COVERS APRIL 22-JUNE 3
6/3/20: The deaths of 106,000 Americans from
the coronavirus are bad enough. The toll on jobs, as our economy ground to a
halt, with more than 40 million Americans suddenly unemployed, are bad enough.
Now, on top of that we see scores of American cities torn apart
by angry protests and rioting.
____________________
This is a president who has no more moral authority than the
cop who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead.
____________________
And who do we look to in vain for a calming voice in a time
of growing fury? Donald J. Trump?
He’ll go down in history as “The Great Divider.”
This is a president who has no more moral authority than the
cop who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead.
Trump is what Trump is, an adept hater. That makes him the wrong
man, in the wrong job, at the wrong time. From the start, his place at the
pinnacle of the right-wing pantheon was carved out by birtherism. Racism
by a new name. Citizen Trump claimed for years that Barack Obama wasn’t American.
He said he could prove it. And he never did. Nor should that have come as a surprise.
Donald had made race-baiting headlines before. In 1989 he came out with a full-page ad in the newspapers, demanding that the “Central
Park Five” be executed for the crimes he had no doubt they had committed. He never
apologized when the five young African American men—who spent years in jail—were
totally exonerated. More recently, he gave a birther radio personality the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. He employs a birther press secretary now.
Trump is who he is. He can’t help to heal a nation because
his political power rests on division. He kicked off his run for the highest office
we have to offer by vilifying all Mexicans. As president, he kept his base in
terror, painting all immigrants as recruits for the MS-13 gang. He’s the leader
who wanted to ban all Muslims from entering this country, even those men and
women who had served alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and hoped to
immigrate. During his run for the White House, Trump appealed to fans
like the West Virginia woman who called Michelle Obama “an ape in heels.” He employed a
campaign co-chair in New York who joked that Mrs. Obama should go back to
Africa, “live in a cave,” and maybe have sex with gorillas.
Trump is a twisted, toxic communicator.
Since entering the political arena he’s managed to stoke the fevers of such neo-Nazi
luminaries as Richard Spencer, David Duke and
Rocky Suhayda. It
was Suhayda who pointed out that Trump’s victory in 2016 represented “a real
opportunity for people like white nationalists.” As candidate, Trump said he was thinking
about paying the legal fees for a white fan who sucker punched a
black protester, who was already being led out of one of his rallies by guards.
Matthew Heimbach, another white supremacist, assaulted an African American woman at another rally in March 2016. His
lawyer later claimed that his client could not be held at fault. Heimbach, because
he had “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and
Donald J. Trump for President.” If his client was found liable for damages, the
attorney told the judge, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of
them.” The man
who sits in the White House today gave the Holocaust denier, Arthur Jones, hope enough to
run for Congress. He hired Carl Higbie, who
joked about having people bring guns to the border to do target practice on illegals
and opined that black women think “breeding is a form of government employment.”
Later, while visiting Great Britain, the president retweeted posts from Katie
Hopkins, a racist with an English accent, who once compared dark-skinned
immigrants to “cockroaches.”
____________________
Trump’s true skill set includes his ability to stir up anger
and fear and fuel the hate.
____________________
Naturally, one of Trump’s top aides is Stephen
Miller. Miller is a soulless chap who subscribes to the “Great Replacement” myth,
that dark people are plotting to replace the white
race in Europe and America. Miller was the diabolical genius
behind the decision to lock up little children in cages after they tried to sneak
cross our border with their parents. And Trump is in sympathy all the way. The
Great Divider himself referred to Haiti and a variety of African
countries as “shitholes.” We didn’t want those people coming to
our country. Trump said we’d be better off—wink, wink—if we had more
immigrants from Norway. Then he denied having said it—because he’s a liar, too.
Trump’s true skill set includes his ability to stir up anger and
fear, and fuel the hate. In the fall of 2016, the man who wished to be
president began firing up his base by attacking NFL players who knelt in peaceful
protest—against police brutality. After he was elected, he insisted that protesting
players, predominantly African American, were disrespecting our military and
our flag, and should lose their jobs. He
even suggested that if they didn’t like it, they shouldn’t live in this
country. When Jemele Hill, an African American sportscaster, labeled him a
racist, Trump said she should be fired
too. He called kneeling players like Colin Kaepernick sons-of-bitches. So
police kept kneeling on the necks of others.
Trump has had almost a full term in office to learn how to
unite rather than divide us. And he has learned less than nothing. Rather, he
has regressed. Just last summer, he suggested that four female members of
Congress, all individuals of color who had protested against his policies,
should go back to countries where
they came from if they didn’t like what he was doing. One of the four,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was born in the Bronx. Another, Ayanna Presley, was born
here in Cincinnati. Presley’s ancestors arrived in American, via slave ship,
long before the first Trump set foot on American soil in 1885.
Now we urgently need a leader who can display empathy. But the
Great Divider can’t do it. When he gazes admiringly in the mirror, he is
looking at all the people he cares about most.
Trump has never governed with all Americans in mind. His
default setting is to appeal to the base instincts of his base. It’s them
against the rest of us—and if he can stir anger against “treasonous” Democrats,
supposedly flag-hating liberals, “Enemies of the People” in the free press, and
his dark-skinned predecessor in the White House, he’s not only ready to do so,
he’s in his element when he imagines he has cause to hate. If you care to look,
the word
“hate” litters the president’s Twitter feed, like bodies during a plague. The
Democrats “hate” our military, he says. His critics “hate” our country. His
political opponents “hate” the Second Amendment. Trump hates anyone who
criticizes or doubts him and works hard to get his base to hate them, too.
Today, we must face up to facts. We know Trump might claim to
care about George Floyd. We know he won’t. He won’t care, no matter how many
African Americans are killed by police, because most would never vote for him
in the first place. Trump won’t tweet sympathy for Breonna Taylor, a
26-year-old ER-tech, shot eight times by
police. And shot by mistake. Or Botham Jean,
shot and killed by mistake, while in his apartment. Or Greg Gunn, shot in the
back by a police officer, while Gunn was walking home
from a card game. Or Sean Reed, a
21-year-old veteran, shot while live-streaming the incident on Facebook, so
that you could hear the cops (who didn’t know his camera was on) laughing over
his corpse. You won’t hear the Great Divider speak with feeling about Ahmaud
Arbery, the black jogger, gunned down by neighbors (watch the video), at any of his MAGA rallies. Because many
who attend those rallies love their AR-15’s way more than they love their neighbors
with darker skins.
If you were to ask President Trump, after three-and-a-half
years in office, who these people are—Frederick Douglass, Trayvon Martin, or
Eric Garner, who died because he was illegally selling cigarettes (more video)—he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know nor
care about Philando Castile (watch even more video if
you’d like to see another senseless killing), Jordan Davis, William Green, Tamir Rice,
killed at age 12, while wielding a toy pistol, Atatiana Jefferson
(shot and killed by police in her own home) or Heather Heyer, a young white
woman (run down and killed by a white supremacist at
the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.).
You remember what Trump said then: “Good people on both
sides.”
Trump has continued, even today, to stoke the anger, as cities
he is supposed to care about explode. And he has used the most ineloquent
format possible to reach and fire up his base: Simplistic, 280-charcter tweets.
When protesters gathered outside the White House on Friday night, Trump boasted
that if they had breached the main fence, they would have been met with
“vicious dogs” and the “most ominous weapons” he had ever seen. As he has often
done before, he intimated that his critics, in this case, the protesters, were
fake. Their anger was a hoax. They had no grievances worthy of respect. (Trump,
after all, was one of many right-wing nuts who gave credence to the idea that survivors
of the Parkland High School massacre were “crisis actors,” not real kids
shocked by the carnage they had seen.) He said the crowd at the White House gate
was “professionally organized,” not comprised of Americans expressing heartfelt
anger and dismay. He commended the Secret Service in a series of tweets, saying
agents “let the
‘protesters’ scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone....
....got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard -
didn’t know what hit them.”
George Floyd never knew what hit him, either, but for Trump,
the simpler the message, the better it is when it comes to riling up his fans.
*
And now it promises to get much worse if the Great Divider
has his way. He wants to turn the U.S. military loose on American citizens, and
he promised to fix the problem in our cities quick.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at that promise in depth. Trump has, in
the past, indicated that he believed the Chinese government acted correctly in
crushing the student-led protest at Tiananmen Square.
 |
| No telling where the bottom with Trump will be. |
May 26-29: It should be obvious, even to his most loyal fans, that
President Trump is enduring some of the most painful moments of his days in
office. Not painful for others. Trump doesn’t feel the pain of others.
Painful for
him.
Narcissism
is the foundation of his personality and his presidency. And Trump knows more
and more Americans are coming to understand that he is a profoundly damaged
human being and a really lousy leader. In the harsh light of his historic
failings, Trump is shriveling.
*
If you missed the ugly news Thursday, another 2.1 million Americans filed
for unemployment. That brings the staggering total (in ten weeks) to 40.8 million.
Fortune estimates that the jobless rate when the May figures are
released will be 23.9 percent.
The day before we hit another grim milestone, with the U.S.
death toll from the novel coronavirus passing 100,000.
CDC also reports that we had another 19,860 confirmed cases
of COVID-19 on May 27 and 21,304 on May
28.
That brought the total for the month to 657,381. But our Narcissist-in-Chief
still gazes admiringly at his reflection in the mirror and tells himself he’s doing
a fantastic job meeting this crisis. The U.S. has more than 1.7 million cases
of COVID-19, four times as
many as any other nation on earth. (And, Brazil, the nation in second is led by
another virus denier.)
Trump
focuses on his own hurt first.
Great reviews on our handling
of Covid 19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus. Ventilators, Testing,
Medical Supply Distribution, we made a lot of Governors look very good - And
got no credit for so doing. Most importantly, we helped a lot of great people!
It’s telling that Trump focuses on his own hurt first. That
he “got no credit.” Only then does he mention helping “a lot of great people.”
Trump always thinks of himself first. Then he thinks again.
And he thinks of himself second.
He is a fundamentally flawed man.
*
At the same time, a president who never hesitates to go low, went
low this week, lower and finally, lowest.
____________________
The president has taken the story of his wife’s death and “perverted
it for perceived political gain.”
____________________
The low came when Trump decided to suggest that MSNBC morning
host and former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough was complicit in a murder.
According to Trump, the death of Lori Klausutis, an aide who worked for Scarborough
in 2001, remains “suspicious.”
Ms. Klausutis’ former husband finally asked Twitter to remove
Trump’s tweets on the topic. Then he wrote a letter, which The New York Time
published, saying that the president had taken the story of his
wife’s death and “perverted it for perceived
political gain.”
Trump started taking heat, even from the few Republicans who
still have souls. So he trotted out Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany to explain
to reporters. McEnany said she didn’t know if the president had seen Mr.
Klausutis’ letter. But, she did want everyone to know “our hearts are with Lori’s family at this time.”
You knew as soon as those false words spilled from her lips, that
McEnany hadn’t given a thought to the Klausutis family in the past nineteen
years, until Trump started tweeting shit.
When reporters questioned Trump, himself, later, he said, no,
he didn’t feel bad about spreading the conspiracy theory. “A lot of people have
been saying that,” he claimed.
He was just repeating what they said.
That was the new Trump low. But Wednesday he sank lower. On
Twitter, Trump retweeted some cowboy-looking dude telling a gathering, “The
only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
Ha, ha! So humorous! What next: “The only good Indians is a
dead Indian?” What could go wrong?
But there it was: the President of the United States offering
tacit approval for a man suggesting that we’d all be better off if someone killed
the 31% of adults in this country who call themselves
Democrat.
How do you go lower than that? You tweet even more crap. In the wake of the tragic
death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of white Minneapolis police,
the city has erupted in protest—and then rioting. How, then does Trump decide
to help? First, he attacked Mayor Jacob Frey.
And, here, let us pause a moment to revisit other times Trump
has responded to tragedy by attacking those who have suffered, rather than
displaying even the slightest shreds of empathy. One might be reminded of the time
Trump called the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico “an ingrate,”
after her city and island were smashed by hurricanes, and she didn’t praise him
highly enough.
Or the time he attacked the Chicago police superintendent in
the wake of a bloody weekend of shootings.
Or the time he called the mayor of London “a stone cold
loser,” in the wake of a rash of terrorist-related stabbings.
Or the time he went to El Paso after a mass shooting, and at
a hospital, where he was supposed to be comforting the wounded, decided to brag about how big his crowds were at a
recent rally.
In other words, Trump has gone low many times before, and
lower many times, also. Now, with an American city in flames, he tweeted twice.
First:
I can’t stand back &
watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of
leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act
together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard
& get the job done right.....
Then:
....These THUGS are
dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke
to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way.
Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the
shooting starts. Thank you!
Once again, you have the essence of a sick human being. For
Trump, all the people out that night—not just the looters, but the people
really protesting—are all the same. They’re THUGS.
You have the bombastic claim of a man terminally ill with
narcissism, “I won’t let it happen.”
Then the simplistic solution: “Any difficulty and we will
assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
And you end with an incongruous: “Thank you.”
Let’s be clear. No one on the left is advocating looting or
burning down buildings. But when governments start shooting into crowds,
results are almost always bad. We know this from the Boston Massacre in 1770,
to Sand Creek in 1864, to the Ludlow blood bath in 1913, to the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, to Sharpeville in 1960, to Kent State in 1970, to Tiananmen
Square in 1989, to Khartoum in 2019, and from too many other
examples to list. Bullets fired into crowds often hit innocent bystanders. Excessive
force—for example, shooting a young man absconding from a looted store with a
$100 pair of tennis shoes—is clearly not the answer needed, when the
precipitating cause of the protests/rioting/looting was excessive force used on
Floyd in the first place.
But Trump doesn’t consider nuance. He’s all about macho
posturing. It’s his image he cares most about. Narcissism first. Narcissism
last.
If shooting other Americans can elevate him in the eyes of
his base, he’s ready to start shooting.
Or: to have others do the shooting.
I’m not sure you can go lower than this; but this is Trump we’re
talking about. So, the bottom may not have been reached.
It probably hasn’t.
 |
| Sand Creek, 1864. |
___
 |
| Masks for experts. No mask for the fool. |
Trump is who he is: This weekend Disinfectant Don, Deal Maker Don, Divot Don, Dimwit Don, and Dictator Don have all been on display.
Despicable
Don.
 |
| The prize that wasn't. |
May
23-25: No telling right now, whether we’re headed for a gradual recovery
or a fresh explosion of COVID-19 infections.
Another 559,668 confirmed cases.
According
to the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. racked up 24,268 more cases Friday.
On Saturday we had 26,229. Sunday numbers will be posted on Memorial Day, but the
CDC is reporting 97,049
Americans have died. Total number of new cases this month? According
to CDC: 559,668.
Turning
water into wine, this is not. Johns Hopkins University has the following numbers posted Monday afternoon: 1,651,254 confirmed
cases in the U.S., including 97,850 dead.
Brazil,
led by another virus denier, is second with 363,211 cases. Russia, also led by
a virus denier, trails slightly, but has dropped to third place. The U.K.
stands second in deaths with 36,875.
Worldometers
runs similar numbers,
but updates faster. They have the U.S. death toll at 99,450, or 301 persons per
million. Russia, where Putin clamps down on any news he doesn’t like, reports
only 25 deaths per million. Germany, which handled the threat effectively from
the start—because Chancellor Angela Merkel is a trained scientist and not a golf-club
wielding, tweeting fool—has 100 deaths per million. The top ten U.S. states for
infections are:
New
York 371,193
New
Jersey 155,384
Illinois 110,304
California
94,486
Massachusetts
92,675
Pennsylvania
71,961
Texas 56,166
Michigan 54,679
Florida 51,746
Maryland 47,152
Overall,
cases in the U.S. are falling; but this may be true only because several of the
hardest hit states have managed to slow the spread, particularly New York, New
Jersey and Massachusetts:
Where
do we stand on this Memorial Day weekend? Hard to know for sure. We do know on Saturday,
that Divot Donald managed to get out for a round of golf at
last. That might help the President Trump’s mood, since playing golf is what he
really likes best.
(Well,
that, and grabbing women by the privates.)
Plus,
he got in another round of
golf on Sunday, just to be safe. No mask for Divot Don; but his Secret Service
detail masked up.
*
We
all know by now that Donald J. Trump is truly terrible when it comes to making predictions.
You know—Mexico will pay for the wall! Repealing and replacing Obamacare will be
“so easy.” The federal deficit will be erased while he’s in the Oval Office.
And,
we’re going to be at zero cases of coronavirus soon.
Deal Maker Don: Just as clueless as Disinfectant
Don.
Now,
as we approach the second anniversary of Deal Maker Don’s greatest deal, we discover
he was clueless again. It seems like a thousand years ago, but
remember when Donald was touting his chance to win the Nobel Peace prize? He said
he had earned his imaginary award by convincing North Korea to agree to give up
all its nuclear weapons.
In
fact, Deal Maker Don boldly announced in June 2018: “North Korea is no longer a
nuclear threat.” And because he had worked out the best deal ever, he claimed the
American people could “sleep well tonight.”
Sadly,
Trump’s deal was ephemeral. Kim Jong-un didn’t give up all his weapons. He didn’t
give up any, really. He even built more.
Now
the homicidal dictator—I mean Mr. Kim—has decided to promote several officials
who have been helping expand the North’s nuclear program. North Korea is still
a nuclear threat. The official, government-run Korean Central News Agency
explains:
Set forth at the [latest top-level] meeting
were new policies for further increasing the nuclear war deterrence of the
country and putting the strategic armed forces on a high-alert operation. Taken
at the meeting were crucial measures for considerably increasing the firepower
strike ability of the artillery pieces of the Korean People’s Army.
*
We
should also focus clearly, on this Memorial Day, when we remember those who
have died fighting for our freedoms, to focus on Dictator Don’s growing anger
with the free press. If all you watch is Fox News, you won’t realize it, because
you will be inundated with fifty stories about Joe Biden’s recent gaffe, saying
black people who support Trump “ain’t black.” True. Biden’s comment was a
gaffe. But Dictator Don has been pedaling crazy shit.
Dictator Don’s Alter Ego: Detective Don.
The
latest example involves Trump tweeting unfounded conspiracy theories about former
Congressman and current MSNBC morning host, Joe Scarborough. Trump loathes his
show. And that meant, Saturday, you had Trump suggesting that “Psycho Joe,” as he
calls him, had had a hand in the murder of
an intern in 2001. “A blow to her head?” Detective Donald wondered. “Body found
under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in
Florida...and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic
geniuses!”
(The fact that
Trump considers “bad ratings” as bad as Scarborough’s imaginary involvement in
a murder tells you all you need to know about this truly twisted human being we
are stuck with as president.)
With Trump, of course,
there’s always more. So he also attacked his former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions:
Jeff,
you had your chance & you blew it. Recused yourself ON DAY ONE (you never
told me of a problem), and ran for the hills. You had no courage, & ruined
many lives. The dirty cops, & others, got caught by better & stronger
people than you. Hopefully this slime will pay a big...
...price.
You should drop out of the race & pray that super liberal @DougJones, a
weak & pathetic puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi & Cryin’ Chuck Schumer,
gets beaten badly. He voted for impeachment based on “ZERO”. Disgraced Alabama.
Coach @TTuberville will be a GREAT Senator!
Dictator
Donald naturally turned to dehumanizing language again. It’s a Hitlerian tactic,
one Trump loves to employ. His enemies are never human. In this case, they’re “slime.”
And then—with
the nation in the middle of a crippling health/economic crisis, you had Dimwit
Don retweeting idiotic shit from idiots. In this case John K. Stahl got a
series of retweets from the president.
Included
was this juvenile bit of idiocy, with Nancy Pelosi as his (and the president’s)
target: “Anyone know what’s going on with PolyGrip? I’ve noticed lately that
her face seems glossy and she is sporting a poorly marked 2nd set of eyebrows.
I’m thinking it’s an extreme case of incurable TDS. Any thoughts?”
Stahl
included this “photo” and Dimwit Don loved it and passed it on to his cultish
followers, who liked it also:
This,
then, is the essence of who Donald J. Trump is—a most deplorable human being.
Deplorable
Don.
___
 |
| The National Parks are beginning to reopen. |
May
19-22: There is so much bad news right now and so much that might be
said, we hardly know where to begin or how to end. Let’s just dive right in and
try not to drown.
First:
the coronavirus disaster figures.
Another
2.4 million
Americans filed unemployment claims in the last reporting period. That brings
the total in nine weeks to 38.6 million. To get some sense of the scope of the disaster,
the U.S. workforce in February—all those employed, and all those searching for
jobs—totaled 164.6 million people.
The losses, equal to more than 23% of all employees, have been staggering.
Friday
afternoon the Johns Hopkins University website has
us at 1,590,349 confirmed cases of COVID-19. We have also lost 95,553 dead. We
have almost five times as many cases as Russia or Brazil, second and third most-hard
hit nations. We have more than two-and-a-half times as many deaths as the United
Kingdom, second-worst in that category.
Those
four countries, top four in confirmed cases, all happen to be led by some of the
biggest virus deniers in the world.
____________________
“So,
I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it’s a badge of honor.”
President Donald
J. Trump
____________________
Even
these grim figures have not sobered Mr. Trump. When not busy blaming President
Obama or China or his own CDC for the mess he has us in, he’s still making stunning
claims.
If
you missed this one Tuesday, I am not making it up. When
reporters asked about the rising number of cases, and particularly the death
toll, the President of the United States offered this incredible analysis:
“By the way, you know, when you
say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody
else,” the president said at the White House. “When we have a lot of cases, I don’t
look at that as a bad thing. I look at that in a certain respect as being a
good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So, if we were testing
a million people instead of 14 million people, it would have far few cases,
right?
“So, I view it as a badge of
honor. Really, it’s a badge of honor,” Trump said.
For
real—he said it was a badge of honor. You almost expected him to take a
celebratory swig of bleach to mark the occasion.
*
To
be honest, this blogger has been hoping Trump would run into trouble, to ensure
that the American people would bounce him out on in November. Trump is, for
example, an existential threat to the rule of law. He stirs hate in his base to
serve his purposes.
And
the Russians clearly helped him win in 2016 and he has always known
that, too.
Unemployment likely to remain above 11%.
Anyway,
I admit I have been praying Trump would run into problems and be denied a
second term. But not this! The Congressional Budget Office warns that the
jobless rate will remain above 11% the
rest of the year.
It
will fall in 2021, but only to 9.3%.
These
are catastrophic numbers and equal great pain and suffering for millions of
Americans, both Trump fans, and Trump detractors alike. No one could have
wanted this.
Eric
Trump has been saying that Democrats wanted “millions” to die. Now he says Democrats
are “milking” the crisis because they don’t want his dad to be able to hold his giant rallies. But
Eric is an asshole, like his dad. “They think they are taking away Donald Trump’s greatest
tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000
people every single time,” he told Judge Jeanine Pirro, on her nightly
show. “You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and
Nov. 3. And guess what, after Nov. 3 coronavirus will magically
all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able
to reopen.”
(We could
be mean here and mention that Eric’s dad said the virus would go away in April—and
then we could be meaner and mention that the U.S. has already piled up nearly 500,000 new cases in May. But sometimes, making
fun of Team Trump, generally, and members of Team Trump, individually, is just
too easy. And, in this crisis, way less fun.)
*
Consider
the economic damage: Even Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is offering dire predictions. If
states delay reopening, he warns, there may be “permanent damage” to the
economy. Even if they open quickly, he warns, “the worst is yet to come.”
Great Depression unemployment numbers?
The official
unemployment rate, 14.4% in April, could surpass 25% when May stats are
totaled. Those are numbers not seen since 1932, during the depths of the Great
Depression.
And
if anything, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell has been even more dour.
He calls what we are seeing “the biggest shock” to the economy “in living
memory.” Powell warns that failure to support state and local governments
(an idea the president has floated, because he doesn’t want to help out any
blue states) will weigh down any recovery we might see.
*
So,
the real question is what happens next, as states and cities slowly opening up again?
Do “We the People” shop like mad and travel with reckless abandon? Do bars and restaurants
rebound? Does Major League baseball reboot? Do college students return in the
fall?
And will
idiots every wear masks?
Now
that many of the gems of the U.S. National Park system are open again, we known
thousands of visitors descended on Yellowstone in recent days. A video analysis
of crowds gathered to see Old Faithful erupt offered a summary: “Not much physical distancing happening and not
a single mask in sight.”
This blogger is a huge fan of the parks; but
this does not make him want to leap into his car and head for the woods.
 |
| Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. Note tourists overlooking falls, top right. |
*
The problem, then, is clear. According to the
U.S. Travel Association, more than half of the 15.8 million travel-related jobs in the U.S. have been lost.
The carnage, as of now, stands at 51%.
So, let’s hope for a speedy economic recovery.
And, please, don’t be an asshole. When you go out in public, wear a mask. Don’t
cough germs on others. Help the U.S. travel industry rebound.
*
What could go wrong if you don’t wear a mask? Consider
the case of a rural Arkansas church. According to the CDC, 92 persons attended
services from March 6 to March 11; 35 parishoners came away infected. Both the pastor and his wife fell ill.
Three people died.
Contact tracing also showed that those infected
at church infected 26 others in the wider community. So, when visitors like Jacob
Willis, who lives in Florida, hop in cars and head for Yellowstone, you have to
hope they don’t bring the virus with them and cough on the bears.
____________________
“The surest way to know where outbreaks are
growing and where testing is being done.”
Tampa Bay Times
____________________
Then again, it appears that some state leaders
want us to see only good news. We learn this week that Rebekah Jones, data manager
in charge of compiling Florida statistics on the virus, says she was fired after complaining about being ordered to delete data that made it clear
the disease was spreading far and wide in her state.
The Tampa Bay Times explains:
The dashboard that Jones managed is the best
official source for in-depth data on how the deadly pandemic is moving through
the state. Studying it is the surest way to know where outbreaks are growing
and where testing is being done. Without access to the data, Floridians would
have to rely on the word of officials and politicians without being able to
verify for themselves.
Or,
as Gov. Roy DeSantis might say: We’re doing great here in Florida! Hardly any cases.
Come on down!
Bring
your wallets and go home with the virus!
Chart of Florida Cases
 |
| We hope Florida's spike is an aberration. |
*
With
Americans dying by the tens of thousands, you might expect President Trump to show
a little empathy.
That
would be akin to expecting donkeys to recite the multiplication tables. You may
already know. But the president’s lawyers have been arguing before the Supreme
Court. They have insisted that he cannot be sued while president—because he
would have to devote some of his precious time to dealing with the legal issues—and
he’s too busy working 24 hours a day for the American people.
Trump pines for a sexual predator.
Yet
we know Disinfectant Donald always finds time to tweet! This week, to cite just
a handful of examples, Trump tweeted:
“LOSER.” That one-word bit was paired with a video clip of Mitt Romney, showing
election results from 2012. Because nothing says, “I’m working around the clock”
quite like focusing on an election from eight years ago. According to a retweet we
learn that the president agrees, Fox newscaster Neil Cavuto is “an asshole.” Another
retweet labels Cavuto an “idiot.” By comparison, Pete Hegseth, a Fox pundit who
never misses an opportunity to praise the president, is called—by the pleased
president—“A Great Patriot.” Trump also finds time to take another shot at Joe
Scarborough, host of a morning show on MSNBC—who he has been accusing recently
of having been involved in the murder of a young intern, while serving in
Congress decades ago. Trump labels him, simply “Morning Psycho.” Even better,
the man who never stops working for the American people during this time of
crisis (except when he’s binging on cable news or tweeting thousands of times)
makes it plain. He’s had it with Fox News! Period. Fox, he grumbles, “is no
longer the same. We miss the great Roger Ailes. You have more anti-Trump
people, by far, than ever before. Looking for a new outlet!”
Yes,
we miss “the great Roger Ailes.” Last seen exiting Fox News in the wake of
multiple claims (and several legal settlements) for sexually harassing female
employees. For example: Gretchen Carlson.
Also:
Megyn Kelly.
Also
Laurie Luhn. Andrea Tantaros Rudi Bakhtiar. Shelly Ross. Kellie Boyle. Marsha
Callahan. Randi Harrison.
And
at least nine other anonymous accusers.
*
This
pair of tweets,
however, may be my all-time favorites from Disinfectant Don. Here he reveals, in
naked form, what he views as the true job of the free press. Yes, he’s miffed
with Fox News; but we know now exactly what has been—and Trump still thinks is—the
role of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Bill Hemmer and
the rest of the toadying crew.
And
we know, also, that tens of thousands of Americans, who hit “love” after seeing
this tweet, were too obtuse to see danger staring them in the face. The
President of the United States wants, frankly, for the “free press” to serve
him.
Postscript:
Asked Wednesday if he could have done anything differently to address the
threat of the coronavirus—you know, like not saying we were headed for zero
cases in late February—Trump didn’t blink before answering. He said his team
had done “amazingly well.” He said the U.S. and Germany and a few other little
countries had kept the death toll low, if you adjusted for population.
Germany
has done an excellent job, with only 99 deaths per million population. We stand
at 291 per million.
Not
in the same ballpark.
Other
large countries doing better than the U.S.: Australia: 4 per million; South
Korea: 5; Japan: 6; Ukraine: 13; Canada: 163.
___
May
18: Yesterday,
on the main fan site for the Cincinnati Bengals, I was reading a story about chances
the team would be able to open up the 2020 season on time, later in the summer.
Several Bengals loyalists commented on the article, insisting that the NFL should
have no problem going forward. Because—really—the mortality rate for COVID-19
was no worse than regular flu. I was dubious, to say the least. I keep checking
the numbers and that “it’s just the flu” kind of assessment doesn’t seem to hold
up.
When
two or three other fans insisted that the “real death rate” from the
coronavirus was around one-tenth to four-tenths of one percent, I felt compelled
to comment.
First,
I checked the CDC website, which gave me a tally of the dead: 89,407, as of
Monday. Then I did the math. If CDC had the number of deaths right and even if one
percent of people who contracted the coronavirus died, that would have meant we
had already had 8,940,700 cases of COVID-19 in this country. Only the top scientists
in the world didn’t know it.
But
these other Bengals fans were saying the death rate was one-tenth of one
percent. That would be a fatality rate similar to seasonal flu—one death for
every 1,000 cases. That would indicate that we had already had 89,407,000
cases in this country, but CDC just didn’t realize.
I can’t
buy that kind of math—even though, in right-wing land, it’s the new way of
saying, Trump is actually doing a great handling this crisis and we should
reopen all restaurants, bars and stadiums and get out there and cough on each other to our heart’s content.
*
So,
let’s keep it simple for today and tally the damage done just
this month. The CDC updates 24-hours after the fact. When I checked Monday afternoon
the U.S. was still piling up more confirmed cases and more deaths than any
other country.
New confirmed
cases by day:
May
17: 13,284
May
16: 31,967
May
15: 22,977
May
14: 27,191
May 13: 20,869
May 12: 21,467
May 11: 18,106
May 10: 23,792
May 9: 26,660
May 8: 25,996
May 7: 28,974
May 6: 25,253
May 5: 22,303
May
4: 19,138
May
3: 29,763
May
2: 29,794
May
1: 30,369
______________________________________________
TOTAL: 417,903*
Fatalities: 89,407
*To
keep that number in perspective, the U.S. has racked up more cases in May than any
other country has throughout this crisis.
*
Meanwhile,
members of Team Trump continued to go tweeting along. Papa Trump got off a classic mishmash of falsehoods
with this:
Wow! The
Front Page @washingtonpost Headline reads, “A BOOST IN TESTS, BUT LACK OF
TAKERS.” We have done a great job on Ventilators, Testing, and everything else.
Were left little by Obama. Over 11 million tests, and going up fast. More than
all countries in the world, combined.
____________________
“In
particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Donald J.
Trump
____________________
First,
let’s ignore the stupidity. Trump continues to blame his predecessor for not handling
a virus that did not exist when Obama exited office. “Disinfectant Don” also hopes
his silly supporters won’t realize that he could have ramped up any government
program he wanted—in the three years, four months, since he plunked down in
the Oval Office. He could have focused on pandemic threats, instead of, say, touting
his Space Force, or talking endlessly about the need for a Great Wall of Trump.
We do know he never mentioned any coronavirus threat, or even any coronavirus, in
something like his first 40,000 presidential tweets. His first tweet on the topic came on January
24. And, typically, Trump got it wrong. “China has been working very hard to
contain the Coronavirus,” he said with equal parts confidence and cluelessness.
“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!”
It’s
also worth noting that the Washington Post story didn’t carry the
headline the Liar-in-Chief said it did. The actual headline: AS CORONAVIRUS TESTING EXPANDS, A NEW
PROBLEM ARISES: NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TO TEST.
Nor
does the article validate Trump’s handling of the crisis, as he hopes his
followers will believe it does. The Post did say there were at least a
dozen states, like Utah, which had the capacity to test more people than it had
people showing up to be tested. But it wasn’t because the federal government
had done such a good job of handling the threat. In many sparsely-populated
states—like Utah—large percentages of people live a long way from testing sites.
There’s also mass confusion about who should take tests and who needn’t bother.
And anyone who has listened to Trump babble in press conferences knows how
confusing his “advice” has been.
“Bartender,
give me a shot of bleach!”
Finally,
many states have the lab capacity to test more people than they are. But
four months into this crisis they are still having difficulty procuring “personal
protective equipment (PPE), nasal swabs and reagents, the chemicals necessary
to process tests.” California is using only 40% of its testing capacity due,
says the governor, to “supply-chain constraints.” In Chicago testing at many
urgent-care facilities ground to a halt recently when medical staff ran out of
kits. And in Washington D.C., right outside the White House door, labs could
test 3,700 people per day. But they have the necessary reagents to do only
1,500 tests daily.
True,
a close reading of the story in the Post would indicate that Team Trump is
doing a better job lately of addressing the crisis.
But
“better” isn’t high praise when you start off with a baseline of incredible blundering
and sustained virus-denial.
Trump was lying then, too.
Last,
but not least, is the president even correct when it comes to the math? What
about this claim that we are testing more than all other countries combined?
Trump has made this same claim before. He was lying then, too. Let’s assume he wanted
to get his facts straight, even if we know he never really cares. Disinfectant
Don could check the Worldometers website. He would know that, as of Monday, the United
States had conducted 12.1 million tests.
Then
he could add up—let’s just say all the tests for the next nine countries with
the most confirmed cases of COVID-19.
As
of Monday, Russia had done 7.1 million tests. And you figure Vladimir Putin
shouldn’t have been bragging about how great his country was doing, beating the
coronavirus. On March 22, he noted that, thanks to him, Russia had fewer infections than Luxembourg. Here we are two months
later with Russia having more confirmed cases than any other country on
earth—except the United States.
Spain,
with the third most infections, had performed 3.0 million tests.
The
United Kingdom had done 2.7 million tests. Wait? That means these three
countries combined had done more than the U.S. And we might point out that on May 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said
that because of his fine leadership the U.K. had managed to “avoid the tragedy that engulfed other
parts of the world.”
We
could stop right there, having already shown that Trump was talking through a
very tall hat. But, what the hell. Add in Brazil (.7 million tests), where President
Jair Bolsonaro once called COVID-19 “a little flu.” Now his country was “climbing
the charts” in infectious spread. Rounding out the “Top Ten” in order of
countries with the most infections: Italy (3.0 million tests peformed); France
(1.4 million); Germany (3.1 million); Turkey (1.7 million) and Iran (.7
million).
Total:
23.4 million, meaning Trump was off by a mile, as he so often is. And, a
quick estimate, after scanning the list for all other countries, would add
somewhere close to 25 million more tests.
*
Also
tweeting sweet nonsense on Monday, we had this:
I
should have added: “or my granddaughter.”
___
 |
| Time magazine cover story: May 25, 2020. |
May
17: President
Trump was in a celebratory mood on Sunday, tweeting about his success taming the coronavirus! “Doing
REALLY well, medically,” he claimed incongruously, “on solving the CoronaVirus
situation (Plague!). It will happen!”
Time
to check the numbers to see if we were “doing REALLY well, medically.”
According to John Hopkins University, by Sunday evening, the United States of
America had:
1,486,423
confirmed cases of COVID-19 (roughly 1.2 million more cases than the next most
infected nation: Russia).
With
the grim numbers piling up daily, Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top economic
advisers, spent Sunday morning trying to pass the buck from Trump to anyone else. “Early on in this
crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in
this space—really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro said.
And if that wasn’t enough—the ballsy nerve to blame a government
agency led by a Trump appointee, an agency of the government Donald J. Trump
leads—HHS Secretary Alex Azar had another explanation for the high death rates
in this country. Americans weren’t dying because he and Trump fumbled the ball.
Not at all. Americans were dying more than, say, Canadians or Germans because
they were fat. Azar cited “comorbidities,” or underlying conditions, as the
reason for America’s high death toll. Just to be clear, he ticked them off: Obesity.
Hypertension. Diabetes.
Really…what could Health and Human Services do about that? If
you died from COVID-19, it was actually your own fault.
*
With
thousands dying every day and millions unemployed, we might forget that Disinfectant
Donald is still threatening the rule of law in other ways. Lately, he has made
a hobby of firing Inspector Generals. If you’re not clear, the job of any IG is
to make sure that people working at the federal agency he or she oversees don’t
break any laws.
The
latest victim of a Trumpian desire to rule like a king—the fourth IG he has
fired in two months—was the IG for the State Department, Steve Linick. According
to multiple reports, Linick had opened at least one investigation into possible
illegal actions by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So, Pompeo recommended his
firing. Trump agreed.
(I
can find only one example of President
Obama relieving an IG in his eight years as president. I also find one case
where President George W. Bush was asked to fire an IG. Robert W. Cobb resigned
instead.)
“To root out fraud and other wrongdoing.”
As
usual, most Republicans are too cowardly to complain about the president’s assault
on the rule of law. One U.S. Senator did show a dash of courage. A second
protested, but we’ll have to wait to see if there are any results. A third
expressed concern.
Starting
with the last of the three: Sen. Susan Collins, who finds herself is in a real
fight to retain her seat in November, went on record via Twitter:
I have
long been a strong advocate for the Inspectors General. They are vital partners
in Congress’s effort to identify inefficient or ineffective government programs
and to root out fraud and other wrongdoing.
The
investigations and reports of IGs throughout the government help Congress shape
legislation and oversight activities – improving government performance,
providing important transparency into programs, and giving Americans better
value for their tax dollar.
The
President has not provided the kind of justification for the removal of IG
Linick required by this law [emphasis added].
See! Concern!
The president might be breaking the law….
____________________
“It is a
threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of
power.”
Senator Mitt Romney
____________________
Chuck
Grassley, GOP chairman of the Senate Finance Committee was blunt. But the question
remains. Will Grassley act? He made it clear to reporters that inspectors-general
were “crucial in correcting government failures and promoting the accountability
that the American people deserve.” Congress, he pointed out, “requires written
reasons justifying an IG’s removal. A general lack of confidence,” which Trump
had cited as his reason for dumping Linick, would not “satisfy Congress.”
Sen. Mitt
Romney, who seems to be the only GOP senator still in possession of a pair of nuts,
was more direct. He warned that Trump’s firings of multiple inspectors-general
were “unprecedented” and “doing so without good cause chills the independence
essential to their purpose….It is a threat to accountable democracy and a
fissure in the constitutional balance of power.”
Also:
Don’t drink disinfectant to combat the coronavirus, folks.
___
May
16: Here
in Glendale, Ohio, where I live people were out in force Friday and Saturday evening,
eating and drinking at outdoor tables in the village square. I’m going to be
diplomatic and say that, generally speaking, revelers seemed not to believe:
a.
Masks were a good idea.
b.
Six feet = seventy-two inches.
c.
People serving them food and drink might be nervous
about getting coughed on by patrons.
In
any case, the country is opening up, for good or ill, no one knows. It’s easy
to understand why people want to get back to work, why business owners want to
open. It’s also easy to understand why people going back to work might want
customers to work a little harder to help them remain safe. And, since I have
three daughters in the medical field, I understand why frontline medical people
are worried we might be opening up too soon.
The
math will help determine whether we are making a mistake. Saturday, the CDC
recorded 31,967 new cases of
the coronavirus. That would make it the worst single day since April 25. Could
be an aberration.
Could
be the start of a Trump Bump.
This
brings the total number of cases in May to 404,652.
___
May 15: The country is
staggering towards a reopening and a highly uncertain recovery. But, by god, we’ve
got binders! The best binders. Not one binder. We have two binders! Binders
that prove Donald J. Trump is the best president ever.
President Obama? He left
the nation binder-less when he exited the White House 1,213 days ago.
And because Obama
left us in a bind, completely without binders, 88,000 Americans have died.
*
At a press
conference Friday, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany wanted to make this all
clear. Standing at the podium, she proudly displayed the fruits of three years
of labor by Team Trump. Binder one in her left hand! Binder two in her right! Both
filled with real ideas about how to handle the COVID-19 crisis! I think she expected
reporters and people listening at home to gasp. Team Trump wasn’t slacking off.
Not like Team Obama. No way! These fantastic binders—and here she sneered at the
work of the previous administration—could be compared to “this thin packet of
paper” left behind by the Obama folks, having to do with combating pandemics. She
held up the packet gingerly, by one corner, like a dead mouse in a trap, and handed
it over to her “assistant, Wendy.”
Only, I didn’t gasp.
My first thought: Taxpayers are paying this fool’s salary? And she has an
assistant?
For what?
(WATCH THE FIRST MINUTE OF THE CLIP BELOW.)
My second thought
was: This is so stupid, it’s hard to know where to begin. We had supposedly learned
on Monday, thanks to Sen. Mitch “Zero Charisma” McConnell, that the Obama
administration was to blame for the spread of the coronavirus because they
failed to leave behind “a game plan” to address pandemics. And what? You thought
Team Trump could have come up with a plan of their own in three years! Shows
what you know. In a chat with Lara Trump—who probably knows less about
pandemics than a panda—Mitch grumbled, “They claim pandemics only happen once every
hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for
the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this
administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”
“That’s
exactly right,” Lara Trump responded.
Sound of this blogger slapping his forehead,
followed by primal scream….
“HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLY
F-ING SHIT!”
____________________
“The American public will look to the U.S.
government for action when multi-state or other significant events occur.”
Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging
Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents
____________________
Mitch wasn’t “exactly
right.” He wasn’t even partially right. In fact, by Thursday, even he had to
admit he was wrong about what he had claimed.
But his attempt to
pin the blame on a previous administration for the blunders (and binders) of
Team Trump wouldn’t have made sense even if he had been correct. Even the most
obtuse person in the U.S. government—for example, President Trump—should be
able to recall the SARS outbreak of 2002. That
coronavirus spread to 26 countries. A decade later, the MERS coronavirus
erupted in Saudi Arabia and struck across the Middle East. Pandemics don’t
happen every hundred years. These threats are no longer rare. MERS struck again in 2015, this time
in South Korea.
Trump called Obama a “psycho” during the Ebola outbreak.
If Team Trump didn’t
understand that they might face a pandemic threat during their watch, then Team
Trump is solely to blame. The Obama administration had to deal with the H1N1
virus in 2009. Then, in 2014, the Ebola virus began to ravage West African. We know
Trump knew about that pandemic threat—because he went berserk at the time and
said Obama was a “psycho” for the way he handled the crisis. You could even say
Trump lost his nerve at the time, predicting that there would be “bedlam” in the streets
after President Obama allowed seven infected Americans, who had been working in
West Africa, to return home.
In the end, a
total of 11 Americans, including those seven, contracted Ebola, and there
was no “bedlam” in the streets.
Trump—ever the
hater—did say at one point, as Ebola spread:
 |
| What's worse? Trump's hate. Or the fact more than 8,000 Americans liked this idea? |
*
In fact, as Politico
reported in March, the Obama
administration did leave behind a 69-page plan titled: “Playbook for
Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and
Biological Incidents.” Indeed, as CNN noted at the time, the document “explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one
of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.”
The plan is
also clear about where ultimate responsibility in a time of pandemic lies:
The U.S. government will use all powers at its
disposal to prevent, slow or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious
disease threat. The American public will look to the U.S. government for action
when multi-state or other significant events occur.
There’s even more you could say about how the Obama
administration tried to prepare the Trump administration.
But if you’re
interested, we’ll let you click the link above and you can read the document
for yourself.
Something, you can
bet, Trump never did.
*
Meanwhile, the toll
rises inexorably. As of Friday evening, Johns Hopkins reported the U.S. had 1,442,924
confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 87,493 deaths.
Those numbers looked
so bad I decided I had better doublecheck the math. The Centers for Disease
Control posts new numbers every day. CDC also has numbers that look grim. The
figure for May 15 is now up; and on that one day we piled up another 22,977 cases. And on May 14 the U.S. recorded 27,191 new confirmed
cases of COVID-19, the worst daily total in a last week.
I’m hoping that
figure won’t jump again; but if you remember Trump saying the virus would go
away in April, that brought the total for May to 372,652 new cases. That’s more
in just 16 days than any other nation on earth has totaled since the crisis
began.
“If we didn’t do any testing we
would have very few cases.”
So,
let’s end with this nugget from the man we have to pray will lead the nation
out of this mess, much of which he made all by himself. Asked by reporters
about the alarming numbers of cases the United States has seen, President Trump
said this: “When you
test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people.
If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.”
Words of wisdom, from Donald J. Trump.
As
we said at the top of today’s post, the stupidity we get from Team Trump is so
profound, so all-encompassing, it’s hard to know where to begin or to end.
But,
hey!
We
have the binders!!!
___
THE ARCHIVE
 |
| Donald J. Trump: Leader of the Windmill Party. |
April
22-23: Time to face a simple truth. Trump is now the leader of the
newly formed Windmill Party. The GOP is extinct; and he can tell the rank and
file anything and they will swallow his sentences whole. If he says windmill
noise causes cancer, they won’t blink. If he says climate change is a “hoax,”
they will nod. If scientists at NASA and NOAA are sounding alarms, they tune
them out. If they only believe in Donald J. Trump, there’s no need to think for
themselves.
Not
to deny that the Windmill Party includes many fine folks. Some of this
blogger’s friends, neighbors, and even favorite relatives have been known to
vote the Windmill Party line.
That
doesn’t mean this party isn’t chock full of nuts. And those nuts drive party policy
most of the time. You have the climate change deniers, of course. You also have
professional deniers who make millions denying reality. Alex Jones, peddler of both
absurd conspiracy theories and expensive coronavirus-curing toothpaste, is one.
In this alternative denier universe, Barack Obama was never born in America. The
slaughter at Sandy Hook was a “false flag.” The massacre of first graders and
teachers wasn’t the work of a screwed up 15-year-old armed with his mother’s
AR-15. It was pulled off by the government, so Obama could have an excuse to
seize our guns.
Opinion
makers in the Windmill Party can’t even handle simple math—and the rank and
file are too busy with their daily lives to check the figures out. That means
when Sean Hannity claimed 95,000,000 Americans were out of work on the
day Obama left office, listeners were justly outraged.
“Justly,”
that is, had that number been even remotely
close to the truth.
At
a time in history when we need to understand the science of the coronavirus and
its spread, we have a political party led by people who believe even the laws
of subtraction no longer pertain.
In
January, when Trump and his toadies were still bragging about the seven million jobs he had created since taking office,
adherents of the Windmill Party line let out a raucous cheer. Trump, himself,
never tired of pointing out that the unemployment rate was the lowest in fifty years—which, by the way, this blogger
admits was true. After all, this blogger believes in the immutable rules of
math.
The
problem with Windmill science and math is that windmill noises don’t cause
cancer. If you believe it does, you’re following a fool. Nor can you take 95
million unemployed (Candidate Trump pegged the figure at a more modest 93 million),
subtract seven million jobs created, and come up with the lowest unemployment
in fifty years.
That’s
not math.
Now
we find ourselves swamped by trouble, in large part due to President Trump’s
ability to ignore science. The Windmill faithful believed him when he claimed
COVID-19 was like the flu. They weren’t worried. Their hero promised when it
got warmer in April the virus would go away. They believed the loudest deniers.
They listened when Rush Limbaugh said the coronavirus was “the common cold,
folks.” They believed because Rush had warned them about the “four corners of deceit” for
years. Those four: government, academia, science, and media.
On
an almost daily basis, Limbaugh and others worked to fire up the Windmill base.
And the base believed. They listened when Laura Ingraham and Ainsley Earhardt
and that whole goofy Fox News crew said there was no need to be alarmed. They took
comfort knowing the virus was no threat. The president was nonchalant about
taking action to address the spread. Party members assumed the nation was in
good hands because they didn’t believe the media if they said we were not. But
the nation wasn’t in good hands. The president was a bumbling buffoon.
The
four corners of “truth” for Trump and the Windmill Party turned out to be
superstition, simplification, bullshit and lies.
*
Nothing
this president—or any other—could have kept our country from suffering serious
pain. But there was a chance to blunt the spread and limit that pain in the
first weeks of the crisis.
That
chance was thrown away.
The
science was ignored—and now we pay an astronomical price. Today, we learned
that 4.4 million more Americans had filed for unemployment. That brings the
total for five weeks to 26.5 million.
That
is what happens when you compare a virus with some of the characteristics of
SARS and MERS (my daughter, who works in infectious diseases at the CDC, just
explained the similarities in a phone conversation) to “the common cold,
folks.” You don’t act with the urgency you should.
And
you pay and pay and pay.
*
We
had fresh evidence again yesterday of the damage that can result when deniers
lead us in reverse.
Dr.
Rick Bright, the director of the federal agency working on a vaccine to fight
the virus, released a letter, announcing he had been fired. He said he
refused to bend science to fit the president’s whims.
If you haven’t been
paying attention, because you’ve been busy trying to figure out how to pay last
month’s bills—let alone the bills for this month—you may not realize the president
has been
touting an almost magical cure for COVID-19. The drug has never been tested for the
purpose, but Trump says hydroxychloroquine could be “a gift from god.” He had
“a hunch,” he has said, it could work to fight off the virus and he has been pushing
hard for its use.
The
problem was that the Windmill Party folks were immediately sold. Ingraham made
it clear on her nightly show that the drug would be a “game changer” and we
could all thank Donald J. Trump. Hannity touted the drug. Tucker Carlson
invited a guest on his show who swore that hydroxychloroquine had a “100
percent” cure rate in a clinical trial conducted by Stanford University.
Behind the scenes, Dr. Bright was making it clear he believed
the drug would not work—and might well do harm.
What, then, was the sin for which he was fired?
Dr. Bright says he was shunted aside because of his “insistence that the
government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the
COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not
in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”
Bah! The Windmill crowd doesn’t trust science!
Science is one of the “four corners” of deceit.
In his statement, delivered by his lawyers, Bright
said he was “speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science—not politics
or cronyism—has to lead the way. Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can
be disastrous and result in countless more deaths,” he added. “Science, in
service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump
politics.”
*
For now, we live in a free country, where Dr.
Bright can publish his statement and employ the word “trump” in clever fashion.
We still enjoy free speech. The New York Times can pick up the story. We
still have freedom of the press. Trump might not like it, nor his most avid fans.
But we don’t live in China. Yet. In China, of course, they silenced
whistleblowers who warned COVID-19 was a threat.
In this country, a reporter—a person President Trump
would tell his followers was an “Enemy of the People”—inquired during the daily press conference: Was Dr.
Bright fired for taking a stand?
And in this country, the leader of the Windmill
Party could only respond,
“Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t; I don’t know
who he is.”
___
April
24:
A quick check shows that the U.S. has 887,622 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 50,283
Americans are dead.
We
have four times as many cases as Spain, the next country on the list, and twice
as many dead as Italy, the next worst, and 32.2% of all cases worldwide.
Russia,
where Putin has spent weeks denying there was a problem (does that sound
familiar?) reported 5,849 new cases in just one day. But Putin is Putin.
That means if Russia has nearly 69,000 confirmed cases …
Sure…only
615 people have died. Because in Russia, the “Enemies of the People” say what
Putin wants.
Here we have the fatal
difference.
Finally,
if you scrolled down to 32nd place, sandwiched in between Poland and
Romania, you had:
We keep citing this example. South Korea (which
has a population one-sixth the size of the United States) discovered it had its
first case of COVID-19 on the same day authorities in this country discovered
ours, a man who showed up at an urgent care facility in Snohomish County,
Washington.
And here we have the fatal difference. In South
Korea, government listened to scientists. They took the threat seriously from
the start and ramped up testing and quarantining at once.
President Trump and the loudest voices in the
Windmill Party (see: 4/22-23/20) downplayed the danger and let the virus
explode.
___
April 25-26: At some point in the Trump presidency, I expect my jaw to drop so far,
so suddenly, it dislocates, and I end up in the hospital for a week.
Once again, “Disinfectant Don” has bee revealed
for what he is: an egocentric, ill-informed liar.
First, however, a look at Sunday’s stark
numbers. A check a little before one p.m. shows that the U.S. has 943,865
confirmed cases of the
coronavirus. A total of 54,480 Americans are dead.
Given these brutal figures, you might assume it
would be easy for President Trump to go before the American people in is daily
press conferences and offer up comfort and compassion. But if you have been
watching, you know he can’t. He might read a few formulaic sentences off a
sheet provided by aides. But there’s never a hint of genuine empathy. The
president reads in a monotone, citing cold statistics to show how much help his
administration is passing on to states, his voice rising only when he turns defensive.
He never mentions individual suffering. He never talks about painful loss. If
you watched all of Trump’s press conference, all the way through, you’d never
know anyone was suffering except him.
Trump’s troubles exploded again on Thursday
when he suggested people with COVID-19 could be cured by injecting them with disinfectant.
That comment sounded so stupid that I had a hard time believing the president
made it. Anyone who follows my blog, knows I don’t like Trump. I can hardly bear
to hear him talk and had not seen the press conference. That meant, I needed to
see what he said in context. I had to know. Could a U.S. president really say
something so profoundly clueless and dumb?
It turns out he could.
Even worse, when it was revealed how clueless
and dumb Trump sounded, he tried to lie about what he meant. He said he wasn’t
seriously suggesting injecting disinfectant. He was being “sarcastic.” He
was directing his comments toward reporters—who we all know he hates.
By the way, if you’re keeping track, that makes
Trump: a) clueless; b) dumb; c) a liar; and d) a threat to the free press.
Still
a loyal member of the Windmill Party.
If you’re still a loyal member of the Windmill
Party (that is: you believe everything the Orange Moron says), you can see the
president’s comments in context, if you watch the briefing, start to end. You
can watch it through a fixed White House camera, which focuses on the person at
the podium. But since you doubtless have better ways to spend your time, such
as picking lint from between your toes, start around the 25:00 minute mark. The
pertinent comments
last about two minutes.
When Trump turns to pose his question to some
person or persons off camera, you can’t see who it might be. It could be a
reporter or reporters—as Trump will later claim. It could be the First Lady,
stopping by to listen to her main squeeze. For all we know, from this angle, it
could be a porn queen.
For proper perspective, you have to view Trump’s
comments from another angle, which C-Span2 provides.
At the 6:37 mark of their tape, the president suggests that we “hit the body”
of a patient suffering from the coronavirus with a powerful dose of ultra-violet
light. Maybe even internally! He has a hunch this might knock out the virus. He
turns to his right and clearly directs his words to Dr. Deborah Birx, seated in
a chair along the the briefing room wall. “And I think you said that hasn’t
been checked, but you’re going to test it,” he says. He’s obviously directing
his comments to her. “And then I see the disinfectant, which knocks it out, in
a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that, by
injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” he continues. He even waves his
hand in a circular motion, as if cleaning an Oval Office window. “Because you
see it gets in the lungs, and does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it
would be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical
doctors. But it sounds interesting to me.”
Trump ends with a shrug.
And if that’s sarcasm directed at reporters,
I’m the Princess of York. You can see where Trump is looking (screenshot at
7:02). It’s clear to Dr. Birx who he’s talking to, as well, because she
answers his questions.
If you still have your doubts about the
veracity of this blogger, you can go to a third
tape and watch Dr. Birx respond.
*
It was bad enough to see that the President of
the United States didn’t understand simple science. Friday it got worse. Most
Americans know lying comes naturally to Trump. Fish have got to swim. Dogs have
got to woof. The man has got to lie.
First, Trump had Kayleigh McEnany, his new
press secretary and an adept liar in her own right, issue a statement. She
insisted the boss had been misquoted by the jackals of the free press. “President
Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors
regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during
yesterday’s briefing,” the statement read. “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly
take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”
Yes!
When Trump said injecting disinfectant might cure the disease, go with the
positive headlines!
BLEACH SALES THROUGH THE ROOF: U.S. ECONOMY
REBOUNDS
Blistering criticism from just about everyone
with a functioning central nervous system did not abate, in part because almost
no one believes what anyone working as Press Secretary for this president says.
So, as we’ve already noted, Trump tried to claim that he was being sarcastic
all along.
It was not lost on keen observers, that Trump
was now arguing that he hadn’t been misquoted—just misunderstood.
____________________
It “can cause death and very adverse
outcomes.”
Dr. Scott
Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner
____________________
Sadly, no one caught the sarcasm—because there was no sarcasm to be caught. The manufacturer of Lysol and other top-selling
disinfectants decided it was time to issue stern warning. “As a global leader in health and hygiene products,” the company statement
read, “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
Environmental Protection Agency felt the need to share a similar don’t drink the bleach message: “Never
apply the product to yourself or others. Do not ingest disinfectant products.”
Dr.
Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s own former FDA commissioner, was equally direct. “I
think we need to speak very clearly that there’s no circumstance under which
you should take a disinfectant or inject a disinfectant for the treatment of
anything, and certainly not for the treatment of coronavirus.” For good
measure, he added, “There’s absolutely no circumstance under which that’s
appropriate, and it can cause death and very adverse outcomes.”
You’d be “better off with
coronavirus.”
Trump’s initial stupidity and subsequent lying were met with scorn. “These [disinfectant]
products have corrosive properties that melt or destroy the lining of our
innards,” McGill University thoracic surgeon Dr. Jonathan Spicer warned. Dr.
Donna Farber, an immunologist at Columbia University was appalled by Trump’s suggestion
that we might use ultraviolet (UV) light to kill the virus. The idea, she said,
was “not practical.” UV rays don’t go deep enough. The rays would never get to the lungs. But you could suffer
DNA damage. Dr. Farber was blunt. Any radiation that would penetrate deeply
enough “would cause so much damage” that you’d be “better off with coronavirus.”
The
more you looked for reaction—to ensure you were getting the story in full—the more harsh condemnation piled up. “Inhaling chlorine
bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs,” warned John Balmes, a San Francisco pulmonologist. “Not
even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe. It’s a totally
ridiculous concept.”
“This
is one of the most dangerous and idiotic suggestions made so far in how one
might actually treat COVID-19,” a British expert told U.S. News and World Report. “It is hugely irresponsible because, sadly, there
are people around the world who might believe this sort of nonsense and try it
out for themselves.”
This
notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is
irresponsible, and it’s dangerous...It’s a common method that people utilize when
they want to kill themselves...Any amount of bleach or isopropyl alcohol or
any kind of common household cleaner is inappropriate for ingestion even in
small amounts. Small amounts are deadly.
Gupta
said he found watching the president’s press conferences “demoralizing.” He was
horrified to think Trump’s loyal listeners might trust in what he offered as
advice. “It’s exceptionally dangerous,” Dr. Gupta warned. There were people “who hang on to every word”
the president says.
Postscript. I
mentioned the president’s lack of empathy near the start of today’s post. To my
knowledge, I have never heard him use the word in any speech, although I have
trouble listening to him for very long.
I
do know, if you check the archive for his
Twitter feed you can search by word. You have, for starters, nearly 48,000
tweets. Punch in “losers” and you find Trump has called his foes “losers” hundreds
of times. He has called those he doesn’t like “psychos” and “sick” and
“lowlifes,” too.
I
had never searched to see how often the word “empathy” is used. It turned up in
two tweets—including Trump retweeting Dan Bongino, of Fox News, who had this to say: “I
don’t feel an ounce of empathy for all of the imbeciles who bought into the
Russian collusion hoax now that it’s been entirely debunked.”
The
second time the word appeared it had nothing to do with Trump thinking about
others. All he really did was quote a White House Proclamation on Doctors Day, and
provide a link.
So:
I would argue that the word “empathy” has never been a part of Trump’s
vocabulary. Nor does he display any in his daily life.
___
April
27:
If you missed this potentially positive development in the COVID-19 story,
you can consider yourself excused. My oldest daughter, who works in infectious
diseases at the Centers for Disease Control, tipped me off to a study done by USC
and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Unlike guests on Fox
News, my girl Abby, almost always knows what she’s talking about.
Based
on a representative sampling of 863 county residents, they estimate that as
many as 4.1% of the adult population already had antibody protection against
the coronavirus in early April. That would mean far more people had been
infected than health officials or even those infected knew.
At
the time, Los Angeles County had 7,994 confirmed cases and 600 deaths. That
would appear to be a fearful mortality rate of 7.5%. But if the sampling figure
held up, the county would have already had between 221,000 and 442,000 cases of
the virus. Selecting even the lowest figure, the mortality rate would be .003
percent, or 1 death for every 368 cases. That would be similar to an
exceptionally virulent strain of seasonal flu—proving President Knucklehead was
partly right when he said COVID-19 was “like the flu.”
So,
I asked Abby if this meant we were safer than we realized. “Yes, and no,”
she explained. “This virus is far more communicable than flu.” She also said the
coronavirus was not like the flu. It was similar in its structure to SARS and
MERS—which had proven highly deadly in the past.
I
listened attentively. Smart kid. I didn’t understand everything she said. But
there did seem to be a ray of hope amidst the gloom.
Anyway,
there may be other signs of hope. New tests indicate that 96% of 3,277 inmates in Ohio, Virginia, Arkansas and
North Carolina who have tested positive for the disease were asymptomatic.
“It adds to the understanding that
we have a severe undercount of cases in the U.S.,” Leana Wen, adjunct
associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University,
explained.
It also means the death rates we
see—which look frightful, to say the least—may be not as bad as they appear.
That would be welcome news.
____________________
“He was
soberly addressing health experts on the coronavirus task force, urging
them to launch a study.”
Fox News
____________________
Generally speaking, however, the
Trump administration—led by a dimwit president—continues to bumble and stumble along.
Poison control centers have seen spikes in calls after the man with the “very, very large brain” suggested injecting
disinfectant might protect a person from the virus. Kentucky officials say
calls related to misuse of household cleaners rose 50% in March, even before the president
leaped aboard the Lysol bandwagon and rode it until it broke loose and went
flying down a steep hill and smashed into a scientific tree. Even Fox News
seemed to have had its fill of the president’s unshakeable idiocy. Since
there are still a few journalists working for Fox, they reported that while Trump
claimed to have been speaking sarcastically when he touted the virus-fighting
glories of disinfectant, “he was soberly addressing health experts on
the coronavirus task force, urging them to launch a study.” The Maryland
Emergency Management Agency said it had received a hundred calls in the wake of
Trump’s comments. Health officials decided it was time to issue an advisory: “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
State of Washington also saw a spike in disinfectant-related health emergencies.
Again, health authorities were forced to plead with citizens not to “drink
bleach” or “inject disinfectant.”
*
Meanwhile, the
president wasted his entire weekend (with no official events on his schedule
Saturday or Sunday) and spent his time roasting and toasting foes on Twitter.
Among other issues, he was infuriated by a story in The New York Times,
which mocked his work habits. The president proceeded to prove he was focused
on critical issues confronting the nation by firing off 45 tweets on Sunday. He
started off well enough, wishing the First Lady
a “Happy Birthday.”
“The hardest working President in history.”
After that, you
had a barrage of wild posts, punctuated by presidential self-pity. Trump
insisted (again) that he hadn’t left the White House “in months,” except to
send off the hospital ship Comfort. He said the story in the Times
was the work of “a third rate reporter who knows
nothing about me.” He went that one better, claiming
people who did know him “say that I am the hardest working President in
history. I don’t know about that,” he continued, “but I am a hard worker and
have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in
history.”
Poor
Donald soon turned his focus to the crushing dilemma of 26.5 million Americans
who had lost their jobs in five weeks.
Or
not.
Trump
was all warmed up by afternoon and started blasting reporters at papers like the
Times, who had won “Noble” prizes “for their work on Russia, Russia,
Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong.” (They weren’t wrong, by the
way.) He said they should have to give those Noble prizes to…Trump took a
moment to hit the CAPS button …“REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS.”
Don
proved he was focused on dying Americans…by howling about mean reporters some
more. “Lawsuits should be brought against all,” said the man who dreams of
dealing with the press the same way his friends Xi
Jinping, Kim
Jong-un and Prince
Mohammed bin Salman do. (Calling those three “friends”
is, in itself, a sad statement about what kind of man sits in the White House
today.) Lawsuits? Yes, sue them all, “including the Fake News Organizations, to
rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we
have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!”
Yes,
forget the 50,000 plus dead. The real victim of “terrible injustice” in this sad
time is Trump.
The
Twittersphere can be a cruel place, of course, and Trump was roundly mocked for
repeatedly misspelling “Noble” prize.
Then—honest
to god—the President of the United States spent even more of his precious time claiming
he was being “sarcastic” when he typed “Nobel” wrong. I mean…Jesus H. Christ.
You
could probably argue at this point that the Narcissist-in-Chief is falling
apart while we all watch. He spent most of Sunday on the attack. He blasted the
“RINO Paul Ryan,” the “fraud” Donna Brazile, and described Chris Wallace, on
Fox News, as “nastier to Republicans than even Deface the Nation or Sleepy
Eyes” Chuck Todd. Trump dug up and retweeted a number of tweets by others he liked.
“John Brennan Hid Evidence Putin Favored Hillary in 2016,” read one. Pelosi was
a “serial fraudster, & generational corruptocrat,” said another. The sister
of General Flynn claimed
her brother “Was Framed By His Own Government!!” Then, for good measure, she
added the hashtag, “#HumanScum.”
Then,
for fuck sakes, the President of the United States thought it was a great idea
to retweet
a doctored film clip of Joe Biden, his tongue lolling out like a cow,
apparently trying to speak.
I,
for one, was appalled.
 |
| A busy schedule. |
I don’t know how we ever ended up
with a president so petty and lacking in class. I don’t know how his fans
continue to ignore his love for authoritarians, his attacks on the free press,
and his disinterest in studying the issues related to the COVID-19 threat. I do
know this. If I was president, I’d not waste an entire weekend tweeting and retweeting
idiotic crap. I’d have aides connect me by phone to the crew of the U.S.S.
Kidd. The destroyer had been stationed off the coast of South American, tasked
with interdicting drug smuggling, including working to thwart drug cartels that
have been building their own mini-submarines. At least 33 sailors aboard the Kidd had tested
positive for COVID-19. I’d have spent my time thanking them for their sacrifice
and promising to get them whatever they might need.
I’d spend part of my Sunday
boning up on documents related to possible reinstatement of Captain Brett
Crozier, who warned that infection was sweeping the crew of the aircraft carrier
Theodore Roosevelt.
I would tell the admiral to get
it done.
If I were president, I might kick
back awhile and see how my favorite NFL team did in the 2020 draft. (My team,
the Cincinnati Bengals, had an excellent
haul, if anyone cares.) But then I’d tell aides, “You know what, let’s get the
numbers for people who have lost jobs. Let’s get the number for Amy, who works
in the plumbing department of Home Depot in Sacramento and still shows up every
day for work despite the risk of infection. And Gina, the Costo checkout lady
in Cincinnati. And Amanda, the nurse practitioner on the front lines in Chicago.
Let’s get Sean, the high school teacher, who lost his mother to the disease on the phone.
I would call them up and offer
words of consolation, as best I could. That’s how I’d spend my weekend, if I
was in charge.
Then again, I use the word
“empathy” a great deal. And I’m not Trump.
___
4/28/20: We should check in and see how
the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) is going. This plan was created to help save
America’s small businesses during the coronavirus shutdown. The most any
company was supposed to receive under the program was a $10 million loan, at 1%
interest. Small businesses were defined as having 500 workers or less. But it turns
out the Trump/McConnell plan, which handed out $349 billion in the first round,
had a few fatal flaws. Yesterday, the second round kicked off with
another $310 billion to give to small businesses in need.
*
I
believe it will be clear to you after you take a little quiz, why Trump worked
so hard to get rid of the Inspector General who would have had oversight
over how that PPP funding was distributed.
ARE
YOU SMARTER THAN THE PRESIDENT?
(Circle
the correct answer or answers.)
1.
The Los Angeles Lakers applied for and received a $10 million PPP loan. The Lakers franchise was
recently valued at $4.4 billion. Since only five employees can be on the
court at one time, this small business obviously needed a loan to survive. TRUE FALSE
2.
AutoNation, with more than 300 outlets
nationwide, filed PPP requests from multiple outlets and received $77 million. Up in heaven, Wayne Huizenga smiled to see
the company he founded in 1996 had been saved by taxpayer largess. In 2018, when
he died, Huizenga was worth a cool $2.8 billion. Bill Gates owns a 16% stake in
the company, so you know AutoNation needed rescuing by taxpayers like you and
me. TRUE FALSE
3.
Ashford
Inc. has 130 properties around the country. Last year the company was valued at
$5 billion. Ashford is what a reasonable person would think of when thinking “small
business.” TRUE
FALSE
4.
Ashford
filed for multiple loans through subsidiaries. Total received: $60 million. Ashford deserved that cash more
than your local bakery, for example, that employed eleven people and asked for
$44,000, which bakery got shut out in round one—because money ran out. TRUE
FALSE
5.
Ashford
is owned by Monty J. Bennett. His compensation in 2018 came to $6,094,056. He did have two bad years,
earning a measly $5,732,750 in 2017 and scrimping by in
2016, on $4,365,333. Bennett had no way to bail out his
business except those PPP loans.
TRUE FALSE
6.
It would be lots of fun to know if the Trump
Organization filed for and received PPP loans.
TRUE FALSE
7.
They probably did. (This is not a question,
though.)
8.
Ruth’s Hospitality Group (RHG), which runs Ruth
Chris Steak Houses, had revenue of $468 million in 2019, and a profit of $42 million. RHG
managed to snag a pair of $10 million loans. RHG needed the cash in order to
keep paying their CEO’s a living wage. As in $13.5 million over a period of three years. (That was for
2015-2017.) Or $6.1 million to Cheryl Henry, who took over as CEO in
2018. Taxpayers should be proud to bail company shareholders and CEO’s out. TRUE
FALSE
9.
There is no way executives at RHG could have
taken less compensation in the past and set aside money for rough times like
this. TRUE FALSE
10. Quantum, which specializes in computer storage
devices, said it received a $10 million PPP loan. As CBS has noted,
“Quantum is 16% owned by a $500 million investment firm that specializes in
buyouts.” CEO Jamie Lerner was paid nearly $2.3 million in 2019. As
a taxpayer, you have to be feeling good about helping Quantum out. TRUE
FALSE
11. Nothing
says “saving American jobs” like loaning money to a company that specializes in
buyouts. TRUE FALSE
12. The
Fiesta Restaurant Group, which had $660.9 million in sales last year, and employs
10,480 people, got the max loan. Fiesta clearly qualified as a business
with 500 employees or less. TRUE FALSE
13. Hallador
Energy, a coal-mining operation with $317.4 million in sales and 915 employees,
got a loan. In March the company announced the permanent closure of its mine in Carlisle,
Indiana and a “reduction in force” involving sixty workers. “Our hearts go out to our co-workers who
are affected by this action, and we are grateful to them for their dedication
and service,” CFO Lawrence D. Martin said at the time. “We regret the
impact that will be felt by their families and the community.” As in: This
mine is permanently closed. Therefore, Hallador deserves a loan. TRUE
FALSE
14. Shake
Shack, a national fast food chain, had $100 million in cash on hand when it
applied for a loan. As soon as the PPP program was up and running, Shake Shack
elbowed its way to the front of the line and received $10 million. Shake Shack had
no other choice than to ask for a loan.
TRUE FALSE
15. Broadwind
Energy, which constructs giant wind towers, received a loan, but for only $9.5
million. That sucks for them. TRUE FALSE
16. President
Trump has said that windmill noise causes cancer. Loaning Broadwind money is part of a plot
to kill unsuspecting Americans.
TRUE FALSE.
17. Windmill
noise does not cause cancer. Only an idiot would say that they it does. TRUE
FALSE
18. The Washington
Post filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Small Business
Administration (SBA), seeking a list of all companies that received PPP funds.
SBA closed the request without providing information. This proves that reporters
are “Enemies of the People.” TRUE FALSE
19. Monday
morning, at 10:30, the second round of PPP loans was made available. Minutes later
the system crashed. This shows we should definitely elect Donald J. Trump again. TRUE
FALSE
20. Based on previous evidence, you should
probably be worried about the way the Trump administration is dealing with this
crisis because ___.
A)
Health and Human Services Director Alex Azar
chose a former breeder of Labradoodles to head up the HHS coronavirus response.
B)
The White House aide in charge of hiring for many
positions is President Trump’s 29-year-old former body servant. He got fired
from one White House job in 2018, reportedly due to a drinking and gambling
problem.
C)
Trump’s first choice to head the EPA got canned
after it was revealed he used his security detail to drive him around
Washington D.C. so he could find his favorite hand soap.
D)
Trump believes the human body can produce only a
limited amount of energy over a lifetime. Once you burn some it cannot be
replaced.
E)
This explains why the president looks like a 239-pound
blob of cookie dough wearing pants.
F)
All of the above.
Answers: 1. Amazingly
false! 2. False. 3. False. 4. False. 5. False. 6. True. 7. ---. 8. False. 9.
False. 10. False. 11. False. 12. Good Lord: Mathematically false. 13. False. 14. False. 15. Sort of true. 16. False (trick
question, because when Trump said that he was talking science nonsense); 17.
True. 18. False (if you marked “True” you get the Dunce Cap and have to sit in a
corner until the next election passes). 19. False.
20. All of the above.
 |
Seriously? We got a PPP loan?
|
*
During
another one of his interminable press conferences, Trump claimed, when asked by
reporters, that the U.S. would soon be able to test five million people per day for the
virus.
Or,
as Trump put it, “We’ll be there very soon.”
Since
the greatest number of tests performed in one day, so far, had been 314,182,
this prediction seemed—shall we say—overly optimistic. But when reporters asked
the Maestro of Misinformation to clarify his answer, he replied, “If you look at the numbers, it could be that we’re getting very close.”
Unfortunately,
earlier that day, Admiral Brett Giroir, the man in charge of the federal government’s
testing response, said “there is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or
any other planet” that we could be doing five million tests a day, maybe ever.
Okay.
Not getting close.
___
April
29:
Knowing that 30.3 million Americans had filed for unemployment in six weeks, it
was jarring to hear Boy Wonder Jared Kushner give offer his assessment of the situation. If you missed it—because you
were trying to log on to your state system and file for jobless relief—Kushner said
he would call the Trump administration’s handling of the virus threat “a great success story.”
*
What else have
we learned in just the last few days? We learned that whereas April is fast
disappearing, the coronavirus is not, even though the Maestro of
Misinformation, once predicted, in April, it
would.
We learned this
week that the U.S. economy shrank by 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020. But the
Maestro told everyone he wasn’t worried at all. Even though economists warn
that second quarter damage will be devastating, the president insisted, “We’re heartened that the worst of the pain and
suffering is going to be behind us.” Trump also said he thought the “new
normal” was going to be great and as of May 1, he said federal social
distancing guidelines would be lifted. “I see the new normal being what it was
three months ago,” he added.
“It will go down to zero, ultimately.”
Next,
reporters pinned Trump down. Now that the U.S. had surpassed a million cases of
the coronavirus, they wondered. Had he been babbling when he said on February
26 that we had only a few cases and would soon have fewer? “When you have 15
people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero,
that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” he famously said.
No,
the president insisted. He wasn’t babbling. He was right!!
“It will go down to zero, ultimately,” he said.
You
could argue—I guess—that if the entire population of the planet was wiped out
by the coronavirus, we’d be down to zero, ultimately, too.
___
April
30:
This is Team Trump we are dealing with, where you can say literally anything
and later claim you did not.
Or
you did, but you were being “sarcastic.”
And
that meant White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was busy on the last
day of April, insisting that Jared didn’t sound as stupid as people with normal
hearing thought he did when he said the Trump administration was writing “a
great success story” in how it was handling the coronavirus crisis.
“I think Jared
has been taken entirely out of context,” she sneered when reporters inquired. (McEnany’s
default expression is a sneer.) Kushner was talking about “a great success
story” involving ventilators, she sneered again. Team Trump had produced a
ventilator for every American who needed one—and possibly spares to keep in
garages. “Not a single American died in this country for lack of a ventilator,”
McEnany sneered once again. “I would call that response a success.”
Yes, tens of
thousands of dead. Who wouldn’t call that a success?
*
McEnany’s
boss, the Maestro of Misinformation himself, was busy too on the last day of
the month, reshaping reality in an effort to make himself look good. Asked again
by reporters about a failure to ramp up testing for COVID-19 in time, Trump laid
the blame at the feet of…holy, fuck…President Obama! “We started off with empty
cupboards,” he complained. “The last administration left us with nothing. We
started off with bad, broken tests, and obsolete tests.” But his administration
was the best! They were coming up with fantastic tests, whereas Obama did
nothing. That bastard! That Kenya guy!
“I
think we’ve done a really great job,” Trump continued, in self-congratulatory
fashion.
Jim
Acosta, Trump’s favorite press foil, the reporter the Maestro most likes to
insult, asked logically how the Obama administration could leave behind broken
tests—for a virus
that didn’t exist back in 2017, the last time Mr. Obama was in charge.
$1,673,972,602.73 every day
An
individual tethered even tenuously to the truth would have been stumped by that
query. Trump never blinked. First, he repeated his line about bad, broken,
no-good-rotten-Obama-testing. Then he talked about H1N1 swine flu and how the
previous administration’s handling of that outbreak was “a disaster.” (No one
had a chance to ask what the H1N1 outbreak had to do with the situation today, eleven
years later.) From there it was on to ammunition. Trump singing his favorite
hits, claiming once more, that when he came to Washington, the U.S. military
barely had enough bullets to stop a bank robbery. There was no telling what
bullets had to do with the COVID-19 virus. But this was the Maestro in action.
You expected a heavy percentage of BS and lying. And you had to wonder. If the
U.S. military had $611 billion to
spend in 2016, or, to be precise: $1,673,972,602.73 every day, under President Obama,
how come they couldn’t afford ammo?
Since
Trump was replaying all his favorite tunes, he decided to attack the free press
for fun. “I have to say it,” he continued, “because the news is so fake and so
corrupt, I think we did a spectacular job.”
Spectacular.
Sure.
___
Tens of thousands dead; U.S. economy in shambles.
May 1, 2020: The coronavirus death toll on the first morning in May stood at 63,019 Americans.
But in Press Secretary McEnany’s eyes, this was a success story because none of those many thousands died “for lack of a ventilator.” No doubt that knowledge made grieving family and friends feel better.
___
May 2: With the death toll rising it has become cliché to note that more Americans have been killed by the coronavirus than died during the Vietnam War.
By Saturday morning, however, as numbers climbed, you had to add all soldiers and sailors who died during the Spanish-American War and the American Revolution, in order to have an accurate comparison.
____________________
Plus 434,234 hours of overtime.
____________________
Of course, since members of the Trump family never don the uniform to serve this country and generally die in comfy beds at advanced ages, it was no surprise to hear a billionaire president order meatpacking plants to stay open and keep producing pork chops and bacon for public consumption.
If workers fell ill, frankly, Trump didn’t care. Whereas, he was alarmed to think stock market investors were falling ill as they watched portfolios shrivel. And the president was deeply worried about not being re-elected.
Stuck at home, with nothing much to do on a shutdown Saturday in spring, I set to work to check into the matter. Like nurses and doctors, and Amazon warehouse employees, and checkout workers at Costco and Walmart, men and women who toil cutting up chicken and beef in this country find themselves on the front lines during this crisis. They have to keep the supply chain open—and they have been infected in shocking numbers. For this privilege, slaughterhouse workers and people making sausage earn a mean wage of $13.68 per hour.
In Trumpistan, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is busy filling the federal bench with pro-business judges, I believe this “proves” we should never raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. If we did the people who run and own Tyson Foods, one of the giants in the business ($40 billion in annual sales), might have to cut back on yacht-buying activities. Take Noel White, CEO of the company. In 2019 he took home $8,939,938 in salary and other compensation. That would equal 2,080 hours of work (40 hours per week for 52 weeks) at $13.68, for an annual salary of $28,454.
Plus 434,234 hours of overtime.
John Tyson, the owner of the company, is worth $2.1 billion. In fact, Forbes estimates that in one day last week, Mr. Tyson lost $34 million as a result of declines in the stock market. For perspective, it would take an ordinary worker at one of his plants 1,194 years, nine months, to earn that much money.
It figures, then, that a soulless billionaire like Donald J. Trump would think nothing of ordering low-paid employees back to work, despite the fact that they often catch and spread the virus on the job. Which means they are prone to keel over dead. Four Tyson employees have already died in Georgia, including Annie Grant, 55, who had called in sick, but was told by managers to report back to work. Two more were dead and 92 infected at a plant in Illinois. Two dead and 148 infected in Iowa.
A worker at a Texas plant tested positive for COVID-19, but plant officials decided not to notify co-workers for two weeks.
Conspiring to depress wages.
Nor should we forget. Tyson was one of several large meatpacking companies sued by the federal government in 2019, and accused of conspiring to keep wages low for what is a predominantly immigrant labor force. According to the suit, officials from several of the big corporations held “off the books” meetings at a resort in Destin, Florida and set “artificially depressed” wages for workers. Industry lobbyists even paid for hotel rooms and seafood dinners for state officials.
Those officials then winked at any labor violations they might have found—if they had bothered to look.
Finally, as an added bonus, a raid on poultry processing plants in Mississippi in August 2019 vacuumed up 680 undocumented workers.
You could get more Americans to do this type of work, of course. Only, you’d have to pay more than the average wage of $12.27 in Mississippi.
Low as that is, it does top Alabama. There, you could develop carpal tunnel syndrome while cutting up chicken—and now, maybe, you could contract a deadly virus—all for $10.90 per hour.
___
May 3: The Trump administration continues to write a “glorious record,” as the nation reopens for business.
Sunday afternoon, a check of the John Hopkins University website indicates the U.S. has 1,154,621 confirmed cases of COVID-19. It’s hard to think that back on February 26, the president predicted we were heading for zero cases, and bragged because no American had died.
As of today, the toll stands at 67,451.
The Maestro is off just a shade.
Your favorite blogger has fallen behind in his posts. So we’re doing catch up today. Last week the Maestro of Misinformation was busy bragging that under his guiding hand the United States was killing on testing. According to Trump, people in every other country dreamed of having a bold orange leader like him. At one point he insisted the U.S. had done more tests for the COVID-19 virus than all other countries combined.
If we go to Worldometers, we find that the Maestro is off just a shade. True, the U.S. has done more tests than any other nation.
We’ve done 7.2 million. Spain has done 1.9 million, Italy 2.2 million and the United Kingdom 1.2 million tests. If we add in France, 1.1 million, Germany, 2.6 million—okay, that’s already more than we’ve done—and then we add Russia, 4.1 million—and we start totaling numbers for the rest of the world in our head and get 17.5 million more.
Okay, the Maestro is full of shit.
*
We do know, without a doubt, that many states are opening back up. We can hope, whether we like Trump or whether we do not, that the country recovers with some sort of speed.
We also know that as of this morning, the Trump toadies are out in force, insisting that when the story of this time is finally written, historians will credit this president for a great success. “When history looks back on this,” Jared Kushner claims, “they’ll say, man, the federal government acted really quickly and creatively, they threw a lot at the problem and saved a lot of lives.”
(Wait, didn’t these very same guys spend weeks telling us, “Don’t worry, this virus is just the flu?”)
And, here, it might be worth offering this chart, to show what happened when South Korea and the U.S. discovered the same day, they had their first case of the virus. The South started immediate testing.
Trump kept denying there was any reason for concern.
Total cases.
South Korea United States
January 20 1 1
March 2 3,276 104
March 5 6,284 225
March 7 7,000+ 401
March 17 8,320 4,661
By March 21, South Korea had already done 300,000 tests for the coronavirus. The U.S., with six times the population, had done 170,000. The cost of delay was soon perfectly clear.
March 29 9,661 137,294
April 6 10,331 337,971
April 24 10,708 887,622
May 3 10,793 1,186,073
South Korea had contained the spread, at a cost of only 250 lives.
Postscript: Speaking of South Korea, troops recently traded fire with enemy forces across the border in North Korea.
Kim Jong-un, who some reports said was dead, has resurfaced. Three years, four months into Trump’s first term in office (hopefully, his only one) the North Korean dictator still has all the nuclear weapons he had when our president told us he was no longer a nuclear threat.
In fact, Kim has more.
 |
One easy way to tell: This was never the flu.
|
____
May 4-5: Where to even begin? The COVID-19 death toll continues to rise and—good god—our president is just nuts.
You would think the most powerful narcissist in the world could have aides check his math. Or he could eyeball the same statistics this blogger sees and not tweet stupid shit.
Typically, yesterday, we got this:
We are, if fact, #1 in most tests performed of any country, but we are still significantly behind if we adjust for population. The U.S. has done 22,612 tests per million. Germany has done more than 30,000. And Germany, with a population equal to one fourth of ours, has one tenth the loss of life. Many nations are testing higher percentages of their populations. That would include Belgium, Russia, Portugal, Ireland and Switzerland. Just one border away, Canada is testing at higher rates than we are under the guiding orange hand of Donald J. Trump. Their death rate is half as high.
Two words you will never hear the president say.
Still, we can celebrate (a tiny bit) as the country begins opening back up. The real question: at what cost, and to whom? Dr. Fauci made it clear last night in an interview on CNN that he feared we were relaxing social distancing rules too soon—and we’d only see the spread of the virus accelerate again. “I have a moral obligation,” he said, to sound warning. (Add those words, “moral obligation” to the list of words you will never hear President Trump utter, not even if you could listen to him talk in his sleep.)
We find ourselves on an uncharted course—steered erratically by a president who compares himself to Captain Bligh. You know: the commander of the HMS Bounty, so hated by his crew that they mutinied and set him and a handful of others adrift in a small boat. And we never know who is at risk.
Consider the case of a Walmart store in Worcester, Massachusetts. On April 1, it was discovered that one employee was infected. By Wednesday, last week, a total of 23 had tested positive. Sunday, that number grew again, with news that 58 additional workers had COVID-19.
On an oddly positive note, Missouri health officials report that 373 workers at one meatpacking plant have been infected by the coronavirus—but all 373 were found to be asymptomatic.
So: the question continues to boggle the minds of even the best scientists. How deadly is this strain?
In total, Missouri reports 8,386 cases and 352 deaths. So, barring mass testing, the death rate, from what numbers we have, would be 4.2% in the “Show Me State.”
Lately, it has become Trump-fan gospel to insist health experts are lying about how many cases of the virus there have been and how many deaths. It’s part of some plot to bring the Orange God down. One right-wing media outlet trumpeted the news that deaths from the virus had gone down—dramatically—in the last two weeks. On Twitter, Tim Young, a right-wing personality, picked up the story and ran with it. “HOLY SHIT: Did I read this wrong or did the CDC just revised [sic] the national COVID-19 deaths to 37,308?!?!”
Then his right-wing fans sprinted with the tall tale. Young garnered more than 12,000 retweets. The “RINO governor” of Massachusetts, one of Young’s followers responded, was in on the plot. Another suggested that inflating the threat meant “big money for hospitals.” “I guess democrats haven’t figured out a way to politicize pneumonia,” a third grumbled. Another respondent had the whole scheme figured out. “Flu death numbers way down from normal,” he or she said, “and way way down from a bad flu year. So, we essentially borrowed from the flu column, put it in the covid column.”
Soon Trump fans were running a marathon with the shocking numbers they had uncovered. The CDC had been lying all along. Those dirty bastard health officials!!!
*
So, this humble blogger kept checking. Would Republican-controlled states, for example, inflate their numbers?
That would defy logic.
We know red-state Texas was among the most reluctant jurisdictions to shut down and one of the first to open back up. So, would they lie about their own numbers? On Monday, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported there were 31,548 infections in Texas and 867 fatalities. Today, the numbers stand at 32,332 and 884. If you start clicking on counties, you learn Presidio, down on the Rio Grande, hasn’t had a case. Briscoe, up in the Panhandle, has one. But Harris County has nearly 7,000.
(Texas officials are also reporting that as of today 1,577 people are hospitalized as a result of coronavirus infections.)
Texas health officials aren’t faking numbers; but the nearly impossible tightrope walk all states face is clear. If Texas opens up Hudspeth County (0 cases) and people from El Paso County (998 cases) are allowed to travel to Hudspeth, which borders to the east, to come to cafes and bars and hair salons—do you kick off a new round of infection?
There can be no doubt: the economic pain being felt is immense and still growing. But no other state wants to end up looking like New York.
In Texas, then, you have the centaur approach. Half open, half closed. The governor has allowed all retail stores, restaurants, and movie theaters to reopen. You can now go to museums and libraries, too. But occupancy will be limited to 25% of what was previously listed. Essential services remain open. That means, if you get infected at the theater, you can go cough on a grocery store clerk. But you still cannot go sweat at the gym or swim in a public pool. You cannot get a tattoo or have innocent body parts pierced. You cannot get a massage, no matter how tense this crisis is making you feel. You can’t get your hair done and you can’t go to a bowling alley. And, my lord, you can’t go to bars.
Two states which moved to shut down quickly, Ohio and Washington, have fared well. Georgia—where the governor admitted he didn’t realize asymptomatic persons could transmit the disease—has, like Texas, moved up steadily on the list of states with the most infections and has not flattened any curve. Another 766 Georgians were found to have the coronavirus on May 4.
Also climbing up the ladder of reported coronavirus cases: Florida, with 37,439 and 1,471 deaths. On March 14, the state reported only 38 new cases for the day. By April 1, the explosion had occurred—with 1,032 new cases in just 24 hours. So, while there seems to be a slight downward trend of late, the spread is clearly continuing:
CDC is clear: 67,456 dead from COVID-19.
As for CDC and those “revised” numbers, Trump supporters were trumpeting? As of May 4, the number given for COVID-19 deaths was pretty clear: 67,456, including an increase of 1,719 from the day before.
By Sunday night, even Trump was fudging his bets, admitting during a talk on Fox News, “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person out of this.”
But his latest prediction was a far cry from his claim eleven weeks ago, that we had only 15 cases in this country, no one had died, and we were headed for zero soon. Because he was the greatest president ever. By far!
So close. So close, Disinfectant Donald. Plus, now we have “murder hornets” to worry about.
According to tracking by CDC, we’ve been piling up roughly 30,000 new cases per day, even as most states start opening back up.
___
May 6-7: It’s time to face hard facts. If you listen to President Trump and believe what he spews, you are actually ending up dumber. This week, for example, he said he was going to disband his Coronavirus Task Force because…who knows why? The next day he announced he wasn’t going to disband his Task Force because…who knows why?
Not even Disinfectant Donald.
Yesterday, to “prove” he was doing an awesome job, Trump tweeted the following graph. And, look, you have probably heard the old line: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” But, Jesus H. Christ. Trump combines them all, telling lies and damned lies, buttressed by statistics.
Sadly, more than 73,000 Trump fans “liked” the graph and more than 22,000 retweeted it, spreading the dumbness far and wide.
Trump even added a little whining to go with his lies:
For the constant criticism from the Do Nothing Democrats and their Fake News partners, here is the newest chart on our great testing “miracle” compared to other countries. Dems and LameStream Media should be proud of the USA, instead of always ripping us down!
So, there, on the face of it, it was. It was a “miracle” what Trump and his administration had done. Look at that graph!!!!
 |
Lies, damned lies, and Trump's statistics.
|
But you don’t have to become dumber, if you’re an avid Trump fan. You can check the president’s math, which is often off by factors of ten or a hundred. In reality—a place where Trump is reluctant to ever tread—you could go to the same source and create a chart using the same data, only adjusting for total tests performed per 1,000 population.
Then the graph would look…uh…not miraculous at all:
This blundering blogger was not able to include Japan on this chart without it blurring for some reason. But much here is clear. Italy, Germany, and Canada have tested higher percentages of their populations. And there is a critical reason which explains why South Korea has “fallen behind.” South Korea began testing as soon as they learned they had their first case of COVID-19. See that difference on March 18, where the graph above begins. You can see it starts even earlier if you look at the president’s own graph.
South Korea ramped up testing in February, while the U.S. diddled around. And that made all the difference in the world.
____________________
Disinfectant Donald’s “miracle” is no miracle at all. It’s not water into wine—it’s water into vinegar. Or: maybe Clorox bleach.
____________________
So, by way of Johns Hopkins University, here are the sad statistics just a little before noon, May 7, 2020:
The United States has more cases than any other country on the face of the earth: 1,231,992. That would be 1 case for every 266 Americans. Italy, the country hit second hardest, has one 1 per 282.
Germany has 1 case per 498 persons. And with a population one-fourth of ours, they have only 7,322 deaths.
The U.S. death toll is 73,573—a little more than ten times as bad—and not a “miracle” at all.
Canada has one case for every 581 persons, and they don’t have a border wall to keep themselves safe.
France has 1 case per 375.
South Korea? South Korean leaders didn’t waste weeks talking about how COVID-19 was just the flu—and it would miraculously go away in April. On March 17, four days after Disinfectant Donald finally declared a state of emergency in this country, South Korea already had 8,320 confirmed cases. The U.S. had only 4,661. But they had been testing relentlessly for weeks, whereas Trump had been claiming we were headed for zero cases soon, and bragging because no one in this country had died. As of today, South Korea has 10,810 cases, or 1 per 4,743 people.
I couldn’t manage to put Japan on my graph—but I didn’t try to fudge my statistics to make the president look bad. I just used basic math. Japan has 15,253 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of today.
Japan also took the threat seriously from the moment the story first broke. Japan has one case for every 8,292 persons. Only 556 Japanese have died as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
If you want to find miracles in the math of this pandemic, you’d best not be looking in the Trump administration’s fun house mirrors.
___
May 8-14: The blogger has been working hard on chimney repairs at his home. So far, he has not tumbled headfirst from the ladder. On the other hand, he has fallen behind in chronicling the tragicomic story of Donald J. Trump and his inept Team of Sycophants. But all of the following stories are true, as far as the chimney-fixing blogger can ascertain. As of May 14, the U.S. leads the world, by far, in confirmed cases of COVID-19. The situation has grown so grim, Trump and the nuttiest right-wing nuts have been reduced to claiming the numbers are “rigged” and a “hoax” and a “Deep State” plot. But here are the numbers we have from those “Deep State” medical experts at Johns Hopkins University: 1,405,961 confirmed cases and 85,066 American dead.
Second place on the JHU list falls to Russia—where Vladimir Putin was long a virus-denier like Trump.
(Different countries update their numbers at different times; Worldometers still has Spain in second.)
As recently as Monday, Trump spent an hour talking about how he had the situation under control. That talk in the Rose Garden came complete with his own “Mission Accomplished” banner. Two banners, actually. Where George W. Bush wore a flight jacket, you had to wonder why Trump didn’t don a lab coat and hang a stethoscope around his neck.
Disinfectant Don was there to brag about “the unprecedented testing capacity developed by the United States—the most advanced and robust testing system anywhere in the world, by far.” He wanted everyone who might miss the signs, to left and to right (see above), that the United States was about to “pass 10 million tests conducted—nearly double the number of any other country.”
If you’re a fan of facts, however, it was hard to decide which might be worse. Was Trump simply ill-informed? Or was he lying?
God. It could be both.
The U.S. is leading in number of tests performed.
If Donald spent less time watching television, reacting angrily to what he just saw, and tweeting like a lunatic, he might realize the U.S. is not leading the world in testing, at least not in the way he wants his fans to believe. Countries like Japan and Germany were far more aggressive in regard to testing from the very start. Our president spent the critical early weeks of the crisis claiming that—due to his fantastic leadership—the pandemic was barely going to touch our fabled shores. And it is true. The U.S. is leading the world in number of tests performed. Adjusted for population Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom and Italy have all tested more. Throw in Germany, Belgium, and Belarus for fun, and add even more countries if you like.
There are a number of important caveats if we want to truly understand who really leads the world in testing in the face of a grave coronavirus threat. South Korea, which tested massively from the start, has a total of 10,991 cases and only five deaths per million population. Japan was resolute in testing at a time Trump was still boasting about his giant campaign rallies and blowing off the virus threat. The Japanese have 16,049 confirmed cases and also five deaths per million. Germany tested seriously from the start. No doubt this had something to do with the fact Chancellor Andrea Merkel is a trained scientist and not a virus denier. Death rate: 94 per million.
Ireland and the U.K., two countries Trump claimed were doing a good job handling the crisis—and would therefore not be included in a travel ban he directed against 26 other European nations—turned out not to have been doing a good job after all. The Irish have tested more, adjusted for population. But they started slow and have 305 deaths per million. The United Kingdom has 33,614 dead, more than any other country except the United States. They also started testing late. Their death rate is 495 per million. With Donald J. Trump’s guiding hand at the helm, we also started too slowly. Our death toll stands at 262 per million.
Ms. Jiang had a valid question, not a nasty one.
So it was, on Monday, that CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, wasn’t buying Trump’s “we lead the world” BS. “Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives and we’re still seeing more cases every day?” Jiang dared ask.
“They’re losing their lives everywhere in the world and maybe that’s a question you should ask China,” Trump bristled.
Jiang, who describes herself as “a Chinese-born West Virginian,” sensed racism in Disinfectant Don’s response. “Sir,” she asked, voice rising, “why are you saying that to me specifically?”
“I’m saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that,” Trump countered. Ignoring Jiang’s efforts to follow up, he called on CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins. Collins said she would like to yield to Jiang. Trump ignored Collins and called on someone new.
“I just wanted to let my colleague finish, but can I ask you a question?” Collins persisted, trying to keep the microphone.
When Ms. Collins continued to ask a question, Mr. Maturity got mad, stomped off the podium and disappeared into the White House, where he could be warm and toasty and safe from having to explain.
 |
| The reporter who asked the nasty question. |
And you could certainly argue, if you liked facts, that Ms. Jiang had a valid question, not a nasty one. On that same day, CDC reported that the U.S. had 18,106 new cases and the next day, and the next, it was worse.
Daily totals for the month:
May 13: 20,869
May 12: 21,467
May 11: 18,106
May 10: 23,792
May 9: 26,660
May 8: 25,996
May 7: 28,974
May 6: 25,253
May 5: 22,303
May 4: 19,138
May 3: 29,763
May 2: 29,794
May 1: 30,369
______________________________________________
TOTAL: 322,484*
*To keep that number in perspective, the U.S. has racked up more cases in May than any other country has, throughout this crisis.
*
Meanwhile, hate crimes aimed at Asian-Americans have spiked. Since the start of this crisis, with rising hate fueled in part by Trump’s insistence that we call this the “China virus,” there have been 1,200 crimes directed against Asian-Americans because of their race. Victims include people of Chinese, but also Japanese, Vietnamese and Filipino ancestry.
Because: racists tend to be stupid, even when choosing targets for their racism.
(One is reminded of a spike in hate crimes against Sikhs, after Trump spent the early days of his presidency warning that all Muslims were potential terrorists. Sikhs, of course, aren’t even Muslim.)
As Time notes the crimes have often been heinous. An Asian-American New Yorker had acid thrown in her face. A California high school student was beaten badly and sent to the hospital. An enraged shopper at a Texas Sam’s Club stabbed three other patrons—including two children, ages 2 and 6—because, he shouted, they were “Chinese and infecting people with the coronavirus.” Two of his victims were left in critical condition.
None of this should be a surprise, really. We knew from the day Trump announced he was running for office, that he was going to stir the hatred and fear whenever it suited his purposes. His initial target was Mexican “rapists” and “murderers.” Then he moved on to Muslims. Then it was dark-skinned immigrants from “shithole” countries like Haiti and Nigeria. Neo-Nazis quickly came to believe Trump was speaking a language similar to their own. Many, like Richard Spencer, adopted Donald as the champion of their cause.
Now, as an added haters’ “bonus,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has announced that anti-Semitic incidents increased by 12% last year, reaching a new high in 2019. Yearly incidents:
2019: 2,107
2018: 1,879
WATCH: VIDEO OF NEO-NAZIS FOR TRUMP HERE.
One modern driver of anti-Semitism is QAnon, a conspiracy theory which rose in step with the rise of Donald J. Trump.
According to the ADL: “Fundamentally, the theory claims that almost every president in recent American history up until Donald Trump has been a puppet put in place by a global elite of power brokers hell bent on enriching themselves and maintaining their Satanic child-murdering sex cult.”
Hillary Clinton was purportedly a member of the “Deep State,” which is also referred to as “The Cabal.” That word is derived from the word “cabala,” a mystical Jewish tradition, making the anti-Semitic roots of the conspiracy theory clear. In fact, many of the “leaders” are supposedly prominent Jews, George Soros for one. These liberal elites are also said to control “the banking system, the Catholic church, the agricultural- and pharmaceutical industries, the media and entertainment industry; all working around the clock to keep the people of the world poor, ignorant and enslaved.” Now, even the global pandemic is said to be the work of this Satanic crew.
Who, then, will break up the ring, bring its leaders to justice, and save us all? Well, “all,” not counting Catholics, Muslims, and Jews, and immigrants with darker pigmentation than most Trump fans.
Who? Donald J. Trump!
By one count, at least 40 candidates for state or federal office, including several running for Congress, were sympathetic to QAnon. A number of those fools were defeated in the primaries, but they included: 1 Libertarian, 1 Independent, 1 Democrat and 37 members of the GOP.
My favorite might be C. Wesley Morgan, a longshot for a seat in the U.S. Senate, shown here with:
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While we’re on the topic of stupidity, let’s highlight results of President Trump’s claim that injecting disinfectant might be a good way to combat the coronavirus. The American Association of Poison Control Centers reports a wave of disinfectant-related poisoning calls in recent months.
Nor does stupidity stop there. On Tuesday morning, Trump got mad while watching MSNBC. That led him to suggest in a tweet—without any evidence—that Joe Scarborough, one of the MSNBC morning hosts, might be a murderer. “When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder?” Trump wondered. “Some people think so,” he continued. “Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”
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A permanent loss of as many as 7,292,800 jobs.
If it isn’t bad enough that Americans are drinking bleach because the president said it might actually work, the nation has massive economic damage that it must now overcome. Today, May 14, we learned that another 2,981,000 Americans filed for unemployment.
In just eight weeks, 36,464,000 men and women have been laid off from work. The good news, if any, is that in one recent poll 80% said they expected to be called back as the economy reopens. The bad news? Twenty percent of 36,464,000 not getting called back would mean a permanent loss of 7,292,800 jobs. Even those whose jobs are safe for now have lost income. They have accepted salary cuts. Hour have been curtailed. Business has been lost.
Officially, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised numbers for March, indicating that 870,000 jobs had been cut. That meant March 2020 was worse than the worst months of losses during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Then came April and another 20,500,000 jobs were knocked out.
Obviously, we’re off to a rugged start in May, as well.
The president has been busy predicting (the man is terrible when it comes to making predictions) that the U.S. economy will come roaring back—will soar like “a rocket ship” later this year. But that appears increasingly unlikely. Fed chairman Jay Powell warned on Wednesday that there could be “lasting” damage as a result of the outbreak and we could be in for a lengthy recession.
The danger signs are many:
Jobs in the clean energy field are down 17% since the start of the pandemic, with 594,300 now idled. And that despite the fact that this year renewables are expected to surpass coal for the first time in percentage of electricity generated in the United States.
Battered by a near-total shutdown of air travel, United Airlines told workers they should consider “voluntary separation” from the company, as United prepares to “right-size” its workforce.
AirBnB has seen its rental business implode. Executive salaries have been halved. The company will also cancel $800 million in advertising for this year. Add that dent to the economy.
White collar jobs are also being flushed down the toilet—many of them likely for good. Hyatt Hotels announced it was restructuring and would cut 1,300 corporate employees.
States battered by falling tax revenues, may have to lay off 275,000 teachers, adding another dent to a battered U.S. economy. Police and firefighters are likely to feel the axe too.
Another grim warning: half of college graduates may finish schooling just in time to end up unemployed.
Major League baseball is talking about an 82-game schedule, starting in July, without fans in stadiums. Everyone involved will have to take salary cuts to make the system work.
Maersk, which handles one-fifth of all cargo shipped by sea, predicts a global decrease in the second quarter of 20-25%.
Indicative of how deep the damage has been, 1.4 million healthcare workers lost jobs in April, which would seem impossible in a time of a health catastrophe. The American Hospital Association says member institutions have lost $200 billion as elective surgical procedures have been delayed. Primary care physicians are reporting huge losses. Patients are staying home rather than go to the doctor’s office with sore throats, or for annual checkups. Millions who have lost jobs have also lost health insurance. And millions more are staying away, fearful they could end up in doctors’ waiting rooms, seated next to someone who might already be infected with COVID-19.
The federal deficit in April was $737.9 billion.
Even the federal government is in a world of hurt. The deficit in April was $737.9 billion. That was higher than any annual deficit under President Barack Obama in his last five years. That brings the deficit for FY 2021, which began in October, to $1.48 trillion.
That’s already a record for any Fiscal Year.
Still: There is one bright spot! The Trump administration continues to keep the legal profession operating at full throttle. Currently, the president’s minions are appealing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lower court has ruled that secret grand jury testimony used in the Mueller investigation should be turned over to Congress. In a 2-to-1 decision, the lower court ruled that grand jury records are court records, not Justice Department records. For that reason, Attorney General Bill Barr can’t just plant his fat fanny on the documents and refuse to move.
According to the Washington Post, the same kind of records “have historically been released to Congress in the course of impeachment investigations involving three federal judges and two presidents.” We should also note that there was at least some belief, back before the coronavirus killed the whole country, that Donald Trump Jr. might have pled the Fifth before the grand jury.
That would be fun to find out.
In two other cases, also on the Supreme Court docket, Trump is fighting to keep his tax returns hidden. Having heard initial arguments in both cases, and listened as the jurists asked questions (all done via video conference), court watchers say they think the president may lose at least one critical case.
Let’s hope he goes 0 for 3.
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Nor does there seem to be any end to the spread of the virus. Two individuals working in the White House have tested now positive. At least one source told NBC that President Germaphobe was “lava level mad” on hearing the news, furious that staff weren’t doing a better job of protecting his narcissistic self. Now all White House employees are finally required to wear masks.
Save for two: Trump and VP Pence.
Documents also show that 11 members of the U.S. Secret Service are currently infected, 23 have recovered, and 60 are in self-quarantine.
And did we mention: the U.S. meat supply may be in danger? At the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa, 1,031 employees have fallen ill. But the problem never stops there. One sick person in the White House could infect the president—which would be the ultimate irony. One infected Secret Service agent infects a second and the second infects a third. Each worker at Tyson goes home at the end of his or her shift. An infected worker passes the virus to a family member. Or two. Or everyone in the house. A family member goes to the grocery, infecting a checkout clerk. The checkout worker says, “Hi,” to the mailman, and infects her in turn.
In Iowa, where a Republican governor has been proclaiming success in defeating COVID-19, Tyson Foods finally admitted a “few” workers might be infected at yet another plant in Perry. Officials refused to release the exact numbers, until they had no choice. By then, 730 employees had contracted the disease.
Another 221 Tyson employees tested positive for the virus at a plant in Columbus Junction.
It was discovered that 258 workers at a meatpacking facility owned by another company in Tama, Iowa were sick—and 131 at a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Newton.
If you work for Tyson Foods, prayer would be wise.
Meanwhile, Gov. Kim Reynolds had relaxed social distancing rules across the state, saying people could go back to church, starting this month. “Occupancy rates” for sanctuaries, however, would be 25% of normal. Many churches decided rightly that keeping one’s distance from others whose heads were bowed in prayer was still a fine idea. Online services remained the rule. On a positive note, members of the First Assembly of God in Cedar Rapids did at least work together to donate 35,000 pounds of groceries to other hard-hit Iowa families.
Across the river, in Nebraska, another Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Dakota County also had an explosion in infections, with at least 669 workers recovering or sick. Or in two cases: Dead.
The Tyson plant in Dakota City [in Dakota County] has temporarily closed for deep cleaning. Now the workers wait, afraid to go back to work but fearful not to.
“They need money and they want to go back of course,” said Qudsia Hussein, whose husband is an imam helping counsel the families of workers who have been sickened or have died. With many businesses shuttered or suffering financially because of the pandemic, she said, “There’s no other place they can work.”
(Blogger’s note: It is estimated that at least a third of the workers in America’s meatpacking plants are immigrants, including refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia, many of whom are Muslims. Believe it or not, MAGA folks, not all immigrants come here to kill you. Not even Muluka Beker, an Ethiopian woman who trims off the tails of up to 2,500 cattle per day. She has a knife. She is happy to use it. And, rather than cut you up like sausage, she and thousands like her are helping prepare that sausage for your breakfast table.)
