Oh, I totally hate them. Right there next to Jug Handles. They’re confusing and you end up going around in circles. What’s wrong with a nice Left Hand Turn?
I’d much rather take a Train and the Subway anyway.
We are exceptional.
Apr 24 2020
The Flavor Aid Moment
Readers, I invite you consider the Power of Flesh.
Shall I tell you? It’s the least I can do. Steel isn’t strong, boy, flesh is stronger! Look around you. There, on the rocks, a beautiful girl. Come to me, my child…
As my Doctor friend tells me you can easily survive a fall of almost any height because soon enough you reach Terminal Velocity and don’t fall any faster than that.
Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
As the Narrator says, after a sudden wet thump there was silence. Oh no, not again.
That is strength, boy! That is power! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! Such a waste.
Wait! She might be OK. (Boom). Well, probably not now.
He had other powers like being able to turn into a snake and who can resist James Earl Jones when he detects a disturbing lack of faith but I think we can pretty much understand why Thulsa Doom is an antagonist.
Now the Modern Religious parallel is Martyrdom and I want to do 2 things, the first of which is the obvious Parable (it means Instructive Story, get over it) of Jonestown. Kool Aid gets a bad rap but I must admit the commercials are truly annoying.
I’m not going to do your required reading for you. Instead I want to talk about the Thought Process that makes Martyrdom seem desirable (not that I wouldn’t sacrifice myself for the greater good mind you, just I would have been working for a while to make that not necessary).
Of course they have a sense of the Righteousness of their Cause and a feeling their sacrifice is required for it’s success. The more pernicious aspect of it that they conceive of their lives as miserable tests of worthiness compared to which only Hell Fire and Eternal Damnation is inferior.
In the Therapy biz we call that ‘Suicidal Ideation’. It’s a Red Flag and normally you get at least 2 days of observation and 2 or 3 a day with the Shrink. Frequently they’ll lock you up for a month and medicate you because…
You’re sick. Really.
But I want to be very, very clear that what they sell is Pie in the Sky of Big Rock Candy Mountain after you Die.
Provided you kiss enough ass in the approved manner.
Drinking or Injecting Clorox, Lysol, or Isopropyl Alcohol (not at all the same as Drinkin’ Whisky) will probably result in your IMMEDIATE DEATH!!!
Now if you hate your life and want to Die so you can ‘Own the Libs’ be my guest. I have one word for you and you won’t accept it- Darwin. Stupid is always a Capital Crime.
I’m not kidding you about the lethality, even in small amounts. There’s a reason they put that Skull and Crossbones on the side of the Bottle and it’s not because they’re full of Jack Sparrow Brand Rum.
On the other hand if you think it’s ripping good fun to install a Supreme Court Justice who will shove a Quart of Vodka up his Ass so he can get even Drunker (yes friends, that’s what “Boofing” is) then maybe the finer points of why you shouldn’t drink Battery Acid or Anti-Freeze are lost on you.
I’ll not dignify the UV nonsense. The easiest way is a razor. You’ll want a warm bath because you’ll get cold and some pain killers for the headache.
Trump Suggests Injecting Disinfectant, Shining UV Light Inside Patients to Kill Coronavirus in Bizarre, Rambling Tangent
By Reed Richards, Mediate
Apr 23rd, 2020
President Donald Trump offered up bizarre and possibly dangerous suggestions about medical research on the coronavirus at his daily White House briefing, suggesting that blasting patients with “tremendous” amounts of UV light, even “inside of the body” as well as injecting them with the same disinfectants that are used to kill the viruses on surfaces might be effective treatments for Covid-19.
Trump was riffing off of some still developing research presented by Bill Bryan, an official from the Science and Technology branch of the Department of Homeland Security, who had just detailed the half-life of the coronavirus under various heat, humidity, and light conditions. Bryan noted that the virus seemed to decay quicker under the ultraviolet light from the sun.
As Bryan finished answering a reporter’s question, however, Trump stepped back up to the podium and began to discuss his own take on the data, which quickly devolved into highly unscientific and potentially harmful advice.
“So, a question some of you are probably thinking of if your are totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting,” Trump said, before posturing as a medical expert.
“So, supposing we hit the body with tremendous, I don’t know if it’s ultraviolet or very powerful light, and I think you said that has been checked but your’e going to test it,” Trump said, turning to Bryan in a sidebar moment at the end for confirmation. “Then I said what it if you brought the light inside of the body which you could do either through the skin or some other way and I think you said you were going to test that, too, sounds interesting,” he added next, again turning to Bryan for validation.
But then Trump even went further, connecting the household bleaching agents in most surface disinfectants to a possible internal treatment for humans, which would be toxic and possibly fatal. “Then I see the disinfectant, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that so that you’ll have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, where it goes in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
Minutes later, ABC News’ Jon Karl revisited Trump’s totally unfounded claims in a question to Bryan, asking if there was any scenario in which a human could be injected with bleach or isopropyl alcohol to treat the virus.
Bryan’s answer, diplomatically delivered with Trump standing just behind his left shoulder, effectively dismissed the idea. “We don’t do that in our labs,” he added.
Trump, however, not letting it go, tried to salvage his medical reputation, which includes no formal schooling at all, and jumped in to elaborate on his earlier comments.
“Not cleaning through injection,” Trump said, waving his hand as if to demonstrate his imagined procedure. “Almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”
Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t work.
Who wants to live forever? Well, me.
Apr 24 2020
The Breakfast Club (Words And Ideas)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
An aborted mission to free American hostages in Iran ends in disaster; Ireland’s ‘Easter Rising’ begins; Armenians face mass deportation during World War I; Singer Barbra Streisand born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.
Apr 23 2020
The OpEd the Washington Post Wouldn’t Publish
Gotta love Fred Hiat, Jeff Bezos, and the WaPo (or as I prefer to call it, Pravda). Michelle Wolf was asked to do a piece and they decided that it was ‘surplus to their needs’ which is the polite way Book Publishers tell you to get lost.
Gee, I wonder why? Do you think it has anything to do with this?
So anyway she got it published over at Daily Beast.
The ace comedian writes about how the media got her White House Correspondents’ Dinner routine so wrong and keeps giving Trump exactly what he craves.
by Michelle Wolf, Daily Beast
Apr. 23, 2020
Back in February, when the hosts of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner were announced, The Washington Post asked me to write an op-ed on my thoughts. I wrote something knowing full well that they would probably refuse to publish it because my foul language doesn’t follow their moral guidelines. I guess we can’t all be as kind and upstanding as their generous owner. You should see how I treat MY warehouse employees. Well, I was right about their refusal to publish it, but here it is anyway…
Confession: I Blew Trump
Why would I ever admit to blowing Trump even if it isn’t true? Because it doesn’t matter what’s in the article. All that matters is the headline. The only reason anyone thinks I made fun of Sarah Sanders’ looks is because that’s what the headlines were. If you look back at those jokes, there is not a single moment when I make fun of Sarah’s appearance. Also, contrary to headlines, I was not partisan. I made fun of the right, I made fun of the left, I made fun of myself, I made fun of the monkfish, I made fun of a lady who died on a Southwest airplane that week, and, most importantly, I made fun of the news. I called the news out on their gross, symbiotic relationship with Trump. Trump is great for their business, which is ironic since he’s catastrophic for his own. But the problem with criticizing the news is that they don’t like it—and they’re the ones who write the headlines.
So who’s been blowing Trump? Providing him sweet, sweet oral satisfaction? It’s The New York Times, it’s MSNBC, it’s CNN, it’s The Hill, it’s CBS, it’s definitely Fox News. It’s all of these media organizations and blogs and websites and books. It’s all the contributors who go on those shows and make money for every temper tantrum they throw. They’re all satisfying Trump, and then wiping their mouths with the money they made. And it’s also YOU. It’s you who’s reading this right now and watching all those shows because you can’t wait to hear how bad Trump is every single day, like an ex who you can’t get over. You’re not #resist, you’re #obsessed.
Is Trump the worst president? I dunno. We’ve had a lot of bad presidents. Nixon started the war on drugs pushing through mandatory sentencing, Reagan (and Nancy) couldn’t have cared less about the AIDS crisis, and one time Obama wore a tan suit. Trump is definitely the least refined president, but the worst? Hard to say. He’s just the first one that powerful white people cared was bad. And if there’s one group that is hoping he wins again, it’s the media. Both sides. And maybe some of you. It’s not often that privileged white people get to feel like the victim. I think the last time it happened was the Titanic.
Am I happy that the Correspondents’ Dinner has a comedian this year? No. The event shouldn’t exist. Why did I do the Correspondents’ Dinner if I’m so opposed to it? So I could do exactly what I did: call the media and the politicians out on their bullshit directly to their face. Whatever this year’s host tries to do, I’m sure it will include some jabs at Trump and his administration that one side of the news will label as “savage” and “eviscerating” and the other side will say is “offensive.” And if the dinner was hosted by a pro-Trump comic, they’d swap headlines quicker than spit at an orgy. (Don’t get fake offended at that. We all know DC has more dirt in it than the folds in Mitch McConnell’s neck— that is a joke about looks.)
But the real problem is that there are sides. The news should not have sides. It should not be entertaining. It should not be on 24 hours a day. The news should be a dry reading of events and facts. It should be a presentation of information, and that is it. It shouldn’t be “breaking” with the same story and no new information hour after hour. It shouldn’t have a panel of four of the loudest contributors where their only qualification appears to be that they can put— and keep on— a shirt. It shouldn’t have opinions or takes or, even worse, fake pearl-clutching in order to maintain their access.
I did my job at the Correspondents’ Dinner. It would be nice if the news would do theirs. The only thing anyone should have gotten upset at was the fact that I made fun of a lady who died— at no fault of her own— and that FLINT STILL DOESN’T HAVE CLEAN WATER. And guess what? They still don’t. Write about that you breaking news, outrage whores. But, instead, I’m sure you’ll continue to write the headlines that get you the most clicks and have contributors on your shows that’ll get enough viewers to keep the step-in bathtub company sponsor happy.
Side note: I wrote this before the virus when the dinner was still scheduled for this weekend. I think that was somewhere between two months and 10 years ago. It’s been rescheduled for August or whenever it’s deemed safe to breathe huffs of indignation on each other. But based on the media’s coverage of the virus, the administration, and what’s going on in general, I’m positive I’m still being too nice. The news’ ratings have spiked the way you said deaths from COVID would. Somewhere in your 24-hour cycle of fearmongering and that charming death ticker, I’m sure there’s good factual information. It’s just hard to find crammed between propaganda press briefings and all your opinions about it. It’s like trying to find a woman’s back Joe Biden refuses to massage. The media is doing us an unforgivable disservice. You’re blowing Trump and talking at the same time. And didn’t your mother ever tell you: it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.
I think Michelle is wrong about the News having sides.
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.
There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it “vengeful” and “primitive” and “perverse” regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. “That kind of stuff is opinion,” they say, “and the reader is cheated if it’s not labelled as opinion.” Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal “objective journalism.” Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called “advocacy journalism,” I’ve used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.
So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits— a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage. – Stockton
Apr 23 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Robert Reich: Coronavirus exposes the height of corporate welfare
Here’s the bottom line: no mega-corporation deserves a cent of bailout money
With the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the global economy, here’s how massive corporations are shafting the rest of us in order to secure billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts.
Charles M. Blow: Covid-19, Confusion and Uncertainty
It will be a difficult road back to any kind of normal living.
Do you feel lost and anxious about the coronavirus crisis and the murky future that rises in its wake? You are not alone.
At the moment, the most urgent and important thing you can do is stay home (if you have the privilege to do so), wash your hands, become teachers for your children and wait it out.
But there is a reckoning coming. We can all feel it.
The number of dead and infected in this country rises every day. A staggering 46,000-plus people have already died, in about two months no less. We have not even tackled the first wave of this virus and we are already being warned that the second wave could be even worse.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, told The Washington Post this week, “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.”
That would mean a second, worse wave would overlap the election. How do we conduct a legitimate election or a reliable census in the middle of a pandemic?
So far, there is no approved medical treatment for the virus and no vaccine. Social distancing is the only tool we have, and yet we know that we can’t maintain it indefinitely.
Jennifer Senior: If We’re Giving Trump a Show, We Should Give Biden One, Too
The president is hitting the virtual campaign trail every night.
Let’s drop all pretenses, shall we? The president has decided he’s had enough of running the country and is running full time for re-election instead.
One could argue that this has been Donald J. Trump’s approach from the start — the last three years of shriek-tweeting, Fox-bingeing, and stadium rallies have had little to do with governance — but it’s much more obvious now that we’re in the midst of a global emergency. The moment Trump declared that it was up to the states to decide when to reopen — and to scale up their own coronavirus testing, and to scale up their antibody testing, and to get their own personal protective equipment — he was implicitly saying, I’m out.
It’s important to make this distinction. Trump’s nightly news conferences, propaganda from the very beginning, are now aimed almost entirely at his base. They are campaign events. And if they are campaign events, the cable news outlets, which still carry the bulk of them live, ought to balance their programming. They ought to check in with the Joe Biden camp before, during and after each one.
Amanda Marcotte: At first, Tucker Carlson took the coronavirus seriously — but now he’s gone total bats**t
Ignoring the whole of human history, Carlson calls pandemic quarantines an “experiment” that’s “never been done”
During the months when Donald Trump thought he could somehow defeat the novel coronavirus by lying, minimizing it and calling concerns about the coming pandemic a “hoax,” most Fox News hosts were right there with him. The one major exception, however, was popular prime time host Tucker Carlson. While Sean Hannity kept calling the coronavirus crisis a “hoax” and Laura Ingraham described people concerned about it as “panic pushers,” Carlson actually criticized Trump and his Fox colleagues for “minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” arguing that the virus was “a major event” that “will affect your life.” The fact Trump made a reluctant pivot and began to admit that the coronavirus was a real threat — even though he’s still trying to cover up the spread of the disease — is likely due to Carlson’s pressure.
In fact, the difference between Carlson’s approach and that of his fellow Fox News hosts, especially Hannity, was so pronounced that it likely altered the course of the disease. A new study shows that communities that favored Hannity’s show over Carlson’s show had more cases of COVID-19 and more deaths. The reason is simple: Because Hannity downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, his viewers were less likely to follow stay-at-home recommendations and therefore more likely spread the disease. [..]
But now even Carlson’s racism-inflected willingness to take the coronavirus seriously has abruptly ended. Starting at the beginning of April, even after his Fox News colleagues had begun to take the virus more seriously, Carlson switched gears and moved toward a denialist viewpoint. He started attacking public health officials for the stay-at-home orders and saying the economic results of the lockdown were worse than the disease.
Linda Greenhouse: A Precedent Overturned Reveals a Supreme Court in Crisis
Separate opinions in a case show nine justices pursuing agendas far removed from the dispute at hand.
The country wasn’t exactly holding its breath for the Supreme Court’s decision this week that the Constitution requires juror unanimity for a felony conviction in state court. The case promised little change. Unanimity has long been understood as constitutionally required in federal court as a matter of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
The only outlier among the states was Oregon. Louisiana, where the case originated in an appeal brought by a man convicted of murder in 2016 by a 10-to-2 vote, changed its rule two years later to require unanimity going forward. Six Supreme Court justices agreed this week that contrary to the outcome of a 1972 case, there is not one rule for the federal courts and another for the states: Conviction only by a unanimous jury verdict is now the rule for both.
That sounds almost too straightforward to be very interesting. Even people with more than a passing interest in the Supreme Court may well have thought, “Well, then that’s that,” before moving on to other cases, other concerns.
That would have been a mistake. This decision, Ramos v. Louisiana, is in fact one of the most fascinating Supreme Court products I’ve seen in a long time, and one of the most revealing. Below the surface of its 6-to-3 outcome lies a maelstrom of clashing agendas having little to do with the question ostensibly at hand and a great deal to do with the court’s future. Peek under the hood and see a Supreme Court in crisis.
Apr 23 2020
Too Close To The Bone
Priorities USA (the Joe Biden Super PAC) is not the only organization that’s been the target of an attempt at Prior Restraint.
American Bridge has an Ad up in Michigan that Republicans are attempting to quash with a cease and desist order delivered to WOOD, an NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids Michigan (actually pretty reliable Republican territory, rich, racist, and devoted to the Dutch Reformed branch of Calvinism which is a tad more radical and militant than Wahabi Islam).
My link is from Susie Madrak @ Crooks & Liars and it’s to a live blog so it might change position and you’ll have to hunt for it.
Trump campaign hits local TV station with cease-and-desist over coronavirus ad
Alex Seitz-Wald, NBC News
4/23/20
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a TV station in Michigan over a Democratic super PAC ad that they say misleadingly accuses Trump of being soft on China at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump’s campaign earlier this month sued a Wisconsin TV station and sent cease-and-desist letters to other swing-state TV stations over an ad from a different Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA. The latest cease-and-desist letter, obtained by NBC News, targets WOOD, an NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and demands the station stop running “a false, misleading, and deceptive advertisement” produced by an offshoot of the Democratic group American Bridge.
The ad, which Trump also attacked in a tweet, accuses Trump of trusting China even though, the narrator says, “everyone knew they lied about the virus.” And it suggests the Trump administration shipped 17 tons of medical supplies the U.S. now needs to China in the early days of the outbreak, before it was widespread in the United States.
The Trump campaign said the State Department merely helped manage logistics for the shipment of medical supplies by using chartered planes that were bound for China to repatriate Americans and would have flown empty otherwise. Instead, the planes carried goods donated by a group of charities and businesses.
American Bridge, however, noted how the Trump administration publicly touted the shipment and pointed to Trump’s repeated praise for China’s response to the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic. In response to Trump’s criticism, the group said it would put an additional “six figures” behind the ad to run it on digital platforms.
“We will not be intimidated by his gang of lawyers, and we will not relent in our mission to make sure voters have the facts straight on Donald Trump,” American Bridge President Bradley Beychok said.
This one, pointed out by Aliza Worthington, also @ Crooks & Liars, is by the Democratic Coalition.
Apr 23 2020
Cartnoon
Ok, in case you’re confused, Butt-Head was the smart one (well, by comparison) with the dark hair and Bevis was the Blonde Haired Maniac who transformed into Cornholio by putting his T-Shirt Collar over his Head and chanted Fire, FIRE!, FIRE!!! on random occasions.
Not that my inner Boy Scout is anything like that.
I tell you, Les Stroud is the only one you should listen to. Mostly everyone else is a Fake (Bear Grillis) or a Quack (Joe Teti) or a Fake and a Quack.
Apr 23 2020
The Breakfast Club (Open Mind)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
William Shakespeare born, dies 52 years later on same day; MLK Jr. assassinator James Earl Ray dies at age 70; Cesar Chavez dies at age 66; Hank Aaron begins climb to throne home run king.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled.
Apr 22 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Bill McKibben: This Earth Day, we must stop the fossil fuel money pipeline
Taking down the fossil fuel industry requires taking on the institutions that finance it. Even during a pandemic, this movement is gaining steam
1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)
Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.
It’s no wonder that people mobilized: 20 million Americans took to the streets for the first Earth Day in 1970 – 10% of America’s population at the time, perhaps the single greatest day of political protest in the country’s history. And it worked. Worked politically because Congress quickly passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and scientifically because those laws had the desired effect. In essence, they stuck enough filters on smokestacks, car exhausts and factory effluent pipes that, before long, the air and water were unmistakably cleaner. The nascent Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a series of photos that showed just how filthy things were. Even for those of us who were alive then, it’s hard to imagine that we tolerated this.
But we should believe it, because now we face even greater challenges that we’re doing next to nothing about. And one reason is you can’t see them.
Amanda Marcotte: Trump doesn’t want coronavirus testing: His instinct is always to hide the truth
His whole life, Trump has lied about the numbers: From the beginning, he’s tried to deflate the coronavirus count
In recent days, Donald Trump’s go-to excuse for why the federal government hasn’t done more to ramp up efforts to test Americans for the novel coronavirus — even though such tests are necessary for the economy to successfully reopen — is that this should be the responsibility of state governments. [..]
When governors complain that they can’t ramp up coronavirus testing, because there’s nowhere near enough capacity, Trump denies it, claiming that governors “don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created.” When asked why testing rates have stayed mostly flat for the past month, Trump of course turns it around and pins blame on the governors, falsely claiming they haven’t asked for help.
It should be obvious what’s going on: The Trump administration is doing everything possible to hamstring states’ capacity to perform the large-scale testing that would be needed to end the lockdowns safely and reopen the economy. When Trump is called out for this, he lies about it. He literally doesn’t want more testing. But why? [..]
Because Trump isn’t capable of seeing widespread testing — and more accurate information about the spread of the virus — as being in his self-interest. He sees it this way: The more tests that are done, the more confirmed cases are counted, and his impulse is to conceal that larger number if he possibly can. So he’s trying to keep the official case count as low as possible through the only method he understands: Lying and cheating. In this case, by preventing testing such that no accurate count is possible.
Dahlia Lithwick: America’s Heroism Trap
Yes, we are grateful for every person working on every front line. But the language of martyrdom distracts from what we could do about it all.
Doctors and nurses and orderlies, truck drivers and grocery workers and transportation workers, nursing home aides and sanitation workers and EMTs—they are all, along with so many others, heroes. Stipulated. There is no amount of honking, singing, or clapping that can adequately express our gratitude for these people, across so many professions, who suit up every day, imperiling their own lives and the lives and health of their loved ones, to make sure that the needs of the rest of us can be met. That’s why it feels good to honor and celebrate and fete and lionize these extraordinary people, who are answering the call of honor and duty every single day as we attempt to flatten the curve. [..]
We keep struggling with the language of privilege and good fortune. When asked how we are, we intone solemnly that we are lucky not to have to risk our lives in this crisis. Maybe instead of thanking and revering and worshipping our first responders we could instead simply ask them what they need and then find a way to give it to them. Even heroes need armor and a spear. Yes, these essential first responders are our heroes. But if the price of their heroism is silencing, retribution, death threats, and delegitimization, we should perhaps find another name for them. Might I suggest that we start by remembering they are humans, too?
Dana Milbank: Georgia leads the race to become America’s No. 1 Death Destination
Whether you’re going to heaven or hell, the old joke goes, you’ll have to change planes in Atlanta.
But Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing to offer a new nonstop service to the Great Beyond: He has a bold plan to turn his state into the place to die.
Kemp, a Republican and an ally of President Trump, just called for the reopening within days of his state’s gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body-art studios, barbers, nail salons, cosmetologists, aestheticians, beauty schools, massage therapists, theaters, private social clubs and dine-in restaurants.
He’s doing this even though the state ranks near last in testing, even though it’s not clear that covid-19 cases are declining there, and even knowing “we’re probably going to have to see our cases continue to go up,” as Kemp himself said.
Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman. But Kemp is making a big gamble that his constituents wouldn’t want to swab places with anyone, and that tourists will be dying to get to Georgia in any class of travel — economy, economy plus or intensive care — as the Peachtree State remakes itself as the Petri State.
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