Crimes against humanity

Tavia Galonski, a state representative in Ohio, is figuring out how to make a referral to the International Court in The Hague saying the nasty guy has committed crimes against humanity. She has put out a call for any lawyer with experience at the international level. The replies to her tweets are a mixture of thanks that she is doing it and a great deal of pushback along the lines of Obama started it or the nasty guy hasn’t done anything considered a crime against humanity. One of those latter ones listed such crimes – at the top of the list is murder.



Want to keep your distance, but have a hard time imagining six feet? The Akron Children’s Hospital tweeted a useful guide. It’s the length of two golden retrievers.



Meteor Blades of Daily Kos quotes Clio Chang of Vice about a case for a wealth tax. Blades says that “throughout the coronavirus crisis the rich have been accidentally making the argument that they need less money as soon as possible.” From Chang's article:

“We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said [former Wells Fargo CEO Dick] Kovacevich, who was also the bank’s chairman until 2009. “Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”

I add: Only two choices? I much prefer this one: You support a national leader that responds to the crisis in a timely manner, as a leader of the people should, and orders and makes available sufficient disease testing so that those infected can be quarantined without having to shut down the entire economy. It might be a bit late for this option, though we should try anyway.



Bill Mitchell, whose Twitter profile features many hashtags in support of the nasty guy, tweeted:

While death is sad for the living left behind, for the dying, it is merely a passage out of this physical body to a spiritual existence, free of this mortal coil.

Which prompted Leah McElrath to reply:

Trumpists are now at the “death is good actually” stage of thinking.

Trumpism is a death cult.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times remembers how Bush II gave a stirring speech at Ground Zero after 9/11. And that Obama gave a heartfelt speech after the school shooting at Newtown, Conn. But he doesn’t remember any speech by the nasty guy showing he grasped the magnitude of the pandemic and sought to comfort our terror. Perhaps because it didn’t happen.



Bill in Portland, Maine writes a Cheers and Jeers post for Kos. In today’s post he starts with this week’s outlook from the USA Forecast Center. It begins this way:

Mostly cloudy skies with widespread coronavirus squalls, along with heavy incompetence and blame-everyone-else downpours by the executive branch. Lies from the White House will hit an all-time high, followed by torrential tweets and fog-filled press briefings from the president that will reach all-time lows.