Month: March 2020

 

Transcript:

Usually we’ll have 50 governors of the call at the same time.
 
No, I think we’re doing very well, but you know it’s a two-way street.
 
They have to treat us well also.

See Complete Interview

 
A one minute video created by New Hampshire students:

From the video:

Stay home.
A lot of people who could lose their lives will be thanking you.

 
Especially hard hitting.
Except for the notice at the end, the ad is narrated entirely by President Trump.

Transcript:

The coronavirus.
 
This is their new hoax.
 
We have it totally under control.
 
It’s one person coming in from China.
 
One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.
 
When you have 15 people, and within a couple of days it’s gonna be down to close to zero.
 
We really think we’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum.
 
I like this stuff. I really get it.
People are surprised that I understand it.
 
No, I don’t take responsibility at all.
 
 
Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this ad.

According to Politico, the ad is running in battleground states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.

Best Quote:

I don’t think that anybody should second guess the government actions. This has been moving very quickly and I think we’ve responded appropriately.

– U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Fox News, asked if the Trump administration had been warned ahead of time about the coming coronavirus pandemic

• nojo experiences how one week can change the nature of coronashopping.
   
• Vincent, at A Wayfarer’s Notes, and his wife are members of an endangered species by reason of age and pre-existing medical condition.
   
• Green Eagle seems unimpressed with press fawning after my President managed to appear rational about the virus for a whole half-hour.
   
• News Corpse watches and finds what President Trump has to say to Americans who are scared about coronavirus. It is that the reporter asking what he has to say to those who are scared is a bad reporter for asking the question.
   
• Tommy Christopher sees CNN’s John King moved to mild profanity as he defends his colleague from that Trumpian attack. Kaitlan Collins joins in, contrasting the Trump attack with the Pence response to a similar question.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests how a compassionate and understanding leader might have answered that question.
   
• In the midst of crisis, Jonathan Bernstein contrasts the public utterances of our current president with those of another. A frightened nation responded those decades ago.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post compares my president to another mass-killer, this one with a better excuse.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit does not quite buy my president’s 10 out of 10 self evaluation: Heckuva Job, Trumpie.
   
• How did we get to this point? Bill Kristol offers his thoughts and driftglass notices Bill’s omission of one key word.
   
• Sometimes a headline says it all. Ant Farmer’s Almanac looks at the list of airlines about to receive a corona related massive financial bailout. You’ll never guess who happens to be on it. Okay, maybe you will.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson investigates reports that 5 US Senators used advance knowledge of coronastocks to benefit. She clears three off them – blind trusts or documented unrelated trading. The other two are actual crooks.
   
• PZ Myers documents how, years ago, Senator Susan Collins was able, all by herself, to kill just-in-case funding of pandemic flu preparedness – including medical masks. Even Joe Lieberman couldn’t talk her out of her extreme position. So it turns out Susan Collins is more evil than Joe Lieberman. That’s pole vaulting over a very high bar.
   
• Not really a good sport: M. Bouffant at Web of Evil declines to give thoughts and prayers to Lou Dobbs as the coronavirus minimizer is exposed to the virus and self-quarantines.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony finds that, in the midst of the Corona scare, some house confined ordinary folks in Italy have a sense of humor.
   
• At Margaret and Helen Helen writes to her friend to express ,umm, skepticism as Trump, Fox, and followers turn their tune at the pandemic. You mean it’s real after all? Carefully documented.
   
• Dave Dubya makes the same point in six lines with less documentation. Just as right, though.
   
• In Nan’s Notebook, there is something wrong with Trump beyond what we’ve known from the start.
   
• JoAnn Williams at Biased Unbalanced and Politically Incorrect reveals how her cat, Maxwell, has discovered White House briefings.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson attacks Governor Tony Evers for applying the ban on gatherings of 50 or more to churches. After all, what right does he have to close churches?
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, helps us take a look at a few worship services whose congregants won’t let fake germs, or state government, or society at large intimidate. I especially like the Arkansas parishioners who are “ready to lick the floor to prove there’s no actual virus.” Personal note: Like many responsible houses of worship, ours will offer services only on-line until further notice.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist reviews past plagues back to 428 BC and finds some common links.
   
• Vagabond Scholar remembered St. Patrick’s Day with a beautiful ballad about bravery in a lost battle for Irish freedom.
   

Personal note: I have begun investing time in physical therapy after a spectacular expressway accident. Seems the human body is not properly constructed for hanging from a seat belt while traveling upside down on the freeway. My thanks to the passersby who extracted me.

 

From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

And of course, Axios’s email thingie gives us the bad news:

Younger adults make up a big portion of coronavirus hospitalizations in the U.S., the N.Y. Times’ Pam Belluck writes from CDC data released yesterday:

• 38% of patients who were hospitalized were ages 20 to 54.
• Nearly half of the 121 patients admitted to ICUs were adults under 65.
• The risk of dying was significantly higher in older people.

So those drunk kids on Spring Break? Yeah.

(New Yorker $) But their parents, too:

“I’m going to kill them before covid does.”

Anecdotally, I would say that it’s true here in COVID-19 Ground Zero (Seattle). The people that are breaking the Social Distancing protocols are the Yutes and the Olds. The callous Yutes are hanging out TOGETHER and still having parties (see above) and the Olds act offended when you refuse to be touched or move out of the way. As always it’s the Xers who continue to be invisible, but be responsible.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

The Texas State Democratic Convention is scheduled to be held in San Antonio from June 4th thru June 6th. But the Coronavirus may well throw a kink in that plan. Many experts predict the Coronavirus crisis may not be over by then. If it’s not, and San Antonio officials prohibit a gathering of several thousand people, the convention will not be able to be held. What is to be done?

State Democratic Party officials have been wrestling with that very possible scenario. And they have plans to conduct an online convention. Executive Director Manny Garcia said delegates to the state convention will be registered online — after being chosen in their county or senatorial district conventions. Garcia said, “If the city of San Antonio shuts us down, we’ll have an online convention with online voting and an online show”.

Delaying the convention is not really an option, since the national convention is slated for early July.

And that’s not the only thing that may require some changes.

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From Infidel753:

So there’s no point in religionists demanding that we prove anything. We have nothing to prove. They need to prove their case, and the hard data on declining religious affiliation show that they’re utterly failing to do it. If they keep on using the same old apologetics and clichés to defend their beliefs, those beliefs will simply continue on down the road to extinction. We don’t need to address their “arguments”, most of which were refuted centuries ago and, more importantly, are abjectly failing on the real-world battlefield of winning hearts and minds. They need to address ours, on our terms.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

Could WiFi and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) signals be harming bunches of grapes? In 2016, a research team from Jadavpur University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research performed a set of experiments (both practical and computer-modeled) to find out.

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From Luke Darby :

Limbaugh’s not alone in claiming that news outlets are trying to use the pandemic to smear Trump—the president agrees. On Wednesday morning, hours before he held a news conference about the country’s coronavirus response, Trump tweeted, “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”

At a rambling and medically uniformed press briefing, Trump downplayed the outbreak, saying that it was “a little bit like the flu…and we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner,” even though it will be some time before a vaccine for the new coronavirus is available. He defended his decision to make multiple massive budget cuts at the Centers for Disease Control, hobbling the agency’s preparedness to handle an outbreak. “I’m a businessperson,” he said. “I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them.”

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