He has done the worst job in the world

Here’s where we’re at: America has passed 3,000 deaths from COVID-19. That includes 500 deaths on Monday. Only two months ago the nasty guy said, “We have it very well under control.”

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos started today’s coronavirus update with:

We are becoming a nation of reluctant mathematicians. Just as everyone’s tenth grade algebra teacher predicted, there really is a need to understand the basics of exponents and formulas. They just didn’t tell us that we’d be using those skills to measure out bodies.
…
All of it is meant to back up the message Trump is still sending—governors and healthcare workers are making things sound worse than they are and asking for too much, all to make Trump look bad.

Gosh, that couldn’t possibly be because he is bad, could it?

Sumner’s chart of confirmed cases since the beginning of March shows the tally in China has leveled off at about 80,000 cases. The US has now shot well above that and is now at 180,000 according to Johns Hopkins University. Italy’s case count is still rising, might be leveling off, and is above China’s but well below that of the US.

However, the rate of increase in the US has slowed, and is now below doubling every four days. Things that happened two weeks ago – shelter in place orders – are having an effect now. Less than a week ago the number of cases was doubling every three days.

In a separate post Sumner reviews how thoroughly the nasty guy was warned and didn’t act. And now the US has more considerably more cases than any other country. Which means…
A pandemic may have been inevitable, as experts were predicting—and Trump was denying—months ago. But the level of damage being done to the United States at every level, including lives, was not. Trump hasn’t done a “very good” job. He has done the worst job in the world. And he has absolutely no excuse.



Bree Newsome Bass tweeted:

So... the WH is taking every possible step to ensure a shortage of masks for healthcare workers? Am I understanding correctly?

Jennifer Cohn, who advocates for election security, tweeted a thread. First she noted that the nasty guy could easily convince 40% of the country to thank him for only 100k or more deaths and also convince them that a million deaths are “just” 100K.

The Trump regime is a suicide cult. Whether death occurs by coronavirus or climate change or lack of health care, they want to “Jim Jones” the United States. We need experts in cult psychology and psychological warfare more than ever.
...
I don’t think this aspect of Trump’s personality has been taken seriously enough. The notion that Trump is an idiot is a dangerous half truth. He’s like an idiot savant. He is a master class manipulator and con man.

Then Cohn tweeted a couple descriptions of warning signs of cults. Some of them:

* The leader is always right.

* No tolerance for critical inquiry.

* Everything the leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.

* Criticism is characterized as persecution.

Sound familiar?

Commenters offered a correction. This isn’t a suicide cult – this leader has no intention of dying. It is a genocide cult.



Joan McCarter of Kos has an example of how corporations are treating the pandemic as a money grab. This example is about ventilators. The Department of Health and Human Services helped develop a ventilator, then ordered 10,000 of them last September at $3,820 each. None are in the HHS stockpile. But Trilogy Evo isn’t selling that model. They’ve got two higher priced models, which a middleman is selling for $17K each.



Gabe Ortiz of Kos tells about several DACA recipients who are working in healthcare as a critical part of the pandemic response. Yet, their status in America is still precarious. And the nasty guy could toss them out of the country, making our medical staffing problems worse.

Which makes me wonder if the nasty guy is not supplying masks so that our medical providers also succumb to the virus, so there is less fewer people caring for the sick, increasing the death count.



In yet another post Sumner wrote:

Under the cover of the coronavirus, Donald Trump has let polluters know that all bets are off. Anything goes. And the usual suspects are welcoming the opportunity.

One example is removing limits on on emissions in vehicles. That could throw a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Car companies don’t want the rules lessened – they would still have to deal with restrictions from elsewhere in the world and don’t want to create two versions. Consumers don’t want rules relaxed because of the threat to public health. So who does? Oil companies – under nasty guy rules instead of Obama rules they would sell 80 billion more gallons of gasoline.



The Hungarian Parliament passed a bill that give Prime Minister Orban unlimited powers, such as a state of emergency without time limit, rule by decree, suspended Parliament, no elections, spreading fake news resulting in up to 5 years in prison.

Anne Applebaum tweeted:

And there it is. The European Union's first dictatorship. None of these powers is needed to fight the virus. But they will help distract and deter opposition, especially when it becomes clear that the government has no better plan.

Yashar Ali of New York Magazine and HuffPost tweeted a long thread saying he has gotten maybe 40,000 messages from people who are suddenly in dire financial situations and need help. They thought they had done everything right – they worked and took care of themselves. Suddenly their jobs are gone and everything else snatched away along with it. Yeah, help – a little bit – is coming, but in a month or several. These suddenly poor don’t know how to file for unemployment because they never thought they would need it.

So, if you can – and not in an impoverished state yourself – please give to those who need it now.



Denise Oliver Velez of the Kos community is a medical anthropologist. She has a strong interest in epidemics and how cultures deal with them. So she shared several videos of songs about the proper way to wash hands. There are videos from Vietnam, New Zealand, Iran, India (policemen in a dance routine), South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir, nurses in Mexico, and even Neil Diamond with new words to Sweet Caroline.

And Bill in Portland, Maine includes an amusing hand washing video in this post.



Tonight’s opera was The Barber of Seville by Rossini. It’s a romantic comedy, famous for the character of Figaro, the barber in the title. Of course, there are several times the singers must navigate the rapid singing that is a feature of the Rossini style. It’s also 90 minutes shorter than a couple of the Wagner operas I watched last week. But I spent so much time watching the opera and the subtitles I'm not getting to bed any earlier.

Trust those who are being hysterical

I read the transcript for the Gaslit Nation episode from March 25, titled The United States of Enron. Hosts are Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa

Kendzior lives in St. Louis. The state isn’t testing much, though media says there are 200 cases. Doctors don’t believe that number. But it allows the GOP state government to say this isn’t bad, the problem is on the coasts. But everyone will be devastated by this.

Kendzior notes that billionaires, such as Michael Bloomberg, are not helping much.

Chalupa said:

Well, one thing that Sarah and I learned from Russia and Trump is that trust those who are being hysterical, as long as they are experts, as long as they have that credibility, if they are being hysterical, listen to them, listen to them.

Because Sarah and I studied authoritarian states, crime and aggression for many years. The writing was very clearly on the wall for us in 2016. We were hysterical, rightfully hysterical, and they tried to punish us for warning everybody. And then we were proven right. Unfortunately, it was far too late by then. So Sarah and I have been watching the situation unfold and listening to those who are hysterical and they're the ones who have been proven correct.

This episode from last week was back when the nasty guy said we needed to open up for the economy (even if millions die). Kendzior said the message was “They are willing to kill you because of the economy.” And behind that: “They are willing to kill you.” She reviews statements by the nasty guy and Steve Bannon saying they want to destroy the current system.

This health crisis is a continuation of the political crisis that emerged in the GOP back in the Reagan days.

Remedy: Ban the nasty guy’s Twitter account. He’s pushing poisons. Don’t show his press conferences live. They have no value. If something major happens, record it, edit it, play it later. Don’t do this and you are an accomplice to murder.

Chalupa asks, “Why are white men in America following politicians who pass policies that are literally killing them?” See the book *Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland* by Jonathan Metzll. The GOP is a death cult with willing follower and those of us fighting their brutality are collateral damage.

Gov. Cuomo complained of price gouging. Attorney General William Barr says they’re fighting price gouging – which means they aren’t. Making money off this disease means it is blood money. That’s similar to the Enron energy fiasco back in the early 2000. Enron bought electricity from California, created an energy crisis, and sold the energy back at inflated prices. See the documentary, *Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room*. A clip from the movie is compared to audio of Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick who suggested old people should die for the Dow.

Kendzior noted there was very little accountability in Congress – see the impeachment trial – and there is even less now. Which means the nasty guy’s criminality will run full force. And the virus gives AG Barr cover for his plans to go full fascist – see his plans for holding people without offering a reason.

Kendzior said:

But now citizens have been put in just an impossible position because there is a genuine plague, there is a genuine public health threat. And can we go out and protest draconian measures? No, we'll get infected. Can we participate in society as a collective in person? No, we'll get infected. Do we need to obey the laws and maintain some sort of trust in local authority? Yes, unfortunately we do. And that does not come easy to Americans. It sure as hell doesn't come easy to me.

Chalupa said Evil is inherently stupid. For example, look at Putin. He’s bleeding Russia dry. There’s a massive brain drain. “Putin is going to be king of a pile of bones.”

Want to save lives? Stay home and watch Netflix.



In other news…

In other people this would be an amazing amount of chutzpah. From the nasty guy it’s just another day in front of the cameras. Laura Clawson of Kos reminds us that the nasty guy has been saying for the last month the number of coronavirus cases would soon be close to zero, that “We pretty much shut it down,” that the numbers are going to get better, that it will all go away. He’s been saying this while doing all he can to make the numbers go up.

Now he’s saying the number of deaths probably won’t be 2.2 million as some have been predicting. In Sunday’s press conference he said that number a lot. But that’s if he did nothing to slow the spread of the virus. He’s now predicting there will be only 100,000 deaths. And for that he’ll claim credit. Wrote Clawson:

Credit. For “only” 100,000 or so deaths.

That’s nearly twice as many Americans who died in the Vietnam war. Well over 10 times as many compared to those that died in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s Trump’s current benchmark for success.

Some Republican leaders at the state and local level are beginning to realize the nasty guy’s daily press conferences are lies. And some are beginning to listen instead to the CDC and other health officials.

And, alas, some aren’t. Sean Soendker Nicholson quoted a Kansas City news source:

The decision to pass up billions in federal aid since 2014 will make coping with the novel coronavirus even more costly than anticipated.

And Jess Piper responded:

I want every Missourian to see this. This is your Republican supermajority at work. They refused money to spite Obamacare. 14 Hospitals closed in Missouri as a result. Missourians have suffered for years and now it will become unbearable.

Ricardo Gutiérrez tweeted a succinct way of saying it:

Healthcare for profit is murder.

In another post by Laura Clawson she documented several GOP critters who object to fair voting. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie objected to universal vote by mail by saying, “Universal vote by mail would be the end of our republic as we know it.” That would, um, be a “republic” ruled by white male oligarchs and authoritarians?

At the end of Clawson’s list is the nasty guy saying:

The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.

So … the nasty guy admitted the GOP can’t win without cheating. Never again have a Republican elected? One can dream.

American lives are removed from the equation

A not cold but windy day here in southeastern Michigan. I’ve been able to walk outside for my daily exercise every day since last Monday. It looks like I’ll be able to do that for most or all of the coming week as well, and maybe get my bicycle out.

There was a lot of rain yesterday and last night. The floodplain park near me was closed due to flooding (which is why it’s a park). So after today’s walk I went out my back gate into the nature preserve (it was a golf course 8 years ago) between me and the park to see the flooding there. As I used to say when the area was a golf course at the moment I now have beachfront property. There is enough of a rise between the river and my house that I’m not worried about the yard or house flooding.

Just beyond my back fence is a path wide enough for vehicles, formerly for the grounds crew. Then there is a line of trees. As I came back to this line of trees an especially strong gust of wind came up. The next tree downwind, about 10 feet away, started cracking, then fell over. It didn’t get very far – its branches soon entangled into the next tree in line. It also fell away from me.



Twitter user brandAn is good offers this:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
all the rest have thirty-one
Except March which has 8000

As of this afternoon Michigan has 5500 COVID-19 cases. Half of them are in Wayne County and most of those are in Detroit. Worldwide there are 718K cases and in the US 139K cases with 2,661recovered.



Since the virus spreads exponentially, we could see two million dead within a month. Kos community member sufeitzh created a chart on a logarithmic scale (where instead of increasing 1, 2, 3, the numbers increase, 1, 10, 100) that shows the exponential growth as a straight line (which is why one uses logarithmic scales). At various dates the chart shows the projected dead and an event with a similar number of dead. For example, by April 9 there could be 58K dead, which is similar to the number of Americans who died in Vietnam.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Kos of Kos compares the virus toll in California and New York. California, mostly around the Bay Area, was prompt in imposing stay-at-home orders. New York wasn’t. Soon New York was dealing with about 3,000 cases and the Bay Area had only 400.

Then Kos looked at states that have a stay-at-home order compared to those that don’t. A big worry is Florida, with its elderly population, could be looking at 320,000 deaths in just a few weeks. Stay-at-home orders make a difference.



There was a lot of news about the cruise ship Diamond Princess that became a virus incubator when the whole ship was quarantined and not allowed to dock. That’s not the end of the story. There are at least 10 other cruise ships, with nearly 10,000 passengers that are not allowed to dock. Anywhere.



Dartagnan of the Kos community explores the nasty guy’s actions as a reelection campaign strategy. First, a quote from Charlie Warzel in the New York Times on the nasty guy’s two choices for his campaign.

* He could have done everything possible (started adequate testing immediately, got masks and ventilators to hospitals).

The first path would save millions of jobs, turn Trump into a populist hero for many and perhaps prevent another depression.

* Or he could do what he did:

The second path would court chaos, playing up the partisan divide, deflecting all blame for the coronavirus pandemic onto the media, China and the Obama White House, and praying that it ends up being enough to obscure his administration’s disastrous lack of preparation.

He chose the second because it has always worked for him. It is both cruel and misguided from an economic perspective. Dartagnan wrote:

But not from a political perspective. Trump’s actions up to this point bespeak a cold, political calculation, one that Trump clearly believes is viable in these polarized times. The calculation is not particularly complex. It is that the number of Americans who die as a result of his policy will be outweighed by the polarized sentiments of the electorate, come Election Day.

He created targets for his supporters to blame. This is both calling it the “Chinese virus” and blaming Dem governors who aren’t “nice” to him. It also meant the media was talking about his racism and not his negligent virus response.

Because that $2 trillion recovery bill doesn’t do a lot for workers the nasty guy can pretend to side with the workers by blaming Dem governors for the economic fallout of the stay-at-home policies. That’s especially true if those stay-at-home policies actually work in lessening the number of deaths. He could also proclaim his national strategy worked. If the virus doesn’t spread to rural areas he can say Dems overreacted. And those daily briefings, mostly set up to stroke his ego, are also daily campaign events. Dartagnan wrote:

Trump is simply counting on the profoundly hyper-partisan divide in this country to be more significant and powerful than the actual body count caused by his strategy.

The problem, though the nasty guy doesn’t see it as one, is that American lives are removed from the equation. Dartagnan again:

Never before has any American president exhibited such wanton, callous disregard for the lives of American citizens.

Members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra did a performance of part of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, each playing from their own home. Technology can be cool! No idea where they hid the choir.



Ann Serling, daughter of Rod Serling, has a Twitter feed. Rod is famous for his work in the early days of television, especially Twilight Zone. A quote from her father:

Human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake.

That prompted this quote (author not named) in reply:

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

And just for fun.

They knew

Congress just passed a coronavirus relief bill. It contains a half trillion for businesses. The law contains rules for oversight of how the money is spent, with regular reports to Congress. The nasty guy signed the bill, adding a signing statement – all those oversight rules will be ignored and any requests by Congress for information will be refused.

That prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tweet:

And just like that, the Congressional oversight provisions for the 1/2 TRILLION dollar Wall St slush fund (which were *already* too weak) are tossed away the day the bill is signed. This is a frightening amount of public money to have given a corrupt admin w/ 0 accountability.

Deeply disappointing, but not at all surprising.



Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been agitating for more medical supplies for Detroit, hard hit by the coronavirus, and has been critical of the nasty guy. When the nasty guy said governors were on their own Whitmer talked to suppliers directly. But she heard from vendors that federal officials told them not to sell to Michigan.

That prompted Leah McElrath to tweet:

Trump is letting the people of Michigan die because he doesn’t like their governor.

I heard on the evening news on Michigan Radio that Michigan received a large shipment of masks. So perhaps the female governor got the nasty guy to back down (though that story isn’t on their website).



This evening’s opera is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Wagner. It’s an opera about a singing contest. Walther comes to town and falls in love at first sight with Eva. She’s the daughter of the head of the town music guild. He proposed that Eva select the winner, whom she could marry. She does have the right of refusal, so it’s not quite as sexist as it might be.

The singing guild has a lot of rules about what qualifies as an acceptable song. Of course, Walther doesn’t know any of them. So we have Beckmesser, who also wants to marry Eva, grades Walther’s introductory song (the day before the contest) and fills his grading board with errors. We also have Hans Sachs, who says the rules shouldn’t apply when the artist clearly works in a wonderful new direction.

When Die Meistersinger premiered several people noticed that the subject was about his own music. Wagner didn’t follow the rules. Many critics were scathing because of that. But others understood that Wagner was staking out a new direction. The character of Beckmesser is supposedly modeled on Wagner’s most vocal critic.
A fun scene happens in the second act. Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva. Sachs, watching over the neighborhood, has set up his shoemaker bench in front of his house and is making the shoes Beckmesser ordered. Sachs volunteers, and insists, to grade Beckmesser on his song, similar to how Beckmesser had graded Walther. Except instead of putting marks on a board with chalk, Sachs will strike the shoe with his hammer. Beckmesser gets so flustered that Sachs is able to finish the shoes before the end of the song.

It is rather nice to have a city in which the working men value song and poetry.

The opera has its comic moments (see above), but a bit too serious for an outright comedy. Though Walther has the role of hero in the contest, most of the story is about Sachs, a very kind and understanding man. A good thing about this opera is that nobody dies. And was there any doubt who got the girl? The downside – it’s Wagner’s longest opera. The third act alone is about two hours.



Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos says we should pay attention to this timeline:

Jan. 16 – The nasty guy’s impeachment trial began.

Jan. 20 – The CDC confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the US.

Jan. 24 – The Senate Health and Foreign Relations Committee held a private, all-senator briefing on the virus. The hearing included CDC and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Senator Loeffler began dumping stocks that day.

Jan. 27 – Senator Inhofe sold stock. Two others would also over the next couple weeks. This turned into a scandal because the senators were at the time telling the public everything was fine.

Feb. 4 – The Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the Department of Health and Human services was briefed by the National Security Office of HHS. GOP Senator Grassley put out a statement that the coronavirus doesn’t pose any imminent threat.

Feb. 5 – The Senate GOP voted for acquittal.

Their stock selling showed the GOP senators knew the seriousness of the problem, even if Grassley put out a “don’t worry” statement. They knew how well the nasty guy would handle the crisis. They voted to keep the nasty guy in charge anyway. They also want the death and destruction the nasty is unleashing. They are also responsible for this disaster.



I had written about chef José Andrés of World Central Kitchen. He had turned his shuttered DC restaurants into places to feed those who lost their jobs. He also set up a kitchen when a cruise ship, with sick travelers, docked in Oakland, CA. Gabe Ortiz of Kos says because of those and other wonderful works Andrés is on the cover of the latest issue of *Time* magazine. He, of course, said he shares the honor with all the millions around the world who feed humanity. Ortiz was able to volunteer for a while with the WCK organization.

People should die

I will start with a bit of thanks. I’m alive. I’m not sick. I’m retired so I don’t have a job to lose. I am able to stay home. Compared to what others are going through boring is good.



Mark Sumner of Daily Kos looks at the numbers of coronavirus cases in the US and around the world. The US moved past 100,000 cases today. That’s more cases than any other country.

China went from 24K cases to 44K in seven days. Italy went from 21K to 53K in seven days. The US went from 19K to 100K in seven days. But we have much more than 100K cases. Because of the lack of testing we don’t know for sure.

A chart of these changes shows the US as an outlier with our rate rising much more steeply. What’s really going on is our curve likely much the same, but the numbers have been off all along. They’re not too far off. There certainly weren’t “just 15 cases” when the nasty guy asserted that weeks ago. But we also don’t yet have mass graves. Sumner wrote …

the numbers that we’re getting show that the situation is bad, but they can’t show how bad, or where we’re going, or how we find our way out.

Two months in, the one thing we’re still screwing up is the first and most important thing: testing.

Jen Hayden of Kos looked at a video put out by Tectonix. The company looked at cell phone location data for a particular beach in Fort Lauderdale during spring break, the first 2 weeks of March. This was a time when public places were starting to close, yet youth were defiant in their partying. Then Tectonix watched the location data as the youth went home. Two things about this. First: Seeing the way these people spread across the country, knowing some of them were infected, even if they had no symptoms, is scary to see. Second: It is also scary that Tectonix had access to this data.



Jim Swift of The Bulwark noted that frequently Democrats criticize GOP policy proposals saying people will die. The GOP responds that doesn’t mean the government should save them. But in this time the GOP variation of the phrase has become: People should die.



Mario King, Mayor of Moss Point, Mississippi, had closed restaurants except for takeout, barbershops and such, and churches. But Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued an order overruling mayors and reopening such businesses. King describes the order as “complete foolishness and foolery.” This is going to spike the number of cases in the state.



Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that entire states may have trouble getting equipment to combat the virus.

That’s because the personal grievances Trump seems most focused on right now are with governors—he’s literally threatening resources for entire states if he doesn’t think their governors have sucked up to him enough.
...
As if the health of entire states should boil down to personal relationships between governors and presidents, because apparently millions of Americans don’t matter.

Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is one of those who has been critical of the nasty guy.



Ryan Struyk of CNN tweeted a quote from Joe Biden:

The harsh reality is that at least 3 million people now don’t have jobs because our president didn’t do his job when it mattered.

Bloomberg business news tweeted:

The Trump campaign told TV stations they could lose their licenses for airing an ad criticizing the president’s actions in the coronavirus crisis.

Olga Lautman, who researches Russia, responded:

Exactly how Putin handles things. The criminal authoritarian now using a crisis to attempt to silence free press. Media should not allow these bullying tactics and continue reporting facts that Trump intentionally failing to respond and suppress cases will lead to mass deaths.

I’ve written about and quoted Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes. I see Urban Dictionary has an entry for the Kendzior Rule. It’s defined this way:

When you let powerful people commit crimes, they will resurface later and commit more crimes. This will come as a total surprise to everyone who still believes shame is a deterrent to the powerful and corrupt.

After reading that the nasty guy was skeptical of the number of ventilators hospitals say they need, Leah McElrath tweeted:

Trump advised one of his friends and donors to flee NYC and go to a beach town because it would be “safer.”

We have to start acknowledging that Trump KNOWS people will die and WANTS them to die.

Trump WANTS chaos because he can (and already is) use the fog to consolidate power.

Today’s opera is Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final chapter in Wagner, *Ring* cycle. It is the longest, well over 4 hours. So to avoid staying up well past midnight I’m occasionally jumping over the boring parts to get to the Big Finish and its glorious music before I fall asleep. The title commonly translates to “Twilight of the Gods.” This particular race of gods have been scheming and screwing things up for three operas, and it all ends in tonight’s story.

A major character in operas 2, 3, and 4 is Brünnhilde. Whenever you see a cartoon (or anything really) of a moment in opera showing a woman with blond hair, maybe in braids, under a helmet with horns and holding a spear or shield, that’s Brünnhilde. She’s become quite the stereotype of opera. I used such a cartoon when I talked about the Ring when I taught music theory. However, in these Metropolitan Opera productions she doesn’t have the blond hair (it’s red) nor the braids. She doesn’t have a helmet with horns, though does at times have the spear and shield.

The ending: Siegfried (the hero in the previous opera) has been betrayed. Under the influence of a forgetting potion, he betrayed his bride Brünnhilde – lots of dramatic singing. He is killed, stabbed in the back. His body is taken back to Brünnhilde. And the Big Finish: She creates a funeral pyre and lights it. Then she mounts her trusty horse and with it leaps onto the pyre. That action burns down Valhalla, the home of the gods, which allows the Rheinmaidens reclaim the powerful yet cursed ring that was stolen from them in the first opera.

A cruel idiot can still do considerable damage

I think my last scheduled event outside the house was two weeks ago yesterday. I feel a bit bored because my choice of activities is limited and I don’t have a lot of other kinds things that I can do. So even though I have plenty to do in each of my projects and each project is interesting I have a feeling of oh, isn’t there something else to do? …



Dr. Jeffrey VanWingen created a video, 14 minutes long, demonstrating how to safely bring groceries and takeout into the home while avoiding possible virus contamination. I’ll remark on a few things he said. I strongly recommend you watch and share.

* I’m at an age where I really should let someone else shop for me. However, right now shopping is the only thing that gets me out of the house.

* Ideally groceries should be left outside for three days. As the weather warms up that may not be so feasible.

* He washed his fruit – apples and oranges in this case – by dumping them into sudsy water in the sink then washing each one as thoroughly as one should wash hands.

* Heat kills the virus (so maybe get hot takeout food and microwave it). Freezing only preserves the virus for later.



The gov’t reported the number of new applications for unemployment in the past week. The previous high was a little less than 700K in a week. That record was set back in 1982. In the last week new applications were close to 3.3 million. Which puts a really big spike in the graph. Some state unemployment systems crashed from the load.



The NRA is in a snit because in states that have shelter-in-place orders gun stores are considered “non essential” and are closed.



Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports that the nasty guy looks prepared to actually do something. And, what a surprise, it doesn’t look good. He’s sent a letter to state governors saying he’ll take over protecting the people of their state, right down to the county level. And like every mafioso there is the underlying threat you do it my way … or else.

A portion of the letter was tweeted here. It does say more testing is coming (no breath being held). It suggests categorizing counties as high-, medium-, and low risk (for what purpose?). It doesn’t mention masks and ventilators.



The news has a sense of I’ve seen that already, which makes for less to report to you. That’s good, because I’d rather talk of something else now. I suppose any long term crisis will eventually be like that.



With not much in the news I read the transcript of another Gaslit Nation episode with hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This one is titled Jared Kushner is a National Emergency. A lot of this episode is, at least for me, stuff I’ve read before. So not a lot I want to share. You could get a lot from listening or reading.
https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2020/3/21/jared-kushner-is-a-national-emergency

The hosts do talk about the nasty prince … a bit. Mostly they say he’s an idiot and he’s cruel, like his father-in-law. But a cruel idiot, especially one with with a lot of backing from a cruel party and cruel billionaires, can still do considerable damage. Somebody in the background is using incompetence to cover the malice.

The discussion turns to religious extremism and the wide variety of it around the world. Kendzior said:

I mean, what I'm basically saying here is that in one sense it's a matter of religion but it's usually a matter of religion as a pretext for chaos and death, and destruction.

The episode eventually turns to the Supreme Court. There is such a thing as the Supreme Court Bar, which is judges and lawyers who have been qualified to argue cases before the Court. One of them is James Dannenberg, who is also a retired state judge in Hawaii. Dannenberg resigned is membership in the Bar in protest and wrote a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts explaining his reasoning. Here’s a bit of it:

I can no longer say with any confidence that you are doing far more and far worse than calling balls and strikes. You're allowing the court to become an errand boy for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.

This evening’s opera is Siegfried, chapter 3 in the Ring cycle by Wagner. Again, it is long. I think there are several “explanation” conversations that could have been left out. The character of Siegfried is rather appealing. He’s the hero that was foretold in the previous opera. As a hero he doesn’t know fear. And when there is a prophesy concerning one who knows no fear, his guardian, Mime tries to explain and teach fear. The lessons don’t work, which, given Siegfried’s innocence, is appealing. I won’t watch all of it. Once Siegfried gets the girl they spend 45 minute singing about it.



A little fun to distract from the day’s strangeness.

The Slo-Mo Guys take video of unusual things at 12,000 frames per second. I first enjoyed them pouring paint on a (protected) speaker cone and watching the paint dance when the speaker is turned on (scroll to the bottom of this post). Then I watched them drop a blob of rainbow colored gelatin and whack it with a tennis racket. Both look really cool in slow motion. They have more videos I could watch.

A merging of religion, white supremacy, and capitalism

After my post yesterday, which talked about the GOP demanding the economy be restarted in spite of the huge numbers of deaths to the elderly and the rest of us, my sister sent an email with questions.

- If The Nasty Guy delegated responsibility to The Vice to handle this crisis, why is he still talking about it himself? Why not let The Vice do that? Or am I the only one sick and tired of his daily stupidity?

You are far from the only one tired of his daily stupidity. There are efforts asking major news sources to not show those press conferences live because the nasty guy spews such misinformation and lies.

The reason why the nasty guy is doing it and not the vice nasty guy is because it shows the NG as in charge and smart enough to know all the answers. This isn’t about him giving info to the country. This is about him getting his ego stroked. Notice that when the VNG does speak it is always in terms of praise to the NG. He either believes it or knows how the game is played, likely the latter.

- If they don't care that The Virus is going after their constituents, the senior citizens who voted him into office, who will be left to vote him in again?

I’ve already talked about ways the fall election could be avoided. I’ve shown that the nasty guy doesn’t have the ability to change the date of the election. But I’ve also written that the GOP state legislatures could cancel the election and award their Electoral College votes to the nasty guy.

In the mind of an authoritarian it is a balance between oppressing others (including to the point of death) and trusting a rigged election system will keep them in power (and declaring it fake news when it doesn’t).

- Will believing like Thanos (bad guy in the Marvel Comics Avenger's Universe) does - that half of the population needs to die immediately to bring stability back to planets with overpopulation problems - really help him get reelected and solve pollution, environmental, and economic problems within The Nasty Guys "reign"?

He and his backers aren’t interested in solving pollution and environmental problems. They believe their billions will provide a way to live comfortably no matter what happens to the world. The environmental problems oppress the rest of us, perhaps aiding in killing us off. From their viewpoint that’s a good thing. As for economic problems – they have so completely rigged the system that when the economy goes belly-up most of them make money off the misery of others.

But yeah, they believe the world is overpopulated. A smaller population is easier for them to control. However, the humane way to stabilize or reduce the population is to allow women to have complete control of their bodies. But that would mean ending patriarchy and misogyny, and they’re not about to do that.

- And where are all the "I survived the 2020 Crisis" (or other sayings) T-shirts to sell and bring back the economy?

This sounds like an entrepreneurial opportunity. Create your own!

And ask more questions as they occur to you.



The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Michigan has topped 2300, up about 500 in the last day. Over 1100 of those cases are in Wayne County (where I live). Michigan Radio reports that Detroit area hospitals are close to capacity. They don’t know how big the situation will become because there still isn’t enough testing.



I had mentioned that the nasty guy suggested some alternate drugs would defeat the coronavirus, though no tests have yet been done to verify that, and some people have died. One of those drugs is critical for Lupus patients. And they are having a hard time getting prescriptions refilled.



On today’s Morning Edition on NPR Ayesha Rascoe explained what is going on with the Defense Production Act the nasty guy pretended to use and then didn’t. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has criticized the nasty guy for not sending enough ventilators, said:

Only the federal government has that power. And not to exercise that power is inexplicable to me.

Beyond that various government people say we’ve invoked it, no we don’t need to. The nasty guy said using it is like a government takeover of companies.

Peter Schulman, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said private industry acting on its own won't be able to get the goods to where they're needed most. The act has previously been used for emergencies too big and complex for the country's free markets to handle.



I mentioned yesterday various GOP talking heads have been pushing the idea that the economy must be reopened and it’s fine of that kills off a few seniors. That got a lot of pushback today.

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reports the hashtag #DieForTheDow has been trending. Einenkel included several tweets with that tag. One is from a 59 year old woman who lists several ways she helps her daughter and grandchildren, who would be in worse shape without her.

Bree Newsome Bass tweeeted:

Everyone arguing that 1-2% of the population dying isn’t a big deal needs to identify 1 or 2 close family members or friends that they are willing to offer up to death in this moment for capitalism. Name them.

Say their names out loud and speak it into the universe with the same ease you condemn others to death.

Paul Jacobson replied stop using small numbers like 1% and 2%. That translates to 3 million to 6 million deaths.

The Good Liars tweeted photos of posters they put up around their town. The main poster is a take on the WWII poster where Uncle Sam points a finger and says “I want you to serve,” but in this one the nasty guy is pointing the finger and the words say, “I want you to die for our economy.”

And in another tweet they say, “Trump caskets. Coming soon.”

Samantha Bee of Full Frontal tweeted:

Trump wants to open up the nation by Easter because he clearly observes Christian holidays. For example, he gave up your grandparents for Lent.

Lots of people responded with scathing quips of their own. Such as an image that shows two buttons labeled “Save Grandma” and “Open Cheesecake Factory Again.”

A 90 year old: “So trump wants country open by Easter. Ok. So we’ll crucify him, put him in a cave and, if he resurrects, we’ll become believers.”

And Lady Leo: “The Republicans at EASTER Time Anti Abortion but PRO Killing Grandfathers and Grandmothers.”

The pro-life party is proposing this? Doesn’t sound pro-life. Which means their ranting about protecting the life of the baby wasn’t about the baby. It was about keeping the woman at home. And out of the business world.



Jared Yates Sexton soundly rejects the idea that there needs to be a trade-off between millions dead and a working economy. As part of his thread:

The truth is that billionaires could be multimillionaires with everything they want and this thing could stabilize. In fact, it would thrive. You’d finally get a stable economy, which we haven’t had for decades. It’d literally be better for everyone. But these people lack duty.

The fact is that Reaganomics pushes corporations and individuals until they grew larger than the nation that birthed them, until they became nations unto themselves and devoid of civic responsibility or conscience. They’ll sacrifice us, all of us, and they’ll do it happily.

In another thread Sexton provides a bit of history into the Cult of Trump, which is also the Cult of the Shining City. It started in the 1960s when MLK highlighted the social justice aspects of the Gospel of Jesus. Jerry Falwell, preaching a supremacist Confederate religion, shifted the Christian focus from social justice to prosperity as an indicator of God’s favor.

Add in Adam Smith’s capitalism and the “invisible hand” of the market that chooses winners and losers. Falwell and gang declared that hand to be the hand of a racist god. Pour in Reaganomics and his idea that poverty was a mark of sinfulness. We get a merging of religion, white supremacy, and capitalism.

People are constantly confused by how the Cult of the Shining City worships Trump as a messiah and stands by him, but he is the literal embodiment of their ideology. His wealth and power, not to mention his defense of white supremacy, makes him a perfect pope-like figure.
...
This worship of the market is inherent to the ideas of Falwell and Reagan. When you watch the DOW jump or fall, these people inherently believe it is a measure of God's pleasure or displeasure. They see a plague like this and see a supernatural punishment.
...
Here's a warning: The Cult of the Shining City is an apocalyptic cult. They're not afraid to sacrifice lives. They're not afraid to drive civilization over the cliff. This policy of reopening the economy despite the warnings of scientists does not frighten or impede them.

The Cult of the Shining City that worships Trump will watch while millions die from the pandemic and they'll chalk it up to God's will. You already hear that. I'm seeing it left and right in white-identity, evangelical circles. It's economic Darwinism made into scripture.

Ashton Lattimore of Our Prism on Kos notes the persistent use of the word “bungled” in describing the nasty guy’s response to the coronavirus. It has appeared in many headlines. But “bungled” implies accident. And if it is all an accident then the nasty guy is an innocent bystander. But the better descriptions would be “gross negligence” or “reckless indifference to life” which imply intentional non-effort and should demand removal from office.



Dems and GOP have come to an agreement over a rescue bill. I’ll let you read the details here. Alas, the vote is being held up by a bunch of GOP members who don’t like the idea that those at the bottom of the pay scale may make more money off unemployment insurance than from their low paying jobs.



Kos of Kos says life changed because of 9/11 (we still take our shoes off at the airport). He suggests there are at least 11 ways our lives will change because of the pandemic. Some of them:

* Reagan was famous for saying the most terrifying phrase is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” It turns out in a global disaster the only thing that can help is the government. And the free market is asking for handouts.

* Security is more than thwarting terrorists.

* We’re in this together.

* Working from home is actually OK.

* Government-supplied health care will receive a boost. A lot of people are about to lose health insurance at the worst time to do so.

* We can tackle the big issues. The Obama bailout at $0.9 trillion was hugely controversial. And the Senate is talking about $2 trillion. If we can do it to survive a pathogen we can do it to prevent the death of the planet.



This evening I’m listening to Wagner’s Die Walkure – The Valkyrie. The famous Ride of the Valkyries opens Act III. After watching Das Rheingold yesterday and now well into the second chapter I feel again that Wagner could have used a good editor for his text. A great deal of of this opera so far is explaining how this set of gods works and doing so in dramatic overwrought music. Even so, the singers/actors at the Metropolitan Opera do a fine job of acting (even if sometimes overwrought) as they do a fine job of singing.

A saying of Wagner’s music is moments of amazingly glorious music interspersed in rather boring quarter hours. But, oh!, those glorious moments! (like the last 20 minutes of Act III).

You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die

I did watch all of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolda yesterday evening. It finished close to 11:30.

There are times during plays and operas when one can get annoyed with the length of a death scene. The character gets stabbed or shot and sings for an amazing long time before keeling over. Tristan took that to extremes – he got shot at the end of Act II and didn’t die until ¾ of the way through Act III! Wagner wrote his own text as well as the music. I think he could have used an editor to condense the story.

On to Das Rheingold for this evening. It’s not quite three hours in length. If you would like a good summary of the whole Ring cycle find Anna Russel. She can accurately and humorously tell the whole 15 hour story in 20 minutes.



Quote of the day:

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt

A bit from today’s pandemic status report that Mark Sumner does for Daily Kos:

Thanks to despicably poor preparation, criminally slow testing, and an unwillingness to accept the steps taken elsewhere, the United States is well on its way to becoming not just the major global hotspot for COVID-19, but the major source of infection that threatens the rest of the planet.
...
As Reuters reports, the World Health Organization has singled out the United States as a unique threat. The U.S. has a very large outbreak, a series of very uneven regulations from state to state, and a White House that is expressing more concern over market falls than overcrowded hospitals. No other nation on the planet is adding cases like the United States.
...
China appears to be successful in fighting the infection there, while the United States seems utterly ineffectual in halting the lightening growth here. At this point, there’s no doubt about which nation is more dangerous to the rest of the world.

And what is happening in that ineffectual national government?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave a press conference today. I’ll take it in two parts. Cuomo said in a justified rant:

FEMA says we’re sending 400 ventilators. Really? What am I going to do with 400 ventilators when I need 30,000. You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators.

To which the nasty guy said:

It's a two way street. They have to treat us well too.
…
I hear there's a problem with ventilators. We sent them ventilators. They they could have had 15,000 or 16,000. All they had to do was order them two years ago. But they decided not to do it. They can't blame us for that.

lovewinsalways of the Kos community explains:

This is where Trump makes explicitly clear that he will happily let those stricken blue states burn in virus hell, unless they flatter him—by doing whatever he wants at the moment.

It is the most chilling moment of his already chilling presidency: if one looks at the bigger picture, I feel like it’s his personal declaration of civil war against half the country.

Neo Cortex tweeted:

He thinks governors need to curry favor with him in order to get what they need.

He thinks he's a damn king.

lovewinsalways replied:

As long as he can singlehandedly throttle the Fed’s action on coronavirus, he IS a king. The Repub Senate did this.

The other part of Cuomo’s press conference is in response to the GOP, so I’ll start with what they did.

I had mentioned that the nasty guy wants to “restart” the economy in spite of how that would cause a lot more exposure to the virus. Various GOP members are now saying stupid stuff to support that narrative. For example: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to say:

And you know Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, ‘Are you willing to take a chance on your survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America [sic] loves, for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reminds us that it won’t be privileged Dan Patrick who has to make that sacrifice. Besides, while seniors are more likely to die, those who are not yet seniors also end up spending long periods in ICUs and also die.

Avoiding more damage to the economy is so important the GOP and the nasty guy are willing to put up with millions of deaths? Yeah, they are.

Laura Clawson of Kos reminds us that even if that was an acceptable trade-off (and it’s not), having millions of people get sick and a couple million die will have a profound effect on the economy, whether it’s restarted or not. All that disease means missing and lost workers, major medical debt, and possibly lost homes.

I’m sure that shuttered Trump properties has nothing to do with the nasty guy’s desire to restart the economy. Sheesh, only six of his top seven properties are shuttered. Together they produce $174 million a year. So what are a few million deaths when one is faced with the loss of a hundred million dollars?

Now, back to Cuomo and the second part of what said:

My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable and we're not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable.

Even before they try to reopen the economy the GOP and the nasty guy seem intent in killing of their base. Example 1: The nasty guy has been touting that chloroquine, a malaria drug, works against the coronavirus. It may. Or may not. Research whether it does and dosages for the safest outcome hasn’t been done yet. But that hasn’t stopped his desperate followers from trying it. And dying from it.

Example 2: They’re talking that restarting the economy means allowing perhaps millions of seniors die. But seniors voted for the nasty guy in pretty good percentages. They want to kill their voters.

They certainly aren’t acting like they want people to stay alive.

Michigan got snow last night. It looked pretty this morning. It didn’t stick to the street or driveways. It’s gone already.

Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer announced more restrictions on being out and about: Grocery store, pharmacy, job, walk your dog, go home. This afternoon the COVID-19 case count for Michigan, as tracked by Michigan Radio hit 1,328. Home sounds like a good idea.

The Metropolitan Opera is streaming for free a different opera each evening and leaving it up through most of the next day. This is the second week they are doing it. And this week is Wagner week with streaming of Tristan und Isolde (which I’m listening to as I write this), all four operas of the Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger, and Tannhäuser. Next week’s schedule hasn’t been announced yet.

Now that I’m listening and somewhat watching Tristan I realize I haven’t seen the whole thing before. I’m quite familiar with the plot and the first 10 minutes (the Prelude) – I even presented it in class when I taught – and the last 10 minutes (the Liebestodt), but not the 4½ hours in between.



Some of today’s coronavirus news.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reports that the Senate’s next bill to lessen the impact of the virus includes a half trillion dollar slush fund that the Treasury department can dole out to corporations as it wishes. A procedural vote on it failed yesterday. Moscow Mitch forced it back again today and it failed again.

Stephen Wolfe of Kos reports Speaker Nancy Pelosi has countered with a Democratic bill. It has all kinds of actually useful stuff, including a provision for national vote by mail in emergencies. Such as now. At the moment the Dems have the leverage.



In another post Wolfe reported that the GOP in Kentucky is heading in the other direction. They are passing a voter ID law – as the primary was postponed to June and drivers license offices are closed by the virus. Dem Gov. Andy Beshear will veto, but the legislature can easily override.



Eri Umansky of ProPublica, tweeted a thread about the Defense Production Act, which could increase production of needed medical supplies and which the nasty guy has pretended to invoke. He quotes a New York Times article that says the heads of major corporations lobbied against it, saying it imposed red tape precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories. And the real reason:

Industry executives say companies are reluctant to crank up production lines without purchasing guarantees from the government.

Commenters note the DPA prevents price gouging and profiteering. So corporations choose money over saving lives.

Another commenter notes these corporations get requests from around the world and from governors and mayors in the US. How should the orders be prioritized? The nasty guy isn’t saying.

Carol Livingston tweeted that a friend, an ICU nurse, is quite upset over the lack of tests, adequate protection gear, and ventilators.

If this administration had invoked the Defense Production Act when it should have, factories would already be geared up and pumping out more protective gear.

Johns Hopkins University and Medicine has a Coronavirus Resource Center. It shows worldwide confirmed cases – 378K, up about 30K since I checked earlier today, and currently 43K in the US. OF that total 101K have recovered.



annieli of the Kos community shares a variety of stories and tweets about the nasty guy along with rebuttals. One of those is a report from the Washington Post that he is being pressured by GOP lawmakers to scale back steps to contain the virus. Conservatives say the impact on the economy has become too severe (and the impact of millions dead wouldn’t be? Hmm.)

Tim Duy, an economist with the Oregon Economic Forum, tweeted:

Suspect this sudden pressure to reopen the economy before we control the virus is a reaction to the realization that the economy as structured cannot survive a month and the necessary restructuring will be in the direction of everything the GOP has fought against for decades.

Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

This isn't about helping people. It's about helping the wealthy and corporations and furthering social inequality. It is literally the picking of the bones of an economy they created knowing full and well it was inherently cruel and predictably unstable.

A tweet from Leah McElrath sums it up well:

I’m not saying Trump and Republican lawmakers want people to die, but they certainly aren’t acting like they want people to stay alive.

Dartagnan of Kos talks about GoFundMe. It is a crowdfunding platform, founded in 2010, that allows people to ask for money for projects of various kinds. While Kickstarter is used for such things as a band trying to fund a new album. GoFundMe is used by people who have suffered a calamity, such as huge medical bills, a lost job, or a natural disaster. Some people are able to raise large sums of money, but most requests fall well short of goals.

The problem is this has become an acceptable substitute for adequate health care coverage, a type of coverage for inequalities in a dysfunctional system. This allows the current system to be maintained and allows The Onion to satirize that GoFundMe is the bedrock of the American health care system. But between COVID-19 medical bills and the massive loss of jobs, Dartagnan says, “We’re not going to be able to ‘GoFundMe’ our way out of that. Not in a million years.”

The end game is, simply, the end

Conservatism is deadly. Which, according to some of them, is the point.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports Kentucky has a Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. The GOP dominated legislature has tried but not succeeded in stripping him of power. Tennessee’s governor is GOP Bill Lee. The two states got their first cases of COVID-19 at about the same time. Beshear took action. Lee did nothing for about a week.

Kentucky now has 63 cases and has done lots of tests. Tennessee has passed 300 cases from fewer tests and its growth rate is much faster.

Thank you to Democratic governors!



Dartagnan of the Kos community noted the nasty guy signed an order to invoke the Defense Protection Act, but admitted he hasn’t actually called on manufacturers to follow it. The DPA allows the president to order companies to manufacture certain products that are vital to the country. Right now that would be ventilators and masks.

This prompted Dartagnan to decry conservatism:

The nationalization of a few select corporations could have alleviated untold suffering among a huge swath of the American population, preventing an agonizing death for many of them, but there were people in this administration who believed it was more important to allow those same corporations the freedom to do whatever they want—including doing nothing, if they wished. They believed it was better to let thousands of Americans suffer and die than to repudiate—even for a moment—their “free-market” ideology.

This is the natural endgame of “conservatism,” because it is a philosophy that ultimately reduces the human condition to an afterthought. It is a philosophy that sells itself with fantasies about “personal freedom,” but the freedom being sold is really only the freedom for a few people to accumulate unchecked wealth. In the imaginary world that “conservatism” aspires to, there is no social compact and Americans are not responsible for each other. So for the vast majority of those who must live in American society, and who are not corporate CEOs or in possession of great wealth, ultimately the so-called “freedom” of conservatism amounts to little more than freedom to die. Boiled down to its essence, so-called “conservatism” believes that if someone profits even while another dies, that is simply the law of the jungle: fixed, immutable, and not to be questioned, certainly not by the government.

This is why instead of bold, decisive national action we see a president extolling the so-called power of cash-strapped state governors, while minimizing his own responsibility to do anything.
…
The fact that this will happen--is happening-- right before our eyes and still nothing whatsoever is being done is the harshest indictment of “conservatism” that could possibly be imagined. Here we see revealed in all its ignominy a hollow and meaningless philosophy, a flimsy excuse dressed up in noble-sounding principles to justify raw, human greed. It does not adapt to crises because “crisis” implies shared responsibility towards others in the society. Its sole goal is to perpetuate itself, even as it leaves behind a wake of human carnage. And just like this administration, it can never admit when it is wrong.

I add that greed is another aspect of supremacy.



Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarians, doesn’t think it is just greed. She was asked if she figured out how the nasty guy and cronies are profiting from the disease. She replied:

Not sure immediate profit (like a virus patent, for example) is the key motive. The end game is, simply, the end. Mass death and economic breakdown make full autocracy easier, lets them steal resources, etc. It also fits agenda of admin religious fanatics like Pompeo, Barr, etc.

As for those saying “history will not be kind” Kendzior tweeted:

They don't care about a traditional sense of history or reputation. Folks need to grasp this point:

The people tweeting "history will not be kind" need to get a grip on the present. The crisis is not about reputations: it's about illegal and nefarious actions. What matters is what people do NOW, or we don't get history, because we don't get a future.

Commenter Hannover Fisk responded:

Respectfully: there is probably no one in the entire nation who cares as much about what people think of him as Donald Trump does.

Kendzior replied;

I understand what you mean, but his solution to that is not to win people over. It's to annihilate people, censor them, kill them, force them to praise him, force everything to revolve around him. There have been autocrats of similar bent. He's uniquely American, but not unique.

Jared Yates Sexton reminds us the fine lines the experts must walk when they line up behind the nasty guy for the daily virus briefing. It is a constant internal battle between trying to get useful information to the country while not contradicting the boss.

Listen. Authoritarians cannot stand experts as they are living proof the authoritarian does not possess all knowledge. They will sabotage experts, undermine them, and endanger everyone just to protect themselves.

I had posted before that the nasty guy can’t cancel the election. It is Congress that sets the date. His term ends at noon on January 20, 2021. Jennifer Cohn, who is an election security advocate, tweeted about an article in Slate:

Maybe Trump wants the situation to get bad enough that Republicans in the GOP-controlled states have “no choice” but to cancel the election and hand their 290 electoral votes to Trump?!

I read the article in Slate, which is by Mark Joseph Stern. Some of what he wrote:

But the Constitution does not require states to assign their electors on the basis of the statewide vote. It does not even require a statewide vote. Rather, it explains that each state “shall appoint” its electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” In other words, each state legislature gets to decide how electors are appointed—and, by extension, who gets their votes.
...
Put simply, it is perfectly constitutional for a state legislature to scrap statewide elections for president and appoint electors itself. It would also be constitutional for a state legislature to disregard the winner of the statewide vote and assign electors to the loser. And because the Constitution grants legislatures the authority to pick electors this way, Congress cannot stop them.

Due in part to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans control the legislatures of 28 states. Collectively, these states have 294 electoral votes. Trump himself could not cancel the entire presidential election. But he could ask these GOP-dominated legislatures to cancel their statewide presidential elections and assign their electors to him. It’s doubtful that we will face this situation in November. But imagine a worst-case scenario: The election is approaching, and the coronavirus remains rampant in our communities. States are unsure whether they have the personnel and resources to hold an election. Congress has failed to mandate no-excuse absentee balloting, and many states have declined to implement it. Or the postal service is so hard hit that it cannot reliably carry ballots to and from voters’ residences. It’s not difficult to envision Trump’s allies in state legislatures assigning their states’ electoral votes to the president, insisting that these dire circumstances justify pulling a constitutional fire alarm.
…
That shortcut to reelection would be profoundly anti-democratic. But so is the Electoral College itself, and we are still living with its consequences. Until both Republicans and Democrats agree to amend this Rube Goldberg machine out of the Constitution, it will remain a tool for autocrats to wield when they fear the majority has turned against them.

Michigan has gotten rid of gerrymandering! Yay! Effective … 2022.



And some good news. If we go down we’ll have safe fun while doing so. Marissa Higgins of Kos gathered stories of people who followed social distancing while still supporting each other. Things like singing happy birthday to an elderly relative from the bottom of a stairwell our outside the window. Displaying new children through the window. A bookstore that does curbside service through a person in a dinosaur suit. A neighborhood street dance with everyone the required six feet apart.

He can fix a crisis that baffles the experts

This post will be a short one because I don’t want to spend my whole evening writing about the same thing I’ve written about for the last ten days.

Harjinder Singh Kukreja tweeted a video of the correct way to wash hands. To demonstrate someone put on white plastic gloves and used a bit of ink to act as the soap. The washing isn’t complete until the gloves are completely black. Along the way the hands point out the various areas people tend to miss. I think I’ve been doing it right all this time.



Let’s see… I can refer to the nasty guy and you know who I mean. The same way with the vice nasty guy and Moscow Mitch. I need one more. Perhaps Jared Kushner should be the nasty prince.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos says the nasty prince bills himself as a problem-solver who can fix any crises that is baffled the experts. Just see how well he handled the new Mid East Peace Plan! Another crisis is here so he’s back at work. Faced with the coronavirus the nasty prince has set up his own task force – separate from the nasty guy’s official task force. What could go wrong?

* People are now getting emails from two groups. Which to believe?

* Every time the nasty prince has helped the nasty guy during this virus crisis he has made things worse. There was the Oval Office address in which the nasty guy said all the wrong things, sending the stock markets into free-fall. The nasty prince helped write that speech.

* The nasty prince is talking to corporations, spouting lines like this:

In America, some of our best resources are in our private sector. The federal government is not designed to solve all our problems; a lot of the muscle is in the private sector and there’s also a lot of smart people.

To which Clawson responds:

Um, fighting pandemics is in fact exactly one of the things the Centers for Disease Control was designed to do. Certainly more so than CVS. As for a lot of the muscle being in the private sector vs. the government, perhaps that has something to do with Donald Trump weakening pandemic response over the past three years.

Meaning, he’s trying to corporatize the pandemic as another profit center. And doesn’t understand that getting people healthy and keeping them that way does not align with the profit motive.



I’m open to suggestions for a name to bestow on Attorney General William Barr. He’s the head of the Department of Justice and that is supposed to protect the little guy from the big guy. But it has been twisted to that he lives to protect one big guy from all the little guys. Barr has filed proposals to grant the nasty guy special powers during the crisis, such as eliminate habeas corpus (which is about unjust detention), extend statue of limitations, and let judges pause trials. And since judges are slowing down trials because of the virus a person could be arrested and not brought before a judge until the emergency is over. Yes, this is an authoritarian move. Yes, this is terrifying. Can the Dem House protect us?



I’m done for today. Other news will have to wait.

Biohazard suit v. paper gown

It would be nice to have something else to talk about in this blog. Alas, not today.

Earlier this week Bishops the United Methodist Church requested General Conference, scheduled for Minneapolis the first half of May, be postponed. 862 delegates were coming from around the world, which would be hard with travel restrictions in place. The committee that runs GC is to meet by phone in a few days. The Minneapolis Convention Center beat them to it on orders of the Minnesota Department of Health. Since the Convention Center got there first the denomination isn’t liable for cancellation costs.

This GC has been anticipated for a year because the major topic is to be whether and how to split the denomination over how to treat LGBTQ people.



Dr. Peter Hotez at Baylor College of Medicine said on CNN …

We know the high mortality in older people, but for reasons that we don't understand, front-line health care workers are at great risk for serious illness despite their younger age.

Perhaps they get larger doses of the virus? Perhaps because their Personal Protection Equipment (masks and gowns) are inadequate and understocked? Whatever the reason if healthcare workers succumb there won’t be people to replace them and that will cripple the whole system.



Kellen Squires wrote a long post for Daily Kos about being one of those front-line nurses. At the top of the post is a comparison of the biohazard suits used in China and Italy with the paper gowns available in America. There are also not enough ventilators or drugs to sedate patients while ventilators do their thing. Even though they’re unprotected these nurses will do whatever it takes to save a patient. Which likely means a viral load seven orders of magnitude higher (for those who aren’t math geeks, that’s ten million times) than the typical patient. So Squires is fatalistic about it, He’ll probably catch COVID-19 and likely die. He’s certainly not going to stop doing what he does now. He and his wife, also an ER nurse, have isolated themselves from their kids and he wishes he could give them one last hug.

If the virus kills off the medical staff? Is this state of things intentional? A phrase Sarah Kendzior has been using: They hide their malice with incompetence.



Several state governors listen to the nasty guy blather about how good things are, that test kits and medical equipment are readily available. And they say, oh really? Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker feels “a little like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football with the federal government.”



California went into lockdown. I think Illinois did the same. Mark Sumner of Kos says that’s great, but all it does is buy us a little time for extensive testing to work. Because only lots of testing will get us through this. Even so, that extra time can allow us to do such things as begin to manufacture test kits, protective gear, and ventilators; start trials on therapeutic drugs; set up field hospitals; and work on a vaccine.



Dozens of members of Congress have signed letters to the leadership saying Congress needs to work from home. Two members have already announced they are infected. Joan McCarter of Kos agrees that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is too valuable to succumb to the virus. The good news is a few members are trying to make that happen.



Moscow Mitch has put out a first version of another round of help to lessen the impact of the virus. He’s trying to push through votes tomorrow. As we’ve learned to expect from him it puts corporations first and ignores workers. Pelosi says it’s a non-starter.



Detainees in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark have started a hunger strike. If the coronavirus hits the facility – two staffers at another facility have tested positive and ten detainees at a third are in quarantine – there is no way for them to avoid it. They say they are there for a civil matter and shouldn’t be locked up during a pandemic. They are not criminals. Let them out.



I mentioned that Ohio has seen a big jump in people filing for unemployment. Nationwide the jump has been 30%. Laura Clawson of Kos reports that the administrator of the Office of Employment Insurance of the Labor Department sent an email to state officials telling them to not use numbers to describe claims levels. Instead, they should use words such as “very high” or “large increase.”

Clawson suggests state officials pull out a Thesaurus, where they can find such words as enormous and hefty. Or maybe gargantuan. But Clawson asks, why demand state officials wait until federal officials give out actual numbers? Are the feds trying to downplay the problem? Are they trying to calm the markets? Well, a transparent government can do that.



John Stoehr writes a newsletter titled Editorial Board to explain politics in plain English. He noticed a phrase the nasty guy used and he explains what it means:

What does "war against the Chinese virus" mean?

1. Trump has found a scapegoat.
2. He wants to be a war president.
3. He can fight "foreign virus" with a border wall and an immigration crackdown.
4. His followers will cheer him on.
5. Even if it kills them.

Below the tweet is a link to a thread with more detail.

Yep, “Chinese virus” is racist.

His desire to be a “war president” is in name only. He invoked the Defense Production Act to require increased production of critical items but didn’t actually specify what items need to be so urgently produced. So an empty declaration.

A “war president” is a strongman getting tough on foreigners, an image the nasty guy revels in. But all he does is show he suspended travel from Chine (where they’re managing things better there than he is here). And the title allows him to confuse public understanding of the outbreak. He can “fight” “foreign viruses” in ways that have nothing to do with public health.

The nasty guy has been doing all he can to lobby Congress for that $1 trillion relief bill. Since the Senate acquitted him, which says they don’t care what he does, he could shift some of the trillion to finish the border wall.

As for his followers, states such as Texas, Missouri, Idaho, and a few more who love him have taken few steps, or none at all, to slow the virus. It could kill them.

He fudged the truth

Between a touch of cabin fever and getting tired of the same food every day I decided I needed to do a grocery run today. Yeah, I have always made lots of whatever I’m cooking and eat the same thing several days in a row, but that’s usually interrupted by 2-3 meals at restaurants with friends. But not this week.

I usually shop at three places and stopped at two of them today. At one store the prepared foods, deli, and produce looked well stocked, while the mayonnaise shelf and the meat counter were in low supply. I talked briefly with the meat person who waited on me. She said yesterday, especially in the evening, was extremely busy. They sold out of practically everything, even when restricting how much could be sold to each person.

I did find the mayo at the other store, chicken too, though couldn’t get as much peanut butter as I would have liked.

The other thing I’m doing today is my taxes. I know the deadline has been delayed. But they still need to be done.



Some brief mentions before getting to the major story. And I’m going to mention a lot less than I might because I skimmed a lot more articles than I usually do.

Back when the US had only 15 cases of COVID-19 and the nasty guy was telling us the whole problem was going to disappear, Sen. Richard Burr addressed a group of top donors that the virus was going to be pretty bad. One of the things he told the group was to cancel travel to Europe. Strange that Burr’s other constituents and the public at large got no warnings. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wonders how many other GOP lawmakers also warned donors while being too fearful to contradict the nasty guy in public?



Mark Sumner of Kos reminds us the daily briefings of the coronavirus task force are not about the virus, but about stroking the nasty guy’s ego. Which means every time Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health is called on to speak he has to tread a very fine line between telling the public actual useful information and not pissing off his boss. Be too helpful and Fauci could be fired.



Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has worked out a deal with a Safeway to give out $5 million in grocery vouchers, or about $800 to each of over 6,000 families who are hard hit by the virus. Seattle is one of the worst hit areas.



While the country and legislators at state and federal levels are focused on the coronavirus, how to slow it down, and how to lessen the economic impacts, GOP legislators in Idaho think this is a fine time to slip through a couple anti-transgender bills while nobody is looking. Both are likely unconstitutional, so they’re using up time and money to just be mean.



Leah McElrath tweeted:

A physician with a hospital in NYC tells me they feel “gaslit” every day by the White House briefings because the resources on the ground are not what the White House is claiming.

This is a problem of a lack of government response.



Twitter user Benjamin Franklin suggests that all those concert venues that are now dark should be rented by the state as field hospitals. A reply suggested using abandoned malls as well.



A couple things from Mark Sumner’s daily status of the virus. Washington state is stepping up testing, now up to 5,000 a day, a big improvement but still low. The US added 4,000 cases today (again, because of better testing) and now has more than 13,500 cases.

And Italy. Normally, a country going through this would prompt the rest of the world to send help. Except all that help is needed at home. Italy marked another 427 deaths today, surpassing China. Its medical system is much more stressed than China’s ever was. There is a video of a line of military trucks transporting coffins from the overloaded cemeteries in the city of Bergamo, one of the hard hit areas.



Follow the link just for a laugh. You’ll need one about now.



Somewhere in my online reading I came across and followed a link to an article about the 1918 flu pandemic that was written by John Barry for the November 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. The article lays out the history of the disease. It started in Haskell County, Kansas early that year. It spread to a couple military bases in the state and from there around the world. About 670,000 Americans died. Between 50 and 100 million died around the world. The virus came in three waves, the second one in the fall was the deadliest.

Several times in the story Barry explains how various government officials played down the severity of the pandemic or even lied about it. Part of it was because WWI was still going on and detailed news of the sick citizens or troops would be nice information for the enemy to have. But each time the government or newspapers did this the situation became significantly worse.

Citizens could see the lies. The could see it in the sick and dead around them. They could see death happen within hours. They could see that towns and cities ran out of coffins.

People could believe nothing they were being told, so they feared everything, particularly the unknown. How long would it last? How many would it kill? Who would it kill? With the truth buried, morale collapsed. Society itself began to disintegrate.

After other disasters, such as hurricanes people helped each other out. But during the flu people looked after only themselves. When someone got sick people refused to help.

The third wave in early 1919 was pretty bad, though not as bad as the second. After that it became less lethal and a part of seasonal flu. Though it appears to have contributed to the start of WWII.

On April 3, 1919, during the Versailles Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson collapsed. His sudden weakness and severe confusion halfway through that conference—widely commented upon—very possibly contributed to his abandoning his principles. The result was the disastrous peace treaty, which would later contribute to the start of World War II. Some historians have attributed Wilson’s confusion to a minor stroke. In fact, he had a 103 degree temperature, intense coughing fits, diarrhea and other serious symptoms. A stroke explains none of the symptoms. Influenza, which was then widespread in Paris and killed a young aide to Wilson, explains all of them—including his confusion. Experts would later agree that many patients afflicted by the pandemic influenza had cognitive or psychological symptoms. As an authoritative 1927 medical review concluded, “There is no doubt that the neuropsychiatric effects of influenza are profound...hardly second to its effect on the respiratory system.”

This flu was unusual in that it killed mostly young people. Their strong immune systems attacked the virus with everything, including chemicals called cytokines. So much cytokines in the lungs had the same effect as breathing poison gas.

Barry gets into lessons for the next pandemic. There are many ways to slow down a virus – hand washing, staying home, and all the rest we’ve been hearing about over the last couple weeks.

But the effectiveness of such interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told.

That is why, in my view, the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth.

Barry participated in a pandemic “war game” in Los Angeles with public health officials. He talked about the 1918 epidemic and urged “You don’t manage the truth. You tell the truth.”

So then they ran the simulation. A top health official was called on to explain the situation to the public.

And he didn’t tell the truth. He fudged it.

I was stunned. This official had not actually told a lie, but he had deliberately minimized the danger; whether or not this particular patient had the disease, a pandemic was coming. The official’s unwillingness to answer questions from the press or even acknowledge the pandemic’s inevitability meant that citizens would look elsewhere for answers, and probably find a lot of bad ones. Instead of taking the lead in providing credible information he instantly fell behind the pace of events. He would find it almost impossible to get ahead of them again. He had, in short, shirked his duty to the public, risking countless lives.

And that was only a game.

So what is the nasty guy doing?