Friday Reads: Extra! Extra! Unexceptional Nation–full of Idiots–led by Huge Idiot
Posted: April 24, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: COVID19 34 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
So, what does it say when two companies that produce disinfectants and dangerous cleaning products have to remind full grow adults not to drink the shit because, well, the so-called President suggests it might be a way to clean out Covid-19 infected lungs in a Prime Time TV Presser.
Injecting disinfectant? WTF?
From CNN: Lysol maker: Please don’t drink our cleaning products . This is usually why we put these things on high shelves or under child-proof locks in homes with very small children.
The statement followed remarks from President Trump on Thursday on the use of disinfectants.
“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning … it would be interesting to check that,” Trump said. “It sounds interesting to me,” he added.
CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was quick to point out that this is simply wrong.
“He also said it needs to be studied. Actually, it doesn’t. I mean we know the answer to this one,” he said on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Thursday. “I think everybody would know that that would be dangerous and counter-productive.”
Ingesting or injecting disinfectants is dangerous, according to a medical expert employed. Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Stephen Hahn told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I certainly wouldn’t recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant.”
The US Food and Drug Administration regularly warns the public against drinking bleach, or even inhaling fumes from bleach. It’s also irritating to skin.
On Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said calls about poisonings with cleaners and disinfectants had increased more than 20% in the first three months of 2020 — as coronavirus cleaning increased — than from the same period a year earlier. Among cleaners, bleaches accounted for the largest percentage increase in calls from 2019 to 2020.
The problem is that I actually believe most of the Trumperz aren’t smart enough to figure out that they still shouldn’t be drinking bleach and Lysol. That’s a pretty strange statement too. But, it looks like those companies and lots of doctors and health organizations think there will be stupid people trying it because their orange messiah inkled it.
The FDA is warning against “use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems”. This was another Trump pet poison.
You’ll remember a couple in Arizona that found a fish version of that and killed the husband in a kool aid drink to save Trump Town. from the deep state. CNBC outlines the problems with that drug.
The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Friday against taking malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 outside a hospital or formal clinical trial setting after “serious” poisoning and deaths were reported.
The agency said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs, often in combination with antibiotic azithromycin, commonly known as a Z-Pak. It also warned physicians against prescribing the drugs to treat the coronavirus outside of a hospital.
“Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the agency wrote in the notice. “We will continue to investigate risks associated with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 and communicate publicly when we have more information.”
His ignorance as well as his extreme pathologies are killing the country. Michael Gerson–writing for WAPO–states “The GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination.” My question is will its demise come soon enough to save us?
The Trump captivity of the GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination: a failed presidency defended by a cowed party. As President Trump’s malignant narcissism and incompetence have been fully revealed — and can be objectively measured by the level of needless death from covid-19 — his approval among Republicans has remained strong. Across a continent filled with elected Republicans, only a few have taken a stand for sanity and effective governance.
Trump is, no doubt, in a perilous political situation. The activist right wing of his party has seized on social distancing as the health-care equivalent of socialism. The tea party fundraising machine has lurched into loud, clanking motion, trying to manufacture outrage against epidemiology. Some pro-life and pro-family groups have joined in the ill-timed promotion of social anarchy.
The president seldom defies the right-wing populists, and his immediate response was to identify with their anger. But this is a different political circumstance from any Trump has faced. In this case, pleasing the most vocal portion of his base puts another important constituency — older voters — at additional risk of painful, suffocating death. It is difficult to play both sides of this issue. And there are indications in recent polling that seniors have grown increasingly critical of Trump’s pandemic response.
Yet none of this is likely to change the minds of partisan Republicans. Some ignore or dismiss Trump’s cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. Some embrace his cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. And Trump naturally takes continued Republican job approval as an endorsement for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. In this way, Republican tolerance for Trump’s ineptitude and ignorance has made these traits more lethal.
It is sometimes useful to stare the worst possible political outcome full in the face. If Trump were reelected in November, he would place his stamp on Republican identity for a generation. The purges of dissidents would accelerate. Resistance within the party would dwindle from rare to vanishingly rare. A party of angry white people would head toward its demographic doom. And even then, Trump acolytes would probably reject ideological and racial outreach, preferring their resentments to the possibility of deliverance.
The entire party has nothing to offer but greed and craziness.
McConnell would actually take down the truly viable states with good economies to prop up his power agenda.
Unfortunately, it’s looking increasingly likely that tens of millions of Americans will in fact suffer extreme hardship and that there will be devastating cuts in services. Why? The answer mainly boils down to two words: Mitch McConnell.
On Wednesday, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, declared that he is opposed to any further federal aid to beleaguered state and local governments, and suggested that states declare bankruptcy instead. Lest anyone accuse McConnell of being even slightly nonpartisan, his office distributed two memos referring to proposals for state aid as “blue state bailouts.”
A number of governors have already denounced McConnell’s position as stupid, which it is. But it’s also vile and hypocritical.
When I say that we have the resources to avoid severe financial hardship, I’m referring to the federal government, which can borrow vast sums very cheaply. In fact, the interest rate on inflation-protected bonds, which measure real borrowing costs, is minus 0.43 percent: Investors are basically paying the feds to hold their money.
So Washington can and should run big budget deficits in this time of need. State and local governments, however, can’t, because almost all of them are required by law to run balanced budgets. Yet these governments, which are on the front line of dealing with the pandemic, are facing a combination of collapsing revenue and soaring expenses.
The obvious answer is federal aid. But McConnell wants states and cities to declare bankruptcy instead.
And, once again we see the “pro-life” agenda isn’t very pro-life as argued by Timothy Eagen in the NYT.
All of us want the same thing — a road map to the way out. The scientific consensus is clear and not that complicated: We need a significant upgrade of testing, contact tracing to track the infected, nuanced and dutiful social isolation, all to buy time until a vaccine is developed.
But the political way out reveals a stark divide, and some true madness. For Republicans, that pro-life slogan of theirs is just another term for nothing left to lose. They are now the party of death.
When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas doubled down this week on prior remarks elevating commerce above life — There are “more important things than living,” he said on Fox News — he was speaking for a significant slice of his party. People are disposable. So is income. But one is more important.
Whatever we can say is American is Failing. I agree with this NBC think piece. We are not handling this crisis well at all and I’m not proud to say I agree with Chuck Todd of all people.
Without question, it’s the worst crisis the United States has faced since the Great Depression and World War II. And so far, this country’s national leaders and federal government have failed to meet the enormity of the moment.
President Trump has failed to meet the moment — whether it’s in uniting the country, giving it the unvarnished truth of the situation or even just mourning the dead.
Congress has failed the moment — despite spending some $3 trillion in aid and stimulus, many small businesses have been unable to get loans, and state governments are seeing their trust funds depleted to pay out unemployment insurance.
And while individual governors and states have stepped up their game, the entire federal government — collectively — has failed the moment. In the months since the spread first began, there have been 4.7 million coronavirus tests in the nation, which represents less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.
OOps. Too soon! There’s that both siderism. The problem with Congress in the Senate Republican majority who appears to see this as a way to reshape the country into its rural white identity. Try this for size: ” >Bailout money bypasses hard-hit New York, California for North Dakota, Nebraska“. This is from Aaron Glantz.
This was the purpose of the Paycheck Protection Program: to subsidize vulnerable small businesses and avoid massive layoffs. The loans will be forgiven entirely under certain conditions, including a requirement that a company keep all of its employees on the payroll for at least eight weeks. Within weeks, the Small Business Administration had exhausted the $349 billion appropriated by Congress, a pace that President Donald Trump has called “an incredible, incredible success.”
An analysis of 1.6 million Paycheck Protection Program loans by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that 58% of North Dakota’s small businesses got loans through the program. A majority of small businesses in Nebraska and South Dakota, neither of which have shelter-in-place orders, also received help.
It was a different story, however, in states with high death tolls and some of the earliest stay-at-home orders prompted by COVID-19. In New York and New Jersey, where more than 350,000 are infected and more than 20,000 have died, just 18% of businesses got help, Reveal’s analysis found. In California, where more than 3 million workers have filed for unemployment after that state became the first to issue a stay-at-home order, that number was 15%. (Reveal is among the California businesses that received a loan under the program.)
The figures were so stark that they sparked concerns of political interference. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who serves on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said the data raise questions about whether stimulus dollars were deliberately funneled to states that voted for Trump and have Republican governors.
Speier told Reveal that she would be calling for an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
Reveal’s analysis found that businesses in states that Trump won in 2016 received a far greater share of the small-business relief funds than those won by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Eight of the top 10 recipient states – ranked according to the proportion of each state’s businesses that received funding – went to Trump in 2016. Meanwhile, seven of the bottom 10 states, where the lowest proportion of businesses received funding, went to Clinton. Taken together, 32% of businesses in states that Trump won got Paycheck Protection Program dollars, we found, compared with 22% of businesses in states that went to Clinton.
“If it is as it appears, it is downright criminal. So there has to be an investigation,” Speier said, noting that the president has a record of using his office to benefit his family and supporters financially, while seeking to deny government support to those he sees as his political enemies.
“As far as the president of the United States is concerned, if he can stick it to California, he will,” she said.
So, this is beginning to feel like they may try to selectively kill us off as well suppress our vote. Mostly they are destroying their precious notion of American Exceptionalism because Republican and Trumpist agendas are about driving us into banana republic status. This is from the AP’s Calvin Woodard.
At the time of greatest need, the country with the world’s most expensive health care system doesn’t want you using it if you’re sick but not sick enough or not sick the right way.
The patchwork private-public health care system consumes 17% of the economy, unparalleled globally. But it wants you to stay home with your COVID-19 unless you are among the minority at risk of death from suffocation or complications. It wants you to heal from anything you can without a doctor’s touch and put off surgeries of all kinds if they can wait.
In the pandemic’s viral madhouse, the United States possesses jewels of medical exceptionalism that have long been the envy of the world, like the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
But where are the results?
For effective diagnostic testing, crucial in an infectious outbreak, look abroad. To the United Arab Emirates, or Germany, or New Zealand, which jumped to test the masses before many were known to be sick.
Or to South Korean exceptionalism, tapped by Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who accepted a planeload of 500,000 testing kits from Seoul to make up for the U.S. shortfall. The aid was dubbed Operation Enduring Friendship and annoyed Trump, the “America First” president.
Simple gloves. Complicated ventilators. Special lab chemicals. Tests. Swabs. Masks. Gowns. Face shields. Hospital beds. Emergency payouts from the government. Benefits for idled workers. Small business relief. Each has been subject to chronic shortages, spot shortages, calcified bureaucracy or some combination.
“This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade,” Andreessen, a tech investor best known for the Netscape browser in the 1990s, said in his company newsletter.
Yet Trump uses his daily White House briefings to claim success and talk about his poll numbers, TV ratings, favorite theories about science and the praise he gets from governors, who may be at risk of seeing their states intentionally shortchanged by Washington if they don’t say something nice about him.
“A lot of people love Trump, right?” Trump asked himself at the briefing Monday.
He then answered himself. “A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I’m here for a reason, you know. … And I think we’re going to win again, I think we’re going to win in a landslide.”
Polls are beginning to inform Trump that he is behind so he will certainly only get worse and more desperate. One reason? The one thing you can say about “safety moms” is they want safety. Trump is the furthest thing away from that.
Here are some things to read about that:
Trump’s poor poll numbers trigger GOP alarms over November from Politico
Team Trump Fears Suburban Women Will Destroy Him in 2020—and That Coronavirus Is Making It Worse from the Daily Beast
Biden predicts Trump will try to delay November election from the Hill
We will need to be vigilant as ever and more reliant on the Democratic Party to fight like hell. Be safe! Stay Home!! Be kind to yourself!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: What exactly defines a Death Cult?
Posted: April 17, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, American Gun Fetish, religious extremists | Tags: Trump Death Cult, Whitmer protests 21 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m old enough to have a clear memory of Jonestown and the suicide massacre that happened in Guyana in November, 1978. The shocking cult massacre has been documented in movies, books, and periodicals. So what exactly is a Death Cult and can an argument be made that MAGA is exactly that?
This brief history and bit of insight of Jonestown is from The Rolling Stone and was written by David Chiu in 2018. Drinking the Koolaid was then introduced into the American Lexicon as the willingness of people enrapt of a charismatic cult leader to do anything in his name. It is terrifically affiliated with the ideal of the white savior.
People have wondered how Jim Jones, a man who preached racial and social equality, turned evil. But as Tim Reiterman explained in Raven, Jones’ dark qualities – his need to control people, his deceit, and his anger toward people who betray or abandon him – could be traced to his childhood in Indiana. A loner during his youth, Jim would entertain his playmates in the loft of his family’s barn and made them his captive audience (one time, he even locked up his young friends in the barn). He performed experiments on animals and conducted funerals for them.
“I thought Jimmy was a really weird kid,” Jones’ childhood friend Chuck Wilmore recalled in the 2006 documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. “He was obsessed with religion; he was obsessed with death. A friend of mine told me that he saw Jimmy kill a cat with a knife.” According to Jeff Guinn’s book, The Road to Jonestown, Jones also had an early fascination with Adolf Hitler. “When Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, thwarting enemies who sought to capture and humiliate him, Jimmy was impressed,” he wrote.
Sound like any one we know today?
Remember The Branch Davidians and David Koresh? That was certainly more complex than any one understood at the time. How about Heaven’s Gate? That one was a combination of alien conspiracy theories wrapped up in the doomsday prepper culture. It’s difficult to understand how people get wrapped up in these things but they do and they mostly just taking the lemming path over the cliff eventually. And that’s what worries me today.
This Covid-19 Pandemic has brought the tendency to police other people as well as subscribe to some kind of wild proposition that an unseen magical being will save you and no one else. These people also imbue Trump with some kind of papal infallibility which is again, worrying. The combination of evangelical magical thinking and the white rage accompanying Trumpism during a global pandemic should worry us all.
Take this church and pastor in East Baton Roughe, Louisiana, please! “Member of defiant Central church dies from coronavirus illness, but pastor says it’s a lie”. This is from the Baton Rouge Advocate as reported by staff writer David J. MItchell.
A 78-year-old man who attended a Central church that has bucked state stay-at-home restrictions has died from the illness tied to the novel coronavirus.
The East Baton Rouge Parish coroner said Harold Orillion, a parish resident, died from the COVID-19 respiratory illness on Wednesday. Three sources told The Advocate that Orillion had ties to the Life Tabernacle Church. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a link between the man and the church.
The Rev. Tony Spell, the church’s pastor, did not return messages left Thursday about Orillion after the coroner released his death information following a public records request from The Advocate. Spell later in the day confirmed to television stations WAFB and WVLA that Orillion was a parishioner in good standing.
Spell also disputed that Orillion’s death was due to the virus, despite the coroner’s determination. “That is a lie,” Spell told WAFB.
The Columbus Dispatch photo of an anti-social-distancing protest went viral this week. (Joshua A. Bickel/AP)
And here’s the kicker:
Spell’s fight against the order, along with a handful of other religious leaders nationally against similar restrictions, has attracted worldwide attention. He has been charged with six misdemeanor counts of violating Edwards’ orders.
Spell, who has faced criticism over his stand, has made several provocative comments about the virus and the resulting controversy, including telling TMZ that true Christians do not mind dying from the virus but from “fear living in fear, cowardice of their convictions.”
While many houses of worship have converted to online services, Spell maintains that in-person services are essential to his congregation’s faith and financial well-being.
And then of course this: “Louisiana pastor holding services during pandemic asks people to donate stimulus checks to evangelists”. (Via The Hill)
A Louisiana pastor who has drawn criticism for holding in-person church services despite coronavirus guidelines is asking people to donate their stimulus checks to evangelists who “haven’t had an offering in a month.”
In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday, the Rev. Tony Spell called on the public to get behind a new online challenge he is dubbing the #PastorSpellStimulusChallenge.
There are three rules to the challenge, Spell said in the video. The first rule is that it starts on Sunday. The second, he said, is for people to “donate your stimulus money.”
“Rule number three,” he continued, is to “donate it to evangelists, North American evangelists who haven’t had an offering in a month; missionaries, who haven’t had an offering in a month; music ministers, who haven’t had an offering in a month.”
“I’m donating my entire stimulus, $1,200,” Spell added. “My wife is donating her stimulus, $1,200. My son is donating his stimulus, $600.”
Individuals with income under $75,000 and married couples with income less than $150,000 can receive the full amounts of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child under legislation signed into law last month by President Trump.
Spell’s comments come as churches across the country have either closed their doors or moved their services online in efforts to comply with stay-at-home orders issued by states and federal guidelines urging people to avoid unnecessary travel and gatherings exceeding 10 people amid the pandemic.
Yes, he continues to violate the law. (via CNN) This was as of April 1st.
When asked why he will not follow the governor’s mandate, he said, “We have a mandate from the word of the Lord to assemble together. The first amendment says that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the exercise of religion.”
Spell said officers came to him Tuesday and read him his rights, but didn’t arrest him. He said he he was asked to stop having services and he told them that he would not stop.
“We aren’t breaking any laws,” Spell insisted.
Earlier in the day, in a Facebook Live video, after being served the summons at his church by two police officers, he maintained his defiant stance.
“We will continue to have church,” he said. “This is a government overreach. They are asking us as a government to stop practicing our freedom of religion. And we have a mandate from God to assemble and to gather together and to keep doing what we’re doing.”
But, he let’s not stop with my local example but head straight to the DeVos Death Cult and its relentless support of the Mad King in the Oval office. The wacky white neoconfederate followers of the Orange Koolaid are out there trying to kill us over what they consider government overreach. And of course, they’ve focused on a Woman Governor, Christine Whitmer. (Via NBC News)
Asked about the protests at his press conference Thursday, one in which he unveiled his administration’s guidelines for reopening, President Donald Trump said he believed the demonstrators would listen to him and added there is no daylight between his views and the governors when it comes to reopening.
“I think they’re listening. I think they listen to me,” Trump said of the protestors. “They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion, and my opinion is the same as just about all of the governors. They all want to open. Nobody wants to stay shut but they want to open safely. So do I.”
The protests have had a tea party flavor to them, with demonstrators carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and wearing “Make America Great Again” gear. Some have even waved Confederate flags.
“I’m only surprised they can tear themselves away from Rush Limbaugh long enough to go protest,” Philippe Reines, a former top adviser to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, told NBC News.
Critics say they’re angry with the shutdowns, which have curtailed business and leisure activity in the name of a deadly virus they say hasn’t hit their neck of the woods. But health experts have warned it won’t take much for a relatively unaffected place to become a hot spot, as just one infected person is able to spread the virus to dozens of others.
Susan J. Demas writing for the Michigan Advance: “Don’t whitewash the GOP’s extremism on full display during Whitmer protest.”
We were promised it wasn’t a Republican protest. We were promised people were just upset they couldn’t golf or buy seeds (in stores) during a pandemic that’s already killed 2,000 of their neighbors.
But the folks trekking to Michigan’s Capitol Wednesday weren’t carrying rakes or watering cans or cute pun-filled signs about the right to garden (which still would have been ironic, since it was snowing). No, they brought Confederate and Donald Trump flags, AR-15s and a Gov. Gretchen Whitmer doll in a noose.
“She’s the reason we need the 2nd amendment!” multiple people shouted from their cars.
The Michigan Militia showed up to do a recruitment push. The Proud Boys were there. A few hundred people left their cars — even though we were repeatedly assured they’d follow social distancing rules — and strolled down the street with misspelled signs like “Heil Witmer” (replete with a backwards swastika) and clustered together on the Capitol steps for photos. Several pushed conspiracy theories that COVID-19 wasn’t real and insisted they couldn’t get it anyway by violating simple federal health guidelines (nobody volunteered any medical credentials to make such claims). Many brought their kids.
Ambulances couldn’t get through traffic. Who knows how many gas station clerks, restaurant workers, police and reporters protestors encountered and possibly spread the virus to.
It’s important to pull back for a moment. The policies Whitmer and 42 other governors have put in place to stop a pandemic have been carefully crafted by public health officials. It’s not that they want to be a buzzkill or kill the economy (seriously, no politician wants that, just out of sheer self-preservation). It’s because the disease has spread so rapidly and killed so many. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
With almost 30,000 COVID-19 cases, Michigan has the fourth-most in the nation. But the protestors didn’t even do a feint to acknowledging the 2,000 people who have lost their lives or the families they left behind. It was just primal screams against the Democratic governor and calls for Trump to make everything great again.
For a party that’s ostensibly dedicated to the sanctity of life, Republicans have repeatedly and flagrantly demonstrated how little they care about their neighbors dying of an excruciating disease that can feel like shards of glass have filled your lungs.
Where is the humanity?
Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast has an explanation: “Trump’s Culture Warriors Are a Literal Death Cult Now”.
You know where this is headed, right? We all know. Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to turn the election into a red vs. blue culture war battle—not over abortion, not over climate change, not over guns, but this time, over death itself.
Because death is every authoritarian’s last play. An authoritarian leader makes demands of his people. They must cheer more lustily than non-authoritarian people cheer. They must salute in a particular way. They must exonerate him of all error, whether stupidly invading Russia or massively screwing up a pandemic response or shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. And finally, they must prove they are willing to at least flirt with death, if the leader’s hold on power requires it. It’s the final demand on loyalty, and every authoritarian gets there eventually, in one way or another, even those forced to operate within democratic contexts.
Thus, the question of the 2020 election, as Trump and his party attempt to frame it: Are you manly enough to sneer at death, like real men do in the movies (which are fake, of course, but never mind that), or are you one of those pusillanimous patsies who quivers under the bed sheets like some avocado toast-eating intellectual, whining that we have to listen to the experts?
Jason Williams of The Guardian has the details on what shadowy groups and characters are funding this craziness.
On Wednesday in Lansing, Michigan, a protest put together by two Republican-connected not-for-profits was explicitly devised to cause gridlock in the city, and for a time blocked the entrance to a local hospital.
It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which Michigan state corporate filings show has also operated under the name of Michigan Trump Republicans. It was also heavily promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos.
But the protest also attracted far-right protest groups who have been present at pro-Trump and gun rights rallies in Michigan throughout the Trump presidency.
Placards identified the Michigan Proud Boys as participants in the vehicle convoy. Near the state house, local radio interviewed a man who identified himself as “Phil Odinson”.
In fact the man is Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.
The pattern of rightwing not-for-profits promoting public protests while still more radical groups use lockdown resistance as a platform for extreme rightwing causes looks set to continue in events advertised in other states over coming days.
In Idaho on Friday, protesters plan to gather at the capitol building in Boise to protest anti-virus restrictions put in place by the Republican governor, Brad Little.
The protest has been heavily promoted by the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), which counts among its donors “dark money” funds linked to the Koch brothers such as Donors Capital Fund, and Castle Rock, a foundation seeded with part of the fortune of Adolph Coors, the rightwing beer magnat
It’s definitely worth the read. The usual list of icky suspects with money an icky suspects with guns and white nationalists tendencies are all there in the list.
So, this isn’t the most pleasant topic to end the week on but I’ll I can say is “the more you know”.
Don’t you know her when you see her?
She grew up in your back yard
Come back to us Barbara Lewis
Hare Krishna BeauregardSelling bibles at the airports
Buying Quaalude’s on the phone
Hey, you talk about, a paper route
She’s a shut in without a home
Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard (1975) lyrics and music by John Prine.
Be safe! Be well! Stay home!!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Sleep and Dreams In the Time of Coronavirus
Posted: April 16, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: coronavirus, Covid-19, dreams, nightmares, sleep disturbances 22 Comments
The Nightmare, painted in December 2016, depicts what artist Mark Bryan imagined the Trump presidency would be like.
Good Afternoon!!
It seems that the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders have caused lots of people to have bizarre dreams and nightmares. I spent this morning reading numerous articles about this phenomenon. Here’s a sampling:
The Washington Post: ‘Edith Piaf sneezed on my cheesecake’ and other coronavirus dreams.
“I dreamed that we couldn’t record [my podcast],” says Alex Scheer, an Ohio music student and the co-host of “College Sports Connection.” “Because covid-19 spread over the airwaves, and if we recorded, we would be risking each other’s lives.”
“I dreamed that I planned a duck boat tour for a conference,” says Christi Showman Farrar, a Massachusetts librarian. “And we were going to meet at the Prudential Center, which is a shopping mall, but we got there and it was eerily quiet and I couldn’t figure out why. And then I realized there were a few people around, but they were all dressed like Santa or elves, and all the stores had been covered in wrapping paper like they were holiday gifts.”
The NIghtmare, by John Henry Fuseli
Did the wrapping paper signify that the concept of public shopping now seems like an underappreciated treat? Did the elves signify that things won’t be back to normal until Christmas? Does anything in a covid-19 dream signify anything more than the pitiful bleating of our collective subconscious, creating a different ludicrous reality than the ludicrous reality we’re already inhabiting?
“Okay, so I’m not typically a vivid dreamer,” says Hillary Haldane, a professor in Connecticut. Nevertheless, a few nights ago, she found herself face to face with the French singer Edith Piaf.
Except it wasn’t the “real” Edith Piaf, exactly — more like the stylized painting-version of Piaf, from the cover of an album Haldane has been playing for living-room dance parties during the quarantine. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dream Piaf produced an entire cheesecake. Then she sneezed on it. Then she handed it to Haldane.
“Obviously, what made it so vivid was the fear of sneezing and coughing,” Haldane says. “Plus, all of this anxiety around food: Do we have enough of it? Is it safe to go get it? The virus was infecting the one safe activity I still have. Dance parties with my kids.”
The New York Times: Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?
The question of whether “anyone else” has “been having” strange dreams (“lately”) is perennially popular online. It is a spooky yet comforting query: Has anyone else stumbled onto possible evidence that the universe possesses a finite metaphysical infrastructure occasionally detected by the subconscious?
Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński recreated his dreams in his paintings.
In recent weeks, however, the question has been posed with increasing frequency. Local news personalities in particular appear uniquely susceptible to wondering if anybody else is having strange dreams, with meteorologists and anchors in, for instance, Texas, Connecticut, North Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin, and New York, having recently posed it on their public Facebook pages. And the Google query “why am i having weird dreams lately” has quadrupled in the United States in the past week.
National media properties — anxious to provide lighthearted human interest stories to counterbalance news items like a recent announcement that the convenience store chain Wawa was sending a refrigerated truck to New Jersey to serve as a temporary morgue, yet hamstrung by the dearth of novel experiences it is possible to uncover in one’s own home — have hastened to supply the answer.
The answer is: Yes, someone else is having weird dreams lately. (Always.) But are we — humanity — dreaming with more frequency, and more vividly, right now? The answer is: Also, likely, yes — at least for many people.
Read much more about dreaming in traumatic times at the NYT link.
National Geographic: The pandemic is giving people vivid, unusual dreams. Here’s why.
Ronald Reagan pulled up to the curb in a sleek black town car, rolled down his tinted window, and beckoned for Lance Weller, author of the novel Wilderness, to join him. The long-dead president escorted Weller to a comic book shop stocked with every title Weller had ever wanted, but before he could make a purchase, Reagan swiped his wallet and skipped out the door.
Nightmare, by Sigifredo Camacho
Of course, Weller was dreaming. He is one of many people around the world—including more than 600 featured in just one study—who say they are experiencing a new phenomenon: coronavirus pandemic dreams….
With hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic, some dream experts believe that withdrawal from our usual environments and daily stimuli has left dreamers with a dearth of “inspiration,” forcing our subconscious minds to draw more heavily on themes from our past. In Weller’s case, his long-time obsession with comics came together with his constant scrolling through political posts on Twitter to concoct a surreal scene that he interpreted as a commentary on the world’s economic anxieties.
At least five research teams at institutions across multiple countries are collecting examples such as Weller’s, and one of their findings so far is that pandemic dreams are being colored by stress, isolation, and changes in sleep patterns—a swirl of negative emotions that set them apart from typical dreaming.
“We normally use REM sleep and dreams to handle intense emotions, particularly negative emotions,” says Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine who is an expert in dreams. “Obviously, this pandemic is producing a lot of stress and anxiety.”
Read about some of these studies at the link.
Seasons with strange dreams, Marnie Pitts
A few more to explore:
The Guardian: Is coronavirus stress to blame for the rise in bizarre ‘lockdown dreams’?
The Los Angeles Times: You’re not imagining it: We’re all having intense coronavirus dreams.
CNN: The meaning behind your strange coronavirus dreams.
Time: The Science Behind Your Weird Coronavirus Dreams (And Nightmares).
There’s even a website that is collecting coronavirus dreams: IDreamofCovid.com
I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been remembering dreams lately. Since the lockdown started I haven’t slept much at all. I’ve been getting about four hours sleep a night and then waking up around 3-4 AM. I know it’s because of my anxiety about what’s happening. Then lately I started feeling tired and sleepy much of the time. I actually dozed off while writing this post! It turns out I’m not alone.
The Cut: Is My Fatigue Due to Stress or the Coronavirus?
For everyone else who is tired all the time now, and worried about what that means, I got in touch with Andrew Varga, a neuroscientist and physician at the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center, and Curtis Reisinger, clinical psychologist and corporate director at Northwell Health, to learn more.
If I’m tired all the time, does that mean I could have coronavirus?
As is the case with chest tightness, or a cough, or any other single symptom, it’s hard for doctors to make a definitive diagnosis — especially when we still don’t have enough tests. And because fatigue can be a symptom of a number of things (many of them unrelated to your physical health), it’s not a reason to panic. “If you get more symptoms, so it’s not just the fatigue, but fatigue plus body aches plus a cough and a fever, that’s worrisome,” says Varga. “Chest tightness alone, fatigue alone — those are less concerning that you’re about to become really sick.”
Henri Rousseau (The Sleeping Gypsy), 1897
So if I’m not sick, why am I tired every day?
Okay, yes: Many people likely have a pretty good guess as to an answer here. Many essential workers are overworked and underpaid, often with fewer resources available when they do feel sick. Parents are tired because they are parenting all day every day without the relief of school and/or child care. But I work from home, on my couch, and I don’t have kids, so what’s my excuse?
First, says Reisinger, it’s important to understand there are different types of fatigue. There’s physical fatigue, like you might experience after a long run or playing sports. That kind can lead to achy muscles, but it’s usually pretty good for sleep.
There’s mental fatigue, like you might get after doing your taxes or something similarly … taxing. Unless you’re an infectious-disease modeler, this probably isn’t the most likely culprit for your persistent exhaustion at the moment. “When you get mental fatigue, you may jump up in the middle of the night and think of a solution,” says Reisinger, but otherwise, your sleep stays pretty regular.
What’s most troubling, says Reisinger, is the third form of fatigue: emotional. When we’re on high emotional alert — worrying for ourselves, our families and friends, the world at large — we use up a lot of brain energy, and we tend to have a harder time recouping it. “Emotional fatigue is the one that’s going to wake you up at three in the morning or give you insomnia — either you can’t get to sleep, or you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t get back to sleep,” he says.
The Independent: Coronavirus: Why Do People Seem To Feel Groggy and Tired During Lockdown?
The way in which our lives have transformed in such a short space of time has heavily impacted our daily routines, as many individuals no longer have to wake up at a certain time in order to be punctual for school or work.
The Nightmre, by John Anster Fitzgerald
This has seemingly resulted in an increasing number of people experiencing “grogginess” amid the coronavirus pandemic….
“The medical term for grogginess is ‘sleep inertia’,” Dr Natasha Bijlani, consultant psychiatrist at Priory Hospital Roehampton, explains to The Independent.
“Grogginess refers to a phase in between sleep and wakefulness when an individual doesn’t feel fully awake. People who are affected feel drowsy, have difficulty thinking clearly and can be disorientated and clumsy for a while after waking.”
Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California and author of Why We Sleep, compares the way in which a brain wakes up to an old car engine, stating that sleep inertia occurs when “sleepiness is still hanging around in the brain”. “You can’t just switch it on and then drive very fast. It needs time to warm up,” he says.
So why is this happening to so many people now? Read all about it at The Independent.
What’s happening with you today? What stories are you following?
Friday Reads: The Trump Family Crime Syndicate Strikes Again and Again and Again!
Posted: April 3, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: #KushnerForPrison2021, Nepotism 15 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
It’s very difficult to think about how much the current administration is doing wrong during this crisis because it is costing lives. Nepotism in the White House is as rampant and as insidious as the virus itself. It basically puts lives and treasure in the hands of those least prepared to do the right thing. As usual, the lack of basic human decency and character at the top has once again brought us into the cursed hands of Jared Kushner.
At one of the most perilous moments in modern American history, Mr. Kushner is trying in a disjointed White House to marshal the forces of government for the war his father-in-law says he is waging. A real estate developer with none of the medical expertise of a public health official nor the mobilization experience of a general, Mr. Kushner has nonetheless become a key player in the response to the pandemic.
Because of his unique status, he has made himself the point of contact for many agency officials who know that he can force action and issue decisions without going to the president. But while Mr. Kushner and his allies say that he has brought more order to the process, the government’s response remains fragmented and behind the curve.
Some officials said Mr. Kushner had mainly added another layer of confusion to that response, while taking credit for changes already in progress and failing to deliver on promised improvements. He promoted a nationwide screening website and a widespread network of drive-through testing sites. Neither materialized. He claimed to have helped narrow the rift between his father-in-law and General Motors in a presidential blowup over ventilator production, one administration official said, but the White House is still struggling to procure enough ventilators and other medical equipment.
Perhaps most critical, neither Mr. Kushner nor anyone else can control a president who offers the public radically different messages depending on the day or even the hour, complicating the White House’s effort to get ahead of the crisis. One moment Mr. Trump is talking about reopening the country by Easter, the next he is warning of more than 100,000 deaths. In the afternoon, he threatens to quarantine tens of millions of people in the Northeast, then in the evening he backs down.
In an interview, Mr. Kushner would not discuss the president’s actions but said he viewed himself as an enabler of government agencies to overcome obstacles. “From the White House, you can move a lot faster,” he said. “I’ve put members of my team into a lot of components. What we’ve been able to do is get people very quick answers.”
But to some in the agencies, his team’s arrival has only exacerbated an already dysfunctional situation. In recent days, administration officials said, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which traditionally coordinates the government’s responses to disasters, has received surprise directives from the White House — including to dispatch deliveries of medical equipment to states that had not even submitted formal requests based on which governor got Mr. Trump on the telephone.
Today, CREW announced an effort to shine light on Kushner’s activities and possible profiteering.
Kushner’s deep involvement in President Trump’s re-election campaign from the White House has been widely reported. Kushner reportedly is “positioning himself now as the person officially overseeing the entire [Trump] campaign from his office in the West Wing, organizing campaign meetings and making decisions about staffing and spending.” He also reportedly oversees several elements of the campaign, including fundraising, strategy and advertising. Kushner has not shied away from touting his involvement in President Trump’s re-election campaign over the past year. admitting to working “to set goals and objectives” for his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
As recently as March 2020, Kushner was scheduling meetings alongside President Trump, Hope Hicks and campaign staff inside the White House on polling numbers. While the coronavirus crisis derailed the meeting before the presentation began, Kushner’s inclusion in the meeting indicates he continues to overlap his official and campaign duties.
“OSC needs to investigate Kushner’s behavior to ensure that he is complying with the Hatch Act,” said Bookbinder. “There is no room in our government for top officials who deliberately violate ethics laws.”
Michelle Goldberg is even more adept at explaining why Kushner is the last person you would want injected into this process.
Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.
According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)
Even now, it’s hard to believe that someone with as little expertise as Kushner could be so arrogant, but he said something similar on Thursday, when he made his debut at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing: “People who have requests for different products and supplies, a lot of them are doing it based on projections which are not the realistic projections.”
Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.
Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.
I don’t think the Kushners are going to be able to return to NYC ever frankly. Seth Meyers even got into the pile one (Via Vanity Fair).
White House senior advisor and President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law Jared Kushner made his first appearance at the White House coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, one day after Vanity Fair reported he had taken a larger role in the government response to the health crisis—with a particular interest in the supply of ventilators available to each state, and the federal government’s role in procuring more.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” Kushner said on Wednesday. He later added, “Some governors you speak to or senators, and they don’t know what’s in their state.” The comments were roundly criticized on social media, but kept consistent with what Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has reported about Kushner’s response to New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who has plead for more than 30,000 ventilators. (Dr. Anthony Fauci has confirmed that number as well). “I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators,” Kushner reportedly said during a White House meeting, according to a person present.
On Thursday’s edition of Late Night, Seth Meyers provided a response to Kushner’s purported comment. “Oh, you’re doing your own projections? Did your parents just buy you a TI-84?” he asked. “You’re not qualified to do anything, let alone tell New York how many ventilators they need. You’re a nepotism case, and you only got the White House job because you married into the family, and because the security guards believed your fake ID.”
Meyers mocked Kushner relentlessly during the tail end of his latest A Closer Look segment, referring to him as the person in charge of “this shitshow” and joking that Kushner is “the guy Slenderman has nightmares about.”
Matt Johnson @HotPockets4All
And in an opinion from Lloyd Green writing for The Guardian: “Jared Kushner’s coronavirus overreach puts more American lives on the line.” No Shit Sherlock!!!
Jared Kushner is not a guy to turn to for sound political advice. Most recently, he reportedly told the president that Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, was being “alarmist” after he announced that his state required 30,000 ventilators to help get through the pandemic.
To add insult to injury, Kushner also bragged of his own wisdom and told those assembled that Cuomo was wrong. According to Vanity Fair, Kushner declared: “I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.”
The princeling has helped place American lives and bodies on the line. New York’s hospitals have become combat zones, its morgues and funeral homes look like abattoirs. Meanwhile, the US is locked down and the administration is projecting up to a quarter-million dead even if everything goes right.
American carnage is now. We may witness more deaths in months than its troops suffered in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam after years of fighting.
When Mike Pence compares the US to Italy, we have a problem whose glaring scars will be felt long after Donald Trump leaves office. Coronavirus won’t be disappearing in a matter of days despite the president’s earlier assurances. Trump ignored the intelligence community and his national security staff, and now we must pay a collective price.
Unfortunately, Kushner doesn’t only suffer from intellectual overreach. Self-dealing may have made a cameo too in the middle of crisis, and we have seen this movie before. Earlier, the Kushners had attempted to attract capital from China, by touting EB-5 visas in exchange for investments and looked to Anbang, a Chinese conglomerate, to bail them out of their real estate positions.
When Kushner was boasting about data and Trump was going on about testing websites, they were probably referring to Oscar Health, an insurance company tied to the Kushner family. In turn, Oscar appears to have been involved in the government’s efforts to map the spread of the disease.
According to reports and filings, Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, still owns a piece of Oscar, and Jared belatedly divested his interest after entering government. If the Trump Organization can bill the Secret Service when they guard the president at his personal properties, why can’t the Kushner kids make a few dimes off the taxpayer?
So, anyway, the shit show continues and we’re at the bottom of that slope it seems.
Please stay safe and check to let us know how you’re doing!!!
I’m sharing this link to Mister Roger’s Neighborhood because I’m still in shock about our city’s treasure and some one who always shared his music and talent with every one as a performer, father, and teacher. I was fortunate to hear him, known him and learn from him. You can also see part of that here in this tribute from Jazz from Lincoln Center with his very young sons that he taught very well.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#QuarantineAndChill Friday Reads: The Corona Virus Times
Posted: March 13, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because | Tags: corona virus 20 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
How’s that Social Distancing thing going for you? I will fully admit to doing that ever since 2016 when the Trump Virus was let loose in the world. I mean you could run into something unpleasant like a TV turned to FOX News. This self isolation time just means I’m now not alone alone in the entire self isolation thing. I can look at my window and know every one is avoiding each other on my street now. It’s not just me avoiding them.
I’m venturing out shortly to hit the pharmacy at my local ghetto Walgreen’s. I’ve been noticing that the public bus drivers are masked and not in the traditional Mardi Gras sense. A quick conversation with a concierge whose a long time neighbor and hospitality worker told me he’d spent the last few days doing nothing but cancellations. My last lecture on ground was Wednesday night and I’m trying to figure out what kind of tools I have at my disposal to spend the rest of term teaching a course in a school that basically has no remote distance programs and whose only remote distance experience was basically post Katrina. It seems they have no bandwith for these number of classes/students. I will be helping fellow faculty members figure out what to do on Monday. I’ve been scheduled to provide a 2 hour seminar. But really, if the tools aren’t there already I doubt this will be easy.
My last major discussion with my students was about the stock market and had airplane stock bottomed yet? Simultaneously, Trump was delivering the message that Europeans–from some random countries but not the UK and Ireland–were going to be denied access to the US. For some reason, Trump’s worried about Europe having so many “open borders” as if a virus can’t go any where if there’s a drawbridge up in a castle. US Equity markets spent all day yesterday crashing to a point we hadn’t experienced since 1987. Remember those Reagan Wonder Economy years? Me neither.
Let’s face it. The Trump administration is simultaneously bumbling and toxic. How much more can we take of this? From The Atlantic and Republican Peter Wehner: “The Trump Presidency Is Over. It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain.” We can only hope.
To be sure, the president isn’t responsible for either the coronavirus or the disease it causes, COVID-19, and he couldn’t have stopped it from hitting our shores even if he had done everything right. Nor is it the case that the president hasn’t done anything right; in fact, his decision to implement a travel ban on China was prudent. And any narrative that attempts to pin all of the blame on Trump for the coronavirus is simply unfair. The temptation among critics of Donald Trump to use the coronavirus pandemic to get back at Trump for every bad thing he’s done should be resisted, and schadenfreude is never a good look.
That said, the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few critical weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.
“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration and is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, told the Washington Post. “To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture.”
Earlier this week, Anthony Fauci, the widely-respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose reputation for honesty and integrity have been only enhanced during this crisis, admitted in a congressional testimony that the United States is still not providing adequate testing for the coronavirus. “It is failing. Let’s admit it.” He added, “The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not.”
BB’s featured many articles about the absolute ineptitude of the Trumpist Regime to alleviate any of the current problems many which they have created. We have the usual call for the Republican cure all economic apple cider vinegar economic tool–tax cuts for large companies and rich folks–being bandied about when retail stores already have suffered a lack of customers and just about every major sporting and entertainment venue in the country has shut down taking jobs for minimum wage workers. Hmmm, no income no income taxes so what good are tax cuts to the rich at this point other than to gratuitously point out the you want the rest of us dead? However, if you can’t work and you don’t get paid, how you going to eat, pay the water bill, or keep a roof over your head?
So, tough luck for every one depending on Medicaid to get through this. “Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis” via the LA Times. As usual, we get to eat moon pies which is probably the Trumpvian versio of eating cake.
Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.
In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.
But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.
That’s making it harder for states to quickly sign up poor patients for coverage so they can get necessary testing or treatment if they are exposed to coronavirus.
And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.
“If they wanted to do it, they could do it,” said Cindy Mann, who oversaw the Medicaid program in the Obama administration and worked with states to help respond to the H1N1 crisis in 2009.
One reason federal health officials have not acted appears to be President Trump’s reluctance to declare a national emergency. That’s a key step that would clear the way for states to get Medicaid waivers to more nimbly tackle coronavirus, but it would conflict with Trump’s repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic.
I guess Trumpvian national emergencies are only tools to get walls built through wild life refugees and chop up people’s cattle ranches to stop women with children from seeking asylum. However, several people testing positive for the virus got access to Trump who is still holding rallies and eagerly jerking hands around including Brazil’s president. And Ivanka may have got it from an Aussie official. William Barr also met with that same Australian official who tested positive.
Really, it’s likely time we talk massive bailouts and not just those aimed at Wall Street. Yes, I know we’re already bailing out farmers and others in deep because of Trump’s awful trade policies but what are we going to do with all these folks that don’t have paid leave or can’t just telecommute?
We do have some information coming from the NYT on a possible stimulus package that is supposedly nearing agreement between the administration and congress.
The legislation, according to a letter Ms. Pelosi sent to her members, will include enhanced unemployment benefits, free virus testing, aid for food assistance programs and federal funds for Medicaid. The package also ensures 14 days of paid sick leave, as well as tax credits to help small- and medium-size businesses fulfill that mandate. Language was still being drafted for provisions related to family and medical leave, according to a Democratic aide, as staff members worked through the night to prepare the bill.
Ms. Pelosi, in her letter to lawmakers, also said that the House would soon pursue another package “that will take further effective action that protects the health, economic security and well-being of the American people.”
The fast-moving measure reflected a sense of urgency in Washington to enact a fiscal stimulus in the face of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the financial markets, which have proved impervious to other interventions. The Federal Reserve, in a drastic attempt to ensure Wall Street remained functional as volatility roiled even normally staid bond markets, said it would promptly inject as much as $1.5 trillion in loans into the banking system and broaden its purchases of Treasury securities. But neither the Fed’s actions, nor a plan by the European Central Bank to offer cheap loans to banks and step up its bond-buying campaign, were enough to assuage investors, who sent the S&P 500 down 9.5 percent.
Amanda Marcotte–writing for Salon–believes the Republican Party’s ideology brought us to this point and I agree. Republicans have become rabid take no prisoner free marketeers for every one but their buddies and total suck ups to religious nuts and science deniers.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell smelled an evil liberal conspiracy on Thursday, one designed to steal away his decades of tireless work to kneecap the federal government. The Democratic-majority House had passed a large emergency bill, designed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and McConnell was absolutely certain Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were trying to pull one over on him.
“Unfortunately, it appears at this hour that the speaker and House Democrats instead chose to produce an ideological wish list that was not tailored closely to the circumstances,” McConnell said. He accused Democrats of exploiting this situation, saying the bill addresses “various areas of policy that are barely related, if at all, to the issue before us.”
There’s a lot at stake here, but apparently the big sticking point for McConnell was a provision requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to employees, which McConnell claims would “put thousands of small businesses at risk.”
In reality, of course, this is just common sense. As the New York Times editorial board noted, companies that don’t offer paid sick leave “are endangering their workers and customers.” A lot of workers with public-facing jobs — such as food service workers and retail employees — come into close contact with dozens or hundreds of people a day. But they are the people least likely to be allowed to stay home without losing their jobs, or at least losing a paycheck.
McConnell is so poisoned by his right-wing ideology that he can’t see this, or chooses not to. Instead, he’s standing firm on the long-standing Republican tendency to view employers as feudal lords who should be allowed to treat employees however they wish — even, apparently, if that means allowing a deadly disease to rip through the population, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people if it is not checked.
This is another reminder that the Republican party is hardly pro-life.
So, the pharmacy undid whatever tech problems my order was having and has informed me I can go pick the damn pills up. I probably should buy new underwear so I can impress any medics that have to show up on my street which according to my mother was much more important than a stockpile of tp. This post also turned up late due to the blue screen of death which was basically Microsoft’s way of crashing my computer to update it. And I will be back with a few things from the grocery store beans, root vegetables and stuff that keeps like my depression surviving okie Nana taught me. Stews for every one!!! This is the new reality! Or maybe it’s just the old with internet.
Have a great time hunkering down with some on healthy you love!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments