Showing posts with label Alex Jones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex Jones. Show all posts

Monday, May 16, 2022

April 2, 2019: President Trump Teaches Americans How to Hate

 

4/2/19: There are ample reasons to fear the president and the damage he’s doing to the country. You can start with his cozy relationship with Russians. His sustained attacks on the rule of law should terrify anyone who has read the U.S. Constitution or even studied the Cliff Notes.

 

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Encouraging 43 Americans out of every 100 to hate the rest.

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The overarching problem is clear. Trump has devoted the first half of his presidency to encouraging 43 Americans out of every 100 to hate the rest. 

A recent recording of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and Trump’s nutjob pal, brings the point clearly to life. In a clip that lasts more than four minutes, Jones is accosted by a group of young people at a fried chicken joint. Apparently, they have been mocking him for his Infowars rants. 



Jones validates their disdain by erupting in a tirade. He waves his hand at other patrons, seated round the room. He shouts at his tormenters that these other customers are sick of their “shit.” “They’re Americans,” he barks, “not traitors and scum like you.” At one point he appears to challenge someone off camera to a fight, balling a fist, and leaning forward in burly menace. He calls the hecklers “shit.” “You ain’t American, you’re a slob,” he says, singling out one. “You’re the one running your fat, libtard mouth.” We wouldn’t have our freedoms, he continues, if it were up to people like these.

 

This is ironic, of course, because Jones – like his hero, Donald J. Trump – has never seen the need to don the uniform and defend his freedom, or anyone else’s, other than with spittle from big mouth.

 

“If you libtards don’t like free speech America,” he seethes, “that’s good.” There’s nothing in the film clip to indicate the young people don’t. They seem to be infuriating Jones simply by exercising that right. “Go listen to your NPR,” he shouts.

 

He calls them “scum” again.

 

When one good-size young man looks like he’s had enough and he’s ready to duke it out, Jones keeps filming with his phone instead and calls him “a coward.”

 

That’s what’s scary about Jones and many on the far-right, and what’s ultimately most frightening about Trump. He and they deal in the kind of dehumanizing language Hitler and his henchmen employed. They hate many of the same groups. During a twelve-year reign of terror, the Nazis were happy to gas gays, lesbians, socialists, Jews, and critics of their regime. Hitler referred to enemies as “vermin,” “parasites” and “untermenschen” or “under men.”

 

You hear the same kind of rhetoric from Jones, as well as the President of the United States. We on the other side saw it coming, even as he ran for office. We’ve seen it endlessly on display since. As a candidate, Trump swore he saw a video of thousands of Muslim-Americans celebrating on 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell. No one has seen the same video since. Yet the toxin of hate had been introduced into the national bloodstream. He implied that all Muslims were terrorists. He came into office promising to bar all members of the faith from entering the U.S. As a hater’s bonus he and half the pundits on Fox News – and Jones – convinced gullible rubes that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim too. They stirred hate against Muslims the way Nazis stirred hate against Jews.

 

 

Winning means winning for himself.

 

We know, after watching President Trump for half a term, that he is bent on winning at any cost. And winning means winning for himself.

 

Whatever weird psychology is at play, this means he is happy to stir hate so long as it stirs his base. He got traction as a candidate by warning that “rapists” and “murderers” were pouring across the border, ironic now that we have learned how many undocumented workers wash up at his private clubs and find employ. They don’t kill the patrons. They groom the fairways, prepare the omelets, and plump the beds. But you can’t stir visceral fear by focusing on groundskeepers, short order cooks and maids. (See: 4/5/19.)

 

So “rapists” and “murderers” (and more recently, “MS-13”) it is!

 

You could have a sensible debate about what to do on the border. In fact, this country needs a sensible debate.

 

Unfortunately, you can’t. Not with Trump. In the president’s vituperative lexicon, those he hates and those he wants supporters to hate are never human. Recently, he made that clear, insisting the illegal immigrants being deported are “animals.” True: Some of those who have been deported are despicable criminals. But Trump repeatedly employed the term “animals” to make a point he’s used before. He doesn’t deal in nuance. He wants others to hate and fear and react accordingly. “Animals,” he once tweeted, “killed that lawyer in a mall parking lot.” “Two deranged animals” killed two young Mississippi cops. “DEATH PENALTY,” Trump added to hammer home a point. In October 2016, when someone set fire to a campaign office in North Carolina, Trump howled: “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina” were on the loose. More recently, the president has called the London terrorists and MS-13 gang members “animals,” while repeatedly implying that the people showing up at our southern border are all MS-13 types – with Middle Eastern terrorists mixed in.

 

Democrats are evil, too. “DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS!” he tweeted last May. “Democrats are the problem,” he insisted last June. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13.” 

 

As Hitler realized, it was easier to consider gassing Jews if they were “vermin” and sub-human – and an infestation.

 

Trump, with his warnings about “animals,” and Jones with his “scum,” play the same twisted game.

 

The president’s targets are many and varied. When combined, they represent more than half the U.S. population. Democrats are the “Party of Crime.” They are the party that doesn’t care to stop the “animals.” Liberals want to take away all guns and all cars and make sure America is never great again. Transgender individuals are unworthy to serve in the nation’s military, even if they are willing – unlike all Trumps, so far – to do their part. In fact, “great Americans” – it is another trick of Trump to label his supporters “great Americans,” implying those who oppose him are not – must live in fear because transgenders want to sneak into public restrooms and molest their children. Gays and lesbians are another staple of right-wing hate, what with their demands to marry whomever they please.

 

Again, the Nazis would understand. Jews got yellow stars to wear in death camps. Gays got pink triangles.

 

This president doesn’t have political opponents. Those who launched the Russia probe are “evil.” Democrats, Trump added last week, are “sick, sick people.” He denigrated Rep. Adam Schiff, calling him “pencil-neck,” the same kind of juvenile dehumanization that makes cruelty in any middle school easier for kids who take immature pleasure in hating their peers.

 

Like any school bully, Trump knows what he’s doing when he stokes hate. The label “sick” is a favorite in speeches and tweets. You have the “sicko” school shooters and “sick” terrorists. And it’s no coincidence he also labels President Obama and James Comey “sick.” Sen. John Tester he called “very dishonest and sick” when he ran for reelection in 2018. Megyn Kelly was “sick” when she criticized Candidate Trump. All the reporters at The New York Times: “These people are sick.”

 

“Sick” people – as in deranged school shooters – are often a threat. When the president lambasts sick opponents, he wants his fans to feel the same stomach-churning fear they might if a psychopath was loose in their town and had kidnapped a toddler at the nearest park.

 

 

Trump’s Orange Fuhrer-alter ego.

 

Trump’s Orange Fuhrer-alter ego is increasingly on display. When he said recently that Rep. Schiff should be “forced to resign” from Congress, it was probably the first time any chief executive has ever made such a demand. One is reminded of Nazis purging the Reichstag of representatives who were deemed unsuitably loyal to Hitler and the Third Reich. Trump has called those who launched the Russian investigation “treasonous” when the punishment for such a crime is death. When reporters call him out for policy blunders, for an endless stream of lies, for bizarre behavior related to the Russia probe, they are not doing what the free press has always done best, holding the powerful to account. In Trump’s world only hate can suffice. Those who fail to spew the kind of propaganda he likes are “the enemies of the people.”

 

It’s the language of Adolf Hitler, c. 1933, and it’s sad to see Trump’s 43% don’t understand how dangerous he is. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: For purposes of comparison, see: “I Read Mein Kampf, So You Don’t Have To.”


Trump isn't Hitler; but he uses the same kind of language.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

April 21, 2022: Today is the Political Resurrection of Ex-President Blubber!

 

4/21/22: I’ve been working recently to reorganize my blog to make it easier to read in shorter installments. I catch a few mistakes now and then, like misspelling Rep. Evan McMullin’s name in one post (“McMullen”). Otherwise, what I’ve said has held up well. I always thought Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were crooks. 


Both men racked up multiple felonies. Then that other crook, President Trump, pardoned them both.

 

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TODAY, the big news starts with the political resurrection of ex-President Blubber. That’s my new descriptor for Trump – since he’s so fond of insulting terms, like “Sleepy Joe” Biden, “Mini-Mike Bloomberg, and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.

 

At least he got that last one right.

 

First, did you know poor, delusional Mike Lindell of My Pillow fame has his own TV show? On Tuesday, he explained to viewers how excited he was for this day. If “everything goes right,” he exclaimed, he would win a “ preliminary injunction” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

 

Like Jesus, only not nearly so fast, Trump would roll aside the stone at Mar-a-Lago, rise from the political grave, and ascend to the White House again.

 

“Now, I’m not going to give all the details,” Lindell said, but assured his audience, “there’s a lot of surprises. It’s going to shock the country, as a matter of fact.”

 

It’s going to shock this liberal blogger, for sure, if anything of substance transpires. I don’t know. Call Lindell an optimist? He went on to blast the mainstream media for not taking his claims seriously, but I think I speak for all the other reptilian people (explained next) in saying, okay, these Trump fans are f**king nuts.

 


We can assume this guy will be thrilled if Lindell is right.


 

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IF YOU ARE NOT on Twitter, I can tell you it can be a source of real humor, often unwittingly. Some left-wing group has been interviewing Trump fans, and making them look like wretched fools. 

I know we have fools on the liberal side, too, but I’m not sure we have anyone who believes President Trump was one of the “reptilian people.” Click on this link and you can watch a Trump cultist explain how Mr. Biden and many of us on our side are.


You can tell by the eyes.

 

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IN OTHER NEWS you probably missed, more guns in more hands, and even more feet, have not made Americans safer. Death by injury has long been the number one cause of mortality for children, teens, and young adults, ages 1-24. For sixty years, car crashes were the top factor. In the Trump Era gun deaths surged. They now account for more injury-related deaths of young Americans than car wrecks. So saith the New England Journal of Medicine. 

Since 2000, deaths of young people in auto crashes have fallen 40%, in large part due to new safety regulations.



 

According to the noisiest voices on the right, however, we can’t have any sensible gun regulations, because that would mean the reptilian people would take over the country and make MAGA loyalists their sex slaves.

 

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WE DO HAVE bits and pieces of good news to report. For example, Rejected-President Trump has lost a court case (again) and must pay former Apprentice star and White House Aide with No Qualifications Omarosa Manigault Newman’s $1.3 million legal fees. She should never have been given a White House position, but Trump gave her one regardless. When she turned against him, President Blubber called her a “dog,” and tried to stop her from publishing a book about what she knew – about what a litigious, cheating creep he really is.

 

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WE ALSO LEARNED (because President Biden revealed his taxes) that he and the First Lady earned $610,702 in his first year in office. On that, they couple paid $150,429 in federal income taxes. 

By comparison, in 2017, during his first year in the White House, President Blubber paid a measly $750 to the feds. (The New York Times acquired a copy of Trump’s income taxes by some means.) 

This happy blogger always thought there was irony in the fact Blubber dodged taxes at every turn. He once complained, for example, that the U.S. military had no bullets to fire, before he took office. 

That wasn’t true, of course; but bullets do cost money; and if everyone paid taxes like Donald and Melania, and Ivanka and Jared, and the rest of their crew, the U.S. would probably still be riding to battle on foot and flying biplanes instead of Stealth fighter jets. Mr. Blogger can also report that he and his wife paid $27,351 in federal income tax for 2020. 

If nothing else, we pay our share to support the U.S. military, keep the national parks running well, and keep federal inspectors at work – checking the safety of the nation’s meat supply.

 

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THERE WAS STILL MORE GOOD NEWS, when we learned that alleged January 6 rioter, Jerry Braun, had been arrested and charged for his participation in the Capitol Hill attack. Braun was identified with the help of an Uber driver, who gave him a lift on the evening of the Capitol Hill attack. Braun had been hit in the face by some object and later developed a nasty shiner.



A black eye and a likely stint in jail.

 

Among other charges, Mr. Braun stands accused of walloping a member of the free press with a board – which is probably the absolute worst way imaginable to stand up for freedom and keep Joe Biden from sinking his reptilian fangs into the U.S. Constitution. 

As NBC notes, based on a variety of tips, including video from a dash cam from the Uber driver,

 

The FBI served a search warrant of Braun’s residence in South El Monte, California, in November 2021, and Braun confessed he’d been in Washington at the Capitol attack, according to the affidavit.

 

“After being asked by the agents if BRAUN had anything he wanted to tell them before he departed the search location, BRAUN responded, “Guilty,’” the FBI affidavit stated. “When asked what he was guilty of, BRAUN responded, ‘Everything.’”

 

Poor Mr. Braun is likely to end up serving a lengthy stretch behind bars, mainly because he fell for the lies peddled by people like President Trump. Braun had traveled across the country to D.C., he says, to “stop the steal” of an election all evidence shows was never stolen. 

Although Trump certainly tried.

 

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SPEAKING OF THE STEAL, Alex Jones, who helped push that very lie, is in negotiations with prosecutors to gain immunity and spill the beans on various plotters, who were working (for real) to steal the election for President Blubber. 

Not from him. (Someone should have warned poor Braun.) 

We can also report, if you missed it, that Jones is filing for bankruptcy protection – having been mangled in a series of civil cases filed against him by parents of children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The ghoulish Mr. Jones had accused them of playing key roles in a “false flag” operation and pretending to have had their six- and seven-year-old sons and daughters riddled with bullets in their first grade classes one gory day. Piled on top of their agonies over the loss of loved ones, this lead fans of Jones’ Infowars program to barrage them with death threats and online attacks, and even occasional threatening in-person visits.

 

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IF YOU ARE WORRIED about the reptilian people, I guess you have one bit of good news yourself, today. Dan Ball, who works a shift as host on One America News, made sure he explained to loyal listeners recently why he’s had his fill of the First Amendment – which also happens to protect his dumb, fascist ass. 

During one segment, he exploded: 


What the mainstream media has done is treasonous [he said], and we should take every single CEO that’s allowed it, every single host, and put them in a military tribunal, for treason to this nation, because they have constantly lied, and that’s just the last five years, since Donald Trump ran for president. We know they lied about the Russian hoax, and countless other things. But they’ve been lying, covering up, omitting facts to the American people, for decades now.

 


So f**k the Bill of Rights. Dan Ball wants to send American citizens to trial before military tribunals.

 

Bring back the firing squads, right?

 

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FINALLY, Monica Crowley, former Fox News dope, is having a much better week, now that she can celebrate a judge’s decision to strike down the Biden administration’s mask mandates on public transportation. 

She said she had been “suffocating” wearing a mask – but now – let freedom ring! She could fly off and attend the military tribunals and not have to put on a “face diaper,” as those on the right like to call ordinary masks. (I admit: I am not aware of anyone pooping into their masks while riding planes.) 

Here’s her tweet, and my quick reply:


 

 

Anyway, I was fiddling around with that story, when I came upon a “solution” for people who hate “face diapers,” but don’t want to catch COVID and go to the hospital – or infect grandma and grandpa at the next family gathering. 

This story goes back to last December, but it’s worth noting that U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who is running for reelection, had a few COVID safety tips of his own. He told an audience that “there are things you can do, get Vitamin D, Zinc, keep yourself healthy, Vitamin C. By the way – standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus. Even if you get it, you may reduce viral application. Why not try out these things?” 

In the wake of the senator’s comments, Listerine felt a need to announce that its mouthwash was in no way intended to battle, let alone kill, the coronavirus.

 

This led Senator Ron “Gargle” Johnson to complain that his comments had been taken out of context, and he was in no way the boneheaded fool he sounded like on tape of his townhall meeting. 

This past January, we know Johnson hosted a panel discussion of some pretty impressive medical personnel – who pretty much said, f**k vaccines – we have better ideas for battling the virus. 

Here, we should note, there are medical experts, sprinkled here and there, who oppose the vaccines. Still, some of the claims made by members of Senator Gargle’s panel were flatly incorrect. Others were dubious, at best. Let’s just say, Johnson is doing his part to confuse the people who listen to him for advice. According to CDC, we have had 80.5 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S., to date. Almost 987,000 Americans have died. 

That would be one death for every 82 infections – way, way, way worse than any ordinary flu.

 

This dedicated blogger is retired and has time to dig into stories and try to find the relevant facts. So: Why not go  to the Wisconsin Department of Health, in Gargle’s own state, and see what they say! It turns out four percent of Wisconsinites who became infected with COVID ended up hospitalized. If grandma or grandpa were over 60, the odds ballooned to something like twenty percent. 

Yeah, f**k those “face diapers.” Let’s send some flowers to grandma at her hospital room. 

As for death rates from COVID, you were generally safe if, like Ms. Crowley, you were 53 years old. 

(Although I doubt any of us would want to hop on a plane, maskless or not, if we were told there was a 1 in 100 chance the aircraft was soon going to plummet from the sky.) 

In fact, had Ms. Crowley been infected, she would have had 99 out of a 100 chances of surviving her case. 



Source: Wisconsin Department of Health.

 

The risk of death for older Americans rose sharply after that, to 1 in 50 if you were in your sixties, 1 in 20, if you were in your seventies, 1 in 10 in your eighties, and 1 in 5 if you were older than that. So, we’ve tried to explain this a thousand times. You wore masks, in large part, to protect others – older Americans, but also immune-compromised individuals who might be seated next to you on planes or trains or ox-carts. 

Shots, of course, were even better if you wanted to stay safe and help stop the rampant spread.

 

Last, but not least, I decided to check  and see. Did the Wisconsin Department of Health – again, the experts in Sen. Gargle’s own state – recommend mouthwash as a way to ward off disease?

 

Ah, here we go: “Protect your loved ones, neighbors, and fellow Wisconsinites by wearing a mask.”

 

Then: “COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, free, and widely available. Everyone 5 and older is recommended to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. You do not need an ID or insurance to get a vaccine.”

 

Frankly, by continuing to spread disinformation and disdain, Sen. Gargle and Ms. Crowley have been doing their part to get other Americans killed.




Yeah. Not gonna' work. Senator Gargle is a knucklehead.


Sunday, April 17, 2022

March 12, 2020: Tom Hanks Catches COVID - Alex Jones Peddles a Bogus Cure

 

3/12/20: It would seem we’re in for more wild and wooly days to come, both here and around the globe. For god’s sake, if Tom Hanks and his wife can be infected with COVID-19, who among us can be safe! 

This blogger happens to have three daughters in healthcare, including one who works at the Centers for Disease Control. All three are advising their parents not to go to crowded restaurants. That meant we skipped a planned dinner out with our daughter, Emily, the nurse, on Tuesday. As for our nurse practitioner daughter, who is moving to Portland, Oregon, to work for the University of Oregon’s medical training program, we elbow-bumped goodbye when we saw her Tuesday in Washington D.C., before driving home.



Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, in isolation.


 

When I visited Costco on Wednesday, I noticed the first hints of panic buying here in Southern Ohio. A crowd of anxious shoppers was gathered round an employee unloading a pallet of toilet paper. 

Not me, baby. I was there to panic-buy potato chips. Because if I’m going to die a hideous death, I want chips.

 

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THEN AGAIN, if you don’t believe in scientific evidence, you might want to contact either of two  big fans of Dr. Zero. Take your pick: Mr. Alex Jones of Infowars, recently arrested on a DUI charge, or Pastor Jim Bakker, who will always pray for people if he can profit. 

For $90, Jones will sell you a vial of 120 pills of his fine product DNA Force, which he swears will protect you from the virus.

 

Rev. Bakker, who once spent five years in prison for fraud, will sell you a “Silver Solution” guaranteed to cure the virus. 

That’s assuming the Attorney General of Missouri doesn’t shut him down before Bakker can cash your check and send you his fine product. For only $40 you can have a 16-oz. bottle of Bakker’s elixir.

March 14, 2020: Trump Announces "National Emergency" in the Face of COVID

 

3/14/20: If you were thinking maybe Dr. Donald J. Trump (commonly known as “Dr. Zero”) is a quack, the evidence is now irrefutable. 

This is the same Dr. Zero who told us the COVID-19 virus was no worse than the flu. Now, Dr. Zero has had to admit we face a National Emergency, “two big words,” as he put it when making the announcement yesterday.

 

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“There are no good choices, but there are good decisions.” 

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan

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And here, let us remember what may have been his worst prediction of all: We were sitting on 15 cases of the novel coronavirus on February 26. But thanks to him, we were headed for zero. 

There was no reason to worry whatsoever. 

(You can find that prediction in the official White House transcript, if you don’t believe me. This isn’t “Fake News.”)

 


 

As of Saturday evening, Johns Hopkins University has increased its running totals for worldwide COVID-19 cases to 156,099 (see above). The worldwide death toll now stood at 5,819, which would indicate a mortality rate of 3.7%. As for the United States approaching “zero,” we stand at 2,572 cases. Like Italy, we may be in for worse to come. Despite having shut down their entire economy, and told everyone to stay home, the Italians report 21,157 cases and 1,441 deaths. The situation in Iran is dire, with 12,729 cases and an admitted 611 dead. Iraqi citizens returning home from Iran say the situation is far worse. Iraq has sealed its border with Iran, except to its own citizens. 

The spread of the virus is so rapid that what Trump said Wednesday night, when he tried to reassure the nation, is already out of date. He said he wasn’t going to need to ban travelers from Ireland or the United Kingdom, even though the U.K. had more reported cases of COVID-19, than several countries included in the ban. The next day, Dr. Don defended his decision not to ban travel from the United Kingdom. He said the Brits were “doing a good job” of containing the virus. Less than 48-hours later, the U.K. had seen confirmed cases rise to 1,143. 

So, as of today, Dr. Trump has banned travelers from the United Kingdom, too. Same with travelers from Ireland.

 

In fact, the president has been forced to admit that this virus is not just like the flu. He recommends today that if you don’t have to travel within the United States, you should stay home. 

Meanwhile, economic damage continues to spread across the world, and hamstring large sectors of the U.S. economy. The stock market plummeted more than 2,300 points on Thursday, rebounded almost 2,000 on Friday. The Dow ended Friday at 23,186, a drop of 6,365 points in a month. Trillions in equity have been wiped from the books. Cancellations of all kinds are drying up business. The local economy of Austin, Texas, suffered a $350 million hit when the South by Southwest Festival was canceled. That was without a single confirmed case in the city. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan may have said it best when she explained the decision to shut down city schools for six weeks: “There are no good choices, but there are good decisions.” 

Travel bans, and an expected slowdown in economic activity, caused oil prices to drop. It was good news for drivers (who have few places to go for the foreseeable future) but catastrophe for drilling companies. Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell to $31.50 per barrel on Friday.

 

Nor is there any end in sight for the spread of the virus or the spread of the damage, both to health and economy. Saturday morning, my youngest daughter, Emily, a nurse in Columbus, Ohio told us the first confirmed case in the city had been revealed, a 49-year-old man who traveled on a Carnival cruise ship, the Valor. He left the ship on March 5, and has likely been infecting others since. The state has 26 confirmed cases, seven requiring hospitalizations and all Ohio public schools will be shut down for three weeks, starting Monday. 

The coronavirus is spreading rapidly around the world. Spain saw a jump of more than 2,000 cases this weekend. It was announced that a two-week state of emergency would be implemented, basically shutting down the country. At least five flights from England were alerted to the news in midair and turned around, rather than land passengers in a two-week quarantine. France, which had only a hundred confirmed cases on March 2, now has 3,672. The government has ordered closure of all non-essential businesses, starting at midnight. Even war-torn Syria has announced the closure of schools and universities to stem the spread of disease – at least all the schools and universities that haven’t been blown to bits during the long and bloody civil war.

 

Anyone who said this was “just like the flu” was ill-informed or obtuse. Dr. Trump decided he had better get tested, after his doctor said last night there was no need. The fact that two people who visited Mar-a-Lago last weekend and tested positive apparently convinced Dr. Trump this morning he had to get checked. Attorney General Bill Barr was already in self-quarantine. So, too, were Rona McDaniel, the chairwoman for the Republican National Committee, and her family, after Ms. McDaniel began experiencing fever and other flu-like symptoms. The Pentagon has put almost all domestic travel for service members and families on hold through May 11. The Archdiocese of New York announced it was canceling masses starting today, and the Boston Marathon has been postponed till September, the first such disruption in 124 years. The Masters Tournament has been postponed. Panic shopping has begun emptying shelves in groceries across the U.S. 

Toilet paper has been a flash point. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: The State of New York has issued a “cease and desist” order to Alex Jones and Infowars. 

Officials warn Jones that he may no longer sell toothpaste, claiming that it will protect users from the COVID-19 virus. 

Also receiving a “cease and desist letter” for selling bogus products to protect against the novel coronavirus: Pastor Jim Bakker.