Trump is ok with it if lots more people die because he tries to “re-open” the economy.

President Donald Trump said in an exclusive interview with ABC “World News Tonight” Anchor and Managing Editor David Muir on Tuesday that “it’s possible there will be some” deaths as states roll back restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus, acknowledging that it was the choice the country faces to reopen and jumpstart the economy.

…

In addition to the president’s acknowledgement directly to Muir that it’s “possible there will be some” deaths as a cost of reopening the country, the president also acknowledged during his visit to Arizona that there will be some who are “affected badly” by

… Read the rest

Urgent matters:

https://twitter.com/PolicyFor/status/1257734990441390080 https://twitter.com/PolicyFor/status/1257734993134211072

How can anyone be dim enough to think that because Jane Wellmeaning from Accounting signs herself “Jane Wellmeaning she/her” therefore the organization is “trans-inclusive”? What do the two even have to do with each other?

Nothing really; rather, it’s a shibboleth, a hoop to jump through, a symbol, a test, a genuflection, a self-advertisement, a blockade, a display of heightened sensitivity and (much as I hate to say it) virtue. Yes, it’s that stale trope virtue-signaling. It’s not a trope I love because it’s applied way too broadly and often, and in my view not always fairly. But this? It’s such a crappy and stupid idea in the first place, and so irrelevant to pretty … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Freemage on But he’s the second Lincoln.

I went to The Lincoln Project’s website:

OUR MISSION

Defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.

We do not undertake this task lightly nor from ideological preference. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain. However, the priority for all patriotic Americans must be a shared fidelity to the Constitution and a commitment to defeat those candidates who have abandoned their constitutional oaths, regardless of party. Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.

I have two issues with them.

1: Too little, too late. This group should’ve been paying for ads and stirring up conflict with the Orange … Read the rest

Trump thinks it’s time to put this whole pandemic thing to bed.

Trump administration officials are telling members and staff of the coronavirus task force that the White House plans to wind down the operation in coming weeks despite growing evidence that the crisis is raging on, Maggie Haberman reports.

Ok it’s raging on but it’s boring, all right? Trump has tv to watch and lies to tell, and this whole “task force” caper is a big yawn now.

A top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who has helped oversee the task force, Olivia Troye, has told senior officials involved in the task force to expect the group to wind down within weeks, a notice echoed by

… Read the rest

Remember when Trump removed Rick Bright as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority? And we were told he was working on a whistleblower report? He’s filed the report.

A federal scientist who says he was ousted from his job amid a dispute over an unproven malaria drug promoted by President Trump said on Tuesday that a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly pressured him to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the clients of a well-connected lobbyist, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.

It’s marketing again. Marketing über alles. Yes yes yes pandemic we know we know but steer the $$$ to the LOBBYIST.

Dr. Rick Bright, who was the director of

… Read the rest

Francine Prose has thoughts on Trump’s cult of callous brutalism:

[U]ltimately our president’s failure of empathy is less disturbing than the ways in which it appears to resonate with his supporters. He and his allies have framed our response to the crisis in terms of partisan politics, to imply (incorrectly, as the polls suggest) that tough conservatives are eager to get back to work sooner than scaredy-cat, stay-at-home progressives.

The flag-waving, gun-toting, defiantly unmasked protesters storming the capitol buildings in Michigan and Wisconsin would seem to support that view.

Indeed they would, and isn’t that bizarre. A virus isn’t political. It’s not “liberal” or “hard left” or even “socialist” to want to avoid a lethal virus and to avoid … Read the rest

Apparently Trump is livid about a Republican campaign ad:

President Trump lashed out after an ad titled Mourning in America criticized his response to the coronavirus pandemic. The ad was released by The Lincoln Project, a super-PAC launched by a handful of Republicans including George Conway, a prominent lawyer and husband to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

Show us the ad then.

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1257348720988913666… Read the rest

Owen Jones is well known for being…what to call it…officious is perhaps the best word. For poking into stuff that’s not really his concern, for seeking out people to prod and scold and censure, for being tooth-grindingly self-righteous and smug. He is of course a devoted Trans Ally and policer of women who don’t think Gender Indenniny is the most important cause of all time.

His latest exercise in policing other people is a WHAT IS THAT ON HIS BOOKSHELF.

Why does Michael Gove and his wife own a copy of a book by David Irving, one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers on earth https://t.co/53xI6UFyBa

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) May 3, 2020

Never mind that, why does he have … Read the rest

The Post tells the story of how Trump and Kushner put Trump’s continued grip on power ahead of the survival of X thousands of their fellow citizens.

In late March Trump was disgruntled about models that predicted deaths from the virus ranging from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans at best, but he was much more disgruntled about the economy and his prospects. What’s a quarter of a million people compared to the next four years of Donald Trump’s life?

Trump was apprehensive about so much carnage on his watch, yet also impatient to reopen the economy — and he wanted data to justify doing so.

He wanted data to justify doing what he wanted to do, as opposed to … Read the rest

A virtual vaccine summit:

World leaders came together in a virtual online summit Monday to pledge billions of dollars to quickly develop vaccines and drugs to fight the coronavirus.

Missing from the roster was the Trump administration, which declined to participate, but highlighted from Washington what one official called its “whole-of-America” efforts in the United States and its generosity to global health efforts.

Why did the Trump administration decline to participate? Is Trump too busy fantasizing that he’s the new Lincoln?

The conference, led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a half-dozen countries, was set to raise $8.2 billion from governments, philanthropies and the private sector to fund research and mass-produce drugs, vaccines and

… Read the rest

What went wrong? No battery in the smoke alarm:

The disastrously tardy, inadequate, confused, and (for many citizens) confusing response of the federal government to covid-19, both before and after the first case, derives from too many factors to list here, but I’ll mention two: failure to appreciate the sars and mers warnings, both delivered by other coronaviruses; and loss of capacity at high government levels, within recent years, to understand the gravity and immediacy of pandemic threats. The result of that loss is what Ali Khan means by lack of imagination. Beth Cameron, a former head of the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense on the National Security Council staff, calls it the absence of “the

… Read the rest

https://twitter.com/Rschooley/status/1257160144468668418… Read the rest

Trump decided Lincoln would be a good look on him.

President Trump gave a two-hour interview to Fox News on Sunday night in the Lincoln Memorial. His mix of self-pity and self-congratulation was startling, especially given the backdrop, as more than 67,000 Americans have been killed by an invisible enemy that has yet to be contained and the country plunges deeper into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Yebbut look. Lincoln. Trump is another Lincoln. Right? Sure.

“They always said … nobody got treated worse than [Abraham] Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse,” said Trump, pointing toward the statue of a president who was assassinated days after winning the Civil War. “You know, I believe we’ve done

… Read the rest

Thank you for your poetry submission to @NewYorker. We get 1,000s of submissions each day from the president and can only read a small fraction. After careful consideration, we felt that, while full of creative punctuation, this did not suit our editorial needs at this time. https://t.co/nPhSD14FSH

— Joel Stein (@thejoelstein) May 3, 2020

… Read the rest

The historian Eric Foner from a talk at Swarthmore in 2013:

One other point, and this I think is important to anybody here who is studying in a history class, you will have heard about this, not necessarily, but reconstruction is a prime example of what we call the politics of history. I’m not just talking about a historian is a Democrat or a Republican or something like that, I’m talking about the way historical interpretation both reflects and helps to shape the politics of the present, the time that is the historian is writing in.

For many, many years, certainly into the, well past the middle of the 20th century, what we call the old or standard view

… Read the rest

The headline:

Female spaces need better protection after trans woman sex assault on girl, say campaigners

The subhead:

Campaigners have called for greater protection of female-only spaces after a trans woman sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet.

How do they know the perp is a trans woman? How do they know the perp is not just a man who claims to be a trans woman so that he can use the women’s toilets for the purpose of assaulting girls? How does anybody know that? How can can anybody ever know that? Given the adamant ideology that a trans woman is anyone who claims to be a trans woman (and that said trans woman is also a … Read the rest

Robert Reich on Trump’s kill them all plan to “re-open the economy”:

Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.

But of course the economy isn’t going to “come roaring back” no matter what Trump does. But never mind that, he’s going to force a re-opening no matter how many people die gasping for breath.

Step 1: make it a choice between the virus and starvation.

Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.

Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting

… Read the rest

The dictator dictates:

The White House has blocked Dr Anthony Fauci from testifying to Congress, saying it would be “counterproductive” for the senior member of the White House coronavirus taskforce to talk about the government’s response to the pandemic in a House committee hearing.

“Counterproductive” to whom? What product would Fauci’s testifying be counter to? Why would it be bad for Congress to oversee the Trump administration’s incompetent response to a pandemic that has killed 70 thousand of the country’s people in a few weeks?

On Twitter on Saturday morning, Trump insisted it was safe for the Senate to return to the Capitol.

…

“Likewise the House, which should return but isn’t because of Crazy Nancy P[elosi],” Trump added.

… Read the rest

Oh well if you’re going to threaten the employees ok then.

The mayor of an Oklahoma city amended an emergency declaration requiring customers to wear face masks while inside businesses after store employees were threatened with violence.

Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce announced the change Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the declaration took effect.

“In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse,” City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. “In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm.”

So rules that protect public safety are no longer rules that … Read the rest