Furious Friday Reads: Delta and Don
Posted: October 9, 2020 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: American White Male Terrorists, Hillary was right, otto dix, Trump meltdown 28 Comments
Waxing and waning by Otto Dix
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I woke up to the most oddly colored sky today as Hurricane Delta spins away in the Gulf of Mexico. Jim Cantore has been spotted in Beaux Bridge and that’s way west of here. We’ll get some bad weather when it rolls closer to us but right now we’ve just got this breeze and a yellowish tinged cloud cover.
So the crazy go nuts at the White House is getting crazier, more gone, and nuttier. We all knew these last few months of the Trumpist regime would be unlike anything we could imagine. Harvard Historian Heather Cox Richardson keeps an active blog on her thoughts on history. On Thursday, she posted this:
On October 8, 2020, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, appears to be melting down. Over the course of the day, he has called for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as well as his own predecessor, President Barack Obama, and called Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris a “monster” and a “communist.”This morning, he announced that he would not take part in the planned October 15 town hall debate if it were turned into an on-line event. But then, after Biden said he was willing to postpone the debate so Trump could take part, said he would participate in another debate on October 22.He released a video addressed to seniors, who are leaving him in droves, calling them “my favorite people in the world,” and speculated that he could continue to hold rallies as early as this weekend, before his quarantine period is over. He called into the Fox News Channel twice, ranting. Of his bout with coronavirus, he said: “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”He is erratic enough that tomorrow, the House will begin to consider a bill seeking to enforce the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, designed to provide an exit ramp for a president who is experiencing physical or mental impairments that make him unable to lead the nation. The bill, advanced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, will not pass, but it will keep focus on what seems to be the president’s precarious mental state.Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to go to Indiana to vote tomorrow, after campaigning in Arizona, has cancelled his scheduled events and is headed back to Washington, D. C.Everything emerging from the White House today is murky and confused, but there is one event that is crystal clear: the FBI announced today it has stopped a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and put her “on trial” for treason. Six men have been charged in the plot, and are now facing life in prison if convicted. Another seven have been charged with planning to storm the state capitol building and start a civil war. They face up to 20 years in prison.This afternoon, Whitmer called out Trump for refusing to denounce such domestic terrorists. At last week’s debate with Biden, Trump told the white supremacist neo-fascist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by.” In April, after Whitmer shut down the state to combat coronavirus, Trump tweeted: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and at least three of the thirteen men now charged were among those who entered the state’s senate chamber with guns on April 30 to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders.Tonight, rather than express sympathy with Whitmer or denounce the terrorists, Trump attacked Whitmer on Twitter. Attorney General William Barr, who has been out of the public eye since last the coronavirus super spreader event at the White House Rose Garden in honor of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, has not commented.
Widow by Otto Dix
It’s so bad that Nancy Pelosi is bringing up the 25th Amendment as a way to discuss his overall mental, emotional, and physical health. She has no power to remove him this way but it starts a conversation.
Since Monday he has blown up negotiations for additional federal coronavirus relief by tweet and spread false claims comparing the virus to the flu.
He also attacked his some of his closest Cabinet allies during a Fox News interview for not pursuing groundless accusations of criminality by Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday openly addressed an issue that even White House aides are said to be speculating about: Has the president’s judgment been affected by his illness and the medication he is taking to treat it? And is it so bad that he is unable to fulfill his duties?
Pelosi in her remarks to reporters Thursday went on to hint that lawmakers in the House might create a commission that would allow Congress to intervene and create a body to remove the president from office under the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution.
The 25th Amendment was ratified by Congress in 1967 to ensure conditions for a smooth transfer of power if the president becomes incapacitated. It was a response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Section 4 of the amendment is most relevant to current circumstances, with a clause allowing for the removal of presidents from office against their will if they are unable to fulfill their duties.
Under the section, the decision to remove a president unable to do the job can be made by “the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.”
With the US presidential election only weeks away, the prospect of adamantly loyal Vice President Mike Pence cooperating is remote. Likewise any of Trump’s Cabinet.
And if they were to do so, the removal would require a supermajority in both houses of Congress to remain in force if challenged by Trump.
But that leaves open the possibility of Congress by law creating another body to try to achieve the same goal.
Newborn Baby on Hands by Otto Dix
Harvard Historian Heather Richardson Cox runs a blog on her Facebook page and frequently gives lectures and blogs on a variety of history things. Yesterday, she went over on Trump.
October 8, 2020 (Thursday)
I’m going to be brief tonight, folks, but here are the main stories I’m watching:
On October 8, 2020, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, appears to be melting down. Over the course of the day, he has called for the imprisonment of his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as well as his own predecessor, President Barack Obama, and called Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris a “monster” and a “communist.”
This morning, he announced that he would not take part in the planned October 15 town hall debate if it were turned into an on-line event. But then, after Biden said he was willing to postpone the debate so Trump could take part, said he would participate in another debate on October 22.
He released a video addressed to seniors, who are leaving him in droves, calling them “my favorite people in the world,” and speculated that he could continue to hold rallies as early as this weekend, before his quarantine period is over. He called into the Fox News Channel twice, ranting. Of his bout with coronavirus, he said: “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”He is erratic enough that tomorrow, the House will begin to consider a bill seeking to enforce the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, designed to provide an exit ramp for a president who is experiencing physical or mental impairments that make him unable to lead the nation. The bill, advanced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, will not pass, but it will keep focus on what seems to be the president’s precarious mental state.
Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to go to Indiana to vote tomorrow, after campaigning in Arizona, has cancelled his scheduled events and is headed back to Washington, D. C.
Everything emerging from the White House today is murky and confused, but there is one event that is crystal clear: the FBI announced today it has stopped a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and put her “on trial” for treason. Six men have been charged in the plot, and are now facing life in prison if convicted. Another seven have been charged with planning to storm the state capitol building and start a civil war. They face up to 20 years in prison.
This afternoon, Whitmer called out Trump for refusing to denounce such domestic terrorists. At last week’s debate with Biden, Trump told the white supremacist neo-fascist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by.” In April, after Whitmer shut down the state to combat coronavirus, Trump tweeted: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and at least three of the thirteen men now charged were among those who entered the state’s senate chamber with guns on April 30 to protest Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders.
Tonight, rather than express sympathy with Whitmer or denounce the terrorists, Trump attacked Whitmer on Twitter. Attorney General William Barr, who has been out of the public eye since last the coronavirus super spreader event at the White House Rose Garden in honor of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, has not commented.
There’s even more crazy things from this morning.
From the New York Times:
Trump Lashes Out at His Aides With Calls to Indict Political Rivals — The pressure on his top administration officials to take action came as President Trump bristled at the restraints of his illness.
From Oliver Darcy at CNN:
Coughing Trump tells Hannity he’s healthy and ready to hold rallies — Recuperating from the coronavirus and plunging in the polls, President Trump is retreating to his safe spaces: Twitter, Fox, and rallies. — On Thursday Trump started and ended his day on Fox.
Nun by Otto Dix
And then there’s the entire craziness of a group of young, white male, right wing extremists going after the Michigan governor. This terrorist cell of incels and your basic white male grievance gone violent is just about as Trumpy as you can get. NBC reports they are likely tied to the so-called “boogaloo” movement.
Several of the six men charged in federal court Thursday with a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have histories of anti-government organizing, as well as interest in countering what they saw as an “uprising” against President Donald Trump, according to their online profiles and comments.
In addition, several of the seven men facing separate state terrorism charges for their activity with a group called the Wolverine Watchmen also posted pro-Trump and anti-government content.
The men have not yet appeared in court or entered pleas.
A senior federal law enforcement official said federal agents found that the group of seven tied to the Wolverine Watchmen believes in the “boogaloo” movement, which is largely dedicated to eradicating the government and killing law enforcement officers. Their social media profiles showed connections to a wide variety of known anti-government groups.
Around the country, self-described members of the boogaloo movement have committed acts of violence and killed police officers in recent months, often in attempts to ignite what they believe will be a second civil war. Authorities said a California man accused of killing a police officer and a federal agent in June scrawled the word “Boog” in blood on the hood of a car during a standoff with police. Federal agents arrested two other members of the boogaloo movement whom they accused of offering to work with the terrorist group Hamas last month.
Still Life with Widow’s Veil by Otto Dix
According to the Detroit Free Press the real intent of this militia that called themselves the “Wolverine Watchmen” was to start a civil war. The name alone is a disturbing mix of two comic book realities. Let’s be real though. These armed “militias” are really just armed terrorists. We always make special names up when it comes to white men being super bad. They’re not misunderstood. They’re not lone wolves. They are armed, dangerous TERRORISTS.
The Wolverine Watchmen militia group didn’t just plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but they were on a mission to attack the state Capitol and target police officers at their homes as part of a broader mission to instigate a civil war, authorities said Thursday in announcing felony charges against 13 militia members accused in a sensational case of domestic terrorism.
Attorney General Dana Nessel referred to the accused as “extremists” who are hoping to recruit new members “by seizing on a moment of civil unrest” to wreak havoc on the country. She identified the militia group as the Wolverine Watchmen, whose members are accused of, among other things, conducting surveillance outside Whitmer’s vacation residence, using code language and encrypted messages to throw off police and planting a bomb under a bridge to divert law enforcement.
“There has been a disturbing increase in anti-government rhetoric and the re-emergence of groups that embrace extremist ideologies,” Nessel said at a press conference Thursday. “This is more than just political disagreement or passionate advocacy, some of these groups’ mission is simply to create chaos and inflict harm upon others.”
I continue to wonder why the remaining jerks in the Republican Party don’t ever say anything about this. Trump will be on Tucker Carlson tonight and that is bound to be an even worse display of idiocy and insanity than we’ve seen this week.
Frau Doctor by Otton Dix
Here’s what we missed besides normalcy and sanity. The Atlantic‘s writer Edward Issac Dovere interviews Hillary Clinton. “Hillary Clinton Says She Was Right All Along. The biggest factors she blames for her loss—disinformation, Vladimir Putin, and America’s deep political divide—will still be problems even if Trump loses, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee warns.”
In many ways, Clinton feels vindicated by how the Trump presidency has played out, and by what Americans have learned about him over the past four years—including the recent revelation that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017. That “was even worse than I thought it was,” she said. But being right is a small solace. She was sitting in her home in New York, speaking with me over Zoom for a conversation you can hear in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. Chappaqua is not Washington, D.C. She’s not in the middle of the reelection campaign she’d like to be running right now. She pointed out more than once that she won the popular vote in 2016, even if she didn’t win the Electoral College, and she mentioned former FBI Director James Comey’s letter in the final week of the race seeming to reopen the investigation into her (and then Comey’s announcement that nothing had come of it). And to those who wish she would just go away? She thinks they feel a bit guilty, she told me: They don’t want to admit that she was right about Trump.
What she’s hoping for over the next four years: Biden wins and gets rid of Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris helps reset some of the American political expectations for women, and Mark Zuckerberg—whom she compared to the sorcerer’s apprentice, losing control of his creation in a way that has done grave damage around the world—ends up facing new restrictions. She’s also hoping that she can step back from politics a bit more.
You can listen to their conversation at the link above. I’m not sure why I went over to Otto Dix’s dark side. I almost used some of his World War 1 etchings which are mostly every one as skeletons but that was like way too dark. But, maybe it’s just the lighting that the weather has brought to my desk. He’s got more styles than Picasso and was just about as prolific!
So, I’m going to trying to get stuff battened down around here before the winds start up around supper time. I’m also going to go eat my favorite comfort food which is my grandmother’s recipe for mac and cheese. Please, please take care! Let us know you’re okay. Thank you for all the Donations! We’ll be able to keep the doors open another year!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads
Posted: October 8, 2020 Filed under: just because | Tags: Chris Christie, coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, Crede Bailey, Donald Trump, gold star families, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, New England Journal of Medicine, presidential debates 2020, superspreader events, White House hot spot 26 CommentsGood Morning!!
I’m not going to spend much time on the vice presidential debate in today’s post. CNN’s post-debate poll showed Kamala Harris was the winner.
I don’t think Mike Pence did a very good job of defending Trump, and that’s what he needed to do. He lied again and again with a straight face–that has always been his modus operandi. He refused to answer a question about what states should do about abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, and–worst of all–he dodged a question about whether there will be a peaceful transition of power if Trump loses. From The Daily Beast:
At the tail end of Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate—one that was noticeably less fiery and chaotic than last week’s presidential clash—Vice President Mike Pence completely avoided answering what he would do if President Donald Trump refuses to step down if he loses the election….
The veep first said that he thinks his ticket will win re-election before accusing Democrats of not accepting the outcome of the 2016 election, bringing up the Russia investigation and the impeachment of the president. After invoking former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s advice that Joe Biden shouldn’t concede on election night if the results are close, Pence reiterated his belief that Trump would be re-elected.
“President Trump and I are fighting every day to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating a massive opportunity for voter fraud,” he concluded. “If we have a free and fair election, we’ll have confidence in it.”
Matt Flegenheimer and Annie Karni at The New York Times: Pence, Peerless Trump Defender, Confronts His Limits.
Vice President Mike Pence approached his task on Wednesday as he has approached his four years as the executive straight man to an unruly leader: not merely defending President Trump but effectively insisting, with poker-faced conviction, that those who doubt his boss should not believe their eyes and ears.
The trouble this time was not Mr. Pence’s skill set on this front, which remains peerless. It was the fact set underpinning this debate, which remains inconvenient to an administration so overwhelmed by the virus that its own West Wing has become a hot spot.
And so Mr. Pence — stripped of most politically palatable explanations for the White House pandemic response — set off on a curious charge when Senator Kamala Harris said that the Trump team’s leadership “clearly” has not worked: He chose to hear it as a direct affront to the American people.
“When you say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn’t worked,” Mr. Pence said gravely, as controlled as his president is rambunctious onstage, “that’s a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made.”
At last, the strain seemed to be showing, at least a little. Perhaps that is what a full term of wear-and-tear can do to even the most accomplished rhetorical gymnast.
Or perhaps the reality is simply too bleak for any administration to explain away entirely: The president has contracted the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans on his watch. His behavior, since leaving the hospital on Monday, appears to be a continuation of the kind of scientifically dubious happy talk that has left the Trump-Pence ticket at a significant polling disadvantage four weeks before Election Day.
Yes, the story today and every day until the election will be about Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the deaths of 211,917 Americans as of this morning. In addition, Trump either doesn’t understand or simply refuses to admit that the pandemic is killing the economy.
IMHO, the biggest story this morning is the coronavirus outbreak at the White House and the obvious fact that Trump and his Trumpists have likely spread the virus very widely. Here’s the latest.
The coronavirus outbreak has infected “34 White House staffers and other contacts” in recent days, according to an internal government memo, an indication that the disease has spread among more people than previously known in the seat of American government.
Dated Wednesday and obtained by ABC News, the memo was distributed among senior leadership at FEMA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security and the agency responsible for managing the continuing national response to the public health disaster.
The memo also notes that a senior adviser to the president is among those infected. Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller, both senior aides to the president, have tested positive in recent days.
The new figures underscore both the growing crisis in the White House and the lengths to which government officials have gone to block information about the outbreak’s spread. ABC News had previously reported that a total of 24 White House aides and their contacts had contracted the virus. It was not clear in the FEMA memo with the larger number what “other contacts” referred to.
Jennifer Jacobs at Bloomberg: White House Security Official Contracted Covid-19 in September.
A top White House security official, Crede Bailey, is gravely ill with Covid-19 and has been hospitalized since September, according to four people familiar with his condition.
The White House has not publicly disclosed Bailey’s illness. He became sick before the Sept. 26 Rose Garden event President Donald Trump held to announce his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that has been connected to more than a dozen cases of the disease.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on Bailey. He is in charge of the White House security office, which handles credentialing for access to the White House and works closely with the U.S. Secret Service on security measures throughout the compound.
Chris Christie is still in the hospital and there has been no news about how he is doing. NJ.com:
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie remains hospitalized at Morristown Medical Center, where he was admitted Saturday after testing positive COVID-19.
Christie’s current condition is not known. Hospital officials declined comment Tuesday….
Christie, who has struggled with his weight and has a lifelong history of asthma, tweeted that he checked himself into the hospital Saturday. Because of his conditions, he’s at higher risk of developing complications from the virus.
The Daily Beast: White House Quietly Told Vets Group It Might Have Exposed Them to COVID.
On the same day President Donald Trump acknowledged contracting the coronavirus, the White House quietly informed a veterans group that there was a COVID-19 risk stemming from a Sept. 27 event honoring the families of fallen U.S. service members, the head of that charitable organization told The Daily Beast.
The White House warning, which came on Oct. 2, is the earliest known outreach to visitors of the complex that there was a risk of coronavirus emerging from the grounds where the president, the first lady, and at least 17 of his aides, according to Politico, have now tested positive for the virus.
The Sept. 27 event to honor Gold Star families came the day after the White House hosted a celebration for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that appears to have been an early source of the White House outbreak, though West Wing officials have quietly disputed that linkage. It is unclear to the head of the veterans charity—the Greatest Generations Foundation—which participant’s potential positive coronavirus test sparked the warning.
USA Today: White House coronavirus outbreak may have exposed thousands from Atlanta to Minnesota.
President Donald Trump and other White House insiders infected with COVID-19 carried the virus across the country in a matter of days, potentially exposing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people as they went about their business, a USA TODAY investigation found.
From a religious summit outside Atlanta to a campaign rally at a Pennsylvania airport and a private fundraiser in Minnesota, Trump, his aides and political allies attended events with thousands of people, often without masks and little regard for social distancing….
USA TODAY reporters examined hundreds of photos and videos from news coverage and social media posts and scoured attendance logs to identify people who came in contact with those individuals.
At least 6,000 people attended meetings, rallies and other gatherings with them within a week of the Supreme Court nomination ceremony Sept. 26 in the White House Rose Garden, pegged as a potential “superspreader” event….
Epidemiologists and public health experts said USA TODAY’s analysis shows that the White House outbreak has put more people, in more places, at risk than has been previously known. It illustrates just how quickly and how far a superspreader event can carry COVID-19.
“I don’t think we know the extent of this outbreak yet … people could die,” said Danielle Ompad, an associate professor of epidemiology at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “It’s the height of irresponsibility for people who are supposed to be leaders.”
Meanwhile, Trump hasn’t been seen in public since he returned to the White House on Monday evening. Instead he has been posting videos of himself wearing heavier make-up than usual and babbling nonsense, including claiming he has been “cured” of the virus and may be immune to it. We haven’t been told what medications Trump is still taking, and the White House and Trump’s doctors have refused to say when Trump last tested negative for the virus. ABC News reports:
The White House has repeatedly refused to disclose when President Donald Trump last tested negative for COVID-19 before he announced his infection — information that could help determine who he exposed to the virus and the severity of his illness.
The White House has also declined to confirm when and how Trump was tested before last Tuesday’s presidential debate with Joe Biden, even though both campaigns certified to debate organizers that the candidates and everyone who traveled with them to Cleveland tested negative within 72 hours of the debate.
The White House, which has made contradictory statements about when and how often Trump is tested, said the president first tested positive Thursday evening, and first discussed symptoms with his doctor at that time. Studies have shown that coronavirus patients are infectious up to two days before the onset of symptoms.
“People ought to have the right to know whether or not they should be quarantining themselves, if they’re at risk,” Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News. “Potentially the president and his team have put others in harm’s way.”
While it’s not clear when Trump was infected with the virus, the White House’s silence raises questions about its compliance with debate rules, the frequency of Trump’s tests, and whether the president or his aides had concerns about him having the virus before he tested positive — as he kept up his busy schedule of campaign events.
And what about the next presidential debate? The debate commission announce that it will be done virtually, and Trump says he won’t participate and instead will hold a superspreader rally! The New York Times: Trump Objects to Commission’s Virtual Debate Plan.
President Trump, in an extraordinary break from the norms of modern campaigning, said on Thursday that he would refuse to participate in the next presidential debate after organizers changed the event to a virtual format because of health concerns about the coronavirus.
His withdrawal from the Oct. 15 event came shortly after the Commission on Presidential Debates, citing the “health and safety of all involved,” abandoned plans to stage the next in-person debate in Miami, saying that Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. would instead participate remotely from separate locations.
But Mr. Trump, whose recent contraction of the coronavirus was a significant impetus for the commission to modify its plans, immediately dismissed the idea of a remote debate as “ridiculous” and accused the debate commission without evidence of seeking to protect his Democratic opponent.
“No, I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate,” Mr. Trump told the Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in a television interview. “That’s not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate — it’s ridiculous.”
And this is extraordinary: the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine have publicly stated that Trump should not get a second term: Dying in a Leadership Vacuum.
https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/1314003144037199872?s=20
Here’s the gist:
Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy….
The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.
The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies….
Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.
I think this post is getting too long; but I can’t be sure, because the new WordPress editor doesn’t provide a word count. I’ll post a few more stories in the comment thread below. I hope you all have a peaceful day. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and please check in with us if you have the time and inclination.
Live Blog: VEEP Debatestakes 2020
Posted: October 7, 2020 Filed under: Live Blog | Tags: Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, VEEP Debate 43 Comments
Where would be without a live debate thread especially when it’s Kamala vs the guy who calls his wife mother?
So, we will be following the debate antics. Here’s the details:
9-10:30 PM EDT on ABC · CBS · FOX · NBC · PBS
Stream: C-SPAN · CBSN · ABC · NBC · PBS
Apps: ABC News · CBS News · CNN · Fox News · NBC News
Moderator: Susan Page
Location: University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Format: Nine segments of approximately 10 minutes each
And here’s the downlow: “How to watch the vice presidential debate” by Caroline Linton of CBS.
Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will meet for their first and only debate on Wednesday, October 7, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Susan Page of USA Today will moderate, and Pence and Harris will be separated by a plexiglass barrier.
…
Campaign manager Bill Stepien and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, both of whom helped with Mr. Trump’s debate preparation, have tested positive for COVID-19, as well as Hope Hicks, counselor to President Trump. Christie also checked into the hospital for treatment. Chris Wallace, the moderator of the first debate, said Mr. Trump arrived too late to the debate site to be tested for COVID-19 there.
Pence has been tested multiple times since then, and he said the latest test, on Wednesday, was negative.
Harris announced on Friday that she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, had both tested negative for COVID-19. To limit travel, she arrived in Salt Lake City on Friday night.
The candidates will be seated 12 feet away from each other.
So, let’s see if she can make him cry!
Tuesday Reads
Posted: October 6, 2020 Filed under: just because | Tags: Benito Mussolini, coronavirus, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Michael Beschloss 43 CommentsGood Morning!!
Can 2020 get any crazier? Unfortunately, the answer is probably “yes.” Trump was released from Walter Reed hospital last night and helicoptered back to the White House, where he staged a ludicrous Mussolini-like balcony scene. The first thing he did was take off his mask, even though he is still infected and a danger to anyone who gets near him.
Here’s how historian Michael Beschloss responded on Twitter:
Tim Miller at The Bulwark: The Weirdest 90 Seconds in Presidential History.
Donald Trump’s photo op on the Truman Balcony following his return to the White House with COVID-19 is one of the most disturbing, absorbing, foreign images I can recall. It does not appear to be of our time or place, and yet it is. With respect to the great painter George W. Bush’s view of the Trump inauguration, I think this has to be the weirdest shit I have ever seen in my life. If you haven’t seen it, just watch it now:
First, Trump takes off his mask, very strongly, very heavily. This is a man who is still on several experimental medications for a deadly virus that is highly contagious and spreads through the air. I guess he thought he would look “weak” with the mask? I would think that he would want to demonstrate that he has in fact “learned a lot” since contracting the COVID. But apparently when all of the infected geniuses from the West Wing put their heads together (over Zoom) to hash out what the optics of the president’s return should be, “lessons learned” came in a distant second to “übermensch.”
So we get a madman, his face pancaked under a 2mm coat of orange powder, jacked up on steroids, straining to breathe—and not caring a whit about those around him.
And I’ve got to hand it to him: Trump nails that image.
As the mask comes off the first thing you notice is the president’s complexion. After two consecutive video appearances that revealed his Immortan Joe old man pallor, the orangina is back. Trump has an extremely prominent make-up line that goes from his right temple down to his neckline, separating the orange from his peaked, natural tone….
After Trump successfully disposes of the mask, he takes two deep breaths to center himself before the still shots. Very deep breaths.
Unfortunately for Trumpilini, “gasping for air” soon began trending on Twitter. It’s pretty obvious he is still very sick and probably has pneumonia. The only thing that is propping him up is the heavy-duty steroid they gave him.
Then he points at someone off camera, giving them the get out of here sign. (Ask Chris Christie. He knows all about it.) Then he takes two more deep breaths—with another wince as if he had broken ribs. After that he spends quite a while trying to button his jacket.
The drama builds to one mammoth, labored breath. The type of breath you would take if you were a child who was about to enter into a competition in a swimming pool over who could last the longest underwater without drowning.
That heave gave him the stamina to move into a dramatic extended salute lasting 23 interminable seconds. He salutes with D-list caudillo energy, channeling an aging Pinochet or Trujillo in their last gasps of power. Throughout the salute he holds an aggressive glare. Then he steps back and looks deep into the distance. Fully embracing his posture as the leader of a death cult, Trump turns and enters the White House. Without a mask.
The coup de grâce (for whom, we won’t know for a couple weeks), is Trump moving into an extremely congested, spittle-filled soliloquy—straight to camera—about how our Dear Leader may well now be “immune” from the deadly virus that has killed 210,000 and which is currently inhabiting his lungs, and his White House.
Trump tells Americans to embrace the virus, because he thinks he’s beaten it. Never mind that 210,000 of us have died from it and none of us has access to the free health care he gets.
This morning, Trump was back to comparing Covid-19 to the flu.
Really? No, we don’t lose more than 100,000 lives from the flu and it isn’t more lethal than the coronavirus. WTF?!
Mainstream reactions to Trump’s insanity are getting more common. Here’s Michael Beschloss again on Rachel Maddow’s show:
David Gergen on CNN:
More:
Stories to check out today:
The Daily Beast: Trump Actually Believes He Can Sell Himself to America as a COVID-Conquering Hero.
The president’s stint in the Military Medical Center may have raised serious questions about his political future and his physical status, with doctors giving him a trio of therapeutics and his physician acknowledging that he is not yet out of the woods. But during his time away from the White House, Trump spent his weekend frantically working the phones, compulsively watching TV, and flagrantly disregarding the advice of his own public health officials….
He also was scheming. And at the top of his mind, according to three people with knowledge of his private comments, was how to reverse the damage that his campaign may be enduring by him being off the trail. Trump assured confidants that he would be back soon, though he wasn’t sure if he could commit to doing so in the coming week. And he previewed what is set to become the latest of many 2020 messaging reboots in the past few months.
The president repeatedly claimed that once he recovers from the coronavirus—for which first lady Melania Trump, his campaign manager, debate sparing partner, press secretary, and other aides also tested positive—he’ll be able to present himself as a conqueror of it, both personally and politically.
The notion might seem far-fetched, considering the poor marks Trump’s received for his handling of the pandemic. But according to the knowledgeable sources, the president insisted that this would be a campaign asset, as he’d be able to say “I know what people are going through,” one of the sources recounted him saying. Allies argued that this could help frame Trump as both resilient and empathetic, which could come in handy in a race where polling shows a wide empathy gap between him and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Of course he has no idea what normal people are going through, and if he did, he wouldn’t be capable of empathizing with them.
By Monday morning, Trump’s campaign had begun test driving this newest 2020 sales pitch, brushing aside the reality that the president’s stubborn flouting of public-health and safety measures had directly contributed to his own infection, not to mention the deaths of 208,000 Americans. Indeed when he arrived back at the White House on Monday night, Trump walked onto the balcony for a photo op, during which he defiantly tore off the mask he was wearing, the heaviness of his breaths making clear that the disease was very much still in his system….
It was a surreal scene that fit neatly into the surreal moment: a president with unclear health status, risking the safety of his own aides and security detail for the purposes of putting on a good face for the election less than 30 days away. And, for the most part, everyone in Trumpland seems happy to play along. In addition to the attempt to turn the president’s serious COVID infection into an electoral asset, Trump’s campaign has also tried to turn it into a cash cow.
“As the leader of the free world, President Trump had no choice,” declared a fundraising email sent on Monday morning by a joint fundraising committee for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. “He didn’t want to stay in the White House and lock himself in, away from the American People.”
AP: White House staff, Secret Service eye virus with fear, anger.
The West Wing is a ghost town. Staff members are scared of exposure. And the White House is now a treatment ward for not one — but two — COVID patients, including a president who has long taken the threat of the virus lightly.
President Donald Trump’s decision to return home from a military hospital despite his continued illness is putting new focus on the people around him who could be further exposed if he doesn’t abide by strict isolation protocols.
Throughout the pandemic, White House custodians, ushers, kitchen staff and members of the U.S. Secret Service have continued to show up for work in what is now a coronavirus hot spot, with more than a dozen known cases this week alone.
Trump, still contagious, has made clear that he has little intention of abiding by best containment practices.
As he arrived back at the White House on Monday evening, the president defiantly removed his face mask and stopped to pose on a balcony within feet of a White House photographer. He was seen inside moments later, surrounded by numerous people as he taped a video message urging Americans not to fear a virus that has killed more than 210,000 in the U.S. and 1 million worldwide.
Read more at the link.
Poynter: Reporters are ‘livid’ after White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tests positive for COVID-19.
McEnany met with reporters indoors last week and then spoke with reporters on Sunday. Sunday’s quick briefing was outside, but she removed her mask to speak. And several journalists who cover the White House have tested positive.
In response, the White House Correspondents’ Association put out a statement that said, “We wish Kayleigh, the president and everyone else struggling with the virus a swift recovery. As of this moment we are not aware of additional cases among White House journalists, though we know some are awaiting test results. We strongly encourage our members to continue following CDC guidance on mask-wearing and distancing — especially when at the White House — and urge journalists to seek testing if they were potentially exposed.”
In a tweet, New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi called it a “weak ass” statement, adding, “Kayleigh McEnany directly endangered the lives of those around her, including members of the press. I expect a stronger defense of journalists from the WHCA when their safety is at risk.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter, on air, said, “I’m also hearing from White House reporters who are quite angry, who think the association should have spoken out more forcefully … and call this what it is: It’s outrageous. Look, I don’t want to kick somebody while they are down and sick, but McEnany’s behavior, her conduct was outrageous. It’s more evidence of a coverup, more evidence of denialism at the White House up until the point you start coughing and you can’t deny it anymore.”
Lots of angry people around Trump these days. More reporters’ reactions:
In a stunning interview on CNN on Monday morning, New York Times White House reporter Michael D. Shear, who has tested positive for COVID-19, said he had not been contacted by anyone in the White House.
“Nobody in the White House has said ‘boo’ and asked anything about where I was or who I talked to or who else I might have infected,” Shear said. “I think that that just shows you they’re not taking it seriously, at least as it pertains to themselves.”
Shear was on Air Force One last Saturday and spoke with Trump that night. He also was at the White House earlier that day and said that was the last time he was “out and about.”
“So it’s pretty clear,” Shear said, “that somewhere along the course of that day is when I got infected.”
One White House correspondent told Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo, “People are livid. There are a lot of us, like dozens of reporters, who feel it’s unsafe to be doing it the way it’s being done. Literally half the White House has the virus they have downplayed for seven months. I mean, it’s just unnecessarily risking serious illness or death, for no reason.”
https://twitter.com/apoorva_nyc/status/1313232041664745473?s=20
The New York Times: White House Is Not Tracing Contacts for ‘Super-Spreader’ Rose Garden Event.
The White House has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, where at least eight people, including the president, may have become infected, according to a White House official familiar with the plans.
Instead, it has limited its efforts to notifying people who came in close contact with Mr. Trump in the two days before his Covid diagnosis Thursday evening. It has also cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has the government’s most extensive knowledge and resources for contact tracing, out of the process.
Contact tracing is an essential piece of any outbreak investigation and is a key to stopping the virus from spreading further, especially after a potential “super spreader” event where many people may have been infected.
Any of the closely packed guests and staff members at the Rose Garden ceremony could have gone on to transmit the virus to many others, so the White House’s decision not to investigate the cluster of infections, and pinpoint the source, has potentially devastating consequences for hundreds of people, several experts warned.
“This is a total abdication of responsibility by the Trump administration,” said Dr. Joshua Barocas, a public health expert at Boston University, who has advised the City of Boston on contact tracing. “The idea that we’re not involving the C.D.C. to do contact tracing at this point seems like a massive public health threat.”
Too bad. The Trumpists don’t give a shit how many Americans they kill. Anyway, you have to figure they don’t want to find out that Trump himself is probably source of the outbreak.
Hang in there Sky Dancers, only 29 days until the election. Take care of yourselves today, and check in here if you have the time and inclination.
Monday Crazy Go Nuts Reads
Posted: October 5, 2020 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Covid-19, Trumpsterfire 45 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
We Americans have had some really crazy few days even with the last 4ish years being one crazy day after another.
Today, we wonder exactly what Covid-19 hospital protocol allows a patient to ride around the block in a hermetically sealed SUV exposing every person around him in the process. Any idea?
I continually worry about the secret service and all of the workers at the White House. You know, the folks that have worked there forever to keep the place clean, the folks fed, and the garden manicured?
This New York Times article kind of sums that answer up: “The president made a surprise outing from his hospital bed in an effort to show his improvement, but the murky and shifting narrative of his illness was rewritten again with grim new details.” This is written by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman.
President Trump sought to dispel any perception of weakness on Sunday with a surprise and seemingly risky outing from his hospital bed to greet supporters even as his doctors once again rewrote the official narrative of his illness by acknowledging two alarming episodes they had previously not disclosed.
The doctors said that Mr. Trump’s blood oxygen level dropped twice in the two days after he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, requiring medical intervention, and that he had been put on steroids, suggesting his condition might be more serious than initially described. But they insisted that his situation had improved enough since then that he could be released from the hospital as early as Monday.
The acknowledgment of the episodes raised new questions about the credibility of the information provided about the commander in chief of a superpower as he is hospitalized with a disease that has killed more than 209,000 people in the United States. With the president determined not to concede weakness and facing an election in just 30 days, officials acknowledged providing rosy assessments to satisfy their prickly patient.
Determined to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask but no tie, Mr. Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.
So, this is all very quite odd.
Andrew Joseph of Stat writes this: “‘There’s a disconnect’: Outside medical experts question the upbeat portrayal of president’s condition”. Supposedly, Trump has gotten a steroid that’s only given to patients in need of oxygen or ventilation. So, it rather implies he might still be on oxygen and we’re not being told about it’
The main concern: Trump started receiving the steroid dexamethasone, which is recommended only for hospitalized Covid-19 patients who are on ventilators or require oxygen. Trump’s medical team said Sunday they planned to continue giving him dexamethasone even as they touted that Trump was not on supplemental oxygen at that point and not having difficulty breathing.“I think today’s news means he’s sicker than I thought he was on Friday and Saturday,” said Nahid Bhadelia, the medical director of Boston Medical Center’s Special Pathogens Unit.
Outside experts also raised other reasons for skepticism.
For one, Trump has experienced at least two drops in his oxygen levels, his doctors confirmed Sunday. One, on Friday, led to doctors giving the president oxygen at the White House. During the Sunday briefing, the president’s lead physician, Sean Conley, said Trump’s oxygen levels had dropped again Saturday but he wasn’t clear whether oxygen had been provided again. It was that second episode that led the team to start him on dexamethasone, the doctors said. To the outside experts, two periods of low oxygen levels indicated this wasn’t a mild illness.
Multiple Secret Service agents are criticizing President Trump’s brief appearance in an SUV outside Walter Reed Medical Center Sunday evening, accusing the president of putting his protective detail in unnecessary danger.
He’s not even pretending to care now,” an agent who requested anonymity told The Washington Post.
“That should never have happened,” another unidentified agent, who works in both the presidential and first family detail, told CNN. “The frustration with how we’re treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We’re not disposable.”Agents are authorized to decline requests that would place the president at risk, but not those that would put themselves at risk.
This comes from The Hill link above and was written by Zack Budryk
So, given that Republicans seem ready to jump off the cliff with the Orange Dumpsterfire I find this Politco story perplexing: “Republicans gripped by dread as multiple crises swirl. The presidency, control of the Senate and even a quick confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett are all in doubt less than a month from the election.” Evidently quite a few of them are now concerned about their elections. We just got this breaking news too. Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania will NOT run for re-election in 2022.
Trump’s Republican critics have long argued that he was a virus infecting their party that would eventually destroy it. Trump skeptics-turned-supporters, which could describe most Washington Republicans, made a different calculation: If the worst elements of Trump could be contained, then Republicans could keep a Democrat out of the White House, lock in a majority on the Supreme Court and protect their redoubt in the Senate. Even before Trump’s diagnosis, the cost of the deal with Trump was starting to look high. But the path to pushing through Barrett and retaining the Senate and even White House was hardly insurmountable.
That an actual virus has now infected Trump, his wife, his campaign manager, the head of the Republican National Committee, several advisers, and three senators — many of them at a celebration of Barrett’s nomination — thus throwing all three of the GOP’s 2020 goals into chaos, is a plot twist that would be rejected by any writer as just a little too on the nose.
“Trump has done more to derail the Barrett nomination than any Democrat,” said one dejected former senior White House official. “They are screwing themselves, that’s for sure.”
Republicans around the Trumpsterfire who have tested positive for COVID-19 include former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Hope Hicks, Russian Sparrow Melania Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former senior advisor Kellyanne Conway . So far, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller among those who tested negative for the virus
Trump’s fast track of Barrett might be on the slowed down track according to WAPO: “Positive tests for senators raise doubts about fast-track confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court choice”. Thoughts and prayers to those Senators and stay in bed place for as long as you’re told too! This was penned by Seung Min Kim.
From the start, Senate Republican leaders have known their ambitious timeline to get Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before Election Day offered little room for error.
But that tightly crafted schedule has now been thrown into uncertainty with the coronavirus diagnoses of at least two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the fear that other senators could test positive in the coming days. A handful of other GOP senators, on and off the committee, are also isolating as a precaution after being exposed to infected colleagues.
Sensing an opportunity to delay, Democrats are cranking up their push to postpone the Oct. 12 confirmation hearings, citing the safety of members, aides and Barrett herself — waging a public pressure campaign because they have no powers on their own to stop the proceedings.
In a statement to The Washington Post on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) demanded that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) require all members of the Judiciary Committee to be tested before participating in Barrett’s confirmation hearing. Democrats have also insisted that remote participation, even for senators, is inadequate for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
“Moving forward with the committee process when three senators have recently tested positive for covid-19 is irresponsible and dangerous, but doing so without requiring all members to be tested before a hearing in accordance with CDC best practices would be intentionally reckless,” Schumer said in the statement to The Post. “If Chairman Graham doesn’t require testing, it may make some wonder if he just doesn’t want to know the results.”
Lets just hope he does everything possible to sandbag that Graham operation. It might be more succesful though given Lindsey’s election problems.
So that’s it for me today! Just a couple of things. Please be patient with us as we learn how to use this crazy block editor from Word Press. It would cost us $283 odd dollars just to keep it as an add on supported for two years so definitely not worth that. Also, it’s time this week to help us with our annual fee to Word Press for what they do provide us now. It’s about $8 a month for the premium which is renewed for us on the 18th.
Be safe! Check in and tell us what’s up with you. And, what’s on your reading and blogging list today!
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