This is a flattering photo.

Seen at the Guardian.

About those fires…

The death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities feared more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states, and politicians lambasted Donald Trump for his response to the escalating crisis.

It’s what he does so as not to panic us.

The White House announced that Trump would visit California on Monday for “a briefing”, a move that drew strong criticism from Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles.

“He’s going to come out here and probably tell us ‘I’m going to send you rakes’ instead of more help,” Garcetti told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the president’s claims that wildfires in the state are caused by poor forestry management and not fuelled by the climate crisis.

Not even send us more rakes but just shout at us for not raking.

Trump issued a disaster declaration in August but has been largely quiet about the wildfires since. At a rally in Nevada on Saturday night, he said: “I spoke to the folks in Oregon, Washington … they’ve never had anything like this. But, you know, it is about forest management … and other things, but forest management.”

That part is true, but the problem is not failure to “rake the forest floor.” The problem is failure to allow controlled burns, with the result that there’s way too much fuel.

I can hear the fog horns from ferries out on the Sound right now, because the smoke mixed with fog is so thick visibility is a few yards/metres.

It’s fine that Trump lied to us about the virus and that thousands of unnecessary deaths are the result. Totally fine.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, and Jason Miller, a campaign senior adviser, tried to mitigate the damage caused by Trump’s taped confessions to Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, for his book Rage, by playing up the president’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 190,000 in America.

“The president was calm and steady in a time of unrest and uncertainty,” McDaniel insisted on NBC’s Meet the Press.

That’s not the Trump we know. He’s very volatile and he has the attention span of a gnat.

“What would it mean if the president came out and said, ‘The sky is falling and everybody should be panicked’? He presented calm and a steady hand and a plan. And that is what a president should do.”

False choice dingdingding! That’s not what he should have said. What he should have said is that everybody should follow the medical advice of people who understand the subject because the virus is a serious thing. That’s all. Nothing about the sky falling, nothing about everybody please panic starting NOW.

On ABC’s This Week, Miller said Trump had always taken the coronavirus “very seriously” and claimed: “We encourage people very strongly to wear the masks.”

And that’s why we’ve seen Trump in a mask only twice. That’s why we’ve seen him sneer at journalists wearing masks several times. Much encourage strongly, very seriously.

The majority of attendees at a Trump rally in Nevada on Saturday were neither distanced nor wearing masks. At another rally in North Carolina earlier in the week, the president mocked social distancing as a tool to prevent the spread of infection.

That’s Trump taking it very seriously.

McDaniel was asked if Trump’s downplaying of the threat was a political gambit, suggesting his dire warnings of anarchy and lawlessness in the wake of recent protests against racism and police brutality showed “this isn’t a president who shies away from trying to incite panic or trying to fire folks up”.

“Think what would have happened if he’d have gone out and said, ‘This is awful, we should all be afraid, we don’t have a plan’,” McDaniel said.

Again – that is not the suggestion.

Another Trump loyalist, trade adviser Peter Navarro, was challenged on CNN’s State of the Union over the administration’s assertions it had acted swiftly in response to the pandemic, specifically in shutting down travel from China.

“[On] 31 January [he] pulls down the flights, saves probably hundreds of thousands of American lives,” Navarro claimed, even though the “ban” was only a partial restriction that still allowed tens of thousands to travel, while travel from Europe was not shut down till later, allowing the virus in that way.

Navarro also attempted to claim Trump had been “straightforward” with the American people, even though the president’s own words on tape confirm he was purposefully withholding information. The Trump adviser also attacked CNN, saying without apparent irony it was “not honest with the American people”, before being cut off.

“The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population,” host Jake Tapper said, “and the United States has more than 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

Yes but CNN has cooties.

The CBC reports – not honestly – on the Rowling billboard matter.

A billboard on a busy part of Hastings Street in Vancouver supporting author J.K. Rowling’s controversial views about gender identity was hastily covered over the day after it was put up.

That’s why I say “not honestly.” The headline is more honest:

I Love J.K. Rowling sign makes brief, controversial appearance in Vancouver

That’s fair, but the first sentence is shamefully dishonest. The billboard does not “support J.K. Rowling’s controversial views about gender identity.” All the billboard does is express love for Rowling. That’s it. “I heart [love] JK Rowling”; the end. Most people who see the billboard aren’t going to know that trans activists consider Rowling an Evil TERF, or that Rowling has views on what “trans” means and what it implies for women’s rights. That means that most people are not going to see a hidden message about the tension between women’s rights and the current version of trans activism. That means it’s just dishonest to claim that the hidden meaning is actually not hidden at all but explicitly printed out on the billboard. The hidden meaning is hidden.

It was a test, you know. They failed it, you know.

The test was “will they even suppress a message expressing love for Rowling, a message that doesn’t say a word about her views?” And in mere hours the answer was yes we will. FAIL.

Amy Hamm, who lives in New Westminster and Chris Elston, a South Surrey resident, paid Pattison Outdoor, an arm of the Jim Pattison Group to put up the sign on Friday around 6:30 a.m. PT.

They copied a similar sign that was erected in Edinburgh over the summer to support the famous author’s claims that having individuals self-identify their gender could pose a threat to women and children who are not transgender.

The Edinburgh sign was Posie Parker’s work.

Posts Elston and Hamm put on social media about the billboard attracted criticism including Vancouver City Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung who tweeted that it was “meant to to stoke hate, exclusion and division.”

Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung should take a look at the hate and abuse that was vomited out about Rowling over the summer.

Morgane Oger, a transgender advocate and a former B.C. NDP provincial candidate, said the sign is a devious way to push a message of hate about gender identity although many people would not understand what it means.

Actually it’s the other way around – the buzzwords around trans activism are a devious way to push a message that men can literally be women if they think they are say they are feel as if they are imagine they are fantasize they are. The devious pushing is from the trans “community,” not from feminists.

“The purpose of this sign was to harass the community, targeting them because of who they are and trying to get them to react through a message only they recognize.”

Says the misogynist guy who has been bullying a Vancouver rape crisis shelter for years.

The political hacks Trump hired have been forcing the CDC to water down its reports to make Trump look less like a mass murderer.

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

By “health department” they mean HHS.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

That’s like the PR people for the fire department telling the fire trucks to slow down because all this rushing about with sirens going will undermine the mayor’s optimistic messages about the house fires.

Optimistic messages are all very well (unless they’re just lies, as Trump’s generally are), but they’re not the goal of HHS or the fire department. Use the right tools for the job. When there’s a catastrophe happening the goal is to mitigate or halt it, rather than cheering people up about it at the expense of mitigating or halting it.

The people at the CDC have tried to resist but they’ve given way a few times. That is not good news.

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation’s public health work for decades.

But now the hoodlums in the employ of the biggest hoodlum are messing with that. Never mind the public health, it’s all about perpetuating Donald Trump’s reign of destruction.

[S]ince Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department’s new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Nothing must be allowed to remain independent of the political needs of the criminal Donald Trump. The survival of 331 million people is worth nothing compared to the continued dictatorship of the criminal Trump.

Caputo’s team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that “the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.”

So the CDC was prevented from saying that for a month. One wonders how many people took hydroxychloroquine as a result.

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to “hurt the President” in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration,” appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump’s push to reopen schools. “CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear.”

Well, yes, their aim is clear: to control disease. Trump’s aim is to boost Trump. We the people are more interested in avoiding COVID than making Trump dictator for life.

This crap again.

There’s a new billboard in Vancouver that says “I heart JK Rowling.” You can write the rest yourself.

A billboard in East Vancouver championing author J.K. Rowling, who has been widely accused of transphobia, was removed Saturday after drawing outrage and condemnation.

The billboard didn’t “draw” outrage and condemnation, people decided to direct outrage and condemnation at it.

Let’s remember that Rowling has never said she hates trans people, or wished bad things on them. Let’s remember that she doesn’t advocate violence or repression or revenge or anything of that kind. Let’s remember that her point is that women have rights too.

The billboard, which was visible from busy Hastings Street, was black with white text that read, “I (heart) JK Rowling.”

Not “I heart Hitler” or “I heart Stalin” or “I heart Mugabe.” Just “I heart JK Rowling” – the woman who wrote that popular series of kids’ books.

Vancouver city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung said she was discouraged to see the billboard put up in her city, given Rowling’s controversial statements criticizing the trans rights movement. 

Rowling’s statements are only “controversial” because people like Kirby-Yung have accepted the propaganda.

Photos of the untarnished billboard were shared on social media on Sep. 11. But when CTV News Vancouver visited the billboard on Sep. 12, it had been marked up with blue paint splatter. About an hour later, a Twitter user posted a video of a person hoisted up in a cherry picker and covering over the billboard.

All because Rowling thinks women’s rights matter too.

Nicola Spurling, a trans YouTube personality and LGBTQ2+ advocate in Metro Vancouver, tweeted out her disapproval of the billboard before it was covered up. She asked for it to be taken down and questioned why the billboard company allowed it in the first place.

Probably because all it says is “I heart JK Rowling.” She’s not Stalin, she’s not Trump, she’s not Kim. She’s not evil and she’s not harming anyone.

The people claiming responsibility for the billboard issued a statement on Twitter Saturday insisting they aren’t transphobic, while also openly denying the identities of trans women. They described womanhood as “a biological reality, not a feeling,” which is a common refrain among opponents of transgender rights.

However common it is, is it true? Of course it’s true. Women are adult human females. We’re not fantasies or dysphoria or cosplay. We have a right to “exclude” men from claiming to be women, just as black people have a right to “exclude” a Jessica Krug from claiming to be black.

What Trump is planning.

And Roger Stone is in there.

More on that:

Roger Stone is making baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and is urging Donald Trump to consider several draconian measures to stay in power, including having federal authorities seize ballots in Nevada, having FBI agents and Republican state officials “physically” block voting under the pretext of preventing voter fraud, using martial law or the Insurrection Act to carry out widespread arrests, and nationalizing state police forces.

Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, made the comments during a September 10 appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network.

…

Stone argued that “the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshalls and taken from the state” because “they are completely corrupted” and falsely said that “we can prove voter fraud in the absentees right now.” He specifically called for Trump to have absentee ballots seized in Clark County, Nevada, an area that leans Democratic. Stone went on to claim that “the votes from Nevada should not be counted; they are already flooded with illegals” and baselessly suggested that former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) should be arrested and that Trump should consider nationalizing Nevada’s state police force.

On the one hand this is just crazy shit, on the other hand crazy shit is what Trump does.

Skeptical Liberalism:

Recyling plastic? It’s a con job. Has been all along.

The US used to send most of its used plastic to China for recycling, but two years ago China said that’s enough now, and no one else wants it.

But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn’t want to hear it.

“I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” she says, “and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You’re lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It’s gold. This is valuable.”

I never thought it was valuable, but I did think it could be re-used. Maybe a break-even thing, maybe an added expense thing, but still worth doing. But nah.

But it’s not valuable, and it never has been. And what’s more, the makers of plastic — the nation’s largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.

Now why the hell would they do that? Oh I know – so that we would keep buying plastic. So that we would not look at all those yogurt tubs and juice bottles and cringe at the waste and the toxic materials added to the brew.

Yep, that’s why.

The industry’s awareness that recycling wouldn’t keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program’s earliest days, we found. “There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis,” one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.

Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn’t true.

“If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry’s most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.

…

Here’s the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice.

In short it’s not worth doing in cash terms so forget it. Forget recycling that is, don’t forget making more and more plastic. Plastic forevaaaaaa!

Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic.

Messaging that said it’s great, do lots of it.

It may have sounded like an environmentalist’s message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.

Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.

…

“This advertising was motivated first and foremost by legislation and other initiatives that were being introduced in state legislatures and sometimes in Congress,” Freeman says, “to ban or curb the use of plastics because of its performance in the waste stream.”

It’s almost funny, in a way. They got the blue plastic bins going, they got us all using the blue plastic bins, and it was all so that plastic could go right on being dumped in landfills and oceans but we wouldn’t mind any more.

Analysts now expect plastic production to triple by 2050.

Boom-tish.

Another one of those wait we need to tease out the meaning here items.

At the moment, the GRA requires people to justify their gender identity to a panel of people in a way that cis people don’t. No one should have other people stand in judgment over their gender identity, deciding whether their gender is ‘good enough’ to count as a man or woman.

Why not? Why should no one have other people being aware of what sex they are?

That’s what the question boils down to. The non-explicit but central to the meaning claim is that “gender identity” is both more real (or “authentic”) than sex and more private than sex. So a man may look like a man to the untutored onlooker, but his “gender identity” is A Woman, and everyone has to take that as absolute truth, and refrain from questioning aka “standing in judgement over” it.

But that’s a hell of a tall order, and the offered reasons for it are getting less and less compelling as more people take a second look at them. We’re being told that we don’t actually know what sex anyone is, that we can’t tell, that it’s not an open, apparent, detectable thing, but a deeply personal feeling or belief or decision which for greater credibility is labeled an “identity.” The root of “identity” is “same” so this is all very ironic. “My identity is the opposite of what I in fact am; you are forbidden to ask questions.”

And the issue isn’t whether Princess Jenny (born Jim) has a “gender” that is “good enough”; the issue is whether PJ has a male body or not. It’s not about quality, it’s not about competition, it’s not about arbitrary cruel sorting, it’s about the most basic human difference, which is also the one that has kept my half of it subordinate all these millennia.

More in News from Scumbag:

That’s it. That’s all he’s said about these fires. Nothing all this time and then thank you to the firefighters but nothing to the millions of people affected.

CNN comments:

The President hasn’t tweeted about the devastating wildfires over the past few weeks, despite regularly posting to his Twitter feed. His relative silence adds to his history of offering little empathy in the face of natural disasters, and tendency to attack Democratic leaders for their handling of crises.

Little or no empathy, usually no.

Trump is still using Twitter to tell his fans to commit a crime.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein reminded people they cannot vote twice, again refuting President Donald Trump’s instruction for North Carolinians to vote by mail and try again in person. It is illegal.

Trump’s “instruction” told his people to commit a crime.

Always breaking new ground, this guy.

Twitter added a disclaimer above Trump’s tweet on Saturday morning: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Trump tweeted: “NORTH CAROLINA: To make sure your Ballot COUNTS, sign & send it in EARLY. When Polls open, go to your Polling Place to see if it was COUNTED. IF NOT, VOTE! Your signed Ballot will not count because your vote has been posted. Don’t let them illegally take your vote away from you!”

If you’re going to your “Polling Place” on election day there’s no need to mail your vote, is there. Only Donald Nobrain would think it makes sense to go to your polling place to check on your mailed vote. (But, I know, he doesn’t really think that, he doesn’t really think anything, he’s just creating havoc.)

President of the US literally instructing people to commit a felony. Openly, shamelessly, despite having been told it’s a felony.

Failed state.

Oregon needs federal help.

Sen. Jeff Merkley said he expects Pres. Donald Trump to approve Oregon’s request for emergency federal assistance for the wildfires e soon, perhaps as early as Thursday afternoon or Friday.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown made the formal request for support Wednesday, and Oregon’s congressional delegation issued a letter of support the same afternoon.

On Thursday, as fires continued to ravage the state, Brown told reporters she was still waiting on a response to the request from the White House. About 900,000 acres of Oregon have burned, she said.

We hate to rush him and everything but…

Brown and state officials said they are working to get more firefighters on the ground. A strike team is coming in from Utah, Brown said, and she requested a battalion of active duty military members from the U.S. Department of Defense and has asked Oregon colleges and universities to be flexible with students who are fighting the wildfires.

It’s not on Trump’s radar though.

Over the past 24 hours on his Twitter feed, President Trump has attacked Democrats and racial injustice protesters nearly a dozen times, mentioned law and order, and made false claims about mail voting.

But on the increasingly deadly, catastrophic wildfires in California and Oregon that have displaced 500,000 people, caused fire tornadoes, killed a 1-year-old in Washington state, and blotted out the sun in one of America’s largest metropolitan areas, he has been silent.

A search of the president’s Twitter feed and his public comments from Factba.se, plus a search of recent White House news briefings, finds no mention by him or his press secretary of one of the worst natural disasters to hit the West in modern times.

Can you imagine any other president doing this? Even the worst of them? Bush was woefully inadequate on Katrina but at least he didn’t ignore it entirely.

These two states are running out of money and manpower to fight the blazes eating millions of acres and neighborhoods. One of the only times the president has talked about this was in late August at a news briefing on the coronavirus, where he announced that he had approved an emergency declaration to open up federal funding for California to fight the wildfires. As the crisis escalated, he approved similar funding for Oregon on Thursday — but the public heard about it from a Democratic congressman, not the president.

…

The president’s relative silence on the West’s wildfire crisis matches up with his relative silence on three other issues: the struggles of Democratic-led states, climate change, and crises that require empathy.

They’re “blue” states so fuck’em, let’em burn and choke. Plus who cares anyway.

The air in Seattle blew past unhealthy this morning, then past very unhealthy this afternoon; it’s now at hazardous and still climbing; after hazardous it’s just we can’t count it any more.

But as for Oregon…

Hundreds of firefighters battled two large wildfires Friday that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland, and the governor said dozens of people are missing in other parts of the state.

The state’s emergency management director, Andrew Phelps, said officials are “preparing for a mass fatality event” and that thousands of structures have been destroyed.

Gov. Kate Brown said more than 40,000 Oregonians have been evacuated and about 500,000 are in different levels of evacuation zones, either having been told [either] to leave or to prepare to do so. She was dialing back on a statement late Thursday issued by the state Office of Emergency Management that said a half-million people had been ordered to evacuate statewide.

…

The Oregon Convention Center in Portland was among the buildings being transformed into shelters for evacuees. Portland, shrouded in smoke from the fires, on Friday had the worst air quality of the world’s major cities, according to IQAir.

From that air quality story:

Smoke pollution from wildfires raging in California and across the Pacific Northwest worsened in San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, on Friday, giving those cities and others in the region some of the world’s worst air quality.

…

The sky turned a hazy, grayish white across the Northwest as winds that had previously pushed much of the smoke offshore shifted, bringing unhealthy levels of near-microscopic dust, soot and ash particles to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, British Columbia. San Francisco also continued to suffer from smoke pollution; those four cities topped the list of major cities with the worst air quality Friday, according to IQAir.com, which tracks air quality around the world.

…

The smoke was expected to linger through the weekend, another reminder of the vast and severe effects of climate change. In a news conference Friday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee insisted on calling the blazes “climate fires” rather than wildfires.

“This is not an act of God,” Inslee said. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.”

It’s apocalyptic around here.

Chris Cillizza is not one of the great journalists, but I like his take on Trump’s efforts to prevent panic over a new lethal contagious disease.

There is, without doubt, a worthy debate to be had as to whether Woodward, who technically works for the Post but in practical terms has been writing books for years now, should have immediately gone to the Post after Trump made his statements about downplaying the virus and demanded space on the website (and in the next day’s paper) to write a big contemporaneous piece about it.

But that conversation pales in comparison to this one: If the President of the United States knew that Covid-19 was worse than people thought — and worse than he was letting on by comparing it to the seasonal flu — why didn’t HE go tell the American public about it?

Wull…because he’s not a reporter. Woodward is the reporter. Trump is just some guy.

Trump said he was downplaying the virus to keep us from panicking. But…

He didn’t just downplay the virus. He openly mocked mask-wearing, one of the only proven tactics we have to mitigate the spread. He pushed hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus, even though the FDA revoked its emergency use authorization for the drug in mid-June. Heck, he even suggested that people might benefit from shining a bright light inside their bodies or ingesting disinfectant to combat the virus.

That’s MUCH more than just downplaying what he knew about coronavirus. That’s openly rejecting science in favor of personal opinion and political point-scoring.

But back to Woodward. The simple fact is that it is Trump, not Woodward, who is the President of the United States. Which means the burden of informing the public about uncomfortable truths regarding a virus that has killed more than 190,000 Americans this year to date — and putting in place policies to mitigate it — falls on the one who was elected to be the leader of the country. Not the guy who is writing a book about the guy who was elected to be the leader of the country.

And so, this defense — like so many of Trump’s excuses, rationalizations and blaming — crumbles on even the slightest inspection. And proves yet again that Trump simply does not understand the responsibilities that come with being president or the moral burden that running for and winning the job confer.

Well when you put it like that…

Few face masks, no social distancing.

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Thursday he was “pretty puzzled” and “rather disheartened” by President Donald Trump’s crowded campaign rally in Michigan — at which few of the several thousand attendees could be seen wearing face masks and virtually none appeared to be practicing social distancing.

In unusually frank remarks during a CNN town hall event focused on the novel coronavirus, the nation’s top public health official lamented that commonsense mitigation measures had become politicized and claimed that aliens from far-off worlds viewing Americans’ behavior amid the pandemic would conclude that Earth was all but doomed.

Except for the “all but” part. Being aliens, they wouldn’t feel any need to hedge to spare our feelings. Earth is doomed.

Trump’s rally came amid ongoing efforts by his White House to counter fallout from newly published excerpts of Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book. Some recordings of the president’s 18 on-the-record interviews with the veteran reporter released this week show Trump calling the coronavirus “deadly stuff” and acknowledging he was eager to “play … down” the outbreak in February and March — a time when he was publicly dismissive of its threat.

…

Although roughly 190,000 Americans have died from the disease, Trump told reporters that “the United States has done really well,” adding: “I really do believe we’re rounding the corner.”

But of course what Trump “believes” has nothing to do with anything, even if he adds “really do” to it, because his “beliefs” are just whatever pops into his head in the moment. He never pauses to evaluate or question or test them – he wouldn’t know how if you told him to. He is unaware of any difference between a thought in his head and a fact about the world.

Now here’s a smart guy.

Brilliant call.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts will end nearly all of his state’s social-distancing restrictions on Monday even as the number of new coronavirus cases has trended upward over the last few months.

Cases are going up so – shrug – might as well stop trying.

The new rules will still limit the size of large indoor gatherings, such as concerts, meeting halls and theaters, but will drop all other state-imposed mandates in favor of voluntary guidelines, as other conservative states have done.

Because “conservative” now means “ignore all expert health advice and refuse to take sensible steps to damp down a lethal pandemic.” They really want to go with that?

Richard Wolffe

The Inuit are supposed to have dozens of words to describe snow. The Brits have endless ways to talk about rain. Now it’s time for Americans to delineate all the many ways that Donald Trump is dumb.

I’ve been working on that project since July 2016.

(I know there’s a retort that he’s having a lot of success for someone who is dumb. Yes but the dumb is why he’s having the success. Sadly, pathetically, maddeningly, tragically, there are enough Murkans who love to see somebody stupid in the White House to put him there and keep him there despite impeachment.)

If Bob Woodward’s new blockbuster teaches us anything new about the character of the 45th president, it’s that we don’t yet have the words to describe the multiple variants of the vacuum inside his head.

There’s the stupidity of arrogance, the stupidity of ignorance, and his old friend: the stupidity of blatant duplicity. There’s his homicidal stupidity, his traitorous stupidity, his criminally corrupt stupidity and his plain old infantile stupidity.

Let’s start with the top of this taxonomy: the domain of Donald’s dumbness. At his core, the former reality TV star is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart.

So maybe, Wolffe suggests, this stupidity explains his 18 interviews with Woodward. (Trump hinted as much in that “press conference” the other day, when he said he respects Woodward because of hearing his name year after year. Not, he stupidly elaborated, because of his work, just because of Celebrity. Now that is stupid.)

… our very stupid genius vomited up all manner of secrets that collectively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he represents the greatest single danger to the fate of both the American people and to himself.

How do we classify the stupidity of blabbing the greatest secret of them all: that he knew all along how Covid-19 was deadly and easily transmissible? We now know that in late January, his national security adviser told him the coronavirus was the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. A week later, he told Woodward that the disease was “more deadly even than your strenuous flus”.

But see at that time he didn’t know he was going to lie to us about it for months and months and months. Because he’s stupid.

Then he admitted it all over again at the press conference Wednesday.

“So the fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country. And I don’t want people to be frightened,” he told reporters. “We want to show confidence. We want to show strength.”

Nothing says confidence or strength quite like 190,000 dead citizens. And nothing blows up your pushback against Woodward (“another political hit job”) like admitting to your arrogance and duplicity at a press conference.

Mattis and Coats knew how bad it was but couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about it.

Because of their failures to act, we now have an intelligence community that suppresses warnings about Russian election interference and white supremacist terrorists, while hyping conspiracies about antifa. You could say this was an impeachable state of affairs, but Republican senators have developed a new stupidity of cowardice.

Is it cowardice or love? I think it’s more that they love him, because they’re as bad as he is.

He leads with “I don’t say this out of ego but”

Hahahaha no obviously not.

He also implies that he’s getting it in the same sense Obama did, but Obama got the actual prize, awarded by the committee, not a nomination, awarded by one far-right jackass.

But never mind, Trump isn’t bragging about his farcical nomination out of ego.