Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[cherdano]

Re chas post and responses :

 

I worry that on Wednesday Nov. 4 the Dems will have a really good argument to explain how unfair it is that Biden lost.

 

I much prefer a celebration of Biden winning.

 

For this celebration to take place, Biden needs votes of people other than, say, Winston and Richard. And other than mine. I hope that they are working on that.

Are you working on that?

 

But in any case, I am all for trying to win over votes. But if you think any Democrat in 2020 has a chance of winning chas_p's vote, then I have a lot of bridges full of email servers in Ukraine to sell you.

[y66]

No pride.

[johnu]

Donald Trump Refuses To Wear Mask At Mask Supplier, Suggests Testing Is ‘Overrated’

 

Trump did not wear a mask during his visit, and neither did his chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

Reinforcing the anti-mask, anti-social distancing quackery of his right fringe supporters who are reading and listening to Fox Propaganda and other alt-right conspiracy sites. Sadly, some people who don't know any better are also watching what the Grifter in Chief is doing and saying and follow his example. They don't have the luxury of getting tested daily, and only being in the presence of people who are now tested daily.

 

President Donald Trump on Thursday griped about the pressure he’s facing to increase the ability to test people for the coronavirus, saying that testing might be “overrated” anyway.

 

“We have the best testing in the world. Could be that testing is, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated,” Trump said during a visit to Owens & Minor, a medical supply company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that distributes masks and other products.

 

“You know, they always say, ‘We want more, we want more,’ because they don’t want to give you credit. Then we do more, and they say, ‘We want more,’” he added.

Testing in the wealthiest and one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has been a massive failure. The US wasted and frittered away months before coming out with a test that didn't do what it was supposed to do, now has many tests being given that are not much better than flipping a coin. When some estimates from experts say the US needs 3 million to 10 million tests per day, we are in the quarter million per day range.

 

No wonder the Grifter in Chief is now trying to discredit testing. It isn't important to fail in testing if testing was never even necessary. If the Grifter can convince enough people they don't need a test, he could boast that his “Anybody that wants a test [for the coronavirus] can get a test.” claim will be true. Just like severe PPE shortages were a figment of the liberal press imagination, because there was more than enough PPE available for everybody.

 

The US has done 10 million tests in 4 months. Wuhan China is planning to do 11 million tests in 10 days. Maybe the US could dream of doing that many tests in a year or two.

[kenberg]

Are you working on that?

 

But in any case, I am all for trying to win over votes. But if you think any Democrat in 2020 has a chance of winning chas_p's vote, then I have a lot of bridges full of email servers in Ukraine to sell you.

 

 

 

 

Probably neither Chas nor I will change our voting plan. If you take any one person, it might well seem that they will not change their view. But should we then just save time and money and hold the election next week? Voters change their minds. Which voter? I don't know. But some.

 

So I suppose/hope that someone is thinking about how to bring the net change in favor of Biden

[Chas_P]

But if you think any Democrat in 2020 has a chance of winning chas_p's vote, then I have a lot of bridges full of email servers in Ukraine to sell you.

 

Thank you, Arend, for an astute observation of the blatantly obvious.

 

I love the whiskys from your country, especially the single malts from Islay.

 

Cheers.

[y66]

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

It’s becoming more and more obvious that President Donald Trump has simply stopped dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and has no particular plan for confronting its economic fallout either. In both cases, he’s pretty much substituted wishful thinking for action. The Atlantic’s David Graham had a good item about this disengagement earlier in the week, followed by one from Ezra Klein arguing that “the White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal.”

 

What surprised me was political scientist Lee Drutman’s conclusion, based on Klein’s article, that “the debate over what to do has polarized with depressing haste, because ‘winning’ in Washington is not defeating the virus, but winning the next election.” I argued a bit with Drutman on Twitter about this, but it’s worth a longer discussion. My basic sense is that Trump isn’t nearly concerned enough with winning re-election, and that the current catastrophe is in part a consequence of that.

 

There’s no way to know what’s really in the president’s mind. But we can compare his actions with what a president determined to be re-elected would probably do. A lot of Trump’s critics have claimed that he’s deliberately risking American lives by boosting the economy to improve his chances in November. And it’s true that he seems concerned mainly with re-opening businesses these days. But there are at least two reasons to doubt that this preference is due to the election. For one, public-health experts and economists broadly agree that opening too soon will be a disaster. For another, even if there is a trade-off, there’s no particular reason to think that restoring jobs at the cost of more illness and death will be a good electoral deal for Trump.

 

At any rate, the evidence that Trump has an economic plan is just as weak as the evidence that he’s engaged in dealing with the coronavirus.

 

What I think is more likely is that Trump simply isn’t finding this aspect of the presidency very much fun. You might remember when President George H.W. Bush declared that he didn’t like broccoli: “And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” Trump acts this way about doing most of the mundane jobs of the presidency. Thus his newly invented scandal, “Obamagate.” As the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser points out: “For Trump, spending the week attacking Obama, no matter what the subject, is the political equivalent of retreating to his bedroom and hiding under the blanket. It’s his safe space, his comfort zone.” Except it’s not so much a political equivalent as it is a retreat from politics altogether, along with the duties and responsibilities of his office.

 

A politician who desperately wanted re-election would’ve been hard at work, from the moment he or she was alerted to the danger, attempting to contain the pandemic and limit the economic damage, and would persevere no matter what the setbacks, never wavering in an effort to produce the policy results that might lead to a big win in November. Such presidents might sacrifice the long term for the short term, as Lyndon Johnson did in goosing the economy in 1964, or Richard Nixon did in 1972. But they would never just give up when things went wrong.

 

That’s not this president. That’s not Donald Trump.

[y66]

From Cornelia Griggs at NYT (March 2020):

 

I’ve had hard conversations this week. “Look me in the eye,” I said to my neighbor Karen, who was spiraling to a dark place in her mind. “I make this personal promise to you — I will not let your children die from this disease.” I swallowed back a lump in my throat. Just the image of one of our kids attached to a tube was jarring. Two weeks ago our kids were having a pizza party and watching cartoons together, running back and forth between our apartments. This was before #socialdistancing was trending. Statistically, I still feel good about my promise to Karen because children do not seem to be dying from Covid-19. There are others to whom I cannot make similar promises.

 

A few days later, I got a text from another friend. She has asthma. “I’m just saying this because I need to say it to someone,” she wrote. She asked that if she gets sick and has a poor prognosis, to play recordings of the voice of Josie, her daughter. “I think it would bring me back,” she said. Josie is my 4-year-old’s best friend.

 

Today, at the hospital where I work, one of the largest in New York City, Covid-19 cases continue to climb, and there’s movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new “fever clinics” and I.C.U.s. It’s becoming an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario.

 

The sky is falling. I’m not afraid to say it. A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over with happiness if I’m proven wrong.

 

Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before. I’m a board-certified surgeon and critical care specialist who spent much of my training attending to traumas in the emergency room and doing the rounds at Harvard hospitals’ intensive care units. I’m now in my last four months of training as a pediatric surgeon in New York City. Part of my job entails waking in the middle of the night to rush to the children’s hospital to put babies on a form of life support called ECMO, a service required when a child’s lungs are failing even with maximum ventilator support. Scenarios that mimic end-stage Covid-19 are part of my job. Panic is not in my vocabulary; the emotion has been drilled out of me in nine years of training. This is different.

 

We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations. The cracks in our medical and financial systems are being splayed open like a gashing wound. No matter how this plays out, life will forever look a little different for all of us.

 

On the front lines, patients are lining up outside of our emergency rooms and clinics looking to us for answers — but we have few. Only on Friday did coronavirus testing become more readily available in New York, and the tests are still extremely limited. Right next to my office in the hospital, a lab is being repurposed with hopes of a capability to run 1,000 tests a day. But today, and likely tomorrow, even M.D.s do not have straightforward access to testing across the country. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria for testing are changing almost daily. Our health care system is mired in situational uncertainty. The leadership of our hospital is working tirelessly — but doctors on the ground are pessimistic about our surge capacity.

 

Making my rounds at the children’s hospital earlier this week, I saw that the boxes of gloves and other personal protective equipment were dwindling. This is a crisis for our vulnerable patients and health care workers alike. Protective equipment is only one of the places where supplies are falling short. At our large, 4,000-bed New York City hospital, we have 500 ventilators and 250 on backup reserve. If we are on track to match the scale of Covid-19 infections in Italy, then we are likely to run out of ventilators in New York. The anti-viral “treatments” we have for Covid-19 are experimental and many of them are hard to even get approved. Let me repeat. The sky is falling.

 

I say this not to panic anyone but to mobilize you. We need more equipment and we need it now. Specifically gloves, masks, eye protection and more ventilators. We need our technology friends to be making and testing prototypes to rig the ventilators that we do have to support more than one patient at a time. We need our labs channeling all of their efforts into combating this bug — that means vaccine research and antiviral treatment research, quickly.

 

We need hospitals to figure out how to nimbly and flexibly modify our existing practices to adapt to this virus and do it fast. Doctors across the globe are sharing information, protocols and strategies through social media, because our common publishing channels are too slow. Physician and surgeon mothers are coming together on Facebook groups to publish advice to parents and the public, to amplify our outrage, and to underscore the fear we feel for our most vulnerable patient populations, as well as ourselves and our families.

 

Please flatten the curve and stay at home, but please do not go into couch mode. Like everyone, I have moments where imagining the worst possible Covid-19 scenario steals my breath. But cowering in the dark places of our minds doesn’t help. Rather than private panic, we need public-spirited action. Those of us walking into the rooms of Covid-19-positive patients every day need you and your minds, your networks, your creative solutions, and your voices to be fighting for us. We might be the exhausted masked face trying to resuscitate you when you show up on the doorstep of our hospital. And when you do, I promise not to panic. I’ll use every ounce of my expertise to keep you alive. Please, do the same for us.

Unfortunately for the U.S., Trump does not have even an ounce of expertise when if comes to helping others and doing the hard work of governing.

[y66]

All the questions about UBI and deficits aside, in this @tylercowen and @Kasparov63 piece, I suspect that this line is backwards.

What the U.S. needs is the economic growth to pay for the huge deficits it has run up during the current crisis. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no deficit hawks in a pandemic. But before the U.S. establishes a huge new program to redistribute wealth, it needs to find a way to produce more of it. Greater redistribution will require higher productivity.

A superior distribution of buying power is a precondition for improving productivity, as that will catalyze higher investment.

[y66]

Great @Neil_Irwin piece. Automatic renewal of core spending priorities (unemployment insurance, checks to families, state/local support, etc.) is essential, solving numerous economic and political problems at once. House Dems passing on it is a bad sign.

 

Economists Want to Put Stimulus on Autopilot. Congress Has Other Ideas.

 

The idea is to link government aid to certain indicators, like the jobless rate, so it shrinks or grows without further action by politicians.

[PassedOut]

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

 

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

 

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

 

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

 

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

 

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

 

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

 

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of *****. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

 

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

A pretty fine description. And seeing all this, lots of folks do react: "Trump is my kind of guy."

[shyams]

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

 

 

A pretty fine description. And seeing all this, lots of folks do react: "Trump is my kind of guy."

Loved this! Thank you for sharing :)

[johnu]

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

 

 

A pretty fine description. And seeing all this, lots of folks do react: "Trump is my kind of guy."

That's fine commentary :) And the Grifter in Chief is nearly as fine a person as those Charlottesville white nationalists.

[y66]

Audra D. S. Burch and John Eligon at NYT:

 

Without the springtime rituals of traditional graduation ceremonies, former President Barack Obama delivered a virtual commencement address on Saturday, urging thousands of graduates at historically black colleges and universities “to seize the initiative” at a time when he says the nation’s leaders have fumbled the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

 

The speech combined the inspirational advice given to graduates with pointed criticism of the handling of a public health crisis that has killed more than 87,000 Americans and crippled much of the economy.

 

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Mr. Obama said in an address streamed online. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

 

It was one of his few public addresses to a national audience during the outbreak, and he said a leadership void had created a clear mandate for the graduates: “If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you,” he said.

 

[Mr. Obama will also speak to high school graduates at 8 p.m. Eastern in an event you can watch at https://youtu.be/6uXkfnn-eg4.]

 

 

Mr. Obama’s remarks were billed as a commencement speech, but they also appeared to be an effort to comfort and assure an American public divided by President Trump’s handling of the crisis. The former president also used the moment to attempt to rally the nation in an election year around values historically championed by Democrats like universal health care, and environmental and economic justice.

 

Since leaving office three years ago, Mr. Obama generally has avoided publicly criticizing Mr. Trump. But his jabs at the pandemic response could further inflame tensions between the two most recent occupants of the White House.

 

Mr. Obama called the current administration’s response to the pandemic “anemic and spotty” in a private call last week with thousands of supporters who had worked for him.

 

“It would have been bad even with the best of governments,” Mr. Obama said on the call. “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mind-set — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mind-set is operationalized in our government.”

 

And in recent days Mr. Trump has unleashed tirades against Mr. Obama on Twitter and on television, resurrecting unfounded claims that his predecessor tried to bring him down by manufacturing the Russia investigation.

 

Mr. Obama’s address to more than 27,000 students at 78 participating historically black colleges and universities was the first of two commencement speeches by the former president on Saturday.

 

He is also scheduled to have remarks air during a prime time special for high school graduates that starts at 8 p.m. Eastern on the major television networks. That event, “Graduate Together: High School Class of 2020 Commencement,” is organized by XQ Institute, a think tank that works with schools, in partnership with LeBron James’s foundation and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a philanthropic organization.

 

The two-hour event for historically black schools, “Show Me Your Walk H.B.C.U. Edition,” was streamed on the social media platforms of its corporate sponsor, JPMorgan Chase. It featured Kevin Hart as host as well as dozens of prominent African-American athletes, politicians and entertainers, many of whom were H.B.C.U. graduates.

 

Mr. Obama told the graduates, most of whom are black, that the coronavirus “just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country.”

 

The disparities are not just in public health, but also “just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog, and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning,” he said.

 

It was a reference to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was chased by a white father and son and fatally shot in a coastal Georgia community in February.

 

As communities across the country emerge from stay-at-home measures, and people clash over how much freedom they should have, Mr. Obama suggested that Americans needed to be considerate of others.

 

He encouraged the graduates to work with other marginalized groups in their efforts to create societal change.

 

“It doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick,” he said, later adding that, “our society and democracy only works when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.”

 

Ariel Turnley, 21, watched her own Spelman College virtual graduation with her mother and aunt in the living room of her Lauderhill, Fla., home, then tuned into Mr. Obama’s speech for H.B.C.U. students.

 

“I think President Obama said what so many of us feel, that those in power are not doing the best things they can during this pandemic with the power they have,” said Ms. Turnley, who graduated with a degree in computer science. “I also appreciated him talking about the injustices that have been highlighted during this pandemic. This is not the graduation that we imagined, but I felt like he offered the words I wanted to hold on to during this crisis.”

 

Erica Bullard, 22, stopped packing up her apartment in Hampton, Va., to listen to Mr. Obama’s remarks. She graduated from Hampton University earlier this month with a degree in strategic communications and hopes to walk across the stage at a commencement ceremony in September. Ms. Bullard said she was most struck by Mr. Obama’s advice to become a leader of your generation, give back to your community and build strong relationships with other disenfranchised groups.

 

Mr. Obama’s speech came at a time when new social-distancing norms have dashed many graduation traditions — from the ritual of walking across the stage to tossing of the graduation cap to family and friends celebrations — so popular political leaders and celebrities have stepped in to offer assuring messages as graduates enter a world shaped by uncertainty, infection fears and economic instability.

 

On Friday, Oprah Winfrey urged the “pandemic class” to rebuild a more fair society in a video commencement speech hosted by Facebook.

 

Mr. Obama is scheduled to make a third online commencement address on June 6, along with Michelle Obama, in a ceremony hosted by YouTube. The three events were among dozens of requests the Obamas received from around the world to address graduates whose in-person ceremonies had been canceled, their office said in statement.

 

While he was president, Mr. Obama delivered the commencement addresses at three historically black schools, Hampton University, Howard University and Morehouse College.

 

The former president has had a complicated relationship with the H.B.C.U. community. While overall funding for the institutions increased during his eight years in office, some complained that he did not make them a priority, and that cuts and changes made under his watch to Pell grants and other loan programs made life difficult for some H.B.C.U. students.

 

On Saturday, Mr. Obama said that H.B.C.U. graduates were the “inheritors of one of America’s proudest traditions,” and they needed to act.

 

“Whether you realize it or not, you’ve got more road maps, more role models, and more resources than the Civil Rights generation did,” he said. “You’ve got more tools, technology, and talents than my generation did. No generation has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world.”

[johnu]

Trump Bashes Reporter Rattled By Maskless Anti-Lockdown Protester

 

Vesey noted in another tweet Thursday that he was “insulted,” “berated” and “practically chased by people who refused to wear masks in the middle of a pandemic.” He added: “All the while, I was there to tell THEIR story.”

 

At one point a protester without a mask and wearing a red MAGA hat and Trump T-shirt deliberately advanced on Vesey (who was wearing a mask). “I think you need to back away from me,” the reporter told him on video, turning his face away.

 

“No, I’ve got hydroxychloroquine,” said the unidentified protester as he strode closer. “I”m fine.” The drug, touted by Trump, has not proved to be effective against COVID-19 and can have lethal side effects.

Apparently these MAGA people have drunk the Clorox.

[y66]

Edward Luce at FT: Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown (not paywalled)

 

America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections & we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo. -- William Burns, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State

So where does the American chapter of the plague go from here? Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

 

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

 

'We have prevailed,' said Trump at a White House news briefing about the coronavirus earlier this week

Economists say a V-shaped recovery is unlikely. Even then it could be two Vs stuck together – a W, in other words. The social mingling resulting from any short-term economic reopening would probably come at the price of a second contagious outburst. As long as the second V began only after November, Trump might just be re-elected.

 

“From Trump’s point of view, there is no choice,” says Charlie Black, a senior Republican consultant and lobbyist. “It is the economy or nothing. He can’t exactly run on his personality.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, had a slightly different emphasis: “Trump’s campaign will be about China, China, China,” he says. “And hopefully the fact that he rebooted the economy.”

 

In the meantime, Trump will probably continue to dangle the prospect of miracle cures. Every week since the start of the outbreak, he has said a vaccine is just around the corner. His latest estimate is that it will be ready by July. Scientists say it will take a year at best to produce an inoculation. Most say 18 months would be lucky. Even that would break all records. The previous fastest development was four years for mumps in the 1960s.

 

For the time being, Trump has been persuaded to cease his daily briefings. The White House internal polling shows that his once double-digit lead over Biden among Americans over 65 has been wiped out. It turns out retirees are no fans of herd immunity.

 

Friends of the president are trying to figure out how to return life to normal without provoking a new death toll. After an initial rally in March, Trump’s poll numbers have been steadily dropping over the last month. For the next six months, America’s microbial fate will be in the hands of its president’s erratic re-election strategy. There is more than a whiff of rising desperation.

 

“Trump is caught in a box which keeps getting smaller,” says George Conway, a Republican lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor. “In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasise and lose any ability to think rationally.” Conway is known for taunting Trump on Twitter (to great effect, it should be added: Trump often retaliates).

 

Yet without exception, everyone I interviewed, including the most ardent Trump loyalists, made a similar point to Conway. Trump is deaf to advice, said one. He is his own worst enemy, said another. He only listens to family, said a third. He is mentally imbalanced, said a fourth. America, in other words, should brace itself for a turbulent six months ahead – with no assurance of a safe landing.

[Winstonm]

IMHO, the biggest threat to U.S. democracy is not Donald Trump or the Republican party but is rather two-fold: first, the horrendous state of educational system and, second, how bad our mega-news organizations have become. Today's Republican party is a byproduct of those two factors.

 

In the first case, generation after generation is being reared with little-to-no understanding of critical thinking, and the first step of critical thinking is to gather facts. Without a fact based worldview, all that is left to form viewpoints is guesswork, beliefs, superstitions, and propaganda.

 

Into that fact-deficient worldview marches our news organizations who now sincerely believe that "fair" news is about allowing both sides to express their views, i.e., bothsidesism. With no central, concerted source of facts the nation wobbles between poles, depending on which side can create the most listeners/viewers/readers.

 

I'm have no answers, but, like Bob Hamman once said, you before you can find a solution you first must see the problem.

[Winstonm]

I read something today about Trump supporters that was truly troubling. I parapharase, but the thrust of the article was that the reason for the support is that Trump is everything these people wish they were or could be. Everything about Trump is seen as a virtue of "the strong", the "winners", and until someone squashes him or puts him in prison he is their hero.

[johnu]

Obama Says U.S. Lacks Leadership on Virus in Commencement Speeches

 

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Mr. Obama said in his first address, directed at graduates of historically black colleges and universities. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Unfortunately, the title of the article is very misleading. Obama is not really saying that the US doesn't have leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic. He is saying that the Manchurian President is providing incompetent leadership.

[johnu]

Obama Says U.S. Lacks Leadership on Virus in Commencement Speeches

 

 

Unfortunately, the title of the article is very misleading. Obama is not really saying that the US doesn't have leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic. He is saying that the Manchurian President is providing incompetent leadership.

Azar lays part of blame for Covid-19 death toll on state of Americans' health

 

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Sunday suggested that the underlying health conditions of Americans, in particular in minority communities, contributed significantly to the death toll from the coronavirus.

Azar did not comment if he thought that Democrats would do anything to make the Manchurian President look bad including deliberately dying from COVID-19 to make the Grifter in Chief look bad in his virus response, but the implication is clear that the Grifter is not responsible for any deaths.

 

Azar had no explanation why 3rd world countries which have 3rd world health systems and massive health problems due to financial problems are doing sometimes much better than the richest country on earth.

[y66]

Man has a point.

 

So, next question is why the U.S. isn't as transparent, vibrant, and innovative as we used to think...

 

No surprise that Taiwan mounted one of the most successful efforts to contain COVID to date. Transparent, vibrant, and innovative democracies like Taiwan always respond faster and more effectively to pandemics than authoritarian regimes. #TweetforTaiwan

[Winstonm]

Turns out this was most likely the reason Pompeo wanted Steve Linick, the State De[artment IG fired - Pompeo was running a propaganda operation and got busted.

 

A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.

 

The con Pompeo has publicly tried to sell is that he had personally seen hard evidence of an "incident" at the Wuhan lab - an incident that caused roadblocks and a decline in traffic around the lab. But...

 

What’s more, imagery collected by DigitalGlobe’s Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed “roadblocks” went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event.

 

And just to be clear, I'm not interested in buying a bridge, either:

 

The document, which NBC News first published and reported on May 8, made its way to Capitol Hill just days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in an interview that there was “enormous evidence” to suggest that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan.

my emphasis

[cherdano]

This Pompeo tweet is really something. I guess they really live in a bubble where they have done a great, wonderful job responding to the covid-19 crisis?

[johnu]

Trump Claims He’s Been Taking Hydroxychloroquine For Weeks

 

President Donald Trump claimed Monday that he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug he’s been touting as a potential coronavirus cure, for a couple of weeks in hopes of preventing COVID-19.

 

“You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the frontline workers before you catch it. ... I happen to be taking it,” the president said at a roundtable with restaurant executives.

Dear Mr. Grifter in Chief - You get much better protection if you take your pills with a Clorox smoothie :rolleyes:

 

The Food and Drug Administration warned against its use in coronavirus cases except for in formal studies in late April, citing that serious heart risk, after Trump claimed it may be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine” and began mentioning it on a near-daily basis.

 

Since then, a study of 1,400 patients at Columbia University in New York found that hydroxychloroquine did not lower the risk of dying or needing a breathing tube. Likewise, there is also no proof that the drug can prevent infection.

 

Trump has also bucked public health guidance by not wearing a mask at public gatherings despite two people who work in the White House falling ill with the virus in recent weeks.

Dear Mr. Grifter in Chief - Maybe you should double the dosage to make sure you are well protected. B-)

[cherdano]

In other news, Trump just said out loud that he fired the state department inspector general, who was investigating Sec. of State Mike Pompeo, because Sec. of State Mike Pompeo recommended to do so.

Where is Susan Collins to assure us that Trump has "learned his lesson"?

[johnu]

This Pompeo tweet is really something. I guess they really live in a bubble where they have done a great, wonderful job responding to the covid-19 crisis?

Not in a bubble, just delusional...

 

Barr Says Biden Probe Unlikely, Claims Trump DOJ Won’t Be Used For ‘Partisan Political Ends’

 

Attorney General William Barr, who has intervened in criminal cases against allies of Donald Trump and helped shield the president from the consequences of the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said Monday that “the criminal justice system will not be used for partisan political ends” as long as he is attorney general.

 

Barr, speaking at a virtual press conference that focused on the investigation into a deadly terrorist attack in Pensacola, Florida, in December, said that increasing attempts to use the criminal justice system as a “political weapon” was “not a good development” for the country.

The Manchurian President's government paid personal shyster apparently developed a warped sense of black humor. Barr is the political operative who misused his position to blatantly mislead and lie about the preliminary results of the Mueller report, and then trying to suppress the release of the report. Barr has also led the DOJ in supporting obstruction of Congress when the House has attempted to do its oversight duties. Barr is also the partisan hack who as head of the DOJ was encouraging Giuliani to continue his attempts to dig up dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine.