer ventilators than expected, experts say, because social distancing and lockdowns meant that COVID-19 cases peaked earlier and at lower numbers.
The number of new coronavirus cases in New York showed signs of reaching a peak in early April. That’s nearly a month earlier than the early May summit that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had predicted in mid-March.
Elnahal said his New Jersey hospital’s COVID-19 admissions peaked on April 10, earlier than he expected. He said the timeline kept getting earlier every time state officials ran the models. “Over time that date crept up by about a week,” he said.
On April 15, New York sent 100 ventilators to Michigan and 50 to Maryland. The following day, New York sent 100 to New Jersey. That’s a sign that the state has extra — even though Cuomo originally wanted 30,000 and didn’t get nearly that amount.
Medical professionals aren’t faulting Cuomo for asking for so many ventilators because he was planning for the worst-case scenario.
“Responsible leadership at all levels needs to plan for the worst,” Elnahal said...
Sharing a ventilator
The worst situation has been reported in New York, where doctors say a handful of patients had to split ventilators.
Dr. Lewis Kaplan, a Philadelphia-based trauma surgeon and the president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, said he is only personally aware of two New York patients who shared one ventilator.
“The need to put more than one person on a ventilator that was anticipated to be a widespread problem, that hasn’t really surfaced,” Kaplan said. “I don’t know of any place that has said, ‘Sorry we can’t take care of you. You need to go to the palliative care wing.’”
Dr. Scott Braithwaite, a professor at NYU Langone Health, confirmed that splitting happened, but he wouldn’t give specifics.
“I don’t know to what extent that is still continuing,” Braithwaite said, and he said it’s unlikely that doctors or hospital administrators would discuss it publicly.
Splitting is a controversial and risky move that involves hooking multiple patients up to the same ventilator. It’s been proven in studies on artificial lungs and animals, but is considered a last resort in humans, used only when the alternative is denying someone a ventilator.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval for splitting in anticipation of a ventilator shortage due to COVID-19.
Prisma Health, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, distributed a Y-shaped pipe to split ventilators to 35 states, 94 cities, and 97 agencies. The company said in a statement it is not aware that the device was used to treat patients.
At SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, where one of the hospital’s emergency medicine doctors did the research proving splitting is possible, a spokesman said the hospital never hooked more than one patient to a single ventilator.
Getting creative
Instead of denying ventilators, many doctors changed the settings on anesthesia machines to pump air instead of the sleep-inducing medicine, hooked patients up to sleep apnea devices and cranked up the air pressure, and attached tight-fitting masks to oxygen tubes to keep people alive.
That’s in part because the Society of Critical Care Medicine in March recommended creative use of non-traditional types of ventilators. New York, for example, ordered 3,000 BiPAP machines — traditionally used for sleep apnea — to convert them into ventilators.
“We found innovative ways to meet this need,” Kaplan said. “We found ways to manage things, but it begs the question, ‘Should we not have been far better prepared than what we were?’ and I think the answer to that is unequivocally, ‘Yes.’”
Major U.S. hospitals including Johns Hopkins Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Veterans Administration ordered helmet-style ventilators, according to Advisory Board, a health-care consulting company. The devices surround a patient’s head like a space helmet and provide oxygen.
In a method they call “prevent the vent,” UChicago Medicine doctors pumped oxygen through tubes inserted in 24 patients’ noses and also flipped the patients on their stomachs to help them breathe. Only one patient ended up needing a ventilator, the hospital said in a statement. The procedure spared others any harmful side effects from sticking tubes down their windpipes.
The method is still risky because the oxygen tube can spray the coronavirus around a room as a fine mist. UChicago Medicine said it was able to use this method because it had enough specialized rooms to contain the contamination.
Dr. Lewis Nelson, the head of emergency medicine at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, said his hospital wasn’t able to use sleep apnea machines because it didn’t have enough isolation rooms. But the hospital bought more ventilators and borrowed from other places.
“There’s not this excessive supply of ventilators,” Nelson said. “We were able to get enough and share and borrow and repurpose and get from the stockpile. We clearly never ran out, which was great, because that would be quite catastrophic.”...
More ventilators are coming
Now that demand for ventilators in New York and New Jersey is on the decline, hospitals in other areas are starting to brace for a surge in the coming days. There’s anxiety, but a better feeling of preparedness.
Hood, at the American Hospital Association, said the Washington, D.C. area, including Maryland and Virginia, have later peak dates. States out west are also expecting later peaks, she said.
Hood said her organization is working with group purchasing organizations, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on a new ventilator reserve that backs up the Strategic National Stockpile.
The federal government sent out about 8,000 ventilators from the stockpile in March and the beginning of April.
Who got help? Rare look at stockpile handouts shows which states got ventilators, masks amid coronavirus
The dynamic ventilator reserve is designed to back up the stockpile. Hospitals and health systems will list their available ventilators in a database and then lend ventilators to one another across the country. Providers in an area with increasing coronavirus cases will be able to tap into the database for help.
The idea is to make sure ventilators don’t sit idle in one place while hospitals in other areas are stretched beyond their ventilator capacity. In total, the inventory has about 5,000 ventilators, Hood said.
“We feel much more confident today than we were two or three weeks ago,” Hood said. “We have been adding to the national emergency stockpile as there’s been purchases made from existing stock both in the U.S. and North America and across the globe.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has ordered more than 187,000 ventilators at a cost of about $2.9 billion. The department expects to receive 41,000 by the end of May. The first batch is due May 4.
By that day, all but four states — Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota — will have seen their peak days for ventilator use come and go, according projections as of April 27 from a model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The model projects that the country will need only 7,228 ventilators on May 4.
Still, Nelson, from Rutgers, said 187,000 is the right amount for the whole country because you can’t have too many ventilators. “We have no idea what we’re going to need, and if it’s easy enough to make them, and it is, I think it’s a good thing,” he said.
Braithwaite, at NYU, said there will still be ventilator demand because the peak doesn’t fall quickly. “It’s not a sharp peak,” Braithwaite said. “It’s more like a gentle hump. So we’re starting to descend on a gentle hump.”
Doctors and public health officials all over the country also are warning about case increases that could come if Americans stop practicing social distancing measures such as working from home and avoiding crowds.
“Now is not the time to relent,” said Kaplan, from the Society of Critical Care Medicine. “You are now starting to see the fruits of your labors but it’s taken this long to see it.
“How many hundreds of thousands of people are positive that we know of?” Kaplan asked. “How many don’t we know of? So, yes, I have concerns. And in this I am not alone.”
fascinating three-parter on the ventilator shortage the media hyped that never happened
worse still is that health officials were recommending alternatives because 85% of coronavirus patients that went on ventilators dies and many of the rest suffered severe lung damage
the Federal stockpile was disbursed when necessary and never became depleted
had the Trump administration not resisted panicky pleas from governors who had no idea what they actually needed, there would have indeed been problems
the media needs to report and stop making apocalyptic predictions
then we would really have to "beg the question"
U.S. economy shrank 4.8 percent in first quarter, the biggest decline since the Great Recession
The worst is yet to come, many analysts say. The second quarter is likely to show a decline of 30 percent -- or more.
The fallout from the deadly coronavirus caused the U.S. economy to contract 4.8 percent from January through March, the deepest decline since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
Consumer and business spending nose-dived in the first quarter, according to the Commerce Department report, which gives the first real look at how painful the economic fallout from the pandemic has been. Although Americans flooded grocery stores to buy food and supplies, it was not nearly enough to offset lost spending on dining out, car sales, entertainment and more.
The worst is yet to come, many analysts say. The second quarter is likely to show a decline of more than 30 percent -- a level not seen since the Great Depression -- as much of the economy entered a deep lockdown to try to encourage people to stay home to stop the spread of the virus.
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“Some health experts say the U.S. needs 5 million tests per day by June in order to safely reopen,” NBC’s Kristen Welker told Trump in an East Room Q&A Tuesday afternoon. “Can you get to that benchmark?”
“We have tested much more than anybody else times two,” Trump replied. “We’ve tested more than every country combined.” He went on to say, “We inherited a very broken test, a broken system and a broken test, and within a short period of time we were setting records. We have done more than the entire world combined.” And he said the United States would “very soon” surpass 5 million tests per day — a figure beyond his own administration’s rosy forecasts.
Yet this disinformation, which in its repetition has become an obvious lie, is at the core of Trump’s coronavirus response. As he pushes to reopen commerce and schools, the country is relying on luck (a viral lull during the summer) and the ability to test people and track the spread. Though we are accustomed to Trump’s nonsense, we are now in a position where lives depend on the capability of a testing system Trump has repeatedly and consistently misrepresented.
On Tuesday, Trump showed support for commentators Diamond and Silk after they were dropped by Fox News over their repeated nonsense about the virus: suggestions that the “deep state” is to blame, that the virus is “engineered” and that people should go “out in the environment,” not shelter in their homes. Most recently, the pair hosted a scientist — part of the fire-Anthony-Fauci crowd — who argues that the coronavirus can be cured not with vaccines but with vitamin supplements.
“I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people,” Trump tweeted in their defense.
Now the country, fed a diet of such disinformation about the virus, is preparing to reopen workplaces based on the false assurance — 5 million tests a day! More than the rest of the world combined! — given by Trump’s repeated lies. What could possibly go wrong?
more on Dem hypocrisy about Biden rape allegations:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/the-hypocrisy-on-tara-reade-is-a-national-disgrace/
We see your one and raise you 24:
Business Insider: The 25 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct
Republicans in the Senate are under growing pressure to take the administration to task for its response to the coronavirus.
GOP senators, with a few exceptions, have been reluctant to criticize the administration, but they are starting to re-evaluate that kid-glove treatment amid public frustration over the lack of virus testing kits and protective equipment and reports of taxpayer dollars going to questionable causes.
Some GOP strategists say it would be smart for Republican senators to use oversight to distance themselves from some of the administration’s problems and to burnish their reputations with independents.
Republicans have a 53-47 seat majority, but the Senate is increasingly seen as in play this fall given the health and economic crises the nation is suffering.
“This may be an unprecedented circumstance in terms of public health and the budget, but it’s not unprecedented politically for the party in Congress to look at the incumbent president in the election and say ‘How can we protect ourselves from the drag of the White House?’ ” said Vin Weber, a Republican strategist.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this month tapped Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to coordinate Senate Republican oversight of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that President Trump signed into law March 27.
Crapo, who helped draft a $500 billion appropriation to the Treasury Department to set up a joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program to backstop loans, has urged administration officials to begin collecting information to share with Congress.
Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is warning companies that they will be investigated if they abuse the small-business lending fund and has threatened to use subpoenas if necessary to compel cooperation.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) says his committee is preparing to conduct oversight into the readiness of the national stockpile, vulnerabilities in the nation’s supply chain, and the use and accuracy of models used to predict and respond to the pandemic.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Trump last week warning the president not to interfere in congressional oversight of coronavirus relief legislation.
Grassley said he was alarmed by a signing statement Trump affixed to the CARES Act last month asserting that the White House would supervise the special inspector general for pandemic recovery’s reports to Congress.
“Over time, politicians in both the legislative and the executive branches have attempted to politicize IGs [inspectors general] and use them for gain but, even the appearance of political interference in their process cannot be tolerated,” Grassley warned in his letter.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) sent a letter last week to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar requesting information on his department’s plan to oversee and administer coronavirus-related funding to health care providers.
“The protection of taxpayer dollars is one of the most important roles of the federal government, and we must work to ensure that taxpayer funds are spent responsibly and that assistance is only provided to those in need,” he wrote.
Scott has also raised concern about the slow deployment of testing kits. He told reporters at the Capitol last week: “We’re way behind still where we should be on testing.”
"We see your one and raise you 24:"
you completely miss the point
no one thinks there is adequate evidence that Biden did this
but it's much stronger than that against Brett Kavanaugh
"no one thinks there is adequate evidence that Biden did this"
Yet you have brought it up 4 times in the past 2 days while never bringing up Trump's a long record of sexual harassment and his very own gold plated three wives club.
"Yet you have brought it up 4 times in the past 2 days while never bringing up Trump's a long record of sexual harassment and his very own gold plated three wives club."
well, Trump didn't hypocritically accuse someone of a crime for which there is no evidence
Biden did
he deserved the same standard he applied to others
less than 24 hours before "Do the Math"'s big embarrassment!
big problem for Biden
he has promised to make a woman his VP candidate
but all the women on his short-list said "believe all women" during the Kavanaugh hearings
poor Kamala Harris
seen as a front-runner, she became famous during the hearings
how shameless and hypocritical does she want to appear?
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump erupted at his top political advisers last week when they presented him with worrisome polling data that showed his support eroding in a series of battleground states as his response to the coronavirus comes under criticism.
As the virus takes its deadly toll and much of the nation's economy remains shuttered, new surveys by the Republican National Committee and Trump's campaign pointed to a harrowing picture for the president as he faces reelection.
While Trump saw some of the best approval ratings of his presidency during the early weeks of the crisis, aides highlighted the growing political cost of the crisis and the unforced errors by Trump in his freewheeling press briefings.
Trump reacted with defiance, incredulous that he could be losing to someone he viewed as a weak candidate.
“I am not f—-ing losing to Joe Biden,” he repeated in a series of heated conference calls with his top campaign officials, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.
The message to the president was sobering: Trump was trailing the former Democratic vice president in many key battleground states, he was told, and would have lost the Electoral College if the election had been held earlier this month.
On the line from the White House, Trump snapped at the state of his polling during a series of calls with campaign manager Brad Parscale, who called in from Florida; RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, on the line from her home in Michigan; senior adviser Jared Kushner; and other aides.
Echoing a number of White House aides and outside advisers, the political team urged Trump to curtail his daily coronavirus briefings, arguing that the combative sessions were costing him in the polls, particularly among seniors. Trump initially pushed back, pointing to high television ratings. But, at least temporarily, he agreed to scale back the briefings after drawing sharp criticism for raising the idea that Americans might get virus protection by injecting disinfectants.
Trump aides encouraged the president to stay out of medical issues and direct his focus toward more familiar and politically important ground: the economy.
Even as Trump preaches optimism, the president has expressed frustration and even powerlessness as the dire economic statistics pile up. It's been a whiplash-inducing moment for the president, who just two months ago planned to run for reelection on the strength of an economy that was experiencing unprecedented employment levels. Now, as the records mount in the opposite direction, Trump is feeling the pressure.
“We built the greatest economy in the world,” Trump has said publicly. “I’ll do it a second time.”
Trump's political team warned that the president's path to reelection depends on how quickly he can bring about a recovery.
“I think you’ll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again," Kushner told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. But other aides, business leaders and economists predict a far longer road toward recovery.
Representatives for the RNC and the Trump campaign did not comment on the polling or last week's phone calls. In a tweet just after midnight Wednesday, Trump denied that he had recently shouted at his campaign manager and said that “he is doing a great job.”
According to people familiar with the incident, Trump vented much of his frustration at Parscale, who served as the bearer of bad news [AKA reality]....
"President Donald Trump erupted at his top political advisers last week when they presented him with worrisome polling data that showed his support eroding in a series of battleground states as his response to the coronavirus comes under criticism."
why are liberals so fixated on polls?
they're changeable and unreliable and there's a summer and fall to go before the election
the general pattern is the Dems look like they're going to clean up until about a week before the election and, then, mysteriously, everything turns
13 hours to go until we see what a huge mistake "Do the Math" made
but you can start laughing now
Yawn
look, it's sleepy Joe Biden
he won't be yawning when he's forced into a permanent time-out with the loudmouth loser, Al Franken!
of course, he deserves credit for landing that choice Hillary Clinton endorsement!
she's always been associated in the public mind with sexual predators: Bill Clinton, Al Weiner, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Joe Biden, et al, ET AL
“Anyone who wants a test can get a test,” Rump declared March 6, a statement so false it needed to be corrected the next day by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
Aides described Rump as in a particularly foul mood last week because of the polling data and news coverage of his administration’s response to the pandemic, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. In one call, he berated [campaign manager Brad] Parscale over the polling data, the two people said.
Other reports describe Rump “shouting” or “erupt[ing]” at Parscale and blaming the campaign manager for his poor standing, because it couldn’t possibly be Trump’s own fault. “I am not f---ing losing to Joe Biden,” he reportedly said.
If Rump has done any angry shouting at aides over his administration’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic — which has killed 60,000 Americans and counting — we have not heard about it. Some low poll numbers, on the other hand? That’s worth a tantrum.
Maryland @GovLarryHogan on whether he was concerned that the federal government would seize the tests the state procured from South Korea. He says the tests are being guarded by the National Guard at an undisclosed location. https://youtu.be/PjkMyHbyhro
Wow. The Maryland National Guard is guarding the tests Hogan and his wife brought in from South Korea from confiscation from the Federal government. How did we get to this? It's horrifying.
"administration’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic — which has killed 60,000 Americans"
what a joke!
if you took away New York, things went well
in NY, there's a particularly incompetent governor
did you want Trump to take over the state?
idea: now that predator Joe Biden is soon to be eliminated from consideration, why not run Andrew Cuomo so we can discuss why his state had the worst response to the virus
The news media isn’t waiting for the dust to settle on the coronavirus pandemic to start assessing blame for the ensuing losses. Since the moment it became apparent that the Wuhan coronavirus was going to exact a fearsome toll in the United States, the pundit class began asserting that the Trump administration had failed to safeguard the country against the threat.
As the crisis deepened and lockdowns were imposed, a different political narrative emerged that contrasted with the alleged failures of President Donald Trump. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings became must-watch television in much the same way Trump’s press conferences did, except Cuomo’s performance seemed to charm many, including the corporate media.
Cuomo’s ability to strike the right tone consistently by sounding in charge, as well as speaking in a manner that seemed comforting to those in distress, was in marked contrast with Trump’s confrontational style that may have appealed to his supporters while alienating many others. While most of the mainstream media continued to hit Trump hard by second-guessing his decision-making early in the crisis, Cuomo’s decisions escaped close scrutiny.
That should have changed once it was clear that one of the hottest of the pandemic’s hotspots — New York’s nursing homes — were compelled by a state regulation to take in recovering coronavirus victims, many of whom were likely still contagious.
The implication of this rule — which was apparently strictly enforced and similar to the order issued by California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration — was that facilities filled with exactly the most vulnerable population had no choice but to admit carriers of the contagion. The results of this blunder were as brutal as they were predictable. As of last week, New York’s Health Department estimated the number of nursing home patients who had died of COVID-19 to be 3,500, a total representing more than 20 percent of all the state’s fatalities.
As reports of the suffering going on in nursing homes made clear, what happened was not a function of demography or chance. The March 25 order handed down by Cuomo’s Health Department mandating that nursing homes could not reject those recovering from the illness set in motion the events that inflated the state’s COVID-19 death tolls.
Far from realizing the mistake and seeking to correct it, Cuomo was still doubling down on the order at an April 26 press conference, at which he said again that nursing homes had no right to challenge the state order and reject patients who were likely to spread the illness.
less than four hours before "Do the Math" is completely debunked
it's looking like you need to do math targeted in the right way and use logic to interpret the result
who knew?
LOL!
Three months after the first case of Covid-19 was diagnosed in the U.S., has the time come to start paying more attention to the critics?
No, not the MAGA types foolishly protesting they have a constitutional right to endanger themselves and others by ignoring social-distancing rules. And not the “it’s-just-the-flu” crowd, either.
I’m referring to people like John Ioannidis, the Stanford University School of Medicine scientist who argued early on that the coronavirus was far less deadly than the models were predicting. Or the Swedish epidemiologist John Giesecke, who says that protecting the elderly and frail — and allowing the rest of society to go about its business — makes far more sense than lockdowns, whose efficacy, he believes, remains unproved. And yes, I’m even referring to Alex Berenson, the pugnacious former journalist who has become a national villain (except at Fox News) for poking holes in the conventional wisdom about how to mitigate the virus and pointing out the various harms that have resulted from measures like lockdowns.
I don’t agree with every claim the critics make. Some go so far as to dismiss the value of social distancing, the importance of which has become pretty clear since the coronavirus was first identified. But I believe it’s always worth listening to smart people with ideas that go against the grain.
As the online publication UnHerd put it recently, “The debate about lockdown is not a contest between good and evil.” In that spirit, I would like to offer four contrarian arguments that, at the very least, ought to be taken more seriously.
We’re still acting as if the original models were correct. In mid-March, a team at Imperial College in London estimated that 500,000 British citizens and 2.2 million Americans would die from an uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. That estimate caused the governments of both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump to begin stressing self-isolation measures, according to the New York Times. In the U.S., state after state shut down their economies while a mad scramble took place to create hospital space for Covid-19 patients.
Since then, the major models have been revised downward significantly. According to data compiled by the Reich Lab at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, models now estimate 67,000 to 120,000 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. Yet strict measures like lockdowns, which were put in place based on the original modeling, remain in place, while hospitals around the country, many of which are largely empty, continued to be reserved for nonexistent Covid-19 patients.
New York is not the rest of the country. There is no question that New York State has borne the brunt of the crisis. The Times reports that one out of every three Americans who has died from Covid-19 has been a New Yorker — 17,000 in all. New York City is one of the few places in the country — along with Detroit and New Orleans — where the hospital system has been stretched to capacity. (Although even in New York City, the most catastrophic expectations never came to pass: for instance, the Naval hospital ship Comfort, which came to New York to provide emergency beds, is being returned after treating just 179 patients.)
New York is the densest city in the country, and density is a crucial factor in spreading the virus. Yet cities and states that are far less dense have imposed the same restrictions as New York State. Idaho has a stay-at-home order; it has had 172 hospitalizations and 58 deaths as of Tuesday. Kansas: 504 hospitalizations and 124 deaths. Maine: 163 hospitalizations and 51 deaths. Meanwhile, Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas never instituted a shelter-at-home order — yet the state has only 104 current hospitalizations and 52 deaths. Which suggests an obvious question: Does it make sense for these less dense places to be imposing the same restrictions as New York?
Focus on the elderly. “Every piece of evidence we have suggests that the virus is mild for most people but can be devastating for those who are frail and vulnerable,” Ioannidis told me. That primarily means people with significant underlying conditions and the elderly.
The Kaiser Family Foundation calculates that at least 10,000 of the 50,000 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. have been nursing-home residents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that fully 80 percent of coronavirus deaths have been people 65 or older. On Monday, the Boston Globe reported that 67 residents — out of 225 — of an elderly home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, had died of Covid-19. There are reports like that all over the country.
It’s been said that lockdown critics are willing to sacrifice the elderly to more quickly develop herd immunity and defeat the virus. But the ones I’ve spoken to say just the opposite: that what the states need to do is put money and effort towards protecting the elderly and vulnerable — and keeping them as far away from the virus as possible. That may be a tall order given the way society depends on facilities to care for the elderly. But it’s not impossible.
How much damage are we overlooking in our single-minded focus on the coronavirus? When you get right down to it, this is the big question. The enormous damage being done to the economy because of the lockdowns is a given. Let’s consider some of the other problems that have emerged.
For instance, the New York Post posted an article on Monday by Daniel G. Murphy, an emergency room doctor in the Bronx. He wrote that since the coronavirus struck, people without Covid-19 were avoiding the emergency room. He added:
A large share of those staying home surely have emergency medical and surgical conditions not related to the novel coronavirus. The growing numbers dying at home during this crisis must include fatal myocardial infarctions, asthma exacerbations, bacterial infections and strokes.
How many people with cancer are not being diagnosed? How many operations are being put on hold — to the long-term detriment of the patient? For that matter, how many hospitals are teetering on the brink financially because patients who need to be in the hospital are staying home?
Here’s another question: Has the lockdown increased incidents of domestic violence? The answer, plainly, is yes; in New York, for instance, domestic violence so far in April is up 30% compared with incidents in the month a year ago. (New York responded by setting up a domestic violence hotline.) What does it mean for at-risk kids, some of whom view school as their “safe space,” now that they don’t have a school to go to now?
Indeed, there may be no bigger ancillary consequence than the closing of schools. It affects everyone. Children aren’t learning the way they should. Parents are struggling to juggle working from home with keeping their kids productively occupied. Other parents, whose jobs require them to be out of the house, have to scramble to find someone who can help out. Teachers are feeling even more stress, trying to impart lessons to kids who may not know how to use a computer — all while taking care of their own kids. And of course, even with online learning, interrupting school can only exacerbate the equality gap.
When I suggested in a tweet a few days ago that government officials should make testing teachers a priority so that schools could reopen, I received plenty of positive responses. But others said that reopening schools could endanger the teachers because children can be asymptomatic carriers. “Are you insane?” one person wrote.
In fact, Denmark has already reopened its schools after calculating that doing so would lead to minimal new infections. The Lancet published an article that concluded that “school closures alone would prevent only 2% to 4% of deaths, much less than other social interventions.”
We know that children are largely unaffected by the virus; even if they’re infected, they are usually asymptomatic. We also know that people younger than 50 are far less likely to become gravely ill from Covid-19. Given how critical it is to get kids back to school, why couldn’t school systems institute a policy whereby teachers older than 50 could remain at home while younger teachers and the children could head back to the classroom? The teachers could remain socially distant from the students, and certain close-contact games, like basketball, could be banned temporarily during recess.
Would there be some risk in taking this approach? Yes. But life is full of risks that we try to mitigate while acknowledging that we can’t eliminate them entirely. Driving a car involves risk. Useful products that contain suspected carcinogens carry a small danger. Bypass surgery is risky. The point is that these are all risks we take willingly knowing that they will cause some people to die. We accept that consequence.
At bottom, that is what the critics are saying about the coronavirus. If only 50 people have died from Covid-19 in your state, isn’t reopening the economy worth the risk? If 80% of Covid-19 deaths are elderly, isn’t it worth the risk to return kids to school? With the expected number of deaths so much lower than originally expected, shouldn’t we take the risk that this virus isn’t going to be the second coming of the 1918 flu?
So far, the U.S. has been unwilling to accept much risk in dealing with the coronavirus. Do we know enough now to change that calculus? The critics say yes — and they may well be right.
"We have done an incredible job. We're going to continue," the President said, claiming that the media won't give the administration "credit" for a successful response to the virus.
Speaking about the 15 individuals diagnosed with the coronavirus on US soil, Trump said that "the 15 will soon be down to three, four."
“Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do ― you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat ― as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases ― 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” [Feb. 10]
“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” [Feb. 10]
“I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that’s a beautiful date to look forward to.” [Feb. 10]
“We think and we hope, based on all signs that the problem goes away in April.” [Feb. 13]
“There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm ― historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet.” [Feb. 14]
“I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.” [Feb. 14]
Much of the U.S. economy is now shut down as people work from home and practice social distancing in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. Medical experts say it will get worse before it gets better.
But even amid the rising number of cases, Trump has continued to insist that everything is going well. As recently as last week, he said he wanted the country “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” which is on April 12.
America is currently having a dress rehearsal for a police state. People are told to stay in and the government will demand a justification for leaving home. The social media, which control information (youtube, facebook, et al) are now deleting any posts that contradict WHO recommendations (WHO, in January, told us COVID doesn't spread person-to-person and that masks are dangerous) and posts protesting government shitdowns.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-big-tech-is-using-coronavirus-to-increase-its-power-and-the-us-is-becoming-more-like-china
The White House released a three-phase plan on reopening the U.S. economy. President Donald Trump said he has no plans on extending social distancing guidelines, which expired Thursday. But Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, suggested that social distancing would exist in some form through the summer.
Trump said Thursday he's seen evidence suggesting the new virus originated in a Chinese virology lab. The president didn't provide the evidence, but his top national intelligence official said the virus was not man-made or genetically modified, as scientists have concluded. The intelligence community "will continue to rigorously examine" the virus' origin, the national intelligence director's office said.
Layoffs amount to 1 in 6 American workers and encompass more people than the entire population of Texas. Some economists say the U.S. unemployment rate for April may be as high as 20% – a figure not seen since the Depression of the 1930s, when joblessness peaked at 25%.
"Layoffs amount to 1 in 6 American workers and encompass more people than the entire population of Texas. Some economists say the U.S. unemployment rate for April may be as high as 20% – a figure not seen since the Depression of the 1930s, when joblessness peaked at 25%."
the Dems and their media subsidiaries are just amazed that most Americans have been ordered to stay home and unemployment is up
maybe they need to do some math
the Dems uniformly want America shut down as long as possible so they can both cause unemployment and scream about it
the lockdowns are not accomlishing anything that sensible social distancing policies and heightened protection for the elderly can't
the middle class can weather it as they generally have jobs that can be done electronically from home
the lower income citizens are the ones hurt
once again, Dems seemed to determined to ignore the needs of the working class
On top of the growing mountain of evidence, nothing points to Joe Biden being guilty of a brutal and violent sexual assault more than his own suspicious behavior.
Tara Reade has credibly accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993. At the time, she was working in Biden’s U.S. Senate office and alleges he pinned her against a wall and then went under her skirt to stick his fingers in her vagina. She says she filed an official complaint and was fired in retaliation.
All available evidence so far backs Reade’s claim, including five contemporaneous witnesses who say Reade told them about the assault at or near the time she says it occurred. We also have videotape of Reade’s now-deceased mother and her anguished call to a 1993 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live to ask for advice about what to do about her daughter’s problems with a “prominent senator.”
What’s more, we have an alleged victim in Reade who is behaving like a woman with nothing to hide. She has made herself ridiculously available to a media who have either demeaned or ignored her, she is challenging investigative journalists to dig into her story, and she wants Biden to authorize the release of his senate papers, which she hopes will prove she did, indeed, file this harassment complaint.
This is not the behavior of a liar. This is not the behavior of a Christine Blasey Ford, who hid behind her attorneys, who was caught telling countless lies, and whose own witnesses — her own witnesses — rebutted her allegation.
Now, let’s contrast Reade’s behavior with Joe Biden’s… He is acting like the guiltiest man alive. In fact, I’ve never seen a politician behave in a more guilty manner. Here’s the rundown….
Joe Biden Refuses to Defend Himself
For months, Biden has been facing this terrible allegation, and, until today, has not once has he said he’s innocent. Instead, he hid behind a campaign that releases statements on his behalf but never a statement directly from him.
Contrast that with anyone you have ever known who was falsely accused of something. Compare Biden to Brett Kavanaugh, who was chomping at the bit to go before the Senate and the public to defend himself and his honor.
Biden is in hiding.
Guilty men hide.
Joe Biden Is Scared to Claim He’s Innocent
Why didn’t Joe Biden defend himself? Well, I think there are only a couple of valid reasons, and both point to his guilt.
Primarily, I think Biden’s terrified that if he claims he’s innocent, this will trigger an immediate civil suit. Reade will sue him for smearing her as a liar.
The statute of limitations might be up on the alleged assault, but if Biden slanders or libels her, she will have cause to file a civil suit, which means videotaped depositions and subpoenaed documents.
Kavanaugh was willing to risk all of this.
Biden is cowering in his basement.
Secondly, much of the evidence against him is impossible to explain away.
Why would Reade — a Democrat — tell five people decades ago she was sexually assaulted by Biden?
What was her motive other than to unburden herself?
And how does Biden explain away Reade’s anguished mother calling into CNN in 1993, a call where he is undoubtedly the “prominent senator” in question.
Joe Biden’s Campaign Is Lying About the Reade Allegation
Just this week, the Biden campaign reportedly issued three talking points to its surrogates about the Reade scandal, and all three of those talking points were exposed as lies.
Innocent men don’t lie.
Joe Biden Is Asking Women to Lie for Him
This week, Joe Biden’s campaign reportedly handed Stacey Abrams — who is on Biden’s potential list of vice president picks — that list of talking points that were all lies. Abrams then went on CNN and told the lie about the New York Times clearing Biden.
Talk about déjà vu all over again…
To those of us of a certain age, this is all depressingly reminiscent of Bill Clinton, a sexual predator who told lie on top of lie on top of lie and then manipulated others, including women, to lie on his behalf.
Joe Biden sent Stacey Abrams out to lie for him. How pathetic and suspicious is that?
Innocent men don’t lie, and they surely do not ask others to lie for him.
Joe Biden’s Serial Pattern of Sexual Misconduct
On top of Reade, seven other women have accused Biden of inappropriate behavior. Creepy stuff like unwanted kisses, hair sniffing… We have tons of videotape proving Biden has a disgusting sense of entitlement when it comes to inappropriately touching women.
Joe Biden Refuses to Release Documents
Joe Biden has so far refused to authorize the release of his Senate papers from the University of Delaware.
On the other hand, Reade wants these papers made available to the public because she believes the harassment complaint she filed might be among them.
Again, Biden is acting like a man with everything to hide, while Reade is acting like a woman with nothing to hide.
Joe Biden Has Yet to Explain Why Tara Reade Was Fired
Reade claims she was fired by Biden’s Senate office in retaliation for the harassment complaint. Investigative reporter Rich McHugh (one of the only good guys in the media who’s actually looking into this) says he found an intern who worked under Reade in Biden’s Senate office, and this intern verifies Reade abruptly disappeared at the time in question.
If Biden is innocent, personnel records would make this the easiest Reade allegation to debunk. But Biden has so far not only refused to release those records, no one has bothered to explain why Reade was fired, and if she was not fired, why she left.
Again, one lie begets a million little lies.
Joe Biden’s Engaging in a Cover-Up
I’m sorry but “cover-up” is the only way to define Biden’s refusal to come out of hiding, his refusal to answer these questions, and, most especially, his refusal to release pertinent documents.
Again, compare Biden to Kavanaugh, who went before the country to profess his innocence and who publicly released his calendar and other documents from 1983, the year in question.
Bottom line: Biden’s videotaped history of inappropriate behavior, combined with multiple accusations, his deafening silence, his campaign’s lies, and his refusal to release documents, amount to the behavior of a guilty man.
Bottom line: Trump's videotaped history of inappropriate behavior, combined with multiple accusations, his deafening silence, his campaign’s lies, his refusal to release documents, hush money payoffs, and having his cronies threaten women amount to the behavior of a guilty man.
And yet that didn't stop him from becoming President. In fact many Republicans are desperately hoping for 4 more year of Donny Drano.
From his balding scalp to his income tax returns to the 25 women he sexually assaulted.
And he is ignoring Dr. Fauci who is warning us all: Fauci warns states rushing to reopen: ‘You’re making a really significant risk’
April 27, 2020 Poll: Voters trust Fauci, Biden, Sanders, Cuomo, Pence more than Trump on coronavirus
"...Sixty-three percent of voters trust Fauci, the most of any official surveyed.
Biden and Sanders follow behind at 53 percent and 52 percent, respectively.
Fifty-one percent of voters say the trust Cuomo and 47 percent trust Pence on the issue.
Forty-four percent of voters say the trust President Trump when it comes to coronavirus information while 52 percent say they do not trust the President's knowledge of the pandemic...."
Because voters know Rump only cares about himself.
Divorce Rates for Atheists Are Among the Lowest in America
Why Do Conservative Christian Defenders of Marriage Get Divorced More Often?
Conservative Christians of all types, evangelical as well as Catholic, tend to link the conservative brand of their religion with proper moral behavior. By far the most popular context is marriage: they claim that a good, solid marriage is only possible when people acknowledge conservative Christianity's claims about the nature of marriage and gender roles. So why is it that Christian marriages, and especially conservative Christian marriages, end in divorce more often than atheist marriages?
The Statics Show the Difference
The Barna Research Group, an evangelical Christian organization that does surveys and research to better understand what Christians believe and how they behave, studied divorce rates in America in 1999 and found surprising evidence that divorce is far lower among atheists than among conservative Christians - exactly the opposite of what they were probably expecting.
The highest divorce rates are in the Bible Belt: "Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, and Oklahoma round out the Top Five in the frequency of divorce...the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average" of. Nine states in the Northeast (Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Maryland) have the lowest divorce rates.
Other Research
Barna isn't the only group to arrive at these numbers. Other researchers have also found that conservative Protestants get divorced more often than other groups, even more often than "mainline" Protestants. The fact that atheists and agnostics divorce less often than other religious groups was, however, surprising to many. Some have simply refused to believe it.
Credit should be given to George Barna, himself a conservative evangelical Christian, for at least trying to face up to these results and what they might mean: "We would love to be able to report that Christians are living very distinct lives and impacting the community, but...in the area of divorce rates they continue to be the same." According to Barna, his data raises "questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families" and challenge "the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriage."
It appears that their connection to Christ makes less difference in the durability of people's marriages than many people might expect. Faith has had a limited affect on people's behavior, whether related to moral convictions and practices, relational activities, lifestyle choices or economic practices.
Barna should, however, acknowledge that the divorce rates for conservative Christians are higher than for liberal Christians. He also doesn't take the further step of acknowledging that perhaps conservative Christianity and conservative religion, in general, are unable to provide a sound basis for marriage - that perhaps there are other, more secular foundations for marriage that conservative Christians are missing. What might they be? Well, an obvious possibility is treating women like fully autonomous equals in the relationship, something which conservative Christianity frequently denies.
The difference in divorce rates is particularly interesting given the fact that the Christians getting divorced in the highest numbers are among the same Christians who are most likely to raise an alarm about the state of marriage in society. They also tend to be the same Christians who want to deny gays the right to marry on the assumption that gay marriage is a "threat" to the institution of marriage. If marriage is in any danger in America, perhaps the threat comes from the unstable marriages of conservative Christians, not the relationships of gays or the marriages of godless atheists.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Thursday sharply criticized China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, suggesting the country should be held financially responsible for the pandemic.
"The Chinese Communist Party is going to have to pay," Bannon said. "I think the world’s going to hold them in judgement, and that judgement is not going to be very pretty. They owe trillions, if not tens of trillions of dollars."
"We're at war," Banon said. "President Trump is a wartime president. This is a war on two fronts. On one front, it is about the pandemic and this unprecedented virus that came upon us. And the other, and let's be brutally frank about it, is this war against the Chinese Communist Party. Both an information war and an economic war."
"We have to face a brutal reality. We're facing a competitor here that is not a partner, not a strategic workmate. This is an enemy and they treat us like an enemy and we have to face that. If you look at what happened here, they treated us like an enemy," Bannon said.
POLITICO has compiled a list of 15 times the president hailed China for its push to prevent a pandemic in the early months of 2020 — an effort that ultimately failed:
Jan. 22, Twitter:
“One of the many great things about our just signed giant Trade Deal with China is that it will bring both the USA & China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”
Jan. 24, Twitter:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Jan. 29, Remarks at signing ceremony for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement:
“And, honestly, I think, as tough as this negotiation was, I think our relationship with China now might be the best it's been in a long, long time. And now it's reciprocal. Before, we were being ripped off badly. Now we have a reciprocal relationship, maybe even better than reciprocal for us.”
Jan. 30, Fox News interview:
"China is not in great shape right now, unfortunately. But they're working very hard. We'll see what happens. But we're working very closely with China and other countries."
Feb. 7, Remarks at North Carolina Opportunity Now Summit in Charlotte, N.C.:
"I just spoke to President Xi last night, and, you know, we're working on the — the problem, the virus. It's a — it's a very tough situation. But I think he's going to handle it. I think he's handled it really well. We're helping wherever we can."
Feb. 7, Twitter:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Feb. 7, Remarks before Marine One departure:
"Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They're working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They're in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We're working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It's a tough situation. I think they're doing a very good job.”
Feb. 10, Fox Business interview:
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
Feb. 10, campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.:
“I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s all going to work out fine.”
Feb. 13, Fox News interview:
“I think they've handled it professionally and I think they're extremely capable and I think President Xi is extremely capable and I hope that it's going to be resolved."
Feb. 18, remarks before Air Force One departure:
“I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently. He’s working really hard. It’s a tough problem. I think he’s going to do — look, I’ve seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he’s doing it very professionally.”
Feb. 23, remarks before Marine One departure:
"I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He's working very hard. I think he's doing a very good job. It's a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem. OK?"
Feb. 26, remarks at a business roundtable in New Delhi, India:
“China is working very, very hard. I have spoken to President Xi, and they’re working very hard. And if you know anything about him, I think he’ll be in pretty good shape. They’re — they’ve had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control.”
Feb. 27, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller.”
Feb. 29, Coronavirus Task Force press conference:
“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good. We just did a big trade deal. We’re starting on another trade deal with China — a very big one. And we’ve been working very closely. They’ve been talking to our people, we’ve been talking to their people, having to do with the virus.”
Someone on Joe My God mused that the way conservatives were acting with this pandemic made it seem that they want to die.
I believe it is a natural psychological tendency of conservatives to want to give their lives in order to benefit their tribe. Our psychology evolved on the tribal basis, with tribal survival being the natural selector of genes such that our natural psychological tendency is to try to benefit our own group even when its to the detriment of humanity as a whole. Research shows conservatives are more prone to this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view
and that is in my opinion why we see more conservatives in armed forces and police forces - these are people psychologically primed to give their lives in defence of ideas, people, or their tribe. These are people who are willing to sacrifice themselves and others for an idea, good or bad. These days they are behaving to the detriment of all.
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.
As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”
It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?
It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.
Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.
In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”...
...Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”
This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.
Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.
The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.
There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.
Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.
And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.
And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.
As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
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About a month ago Disqus user Mary with a Jesus avatar was trolling people on Joe My God. I was a bit late to that, but and decided to engage him/her thinking I would get the best of them, which I certainly did. If you'd like to get some ideas on how to handle an anti-gay troll please check it out here.
Finlan O'Toole rhymes with fool. That's apropos.
take this:
"In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”
yes, Finlan, we know when you sit in a pub in Ireland, and your only information is CNN, you might think Florida is decimated by the virus
but the truth is, despite keeping churches open and using restraint, Florida is many times better off than states run by Dems, like NY NJ, Michigan...
In order to flatten the curve of the coronavirus, the politicians told us we must lockdown and be quarantined while our economy collapsed. They told us we had to flatten the curve to ensure our health care system was not overwhelmed by the sick and dying. They told us that if the health care system was overwhelmed, people would die who could otherwise be saved. They told us losing people who can be saved is intolerable, and America agreed…
And so, for the first time in recorded history, healthy Americans dutifully fulfilled our end of the bargain and went into quarantine by dutifully agreeing to go into lockdown while our economy collapsed.
And now we know we were suckers…
Now we know the politicians lied to us.
This was never about saving the healthcare system from crashing, because we have saved the system from crashing, and most of us are still in these goddamned lockdowns.
They lied.
Not all the politicians lied. But most of the politicians lied, most especially Democrat governors….
Democrat governor, Roy Cooper, just canceled school for the rest of the year and extended his ludicrous, pointless, statewide, one-size-fits-all lockdown to May 8.
Why?
There’s no good answer.
Among others, all of California, Michigan, Hawaii, and Wisconsin are locked down through the end of May. Oregon is locked down until July 6!
Why?
There’s no good answer.
There is no threat the healthcare system’s going to crash in any of those states. You might be able to convince me there’s a small risk in some urban areas — in Detroit or Los Angeles or Milwaukee, but 95 percent of those states are completely out of the woods. But these Democrat governors refuse to open any part of their state.
The curve in 95 percent of the country is not just bent, it’s crushed, decimated, destroyed — and let’s now take this opportunity to go ahead and say the following out loud: in much of the country there was never any real danger of overwhelming the health care system.
The experts were wrong.
But that’s okay.
It happens.
We planned for the worst and the worst didn’t happen… That’s a good thing. But why in the name of God’s creation are lockdowns being extended where there is no risk of the system being overwhelmed?
You told us we had to ravage our economy in order to bend the curve. Okay, the curve is bent; can we go now? No, because now you’re moving the goalposts. Now you’re spreading an all new pile of bullshit with this bullshit about saving lives and it still not being safe to go out.
Well, riddle me this Govs. Newsom, Cooper, Whitmer, and Evers…
When there is zero risk the health care system will crash, and when there is no vaccine or cure, why is it safer to reopen in two or three weeks or a month or three months, as opposed to right now?
With no vaccine or cure, what’s going to change to make things safer between today and May 8 or May 31 or July 6?
"Florida is many times better off than states run by Dems, like NY NJ, Michigan"
It sure looks that way, huh?
Nice spin.
Here's the data:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
And here's the important data you skipped right over:
FLORIDA STOPS MEDICAL EXAMINERS FROM RELEASING CORONAVIRUS DEATH DATA: REPORT
Keep spinning but stay home!
spin?
are you saying that Florida 1s anywhere close to NY or NJ?
just checking to see how far your delusions have advanced
half of all cases in the US are in five states
all run by Dems
this will be discussed during the fall campaign
Also to be discussed during the fall campaign:
Trump’s ‘corona-federalism’ pits states against each other. It’s a disaster: The president blames states for the federal government’s failings
Trump commits to helping blue states fight the coronavirus -- if their governors are nice to him: The president prefers to be surrounded by sycophants
Donald Trump shows 'propaganda video' during coronavirus press conference as he lashes out at media
And of course, Mexico hasn't paid a dime for Trump's wall, but the Pentagon sure has.
Trump to Transfer $3.8B from Military to Fund Border Wall: The move by the Pentagon would transfer money from National Guard units, aircraft procurement and shipbuilding to anti-drug accounts that can finance construction of new wall.
none of what you're saying Trump did prevented blue state governors from doing their job
because of Dem actions, ten of millions of businesses are going bankrupt needlessly and our economy will be impacted for years
meanwhile, lives were saved in Florida by an approach that won't result in deprivation
Epidemiologists are baffled by how the coronavirus pandemic has played out thus far in Florida but the state's governor isn't waiting much longer to declare his response a win.
As Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis prepared to reopen much of his state Monday, he took a victory lap that began at the White House last week -- touting his "tailored" and "surgical" approach to stay-at-home orders as the central reason Florida has so far defied the dire predictions that it would become "way worse than Italy."
With his self-congratulatory news conferences, DeSantis sparked new debate over the stay-at-home measures in more restrictive states -- framing those measures as "draconian" compared to what he views as his more targeted approach.
Ridiculing the scientific models that DeSantis says overstated the crisis and encouraged a climate of fear, the Republican governor has chided critics who faulted his slow and often hapless response to the coronavirus in March when spring break revelers thronged Florida's beaches.
Presuming that humans and education and history books survive, the destructive Republican ideology that has spread slowly through the United States over the past forty years will likely be recorded in history books as the deadliest pandemic. It has been spread deliberately and maliciously by those who seek to purge science, knowledge, and progress from the human species for anyone outside of the ruling oligarchy. It is a cult of death and ignorance that seeks supremacy. Diseases like COVID-19 just prove to be opportunistic tools that are used to accelerate the destruction. Current Republican ideology is a disease far worse than COVID-19.
The health experts say its too soon to open the economy. I'm going with them over Trump and Republicans who've lied constantly to the public.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous and Trump claimed only 60,000 would die.
You can't trust anything they say.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis never attended any medical schools.
Trump U maybe, but no medical schools for sure.
And Rump didn't go to any medical schools either.
In the meantime DeSantis opened FL with Rump's blessing but without following CDC or the Rump White House guidelines that must be satisfied before proceeding to phased comeback:
"SYMPTOMS
Downward trajectory of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) reported within a 14-day period
AND
Downward trajectory of covid-like syndromic cases reported within a 14-day period
CASES
Downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period
OR
Downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests within a 14-day period (flat or increasing volume of tests)
HOSPITALS
Treat all patients without crisis care
AND
Robust testing program in place for at-risk healthcare workers, including emerging antibody testing"
See https://www.whitehouse.gov/openingamerica/#criteria
Dr. Brix " on Sunday said it was “devastatingly worrisome” that those protesting at state Capitols against stay-at-home orders did not wear masks or practice social distancing, warning that they could unknowingly transmit the novel coronavirus to at-risk relatives.
“It’s devastatingly worrisome to me personally because if they go home and they infect their grandmother or grandfather who has a comorbid condition and they have a serious or very unfortunate outcome they will feel guilty for the rest of their lives. So we need to protect each other at the same time as we’re voicing our discontent,” Birx said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Birx, asked by Fox News’s Chris Wallace about whether reopening businesses such hair salons was safe, said it was "safer" if both parties wore masks but added that "we’ve made it clear that that’s not a good phase one activity, and I think the president's made it clear when he discussed the case in Georgia."
Asked by Wallace whether the U.S. was “past the peak” or “on the downslope” when it comes to infections, Birx noted that “every single metro area and every single outbreak across the country is different.”
“We are encouraged that the New York and New Jersey metro areas are starting to see a decline after a long flat curve,” she said.
Federal guidelines call on states to wait for a 14-day period of continually declining cases before moving to phase one and then each subsequent stage of reopening, which no state has met as of Sunday.
I just would like to point out that the very people that have been outraged for 8 years because of 4 dead people in Benghazi are now telling us that 100,000 deaths due to Trump's negligence is an acceptable number.
Quarantine, no human right.
No quarantine, no human left.
NY v Florida is an easy contrast, showing how blue state governors have failed their citizens.
But any two comparable red & blue states show the same.
Michigan and Georgia offer a good comparison. They’re about the same size, with regard to population (each boasts 14 congressional districts), and each state has been hit hard by job losses over the last several weeks. A full 27% of Michigan’s workforce has now filed claims for unemployment insurance and tops the country in related rankings; in Georgia, 24.1% of the workforce has filed claims, ranking the state in seventh place.
So what does the comparison reveal?
In Michigan, Whitmer used her edicts to impose the heaviest hand of government possible: She banned the sale of “carpeting, flooring, furniture, garden centers, plant nurseries, or paint;” she prohibited travel to and from other homes, including one’s own homes; she banned the use of motorboats and decreed that golf and landscaping “are not necessary to sustain life” and were, therefore, banned.
A week ago Friday, Whitmer announced an easing of her more draconian restrictions, but she’s still got some of the toughest in the country. And on the last day of April, she extended her state of emergency order through May 28. Under that declaration, state law gives her the power to issue executive orders related to the coronavirus, including a stay-at-home order that’s in effect until May 15. The state’s Republican-led legislature opposed Whitmer’s moves, and both chambers passed resolutions authorizing their leaders to take legal action against the governor.
Not surprisingly, as of Friday, Michigan had 41,347 confirmed cases and 3,788 deaths.
In Georgia, by contrast, Kemp was late to the shutdown game, and when he arrived, he seemed only to want to tap the brakes on his state’s economy gently. Rather than go draconian and shut down everything in sight, he left most businesses open as long as they followed a set of guidelines designed to mitigate the spread of the virus. He left golf courses and landscaping businesses open, and when he issued orders two weeks ago to allow owners to reopen nail and hair salons, gyms, massage parlors, and the like, he explained that he chose to reopen those particular businesses because, in his words, “those are the ones that are closed.”
As of Friday, Georgia had 25,444 confirmed cases (only 62% of Michigan’s caseload) and 1,121 deaths (just 30% of Michigan’s death toll).
What’s interesting about the comparison is that Whitmer’s actions mandate action (or inaction) on the part of individuals — “thou shalt not travel” — whereas Kemp’s actions will allow individuals to do what they want. If they want to go back to work, they may. If they want to go to a hair salon, they may. But if they do not want to go, they are not required to.
Kemp’s approach, in other words, grants individual liberty while Whitmer’s takes it away.
And, under liberty, more citizens have survived.
Imagine that....
https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/04/your-guide-to-the-obama-administrations-hit-on-michael-flynn/
top seven states in virus cases and deaths are all run by blue state governors
it's pitiful
Dems will ever explain this to the voters in the fall
Oh yeah, that's tough.
Where there are lots of people, AKA voters, Democrats win.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "h*sexuality is inherently sado-masochistic"
What about me and my husband? You say you consider us two gay men, but I have a vagina and my husband has a penis - is that inherently sado-masochistic?
IS A PENIS AND A VAGINA INHERENTLY SADO-MASOCHISTIC????
Also, the vast majority of anal sex happens between opposite sex couples, not between two men. Funny how Wyatt/Regina never complain about that. Its almost as if they are covering their unjustified animosity with double standards.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "heterosexuality is the preferred foundation of civil society"
Maximizing the good and minimizing the bad for all in an equal and fair way is the preferred foundation of civil society - for those who want the best society we can have.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "if the Bidens are innocent, why not cooperate with the investigation and prove it?"
First, there is no investigation. Second, how hypocritical of you given you backed Trump's refusal to cooperate with the investigations into him. Republicans have rules for Democrats but none for themselves.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem"
When Republicans say this, what they mean is they want to take away your social security, medicare, and medicade. They want you to pay for your own police and fire protection or get no protection.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "h*sexuality doesn't generate life and doesn't deserve special preferences from society"
Only christians are asking for special preferences, not gays. With the world exploding from overpopulation, "generating life" is something we have far to much of. Its time to save the world by preferencing childlessness.
Good anonymous said "In 2016 the Obama administration told then President-elect Trump and his advisers of the high likelihood that a pandemic would strike the nation and advised the incoming administration to take appropriate steps to reduce its impact."
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "odd, then, that Obama depleted the stockpiles of PPE and didn't replace them"
Another lie by Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous. Obama tried to replace the stockpiles of PPE used during swine flu, AND THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS REFUSED TO DO SO.. As is so often the case, yet again the truth is the exact opposite of what Wyatt and Regina Hardiman claim it is.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "without heterosexuality, humanity would have no future, hence the societal preferencing"
The human population is expanding exponentially which will inevitably result in mass starvation. If humanity is to survive we need to stop encouraging reckless heterosexual reproduction and start rewarding childless couples.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "IF GLOBAL WARMING THREATENS LIFE ON THE PLANET WHY DO DEMS OPPOSE NUCLEAR ENERGY AND FRACKING?!?"
Because natural gas is a greenhouse gas and nuclear energy is polluting the planet with deadly radiation that will last tens of thousands of years. Humanity cannot continue indiscriminately polluting earth and expect to survive. Only renewable energy resources can save us.
Really you two, you already know this. Stop trying to deceive people to humanity's detriment.
The United States has the worst coronavirus epidemic in the world.
Tens of thousands have died needlessly because Trump failed to head dozens of warnings given as early as November and he didn't take the slightest action until the middle of March.
On a per capita basis the highest rates of increases in infections are in red states - blue states have flattened the curve. The national rate is getting worse because red states haven't taken this seriously.
Tens of thousands died needlessly due to Trump and tens of thousands more will die needlessly because Republicans and conservatives won't shelter in place or use masks and insist on reopening everything too early.
"Where there are lots of people, AKA voters, Democrats win."
Florida has two million more people than NY and a fraction of the cases and deaths
Georgia has about the same number of people as Michigan and significantly fewer cases and deaths
Texas has tons of people and they vote American constitution not socialist
I can understand you are afraid to read any media that is not liberally biased but at least read all the posts on TTF, except the ones made by foreign trolls
May we come to know justice and compassion and repent for those who have let the viruses of greed and lies make this situation worse. May we come to know pandemic’s spread through the wounds and fissures of our society, and seek to close them. May those who’ve gone along with the lies just to please narcissism break free and tell the truth.
May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake. May we who have no risk factors remember those most vulnerable. May we have the necessary righteous indignation in this moment to fight for transformation. May we who have the luxury of working from home remember those who must choose between preserving their health or making their rent. May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools are closed remember those who have no option.
May we who have to cancel our trips remember those who have no safe place to go. May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market remember those who have no margins at all. May we who settle in for a quarantine at home remember those who have no home. As fear grips our country, may we be the kind of people who stand up and who refuse to lay down. May we choose love.
During this time when we cannot physically wrap our arms around each other, let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God for our neighbors. And let us recognize that we cannot give up in this moment, and no matter what it takes; let it at least be written down in history that with our last breaths we fought for the world that ought to be.
AUSTIN, Texas, May 5 (Reuters) - The Domain mall in Austin, Texas, is open for business - unlike most of its 100 upscale shops - as the state entered its first work week of eased pandemic restrictions in the hopes of rekindling the economy.
A dozen or so people were strolling about the sprawling open-air shopping center Monday afternoon, with three seated on the patio of a Tex-Mex restaurant. Only one shopper wore a mask, and the loudest noises were from songbirds perched in the live oak trees along the deserted pedestrian thoroughfares.
"I've seen one customer today - they didn't buy anything," said Taylor Jund, who was keeping watch over an empty Chaser clothing store. "There's absolutely no one coming around here."
While protests across the United States demand state governments allow business to reopen and people to get back to work, the vast majority of Americans balk at relaxing stay-at-home orders too quickly, according to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polling.
Texas, Georgia and other southern states are leading the way in letting stay at home orders expire and gradually allowing people go about their business. But the early days of the opening in Texas show that many residents might want to stay home anyway.
"The cases of coronavirus aren't really going down, so I suspect people aren't comfortable going to malls or getting back to normal life," David Tamayo said while sitting on a shaded bench with his girlfriend at The Domain, where he said they came to relax outdoors.
Restaurants, retail stores and malls in Texas are now allowed to open at 25% capacity in most areas. Stores in rural counties with five or fewer cases can operate at 50%. A second phase is planned for May 18 if infection rates decline.
On Monday, Texas reported that it had 884 deaths from COVID-19 and 32,332 cases total, though it has among the lowest per capita testing rate of any state.
With temperatures in the 90s, Texans flocked to parks, beaches and rivers over the weekend. Beachgoers packed the shore in the resort town of Galveston, though police said most people seemed to be practicing social distancing.
A large gathering of youth at a lake outside Lubbock, in West Texas, prompted authorities to say on Sunday they were closing the beach there back down.
Still, in most spots in the state - which is larger than France - there has been plenty of room for outdoor recreation and social distancing.
Christy Armstrong, who works for a food distribution company, made the rounds with her restaurant clients across the Houston area on Monday. During a stop at Arnaldo Richards' Picos Mexican restaurant in central Houston, she saw a handful of customers sitting at a bar, separated from one another by Plexiglas barriers.
"It's sad to know that this is the first Monday we've reopened, and a lot of the places are still very empty," Armstrong said. "I'm a little shocked it's so dead out."
But patience, and even closing down again if there are coronavirus flare-ups, should be foremost on business owners' minds, said Laura Hoffman, president of Austin's Chamber of Commerce.
She said the most important thing for businesses was to figure out how to safely reopen and for the Chamber to help them do that, sharing lessons learned at places that have stayed open all along, such as grocery stores.
"We have to look at this pandemic as a long-term condition," she said. "We must strike the balance between keeping people healthy and reopening."
But not Floridians
Orlando Sentinel reports: "In a list of 15 governors’ most recent approval numbers compiled by the political statistics website FiveThirtyEight, DeSantis was the only one to not see a double-digit improvement on his baseline approval from the end of 2019."
See: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-desantis-polls-governors-20200412-fqo7ptihrzazjlzj7pbixl4n4u-story.html
Click the link above to see FiveThirtyEight's list in a table and here's the FiveThirtyEight text:
Governors like Cuomo and DeWine are getting far higher marks for their response to the virus than, for example, Ron DeSantis of Florida. DeSantis has been criticized for failing to close down Florida’s beaches during spring break and for waiting until April to issue a stay-at-home order.
Still, approval of most governors’ pandemic response is higher than their baseline approval ratings, suggesting they’re doing something to impress even people who don’t normally approve of them. Newsom, for example, isn’t especially popular overall, but he’s getting higher marks for his coronavirus response than just about any other governor for which we have data. Meanwhile, Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, is also getting good marks for his handling of the virus, but he already had the approval of a large majority of his constituents. Baker was, at one point, the most popular governor in America according to Morning Consult’s numbers (and according to PARG — our “Popularity Above Replacement Governor” — metric).
"Where there are lots of people, AKA voters, Democrats win."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/country/united-states/
take the list on this link and sort by deaths per million
11 of the top 12 states have Dem governors
the only outlier is Louisiana and that's because this hit right at Mardi Gras
of the two most populous states with GOP governors, one is at 24th and the other at 42
and, yet, we hear the propagandistic media screaming of how the GOP is endangering American lives
Dems will suffer massive losses in November
when the media fog will have cleared
"Governors like Cuomo"
I've watched some of his conferences and I personally like his approach
good leadership skills
the problem is that his decisions and results have been deficient
still, my advice to Dems would be to use the Tara Reade episode to get rid of Biden and run Cuomo
A new poll showed, among all voters, Biden's credibility on the issue of the Tara Reade rape allegation is nearly split - 40 percent of all voters said that Biden's denial was "somewhat credible" or "very credible," while 39 percent said it was "not that credible" or "not credible at all."
The Morning Consult poll, taken between May 2-3, surveyed 1,991 registered voters, with a margin of error of two percentage points.
Thank you for your worthless predictions once again, President Huckabee.
One woman has accused Biden of inappropriate touching, which is nothing compared to the list of women who have accused PresidentGrab'EmByThePussy of sexual harassment and rape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVKukVC_S5g
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "for millenia[sic], mankind has defied[sic] marriage as the union representing all the genders"
For millennia same sex couples have been getting married. Marriage has always included any two people in love.
The United States has the worst coronavirus epidemic in the world.
On a per capita basis the highest rates of increases in infections are in red states - blue states have flattened the curve. The national rate is getting worse because red states haven't taken this seriously.
Tens of thousands died needlessly due to Trump and tens of thousands more will die needlessly because Republicans refuse to take the pandemic seriously.
Even if it was true that Biden inappropriately touched this woman, the moral voter would still be obligated to vote for him as Trump is accused of sexual assault/rape by dozens of women.
Even if it were true, Trump is still far, far worse.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "still, my advice to Dems would be to use the Tara Reade episode to get rid of Biden and run Cuomo"
LOL, Biden has led Trump in the polls by a large percentage for the past year and Trump has never been above a 50% approval rating. Trump can't win an honest and fair election.
My advice to Trump would be to offer to resign in exchange for protection from prosecution - its the only way he's staying out of jail.
Tara Reade's story has changed multiple times and she backed out in shame from a Fox interview to avoid being asked about the contradictions in her story. No one takes her claims seriously. This will have no effect on Biden in the election, nor should it.
When you've got one accuser there's a good chance they're lying. When you've got dozens of accusers like Trump, there's very, very little chance you're innocent - no one believes Cosby was innocent, the same is true for Trump.
If Trump is innocent, why doesn't he provide DNA in the E. Jean Carroll rape case?
Trump won't let the medical expert Dr. Fauci testify before the House of Congress.
Remember when Obama refused to let Hillary testify in the Benghazi hearings
Me either
Just look at how extremely disproportionate Republican reactions are to the same issue depending on who is responsible:
4 died in Benghazi - 8 years of hearings, millions of dollars and "lock her up".
Tens of thousands die needlessly of coronavirus - Trump and the Republicans don't care, that's "a big success".
And what did all those Benghazi hearings find on Hillary? Not a damn thing.
What they found is that there was insufficient security after Republicans had forced through cuts to security budgets for embassies.
Just like here with Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous repeatedly saying Obama used all the PPE and didn't replace it, it was the Republicans who blocked Obama from replacing the PPE used in the swine flu epidemic.
We see this again and again with Republicans. In their blind charge to cut any government whenever the opportunity presents itself they do so with no consideration for the future deaths the cuts cause. Then the blame Democrats for a situation Republicans created.
Its just total dishonesty through and through with Republicans in their blind lust for power and to cut government down to a funnel to get the wealth created by the working class to the wealthiest Americans.
Trump's paranoia is in full bloom He is so afraid the democrats will ask a whole bunch of questions that Fauci will answer truthfully and embarrass the HELL out of Trump Can't be having that
"Trump's paranoia is in full bloom He is so afraid the democrats will ask a whole bunch of questions that Fauci will answer truthfully and embarrass the HELL out of Trump Can't be having that"
why do you think Democrats will ask anything that reporters already have?
I know, because you're a moron
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous, if Trump wasn't afraid of what Fauci would say to the House of Congress he'd let him speak.
Its no different than when Trump blocked everyone from testifying at his impeachment trial.
"Trump's paranoia is in full bloom He is so afraid the democrats will ask a whole bunch of questions that Fauci will answer truthfully and embarrass the HELL out of Trump Can't be having that"
Trump has appeared with Fauci daily for weeks and reporters, generally pretty hostile, have asked anything they wanted. The idea that Trump is afraid to let Fauci take questions is risible. He is doing this to prevent political grandstanding by craven Democratic huckster politicians.
Congress doesn't really ask questions. They bring people in for lectures that are intended to impress the folks back home. People are sick and tired of it. Congress has approval ratings much lower than any other segment of our society.
Dem governors will face a political reckoning this fall over their horrid results during the pandemic. Dem Congressmen should expect to suffer as well.
the lockdowns were originally intended to flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by a surge of cases
this task was accomplished so much that hospital beds are empty and hospitals are losing money across America
now, pathetic Dems have moved the goalposts and their sycophant blogs are demagougeing about how we need to eliminate any threat of anyone getting the virus or we're just trading lives for money
really?
we let people drive every day even though they could get killed in an accident
so why are Dems and their sycophant blogs pursuing this non sequitur?
they want to spread economic suffering and poverty to the working class to try and trick those voters to return to the Dem party in the fall
"they want to spread economic suffering and poverty to the working class to try and trick those voters to return to the Dem party in the fall"
TTF is a gangrene on society
The coronavirus shutdown is over by public demand.
There are crowds of sunbathers in the parks of New York City and mobs on the steps of the statehouses.
Pedestrian and road traffic are rising and businesses are defying orders by informally reopening.
The people are speaking — the people who used to work on a hand-to-mouth economy, the people who cannot afford to stay indoors indefinitely, the people who cannot be bothered to stay in when the sun comes out.
These people are not all the people.
They are not the doctors, who counsel caution.
They are not the state governors, who are terrified of votes being washed away by a post-reopening second wave of casualties.
They are not state employees, who can trust that their jobs will be waiting for them.
They are not the service corps the digital economy, who were work-from-home losers until coronavirus made them winners.
But they are numerous enough, and desperate or casual enough, to constitute a critical mass.
The people are calling the bluff of their elected leaders and unelected experts, first in the parks and on the beaches, next in the shops and offices.
We are already seeing civil disobedience on a barely containable scale.
It will only accelerate as the sun comes out, the debts pile up and the curve of the death rate flattens.
Are the police going to arrest the reckless sunbathers of Central Park?
No.
re they going to gun down the would-be surfers of Southern California.
Of course not.
The United States is leaving the shutdown as it went into it: in disorder and incompetence, in partisan hypocrisy and racialized bickering. The Trump administration sets its course by not governing: its federal order expired at midnight on April 30 and has not been renewed. The President has resumed his informal campaigning with a cross-country trip to a mask factory in Arizona. The mayor of New York City is exposed yet again as an incompetent. It’s almost as if we’re already back to the old normal.
Two weeks ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was first asked about his policy that forced nursing homes to admit patients infected with the coronavirus.
“That’s a good question, I don’t know,” the governor answered, turning to an aide.
On Tuesday, Cuomo was asked about a report from The Associated Press that his team had added more than 1,700 deaths to the count of those who died in nursing homes, bringing the total to at least 4,813.
“I don’t know the details, frankly,” the governor answered, turning to an aide.
Sgt. Schultz reporting for duty!
Cuomo is legendary for micromanaging and has been praised for his detailed daily briefings during the pandemic. He has closed schools, religious services and businesses because each human life is “priceless.”
So with known nursing-home deaths representing 25 percent of all deaths in the state, it beggars belief that the governor didn’t know anything about his office’s fatal policy two weeks ago or the new death totals now.
The only way either could be true is through an extreme case of plausible deniability.
Thus, if there’s no proof he knew, he can’t be held responsible, right?
Which was the whole point of the Sgt. Schultz defense.
That was a sitcom. This is life and death.
And if you are the governor of the state that is the national epicenter of the deadly outbreak, you don’t have the luxury of not knowing, or pretending not to know, about the horrendous carnage in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. And if your policies contributed to that carnage, the decent thing to do is to own your mistakes and fix them.
In fact, Cuomo does claim to know something about nursing homes and COVID-19 patients. He says the former can refuse to take the latter.
“The nursing home has to make the decision,” he said Tuesday. “If they don’t think they can take care of someone, all they have to do is say no.”
In this case, he “knows” something that’s simply not true, according to nursing-home executives.
The March 25 order that forced infected patients on them allows for no exceptions and has not been changed.
The killer fifth paragraph still reads: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
Owners and managers said Tuesday they are not aware of any loosening of the policy.
They also say that hospitals still are referring infected patients to them on a near-daily basis and they are expected to take them if they have an empty bed.
To them, the March 25 order was a death sentence. Some facilities say they had no deaths or even positive patients before that date, but many of both since, including among staff members.
Ooooo, did I ever make Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous mad!
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Robert Mueller...LOL!! "
Over 1500 prosecutors signed an open letter saying if any other American had done what Mueller documented Trump doing they'd be in jail.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Merrick Garland.....LOL!!"
Again we see the delight Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous takes in Republicans having successfully flouted the law and democracy to get what they want. Its no so much getting their guy on the supreme court that pleases them, its that they did it by corrupt means that really thrills them.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman like to think of themselves as morally superior to harmless lgbt people, but as we see again and again on this blog, there is no value they hold true, that they won't turn their backs on to gain power or to harm people they don't like. I'm far from a good moral example, but its clear I'm morally superior to them.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage"
Old and infertile couples never produce life but we let them get married.
There's no harm in letting gays share in the joy of marriage that heterosexuals experience.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "up in Canada, they have a sad sack of trash lying in the street, and on the computer"
Oooooo, someone's triggered, lol!
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "transgender-ism is sexist and anti-woman"
Nonsense. I live my life as a woman and people treat me as a woman - no one is hurt by that.
Wyatt and Regina want to deny people freedom for no good reason.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "The coronavirus shutdown is over by public demand."
You can end the shutdown but you can't end nature - the coronavirus is going to come back on those red states who've prematurely ended their shutdowns (if they ever had one)
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "The people are calling the bluff of their elected leaders and unelected experts"
Nature isn't bluffing. Tens of thousands are dying needlessly due to Republicans like you. Pretending its over when it isn't is going to backfire and result in even more people dying needlessly. And you people claim to be "pro-life". You disgust me.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "It’s almost as if we’re already back to the old normal."
1800 people dying every day that otherwise wouldn't be, that projected to go up to 3000 per day and Wyatt and Regina Hardiman are trying to gaslight readers into believing everything is normal.
If Republicans get their way, tens of thousands of needless deaths every few months will be the new normal.
These are the same people that wanted to imprison Hillary over four deaths she had nothing to do with. The chasm between honour and the hypocrisy of Republicans couldn't be greater.
Only in Democratic states is the rate of new infections dropping, due to the stay at home orders.
In Republican states that are ignoring social distancing and stay-at-home the rate of new infections is increasing.
The moral of the story is that nature doesn't care if you pretend it can't hurt you, it'll kill you anyway.
Wyatt and Regina Hardiman laugh at thousands of needless deaths a day.
And then they have the gall to claim they're "pro-life".
Let’s be clear: I believe Tara Reade. I believed Anita Hill, too. Remember the buttons? I wore one. What’s the constant here? Joe Biden, then the bumbling head of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Long before Ms. Reade, before the reports of the rubbing and the sniffing, I interviewed an adviser to Ms. Hill, who said she’d tried to warn Mr. Biden of what was happening in the Thomas hearings — how unchecked Republicans were smearing an upright woman’s character. But “the United States Senate was still very much a boys’ club” back then, the adviser told me, and there was no getting through to him. Democratic primary voters knew all about Mr. Biden’s membership in that boys’ club when there was still time to pick someone else. Alas.
So what’s a girl to do now? Discounting Ms. Reade’s accusation and, one after another, denigrating her corroborating witnesses, calling for endless new evidence, avowing that you “hear” her, is nonsense. We are now up to four corroborating witnesses — including one contemporary corroborating witness, unearthed by Rich McHugh, who was Ronan Farrow’s producer at NBC News during the Harvey Weinstein #MeToo reporting — and one “Larry King Live” tape.
So stop playing gotcha with the female supporters of Mr. Biden or the #MeToo movement, making them lie to the camera — or perhaps to themselves — about doubting her to justify their votes.
I’ll take one for the team. I believe Ms. Reade, and I’ll vote for Mr. Biden this fall.
I won’t say it will be easy. I have been writing on and agitating for women’s equality since “The Feminine Mystique” came out in 1963. I know how supposedly “liberal” men abused the sexual revolution in every imaginable way. I am unimpressed by their lip service to feminism, their Harvard degrees or their donations to feminist causes.
In 1998, I was one of a few establishment feminists to argue on behalf of Monica Lewinsky, when the unofficial representative of the movement, Gloria Steinem, threw her under the bus in the pages of The New York Times to protect Bill Clinton. I maintained my position until, two decades and a #MeToo movement later, Ms. Steinem issued a non-apology for the essay. So I hate, hate, hate to say the following.
Suck it up and make the utilitarian bargain.
All major Democratic Party figures have indicated they’re not budging on the presumptive nominee, and the transaction costs of replacing him would be suicidal. Barring some miracle, it’s going to be Mr. Biden.
At least we can dump the pretense that the GOP is the ‘pro-life’ party
At least some Republicans are dropping the pretense they are “pro-life.” They seem to have backed away from their longtime assertion that all human life is sacred — so sacred as to justify overriding the autonomy and health of women in the context of abortion. Frankly, they are revealing that they think human beings, post-birth, are expendable because of inconvenience (who wants to sit home?), personal liberty (stop telling me what to do!) and economics (we cannot afford the burden). Tuck those away for the next abortion discussion.
At any rate, the jig is up. The Daily Beast reports:
"During a private call on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that “every scientific and medical report shows” state reopenings “ipso facto” lead to an increase in novel coronavirus cases, even as he publicly announced plans that same week to end an executive stay-at-home order in the state."
So open very slowly, only when you have a massive testing and contact tracing infrastructure and are ready to reverse course if deaths increase? Nope, testing in Texas lags behind what scientists say is an acceptable level to test, track and isolate those who test positive. Abbott, a Republican, is throwing open the doors anyway, even as cases and deaths in his state rise. (“Data from the Texas Department of Health Services shows that the number of new cases each day does not show a leveling-off. As of April 30, there were 1,033 new cases of COVID-19.”) Abbott watches the death toll rise but doesn’t take his foot off the gas. (“Additionally, the COVID-19 death toll has risen steadily week-to-week in April. In the period from April 24 to April 30, 221 people died, making it the deadliest week since the tracking of data began.”)
Similarly, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie intoned on CNN: “Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can — but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?” Umm, so more men, women and children do not die? The conversation then got surreal:
"When [CNN host Dana] Bash pressed Christie on whether people would be able to accept reopening in light of news of a Trump administration model projecting a rise up to about 3,000 daily US deaths from coronavirus by June 1, Christie responded, “They’re gonna have to.”
“We’re in the midst of a pandemic that we haven’t seen in over 100 years,” he said. “And we’re going to have to continue to do things.”
President Trump, of course, is the leader of the brigade that suddenly puts not all that much value on human life. During an interview on ABC News that certainly will find its way into another ad for former vice president Joe Biden, Trump sounded downright dismissive about the loss of life:
"ABC: Do you believe the reality is that lives will be lost to reopen the economy?
TRUMP: "It's possible there will be some, because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is. But at the same time, we're going to practice social distancing.""...
The president didn’t sound any more empathetic at an appearance in Arizona (where he declined to wear a mask, thereby increasing the risk of infection and death of those around him):
"ICYMI: Trump says "For those people that have lost somebody ... nothing can ever happen that's gonna replace that. ... From an economic standpoint, purely an economic standpoint, I think next year's potentially gonna be one of the best year's we've had yet." #MTPDaily"...
..Then there are five red-state governors who insisted on the pages of The Post that a can-do attitude, “tenacity" and “grit” allowed them to reopen their states. (Does that suggest states in which thousands are dying and remain sheltering in place are just wusses?) Maybe the reopening is possible because they tolerate increases in unnecessary deaths that Democratic governors simply will not.
Take the state of one of the op-ed writers, Gov. Kim Reynolds’s Iowa. As the local ABC News affiliate reported on Tuesday, “The Iowa Department of Public Health announced 19 more deaths due to the virus and 408 new confirmed cases in the state. That brings the totals to 10,111 confirmed cases and 207 total deaths.”
Working-class, nonwhite workers are often the victims:
"More than 1,600 workers at four Iowa meatpacking plants have been infected with the coronavirus, state health officials reported Tuesday.
The worst-hit factory is the Tyson pork processing plant in Perry, where 730 workers tested positive for the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health reported. That means that 58% of the workers who were tested at the plant had the virus, Deputy Public Health Department Director Sarah Reisetter said at the state’s daily news conference about the pandemic. . . .
Meatpacking plants have been at the center of several COVID-19 outbreaks around Iowa and the nation this spring. Workers in the plants stand close together all day, and critics say the companies did a poor job of protecting them from the virus’ spread. The companies say they’re trying to protect workers while continue to produce food that Americans rely on."
Reynolds won’t close the plants. “She has resisted calls to close the plants, saying they provide crucial food for consumers and markets for farmers.” (It’s a similar story in Missouri, notwithstanding the assertions of its governor, Mike Parson, another of the op-ed writers.) These governors are opening their states not because they have conquered the virus but in spite of the rising number of cases and deaths.
Republicans’ candor, their willingness to sacrifice American lives in a desperate effort to shape up the economy in time for Election Day, is stunning. But — weird, huh? — Americans do not see things that way. Overwhelmingly, they reject Republicans’ indifference to human life. Their lives, not those of the cavalier Republican politicians, are at issue.
And you believe all 25 Rump accusers too, right?
If not, STFU.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Let’s be clear: I believe Tara Reade. I believed Anita Hill, too."
Only an ignorant or dishonest person would make such a statement - Tara Reade is no Anita Hill.
Over the years, Tara Reade has made assault accusations against her father, her ex-husband, a former employer named Krystal Rojas, another female YWCA supervisor, and a former business partner Frankie Knight. She's defrauded money from friends, neighbours, landlords and businesses, and created dozens of scam GoFundMe pages. But we're expected t believe her and not the 22 credible witnesses against Donald Trump.
Tara Read aka: Tara Reade Moulton, Alexandra Tara McCabe, and Alexandra Tara Reade
GOP consultant: Trump's campaign officials are raking in cash for themselves like a "criminal enterprise"
That practice of funneling donor money into Trump's own pocket began in 2016, right after he became the presumptive Republican nominee and began raising large amounts of GOP cash. Trump immediately quintupled the rent he was charging his campaign at Trump Tower.
The Trump reelection effort’s lavish spending highlights a singular irony: Better funded and having spent more money than any previous presidential campaign to this point in the election cycle, it has nevertheless been unable to improve Trump’s polling numbers with the election now just six months away.
“All organizations reflect the person at the top. That person’s values. And that’s the problem for the Trump campaign. Everything reflects off their sun god,” said John Weaver, a Republican consultant who worked on the presidential campaigns of John McCain and John Kasich.
Trump’s approval ratings, while slightly higher than they were at the lowest points of his presidency, have remained stuck in the low 40s. While they edged upward a few points after the coronavirus pandemic struck in a classic “rally ’round the flag” effect, that disappeared quickly after Trump staged nightly two-hour briefings in which he repeatedly aired his numerous grievances and unusual medical theories.
And though his campaign frequently boasts of all the internet-based events they are hosting to recruit volunteers from among their database of rally-goers, critics like Weaver are dubious that merely getting his hard-core base to the polls will be enough to win a second term.
“What would a normal campaign that won after losing the popular vote have done? They would have done everything they could to expand their base and broaden their coalition,” he said.
But instead, in media interview after media interview, rally speech after rally speech, Trump appealed to his core supporters among white, rural Americans without college educations and managed to alienate everyone else, Weaver said.
“What have they gotten for their money? They have a narrowing Electoral College path. They decided to see if they can draw an inside straight two elections in a row,” he said. “It’s like trying to get an inside straight on a high wire in a high wind.”
Trump Tells Nurse That PPE Shortages Are “Fake News”
May 6, 2020 Trump Corruption, Trump Lies
CBS News reports:
President Trump attempted to correct a nurse practitioner who said personal protective equipment is “not ideal” in parts of the country, and said she has been reusing her own N95 mask for “several weeks.” The president also called reports of PPE shortages “fake news” during his Oval Office event intended to honor nurses on the front lines of the pandemic on National Nurses Day.
Sophia Thomas, the president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners who works at a community health center in New Orleans, explained to the president how they have to reuse personal protective equipment. “I think it’s sporadic,” Thomas said when asked how the PPE supply is now. “As I talk to my colleagues around the country certainly there are pockets where PPE is not ideal.
At an event marking #NationalNursesDay at the White House, President Trump contradicted a nurse who said the availability of personal protective equipment has been "sporadic"
Real news:
1. Nurses are getting shorted on PPE
2. FEDGOV is stealing PPE and setting up exclusive contracts with producers
3. FEDGOV is selling PPE below cost to "Blue Flame," a brand new republican inside shell company founded by a donor bundler.
4. FEDGOV is allowing Blue Flame to force States to have a bidding war for the PPE
Why? Corruption, limiting supply to drive up prices.
It's sick
It's illegal
It's getting more of us - especially nurses - dead.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will urge the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, maintaining its all-out legal assault on the health care law amid a pandemic that will drive millions of more Americans to depend on its coverage.
The administration appears to be doubling down on its legal strategy, even after Attorney General Bill Barr this week warned top Trump officials about the political ramifications of undermining the health care safety net during the coronavirus emergency.
Apparently Trump thinks Republicans can destroy protections for preexisting conditions and gaslight the public into believing they saved those protections.
After over three years of Trump the public is no longer so easily fooled.
Why not? Dismantling Obama's Pandemic Response Team has been a smashing success thus far--let's go for broke.
This man seems hell-bent on tossing the November election to Biden, and the Senate to the Democrats. Fine with me -- I'll be glad to see the SOB go back to his sewer.
Trump 2020......."Die faster" "What have you got to lose?"
At this point, the cruelty is the point. There's no reason to do this now other than to just be evil.
This will just increase support for universal healthcare. You get the SCOTUS to go "die, f*kers, die" to the US population by killing Obamacare during a pandemic and depression, you create a situation where you create 1) utter contempt for the institution of SCOTUS and 2) nationwide instability.
Just think: if Dems hadn't nominated the corrupt and incompetent Hillary, they probably wouldn't have lost the courts for a generation
Alas, stupidity has consequences.
They're about to do it again with that senile, bumbling Biden.
How sweet it is !!!!!!!!
And everyone wonders: whatever happened to the gay agenda!
President Trump’s nominee to the most influential federal appeals court was berated by Democrats over his past comments about the Affordable Care Act.
The nominee just laughed.
As did Republicans, who praised his recent ruling allowing Easter church services during the coronavirus pandemic.
Judge Justin Walker, a protege of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Supreme Court Justice and all-around bro, Brett M. Kavanaugh, laughed off criticism at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing over his remarks two years ago that rulings upholding the ACA were “indefensible” and about jokes he made at the law’s expense at a ceremony in March marking his entry to the federal bench.
Republicans are elevating Walker to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — a promotion that Democrats whine is not fair for the 37-year-old, since he has only been on the district court in Kentucky for six months.
"Oh, well" smirked O'Connell.
Democrats kept mumbling about an early-March ceremony in which Walker spoke before a crowd that included McConnell, Kavanaugh and former justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom Walker served as law clerk.
Walker bragged about his comments in March as a brilliant joke in honor of his mentor.
“He has been an invaluable mentor and friend to me since I clerked for him in 2011 and 2012,” Walker said of Kennedy.
Several Democrats ranted at Walker over his comments about the 2010 law, which faces a major challenge in the Supreme Court. GOP Senators smiled and winked at Walker. The Trump administration is backing a lawsuit by GOP state officials that is expected to gut the law, eliminating its insurance protections and coverage for tens of millions of Americans. The ruling is expected next year.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, sullenly noted that Walker’s confirmation will “exacerbate the health crisis in this country.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) blubbered, “we are here in the midst of a public health crisis considering the nomination of someone who would dismantle a health-care system”
Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority, so Walker is cruising to win Senate confirmation while Republicans gloat over the pitifulness of the Democratic opposition.
Walker served as a law clerk for Kavanaugh, when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit, and then for Kennedy before his retirement.
Kennedy was replaced by Kavanaugh after a 2018 confirmation battle that included delightful tales about Kavanaugh, as a high school student, when he was very popular with the girls.
In Wednesday’s hearing, Walker embraced his drinking buddy, Kavanaugh .
“As an academic and as a former clerk, I thought I knew about Justice Kavanaugh and his jurisprudence, and I wanted to share that knowledge with people who didn’t,” Walker chuckled before the committee.
Referring to Kavanaugh and Kennedy, the nominee joshed, “I will defend them both until the cows come home.”
And Republicans celebrated Walker’s Easter-service ruling in Louisville, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who introduced him to the panel, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman who used his first question to ask about the decision.
Last month, Walker blocked Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) from forbidding drive-in church services on Easter to slow the spread of the coronavirus. McConnell and other conservatives hailed Walker’s decision.
“I had to make a decision and I had to make a decision quickly so that people could know on Saturday whether they could go to church on Easter Sunday,” Walker told Graham. “And looking at the law, it seemed to me that the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment prohibited the action that the mayor was taking.”
In that opinion, Walker wrote that Fischer had “criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” adding that Fischer’s decision was “beyond all reason.”
Walker’s nomination received a boost late Tuesday when the American Bar Association deemed him “Well Qualified” for this more prominent post.
Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "Walker’s nomination received a boost late Tuesday when the American Bar Association deemed him “Well Qualified” for this more prominent post."
Trump appointing someone as a judge who isn't terribly unqualified would be quite a change if it were true.
The truth is, The American Bar Association said he was "qualified" less than a year after the organization said he was “Not Qualified” to serve on the district court where he currently presides.
The American Bar Association has clearly been corrupted by Trump, at least in this instance.
In a long list of judicial appointments Republicans have appointed judges who have been appallingly unqualified such as a couple of lawyers who'd never tried a case in court. The sole thing these appointees have in common (besides being grossly unqualified) is a long history of lying to support right wing policies and making voluminous statements in favour of oppressing harmless lgbt people.
The Trump administration has sustained an all out attack on innocent lgbt people to distract from its gross incompetence and corruption. And evangelical christians like Wyatt and Regina Hardiman swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
Donald Trump's four-step plan to reopen the US economy – and why it will be lethal
The president and his allies are hiding the facts and pretending ‘freedom’ conquers all. As a result, more Americans will die
Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.
But much of the economy remains closed because of the pandemic. The number of infections and deaths continue to climb.
So what is Trump’s re-election strategy? Reopen the economy anyway, despite the risks.
Step 1
Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.
Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.
Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting the disease. “That’s a voluntary quit,” making someone ineligible for benefits.
GOP officials in Oklahoma are even threatening to withhold the $600 a week of extra unemployment benefits Congress has provided workers, if an employer wants to hire them. Safety is irrelevant.
“If the employer will contact us … we will cut off their benefits,” says Teresa Thomas Keller of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.
Forcing people to choose between getting Covid-19 or losing their livelihood is inhumane. It is also nonsensical. Public health still depends on as many workers as possible staying home. That’s a big reason why Congress provided the extra benefits.
Step 2
Hide the facts.
No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. To date only 6.5m tests have been completed in a population of more than 200 million adults.
Florida, one of the first states to reopen, has stopped releasing medical examiners’ statistics on the number of Covid-19 victims because the figures are higher than the state’s official count.
But it’s impossible to fight the virus without adequate data. Dr Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading infectious disease expert, warns that reopening poses “a really significant risk” without more testing.
Not surprisingly, the White House has blocked Fauci from testifying before the House.
Step 3
Pretend it’s about “freedom”.
Weeks ago, Trump called on citizens to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, imposed strict stay-at-home rules.
Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in America, although it is 10th in population. When on Thursday Whitmer extended the rules to 28 May, gun-toting protesters rushed the state house chanting: “Lock her up!”
Rather than condemn their behavior, Trump suggested Whitmer “make a deal” with them.
“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!”
Meanwhile, the attorney general, William Barr, has directed the justice department to take legal action against any state or local authorities imposing lockdown measures that “could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens”.
Making this about “freedom” is absurd. Freedom is meaningless for people who have no choice but to accept a job that risks their health.
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