And many informed people think it’s very likely that Putin is doing his bit to fan the flames.

Brazen grifter orders people to give him their emergency money.

From the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday:

As a chief physician executive, I rarely get involved in my health system’s supply-chain activities. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed that. Protecting our caregivers is essential so that these talented professionals can safely provide compassionate care to our patients. Yet we continue to be stymied by a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the cavalry does not appear to be coming.

Our supply-chain group has worked around the clock to secure gowns, gloves, face masks, goggles, face shields, and N95 respirators. These employees have adapted to a new normal, exploring every lead, no matter how unusual. 

They put together a very convoluted deal to get a large shipment of three-ply face masks and N95 respirators. They put together the funds to buy it, at 5 times the normal rate. They sent a team of three to check the shipment.

I arrived by car to make the final call on whether to execute the deal. Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.

They got there, they opened some boxes to check and hoped they were representative.

Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.

This is what a fabulous job Trump is doing of managing the pandemic.

Did I foresee, as a health-system leader working in a rich, highly developed country with state-of-the-art science and technology and incredible talent, that my organization would ever be faced with such a set of circumstances? Of course not. Yet when encountering the severe constraints that attend this pandemic, we must leave no stone unturned to give our health care teams and our patients a fighting chance. This is the unfortunate reality we face in the time of Covid-19.

Because we’re a failed state.

Crazier every day.

The clip starts in medias res with “…real information, and responsible and thoughtful dialogue from their elected leaders n from [he lifts his head from the page he’s been reading and exclaims] the media!” And with that he abandons the script and repeats his moth-eaten rant about the media, which reminds him of his moth-eaten obsession with Haberman, and away he goes. It’s loony tunes.

I don’t mean loony tunes in any hyperbolic sense, I mean loony tunes. Out of his fucking mind.

It would be nice if everyone could grasp this point.

It’s the truth. I can’t experience life in a lizard body or an eagle body or an elephant body (and neither can any other human). We can try to imagine what it’s like, but that’s the limit of what we can do.

People who are not born X can’t experience what it’s like to have been born X. Of course they can’t, by definition: not being born X=not having the experience of having been born X.

The idea is that there’s such a thing as “feeling like” a woman and thus sharing the lived experience of being female, but the idea is wrong. You can experience your own idea of what it’s like, but you can’t share an experience you’ve never had and by definition can never have. You can try to imagine it, empathize with it, and the like, but you can’t literally have it.

But there’s always someone who doesn’t get it.

Because being presumed to be female is not the same thing as being female. At all.

It’s possible to have experiences that are like experiences that women have, but that is not the same as experiencing what it’s like to exist as a female, because of the whole not being one thing I just mentioned. You can imagine, guess, fantasize, pretend, but that’s all you can do.

Anyway, sooner or later the contempt and entitlement elbows everything else aside.

The pink flowers don’t cancel out the male entitlement.

Baby Don is having another Twitter tantrum.

Donald Trump calling other people RUDE and NASTY. You couldn’t make it up.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Soz nomination canceled.

Lumping race and religion/”faith” together is exactly the kind of thing that causes problems for women within Muslim families who disagree with the conservative tenets of the faith, who need support, and who are too-often ignored by UK “progressives” who are far too concerned about “Islamophobia” to listen too closely to the issues raised by liberal Muslims and Brits with Pakistani/Indian heritage.

Subsuming women’s rights entirely into the category “gender” is such blatant sexist bullshit, it’s clear these “awards” are a joke.

And indeed, of course class isn’t mentioned. I’m sure these are comfortably well-off young people, the kind of people I’ve had to work and live alongside my whole adult life: who like to think they count as working-class because they take low-paying jobs in the city and live in the city, but they still call their parents’ house in the suburbs “home” and still have a bedroom to go “home” to for the holidays, who have no idea the constant anxiety, the fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night in sweats, of living paycheque to paycheque with absolutely no safety net, no parents or relatives to fall back on. People who don’t understand that your “place” in the city isn’t your fun-times adventure-pad; it’s your real home — the only shelter you’ve got, and if you lose it, the consequences are far more than an awkward phone call to Mum and Dad: it’s selling your mattress for $40, stuffing as many clothes you can into a duffel bag and registering at a bedbug-infested shelter. A lot of young people (and not-so-young people too) have a hard time understanding that for many of us it feels like every day we’re clinging by our nails to the ridge of a volcano’s caldera, just trying not to fall into the fire.

And frankly I’m not one to talk, because I don’t have dependents. Even stuffing a duffel bag and moving into a shelter for a while isn’t so bad compared to what impoverished parents have to go through to support their kids.

I wonder if the COVID crisis will bring class, income inequality and the social safety-net back to the forefront of the left’s priorities, where frankly it has always belonged…

I call these people the modern-day Hitler – they are protesting against democracy and the common good.

Rosa Parks was not protesting some generic “injustice and loss of liberties”; she was protesting Jim Crow laws that kept slavery in place in all but name for almost a century. The segregation of public transportation was insulting and racist, yes, but it was also part of a larger system that kept African-Americans captive despite the official end of slavery, just as mass incarceration does now. None of that has anything to do with petulant selfish people who want to spread the virus because they need to go to Walmart.

More of this kind of crap:

On Tuesday 21st February 2020, we were surprised and delighted to find that Woman’s Place UK had been nominated for something called the National Diversity Awards.

Congratulations! You have just been nominated for the Community Organisation (Gender) award at the National Diversity Awards!

Woman’s Place UK felt honoured by the nomination.

We were invited to accept the nomination and to create a profile page.

In the meantime, why not create a profile page so others wishing to nominate you can find you! Please click the link below to confirm you accept this nomination.

They clicked on the link below but it didn’t work. The password they’d been issued was rejected. They tried again on a different computer, and got the same result. They emailed the National Diversity Awards to report the problem. There was no response.

On Tuesday 4th March, we tried to log in again, unsuccessfully, and decided to register a ‘forgotten password’ to see if that would elicit a response.

It did, it elicited a “no recognize password” response and advice to contact them for help, so they tried that again. This time a response arrived.

Many thanks for your email and apologies for any inconvenience.

Unfortunately, upon confirming your nomination, we received a number of complaints which are currently being investigated by our advisory panel. During the nomination process, it is our obligation to review any issues raised and we are committed to ensuring our nominees values align with the inclusive ethos of The National Diversity Awards.

Inclusive of what? Inclusive of men who say they are women and not of women who say that men are not women? Is that the kind of inclusivity we get to have? The only kind?

They said they’d “be in touch” once they’d “completed” their “investigation.”

Given that we had not completed our public profile page, we wondered where “a number of complaints” could have originated from.

We were also astonished that the National Diversity Awards had only informed us that our nomination had been rescinded when we approached them for an explanation.

The National Diversity Awards gave us no information on the complaints nor did they offer us any opportunity to make representation to the “advisory panel”.

Naturally. Women who refuse to obey orders to call men “women” are so evil that we don’t deserve basic courtesy.

WPUK replied asking for more information, and were rudely ignored. See above: no courtesy for you evil women who don’t “include” men in the category “women.”

WPUK has heard noting more to this day.

The National Diversity Awards lists the following categories as being eligible for recognition:

Age | Disability | Gender | LGBT | Race, Religion & Faith

Quite a mess, isn’t it. “Gender” should be “sex,” and “Race” should not be in the same category as “Religion” on account of how they’re not the same thing at all. But perhaps not quite so obvious…where the hell is class? Where is diversity of money-having? Where is the category for people who have to go on showing up for work during a pandemic to get their small paychecks while people who make big paychecks can mostly work from home? Where is the difference between poverty and wealth?

Never mind. That’s not interesting any more. It’s too of the earth earthy. The real heroes of our time are men who have intense fantasies of being women.

Mary McCord on Trump’s call for insurrection:

Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials — as it must under our Constitutional order — the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.

Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” followed immediately by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and then “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” This follows Wednesday’s demonstration in Michigan, in which armed protestors surrounded the state capitol building in Lansing chanting “Lock her up!” in reference to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and “We will not comply,” in reference to her extension of the state’s coronavirus-related stay-at-home order. Much smaller and less-armed groups had on Thursday protested on the state capitol grounds in Richmond, Va., and outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, Minn.

“Liberate” — particularly when it’s declared by the chief executive of our republic — isn’t some sort of cheeky throwaway. Its definition is “to set at liberty,” specifically “to free (something, such as a country) from domination by a foreign power.” We historically associate it with the armed defeat of hostile forces during war, such as the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control during World War II. Just over a year ago, Trump himself announced that “the United States has liberated all ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq.”

So what does “liberate” mean in this context? It means overthrow the people in power…the ones who were elected. It means nullify the elections with guns.

In that context, it’s not at all unreasonable to consider Trump’s tweets about “liberation” as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders.

Legally issued stay home orders during a pandemic. It’s encouragement to overthrow the government in order to spread the pandemic among the population. Spreading the pandemic isn’t the goal, but it is the inevitable result. I don’t think the beefy guys with assault rifles know more about contagion than the CDC does.

Oh NPR. Do better.

“Critics say” Trump is inciting violence and civil war, and they’re right to say so.

No, these are people expressing their views, I see where they are, I see the way they’re working [flapping hands back and forth to illustrate the way they’re working], they [shrug] seem to be very responsible people to me, but it’s uh, y’know they’ve been treated a little bit rough, yes go ahead.

This isn’t a 3-year-old sleepy after a nap, this is a guy who decided he should be president of the US.

Ok so Trump is sticking to it. Let’s have a civil war, so that Trump can add that to his scrapbook.

The governor of Washington state isn’t too impressed either.

We’ll never have that luxury until the dangerous egomaniac is gone.

The Guardian live on Trump’s incitement of fascist revolt:

Minnesota governor Tim Walz said he has been unable to reach the president or the vice president to decipher the meaning of Trump’s “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” tweet.

What can they say? “He meant fascist men with guns should forcibly take over the government of Minnesota and throw it open to the pandemic.” I don’t suppose they want to say that to the governor, just about him.

The Democratic governor told the Wall Street Journal that his calls to the White House in the past couple of hours have gone unreturned.

Trump’s tweet echoed messaging from right-wing protesters who have expressed outrage about stay-at-home orders meant to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Meanwhile Fox “News” person says:

Trump wants gyms to re-open. That’s bonkers.

The inclusion struck public health experts as bizarre. ‘Gyms are like a petri dish,’ said Laurence Gostin, the director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. ‘People are close to one another, they’re sweating, they’re coughing and sneezing, they’re touching multiple surfaces, they’re sharing equipment, they’re indoors. Literally all of the heightened risk factors for COVID transmission are all entwined together in a gym.’

I would guess a plane is the very worst place to be, but a gym looks like a close second.

The decision on gyms came a day after Trump’s phone call with sixteen business leaders including Stephen Ross, the founder and chairman of the Related Companies. That firm’s portfolio includes Equinox Holdings, which owns its own eponymous chain of luxury gyms as well as fitness brands SoulCycle, Blink Fitness, and Pure Yoga.

Ah, no wonder then. Of course he talks to the business leaders and takes their point of view, as opposed to talking to and taking the point of view of workers, consumers, bystanders, the population as a whole.

Let them eat bike shorts.

Time for the 25th.

Aaron Rupar on the eruption:

President Donald Trump can’t help but sow division, even at a time when Americans are largely united in supporting stay-at-home orders and social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

It’s not that he can’t help it, it’s that he loves doing it. He can’t help being the person he is, I guess, but the person he is loves doing malevolent cruel destructive things to people who are more vulnerable than he is, and to people who are not Donald Trump.

Just after 11:21 am Eastern time on Friday, President Donald Trump posted a trio of tweets endorsing the so-called liberation of a trio of states with Democratic governors from measures they’ve taken to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Liberate the virus! Liberate the pandemic!

These posts — which are among the most dangerous of Trump’s tenure — appear to have been inspired by a segment he saw on Fox News minutes earlier.

…

At 11:19 — two minutes before Trump’s Minnesota tweet — Fox News ran a segment about small groups of right-wing protesters in Minnesota and Virginia who have been agitating for governors there to relax stay-at-home orders so they can resume normal shopping and traveling activities.

Fox has extensively covered right-wing demonstrations in Michigan on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, which echo the same theme.

Because public health measures are a left-wing plot, I guess.

Trump is erupting again.

Liberate them from…measures to slow the spread of the virus? Liberate them to get sick and die or survive with reduced lung capacity or damaged kidneys or both? Funny kind of liberation.

Jesus, the spectacle of Donald fucking Trump telling anyone else on earth to stop talking. He never shuts up and he never lets other people talk if he wants to talk over them. He interrupts reporters at those press briefing campaign rallies, shouting “Excuse me” and pointing his nasty stubby finger at them, then he talks and talks and talks and says nothing but bullshit. And he’s telling Governor Cuomo to stop talking.

Ah yes, the states do. It’s all the fault of the states.

But wasn’t that the states’ fault? You just said…

The thousands of cases in New York are not ridiculous.

Got a shortage of N95 masks? Then the thing to do is give a huge packet of money to a bankrupt company with no employees that has never made masks. Problem solved!

In this chaotic effort to obtain supplies, the Trump administration awarded a $55 million contract to Panthera Worldwide LLC, a company with no expertise in the world of medical equipment, for N95 masks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Panthera’s parent company filed for bankruptcy protection last fall, and one of its owners last year said it had had no employees since May 2018, The Post reported, citing sworn testimony. It’s no longer listed as an LLC in Virginia, where its main office is, after fees went unpaid, the newspaper said.

So, perfect company for the job. What a good thing the Trump admin was able to find it.

James V. Punelli, one of Panthera’s executives, told The Post that the company was working with military contacts to obtain the masks.

“We’ve done [Department of Defense] medical training over the years and through those contacts with that community were brought sources of supply in order to assist in the COVID-19 response,” Punelli said in a text message to The Post. “We made the connection with FEMA and offered these supplies to them.”

They have contacts. But surely the government also has contacts? Is it really worth 55 million bucks to have Panthera ask its contacts to send along some masks? Can’t the government do that itself without handing 55 million to an irrelevant intermediary? One that’s bankrupt and has no employees and is being sued?

The Post reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was paying Panthera about $5.50 per mask, decidedly more than what the government pays companies with an established background in producing medical supplies such as 3M, which charges about $0.63 per mask.

Because…?

Chuck Hagel, a former defense secretary, told The Post something was “amiss” about this order. “This is not how the government procures training or any type of supplies,” he said. “You just wouldn’t do business with somebody like that.”

But her emails.