Trump Has Given Up On The Pandemic-- The World Has Given Up On Trump

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Señor Trumpanzee has officially reached out to crazy right-wing governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) to find out what the process is for getting his likeness added onto Mount Rushmore. I'm not joking. I wonder how long it would take to dynamite it. Trump, apparently, doesn't understand it is supposed to represent the greatest and more admired American presidents, not the worst and most despised president.

Last week, the U.S. breezed through the 5 million confirmed cases mark. Because of Trump and his enablers another 63,246 cases were confirmed on Friday, 54,199 more cases on Saturday, and another 47,849 yesterday, bringing the total to 5,199,444-- about 2 million more than all of Europe combined (including Russia). The population of the U.S. is 331,002,651, while the population of Europe is 747,678,099. So why does Europe have 3,035,997 cases and the U.S. 5,199,444 cases? Donald J. Trumpanzee is the simple answer. A more complex answer-- though not a lot more complex-- would be that there are millions of people in the U.S. who freely voted to make Trumpanzee their leader, many of whom planning on voting for him again, despite the last 3 year of catastrophe. Toxic brew.

Over the weekend 4 Washington Post reporters, Philip Rucker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, collaborated on a piece, The Lost Days Of Summer: How Trump Fell Short In Containing The Virus, that shows how the Trumpist Regime has just given up on the pandemic. Former radical right psychopath North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows-- current radical right psychopath Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is in charge of coordinating the executive branch, including its coronavirus response. "But," wrote The Post quarter, "in closed-door meetings, he has revealed his skepticism of the two physicians guiding the anti-pandemic effort, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, routinely questioning their expertise. Meadows no longer holds a daily 8 a.m. meeting that includes health professionals to discuss the raging pandemic. Instead, aides said, he huddles in the mornings with a half-dozen politically oriented aides-- and when the virus comes up, their focus is more on how to convince the public that President Trump has the crisis under control, rather than on methodically planning ways to contain it. During coronavirus meetings, Meadows has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that wearing masks helps contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials said. He has regularly raised with Fauci and others a range of issues on which he thinks Fauci has been wrong, and he personally monitors the infectious-disease expert’s media appearances. When he catches Fauci sounding out of sync with Trump, the chief of staff admonishes the doctor to 'stay on message,' officials said-- and he has impressed upon Fauci, Birx and other public health professionals that they should not opine on restrictions or make policy in the media."

If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer, according to the portrait that emerges from interviews with 41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts. Many of them spoke only on the condition of anonymity to reveal confidential discussions or to offer candid assessments without retribution.

“Right now, we’re flying blind,” said Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Public health is not getting in the way of economic recovery and schools reopening. Public health is the means to economic recovery and schools reopening. You don’t have to believe me. Look all over the world. The U.S. is a laggard.”

Under mounting pressure to improve the president’s reelection chances as his poll numbers declined, the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country. A senior administration official said there was a desire to focus on the economy in June.

It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states-- Arizona, Florida and Texas-- and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.

...Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force-- which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads-- as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.

...[I]n recent interviews, several governors and mayors in some of the nation’s hardest-hit areas questioned the president’s credibility and the value of his presentations.

“You can be out front, but if you’re not providing accurate and truthful information, it can hurt rather than help,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), whose city has been a major hot spot. “Correct information is vital. People are listening, and they will respond based on what they’re hearing. And they look to their leaders at all levels of government... That trust factor is critical. If you lose that, it’s very difficult to govern.”

Jack Chow, a U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W. Bush administration and a former World Health Organization assistant director general, said, “It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola-- we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Trump’s push for a speedy return to normal had deadly consequences. Asked who was to blame for the pandemic’s dark summer turn, Pelosi said, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“The delay, the denial... the hoax that it’s going to go away magically, a miracle is going to happen, we’ll be in church together by Easter, caused death,” Pelosi added.

...Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner and strategic communications director Alyssa Farah.

The policy process has fallen apart around Meadows, according to four White House officials, with the chief of staff fixated on preventing leaks and therefore unwilling to expand meetings to include experts or to share documents with senior staffers who had been excluded from discussions. This breakdown in order, for instance, has given room for trade adviser Peter Navarro to push his ideas directly with Trump and to submit an opinion piece to USA Today attacking Fauci.

...Health officials said they have been dismayed that there is no consistent message from the White House advising what people should be doing to help stem the tide of coronavirus infections, such as wearing masks and social distancing. Some internal administration models suggest that full adherence to those measures could yield the same result as the shutdown, and officials recognize that it would be better for the public health and psyche of the nation and the economy if the country could avoid another full shutdown.

Luciana Borio, a director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the first two years of the Trump administration, decried “a response in disarray hampered by a lack of clear, consistent public health-oriented guidance to the public.”

“It’s very difficult to know who to trust,” Borio said. “To expect the public to sort out the facts in a time of tremendous stress leads to inconsistent and disparate actions, and that really hurts our collective effort to fight the virus.”

What also has frustrated a number of the president’s allies and former aides is that he simply seems uninterested in asserting full leadership over the crisis, instead deferring to state leaders to make the more difficult decisions while using his presidential bully pulpit to critique their performances. He deputizes Pence to handle much of the actual communication with states and other stakeholders in the fight against the virus.

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. response has been plagued by a chronic shortage of diagnostic tests, the supplies needed to run them and the lab capacity to process them in a reasonable time to maximize their effectiveness, according to state officials.

The Trump administration has resisted devising a national testing program and instead ceded the task to state governments, even as cases of infection average more than 60,000 a day and some people wait 10 days or longer for test results, delays that render the results essentially useless.

State officials, leaders of the American Medical Association and other medical groups as well as some officials in the administration have pushed for a stronger federal solution to the problems of testing.

...Despite repeated calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to help resolve testing-supply shortages, the administration has resisted doing so. Trump and several White House aides have instead continued to think that it is politically advantageous to cede the issue to the states to avoid taking ownership or blame for the issue, even though testing shortages are largely seen as a federal failure.

“The thing that disturbs me is I think the public has to know it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) said. “Other countries have taken this virus seriously, trusted their public health officials and scientists, and now they’ve flattened the curve,” he said. “Meanwhile, our situation gets worse and worse every day and some Americans think, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is.’ But that isn’t how it has to be.”

Even Trump has taken to sounding defeatist at times, as if he had given up trying to save lives. When the president claimed in a recent interview for HBO that the virus was “under control,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interjected.

“How?” Swan asked. “A thousand Americans are dying a day.”

“They are dying, that’s true,” Trump said. “It is what it is.”

Some people familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president is preternaturally averse to difficult challenges that don’t produce immediate results.

“He’s just not oriented towards things that even in the short term look like they’re involving something that’s hard or negative or that involves sacrifice or pain,” a former senior administration official explained. “He is always anxious to get to a place of touting achievements and being the messenger for good news.”

The Associated Press noted on Sunday that "the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the scourge has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Italy was hit first and hit hard, but "after a strict nationwide, 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment... Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn’t have when the first COVID-19 patients started filling intensive care units. Yet, more than four months into a sustained outbreak, the U.S. reached the 5 million mark... Health officials believe the actual number is perhaps 10 times higher, or closer to 50 million, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of all those who are infected have no symptoms.

With America’s world’s-highest death toll of more than 160,000, its politicized resistance to masks and its rising caseload, European nations have barred American tourists and visitors from other countries with growing cases from freely traveling to the bloc.

France and Germany are now imposing tests on arrival for travelers from “at risk” countries, the U.S. included.

...When the virus first appeared in the United States, Trump and his supporters quickly dismissed it as either a “hoax” or a virus that would quickly disappear once warmer weather arrived. At one point, Trump suggested that ultraviolet light or injecting disinfectants would eradicate the virus. (He later said he was being facetious).

Trump’s frequent complaints about Dr. Anthony Fauci have regularly made headlines in Europe, where the U.S. infectious-disease expert is a respected figure. Italy’s leading COVID-19 hospital offered Fauci a job if Trump fired him.

Trump has defended the U.S. response, blaming China, where the virus was first detected, for America’s problems and saying the U.S. numbers are so high because there is so much testing. Trump supporters and Americans who have refused to wear masks against all medical advice back that line.

“There’s no reason to fear any sickness that’s out there,” said Julia Ferjo, a mother of three in Alpine, Texas, who is “vehemently” against wearing a mask. Ferjo, 35, teaches fitness classes in a large gym with open doors. She doesn’t allow participants to wear masks.

“When you’re breathing that hard, I would pass out,” she said. “I do not want people just dropping like flies.”

And health officials watched with alarm as thousands of bikers gathered Friday in the small South Dakota city of Sturgis for an annual 10-day motorcycle rally. The state has no mask mandates, and many bikers expressed defiance of measures meant to prevent the virus’s spread.

Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who is leading a team seeking treatments for COVID-19, decried such behavior, as well as the country’s handling of the virus.

“There’s no national strategy, no national leadership, and there’s no urging for the public to act in unison and carry out the measures together,” he said. “That’s what it takes, and we have completely abandoned that as a nation.”

When he gets on Zoom calls with counterparts from around the globe, “everyone cannot believe what they’re seeing in the U.S. and they cannot believe the words coming out of the leadership,” he said.

...Many Europeans point proudly to their national health care systems that not only test but treat COVID-19 for free, unlike the American system, where the virus crisis has only exacerbated income and racial inequalities in obtaining health care.

“The coronavirus has brutally stripped bare the vulnerability of a country that has been sliding for years,” wrote Italian author Massimo Gaggi in his new book Crack America (Broken America), about U.S. problems that long predated COVID-19.

Gaggi said he started writing the book last year and thought then that the title would be taken as a provocative wake-up call. Then the virus hit.

“By March the title wasn’t a provocation any longer,” he said. “It was obvious.”

At the same time, Rebecca Falconer reported at Axios that New Zealand also has a COVID election coming up, but a very different one for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern than Trump's November reckoning. "New Zealand," wrote Falconer, "has now gone 100 days with no detected community spread of COVID-19... New Zealanders are going to the polls on Sept. 19. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been widely praised for her leadership that saw NZ lock down hard for several weeks before all domestic restrictions were lifted in June. She sees her government's response to and recovery from the coronavirus outbreak as key to her Labour Party being re-elected. Ardern announced at a briefing Saturday that Labour's re-election campaign that is heavily focused on continuing with the economic recovery, pledging NZ$311 million ($205.32m) for a 'Flexi-wage' subsidy scheme to help businesses give jobs to some 40,000 Kiwis. Labour is well ahead in the polls of its nearest rival, the National Party, led by Judith Collins. But conservative Collins told RNZ Saturday she's still confident of winning under her party's platform 'Strong team, More Jobs, Better Economy.' Collins is the third leader to be appointed by the National Party this year. New Zealand has 23 active coronavirus cases. All are NZ residents newly returned from abroad, who are staying in managed isolation facilities. The border remains closed to non-residents and all newly returned Kiwis must undergo a two-week isolation program managed by the country's defense force. All travelers tested three times before they leave. Police are stationed outside hotels where travelers are in quarantine. Officers have taken prosecutorial action against several returned travelers who've breached these rules by fleeing the facilities under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act."

Reporting solo for the Washington Post yesterday, Ashley Parker wrote that many people have just stopped caring what Trump says because everyone knows he's full of crap and nothing that comes out of his mouth is ever anything but attempted manipulation. "More than 3½ years into his presidency," wrote Parker, "Trump increasingly finds himself minimized and ignored-- as many of his more outlandish or false statements are briefly considered and then, just as quickly, dismissed. The slide into partial irrelevance could make it even more difficult for Trump as he seeks reelection as the nation’s leader amid a pandemic and economic collapse. In battling the coronavirus crisis, which has left more than 158,000 Americans dead, many of the nation’s governors have disregarded the president’s nebulous recommendations, instead opting for what they believe is best for their residents. So have the nation’s schools, with many of the country’s largest districts preparing for distance learning when they reopen this fall, despite Trump’s repeated calls for kids to return to classrooms in person. And the president’s own top public health officials are routinely contradicting him in public-- offering grim, fact-based assessments of the raging virus in contrast to his own frequently rosy proclamations."

Upstairs, Downstairs In The Age Of The Pandemic

Who gets released early and who gets COVID-19?

Bill Cosby thinks Pennsylvania should release him from prison because some of the other inmates are infected with COVID-19. He claims the state is trying to execute him. Pennsylvania has been temporarily releasing some vulnerable and nonviolent prisoners, but not sex offenders like Cosby. Some states are letting prisoners out early and some aren't. And there's no national standard for who gets out and who doesn't. "Celebrity criminals" like former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and Mafia boss Vincent Asaro are allowed to confine themselves in their swank digs... while others, guilty of lesser crimes, are allowed to become exposed to the deadly disease. In a hellish Ohio prison in Marion, Ohio that holds around 2,500 inmates, 1,828 detainees and 108 staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Betsy Sweet, the progressive candidate for the Maine Senate seat occupied by Susan Collins, reminded her supporters yesterday that it was 4/20-- and a time to send a strong message on marijuana. "Early on," she wrote, "I fought hard to ensure that people had access to marijuana for medical reasons. It became increasingly clear that the war on drugs was really a war on the poor and communities of color. These are the people who are going to jail for possession and recreational use, filling up our prisons and creating a lifetime of negative consequences for them." She is certain that it's "time to legalize marijuana nationally. I believe all individuals incarcerated on marijuana charges should have their records expunged-- a crucial and necessary next step. We need to give these folks their lives back." The idea that being arrested for possessing some weed could be a death sentence, is horrifying.

CNN reported yesterday that "Prison and jail populations across the United States are becoming a breeding ground for the coronavirus, sickening thousands of inmates and detainees as well as the staff and employees that work in the facilities." Jail situations are even more shocking, since well-off detainees who haven't been convicted of anything can get out on bail while poor inmates are... condemned.

In Illinois, a fourth detainee of Cook County Jail died Sunday, a press release from the Sheriff's Office said.

To help fight the spread of the virus the jail released almost a fourth of its population. Of the roughly 10,000 detainees previously housed in Chicago's Cook County Jail only 4,200 remain in custody.

Part of the decrease can be attributed to bail reform, which cut the jail's initial population by almost half. But 1,300 more inmates were released in the last month.

"We want to make sure that we're creating conditions whereby people who don't need to be there aren't there and the people who are there have optimal conditions for their health and safety," Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx said.

...A total of 215 detainees in custody of the jail are currently positive, including 21 who are being treated at local hospitals, according to the release. It also said 180 have already recovered.

But detainees aren't the only ones infected. A total of 191 correctional officers have tested positive and 34 other Cook County Sheriff's employees have also tested positive for coronavirus, the release said.

Billionaires who have led lives of seriously anti-social criminality, of course, are the least likely of anyone to face any consequences, including being exposed to coronavirus. Bloomberg News' Olivia Carville reported that rich Americans are activating pandemic escape plans-- not from prison but from the rest of us. "As coronavirus infections tore across the U.S. in early March," she wrote, "a Silicon Valley executive called the survival shelter manufacturer Rising S Co. He wanted to know how to open the secret door to his multimillion-dollar bunker 11 feet underground in New Zealand. The tech chief had neve­r used the bunker and couldn’t remember how to unlock it, said Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Co. 'He wanted to verify the combination for the door and was asking questions about the power and the hot water heater and whether he needed to take extra water or air filters,' Lynch said. The businessman runs a company in the Bay Area but lives in New York, which was fast becoming the world’s coronavirus epicenter. 'He went out to New Zealand to escape everything that’s happening,' Lynch said, declining to identify the bunker owner because he keeps his client lists private. 'And as far as I know, he’s still there.'" Too bad there are no one-way flights to the moon or Mars.

For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities.

In recent weeks, the country has been lauded for its response to the pandemic. It enforced a four-week lockdown early, and today has more recoveries than cases. Only 12 people have died from the disease. The U.S. death toll stands at more than 39,000 41,000, meaning that country’s death rate per capita is about 50 times higher.

The underground global shelter network Vivos already has installed a 300-person bunker in the South Island, just north of Christchurch, said Robert Vicino, the founder of the California-based company. He’s fielded two calls in the past week from prospective clients eager to build additional shelters on the island. In the U.S., two dozen families have moved into a 5,000-person Vivos shelter in South Dakota, he said, where they’re occupying a bunker on a former military base that’s about three-quarters the size of Manhattan. Vivos has also built an 80-person bunker in Indiana, and is developing a 1000-person shelter in Germany.

Rising S Co. has planted about 10 private bunkers in New Zealand over the past several years. The average cost is $3 million for a shelter weighing about 150 tons, but it can easily go as high as $8 million with additional features like luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.

Some Silicon Valley denizens have already made the move to New Zealand as the pandemic has escalated. On March 12, Mihai Dinulescu decided to pull the plug on the cryptocurrency startup he was launching to flee to the remote country. “My fear was it was now or never as I thought they might start closing borders,” said Dinulescu, 34. “I had this very gripping feeling that we needed to go.”

Dinulescu packed his bags and left his furniture, television, paintings and other belongings with friends. He bought the earliest plane ticket available and within 12 hours the Harvard University alum and his wife were on a 7 a.m. flight bound for Auckland. In San Francisco, “the entire international section of the airport was empty-- except for one flight to New Zealand,” Dinulescu said. “In a time when pretty much all planes were running on a third occupancy, this thing was booked solid.”

Four days later, New Zealand closed its borders to foreign travelers, which could thwart some refugee travel plans. Dinulescu said he has connected with about 10 people in New Zealand who made the jump before the shutdown, but “a lot of venture capital people I know were not afraid enough in time for the border close,” Dinulescu said. “And now they can’t get in.” After the shutdown was announced, however, local press reported a slight increase in private plane landings in the country.

Dinulescu is now working for Ao Air, a small startup that's designing an air filtration mask to rival the N95. Its co-founder, New Zealander Dan Bowden, said he’s fielded inquiries from about a dozen hopeful employees from the U.S. tech industry since the start of the pandemic, but that generally he’s wary of these requests.

"Some people are scared and reaching out just because they want a visa," Bowden said. One potential U.S.-based investor even asked if he would be eligible for New Zealand residency if he boosted his investment in the startup. Notably, New Zealand does offer an investor visa for about $6 million for three years.

The current travel restrictions complement another order, passed in August 2018, banning foreigners from buying Kiwi homes, partly in response to Americans gobbling up swaths of the country's prime real estate. That’s been a hurdle for New Zealand luxury real estate agent Graham Wall, who said that in recent weeks he’s gotten about half a dozen calls from wealthy Americans hoping to buy up properties on the island.

"They have all said it looks like the safest place to be is New Zealand right now,” he said. “That’s been a theory since before Covid-19.”

Over the years, the moneyed North Americans who have managed to wrangle properties there include hedge-fund pioneer Julian Robertson, Hollywood film director James Cameron and PayPal Holdings Inc. co-founder Peter Thiel, who has two estates in New Zealand, one of which features views of snow-capped mountains and has a safe room.

Though not in a mansion, Dinulescu has no plans to return to the Valley until the pandemic recedes. He is now holed up on Waiheke Island with his wife in a two-floor, three-bedroom house with ocean views for $2,400 a month—more than a third less than what they were paying for their two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

The couple chose Waiheke, with a population of about 9,000, for the proximity to its other elite residents. Dubbed “the Hamptons of New Zealand,” the island is home to epic cliff-top mansions and world-class wineries. Sir Graham Henry, former coach of the All Blacks rugby team, owns a home there, as does the packaging tycoon Graeme Hart.

“Frankly, we were billionaire hunting,” Dinulescu said. “We wanted to figure out where all the other Silicon Valley people would be.” So far, he said he hasn’t rubbed shoulders with any tech elite: “Everyone has been in self-isolation.”

Perrin Molloy, a local builder who has lived on the island since he was 11, described Waiheke as a “billionaire’s playground.” Molloy is often called to do repair jobs inside mega-mansions on the island, many of which are empty almost year-round. “These homes are designed to be a sanctuary for wealthy billionaires when they need to get away from what’s happening in the rest of the world,” he said.

On Waiheke, it’s common for builders to not know the identities of the homeowners they’re working for, Molloy said, and doomsday-related renovations are fairly routine. One of Molloy’s colleagues helped build a $12 million house in a private bay that had an “air tunnel” marked in the foundation plans that could easily fit four people walking shoulder-to-shoulder. “It was quite obviously an escape tunnel in the basement,” he said.

The virus is likely only to fuel the disaster preparedness industry in New Zealand and beyond. “Obviously the coronavirus is making people realize how vulnerable we all are, but what people are really concerned about is the aftermath,” said Vicino, the Vivos founder, who believes the wealthy fear an economic collapse or global depression could lead to uprisings against the top 1%. “They don't want to have to defend their homes when the gangs of looters or marauders show up.”

Sam Altman, former president of Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator and chief executive officer of OpenAI, has helped boost New Zealand’s reputation as a respite, previously telling the New Yorker that in the event of a pandemic he planned to escape there with Thiel. However, in an interview last week he said, “It’s a very lovely place, but I don’t know anyone who has run away to New Zealand.” Some fellow entrepreneurs have headed up to Napa Valley, but Altman says he hasn’t heard of any peers escaping internationally because of the virus.

Instead, Altman is sheltering in place in his San Francisco apartment, he said. Currently, like so many others, he’s growing his facial hair and watching Tiger King on Netflix.

The actual Tiger King, Joe Exotic, is now on Trump's radar for a celebrity pardon. And the mini-series about his life, Tiger King is good-- although the just-released third season of Fauda is better-- but facial hair? Maybe not. "[B]eard wearers aren't totally in the clear. A hairy face can play host to germs. If you're sick, Adalja warns, a beard could trap debris from coughs and sneezes, potentially infecting other people in close contact. In a study published last year, researchers in Europe found that men's beards harbor more harmful bacteria than the fur on dogs' necks." And a beard makes a facial mask less effective.

Sinking of the U.S.S. Économie

Who Will Stand Up To Hatred And Bigotry-- Trump? Bernie?

We've covered her quite a bit before but in case you've forgotten, Brandy X. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at Yale, best known for the bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Friday she penned an OpEd for the New York Daily News, Trump’s mental condition seems to be getting worse: He should subject himself to a rigorous assessment now. She wrote that in the two years since she organized the conference at Yale "about how mental health professionals could warn the public ethically and effectively" about what Trump is, their "predictions have borne out to be true: Donald Trump in the office of the presidency has proven more dangerous than people suspected, has grown more dangerous by the day, and, without proper treatment, is becoming increasingly uncontainable."

She points to many easy to recognize symptoms of his increasing mental impairment-- the more frequent and more vitriolic tweets, the vicious and violent rallies, the crackpot conspiracy theories that show him unable to tolerate reality but "most markedly," she wrote, "he has of late been growing less and less coherent. His two-hour Conservative Political Action Conference speech revealed many rambling sentences, tangential thoughts, repetitions and word-finding difficulties. There was also the 'Tim Apple' episode a few weeks ago, and then his calling Venezuela a company, confusing his grandfather’s birthplace with his father’s, mispronouncing 'oranges' for 'origins,' and stating, out of the blue, 'I’m very normal.' These are signs of cognitive decline, the source of which we cannot know without examining him, but there is no question he needs an evaluation... If an employee showed the kind of impulsivity, erratic thinking and belligerent behavior that the president does, the employer would likely have demanded testing right away before the employee could resume work. In the United States, the people are the president’s employers. An unprecedented Washington conference on fit leadership revealed that even non-mental health professionals agree that the president needs urgent mental health intervention. So the choice now seems clear: the president needs to submit to a proper, independent evaluation of fitness, or if not, he can always resign."



Yesterday I watched him at Sheldon Adelson's Kapo Convention in Las Vegas (video up top). Right after he introduced a slew of far right Republicans from Georgia, South Carolina, Bakersfield, North Dakota-- not exactly Jewish-friendly places but very Israel-friendly (see the difference and why here), he launched into a typical cheap shot, slandering Ilhan Omar (D-MN), soon after Patrick Carlineo, one of his supporters, was arrested by the FBI and charged with threatening to kill Congresswoman Omar. The Trumpist told authorities that he's a patriot who loves Trump, and "that he hates radical Muslims in our government." Trump always refers to Rep. Omar as a "radical Muslim," which isn't true. Carlineo told them that he had told Omar's office that "If our forefathers were still alive, they'd put a bullet in her head." [You can contribute to Ilhan's reelection campaign here.]

Trump spreads hatred and rancor whenever he goes and whenever he speaks. Bernie, an American Jew from Brooklyn-- we grew up a few blocks from each other and went to the same elementary school (PS 197) and high school (James Madison)-- has a different way of approaching people. Please, please, please watch this video. "Love Will Conquer Hate: Bernie Visits Islamic Center in California." That's the likely choice we'll be making in 2020. I can't tell you strongly enough how important this short video is:

Your Congressmember Doesn't WANT You To Die-- He Probably Just Doesn't Care One Way Or The Other

As you can see in the video above, on Thursday-- 6 days after a completely garden variety, typical Trump supporter went on a shooting rampage and slaughtered 50 Muslims worshipping in 2 mosques-- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles, along with a government buy-back program. Many have noted how different that quick and decisive decision by New Zealand's government was in comparison to the inability of the U.S. government to do anything about the gun-terrorism that continues to plague this country despite thousands and thousands of tragic deaths that horrify everyone except the death cult Trumpists, who absolutely revel in the mass murders.

Marie Newman, the progressive candidate running in the Chicagoland district occupied by right-of-center Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, pointed out that "New Zealand’s swift action on the assault weapon ban after the horrifying tragedy is the model for strong leadership. The hope is for our leaders to follow and adopt stronger and more impactful laws. We can do this, over 80% of Americans want common sense gun laws." That was pretty much what I heard from every Democratic candidate I spoke with. But what's mucking up the works. Eva Putzova, another progressive running for a seat held by a real bad Blue Dog (this one, Tom O'Halleran), noted that "As in other policy areas, what often times stands between people and sensible policies and programs is unbridled corporate power-- in this case the arms industry and the NRA-- enabled by a subservient legislative and executive branch." She'srunning to challenge that power. So is Mike Siegel in Texas, whose opponent, hard-core Republican incumbent Michael McCaul, an NRA patsy. Mike told me that he'd "support a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons and believe most Texans feel the same. We need to simultaneously limit corporate interference in our elections because unlimited NRA money is preventing Congress from enacting the will of the people."

Yesterday, in a report for CNN, Zachary Wolf asked why the U.S. hasn't been able to react the way New Zealand has, noting that "Twenty years after Columbine, the first of so many major mass shootings in the US, the federal government has done basically nothing. The federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004. Support for reinstating such a ban is less than 50%, according to recent polls." Wolf offered one sickening excuse after another that has made it impossible for the U.S. to ban assault weapons, some political, some cultural, some systemic-- all requiring, if they're to be overcome, the kind of political courage sorely tacking in contemporary U.S. politics. Think carefully before casting your next votes. The people you elect could kill you and your family by-- for example-- ignoring gun control, ignoring health care, ignoring climate change. This is serious stuff. If we don't take it seriously...

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

President Trump's blatant encouragement of white supremacists is working. They are increasingly emboldened, They even have prime time FOX "News" goons like Tucker Carlson pushing their sicko agenda, catapulting the propaganda, which, of course, Trump regularly relays to his Republican followers via twitter.

Knowing what we know about Trump and his lifetime of openly demonstrated bigotry, there can be no reasonable doubt that his biggest disappointment last week was that the New Zealand shooter didn't live here in America. Trump is all about manifesting hate and mayhem. When asked to comment on the Mosque attack which left 50 dead, he mouthed some words about it being horrible and quickly reverted to uttering words and phrases that could have come from the Daily Stormer or any other Nazi website. The way he spoke, the words he emphasized, gave a clear indication that he was more comfortable using the language of white supremacists than saying the event was a horror. The shooter had already received the Trump message loudly and clearly. Like any good Nazi, he already knew he had a compadre in the White House before he pulled the trigger.

Trump's current Chief of Staff Mike Mulvaney facetiously claimed, on FOX, of course, that he doesn't know why people keep calling his boss a white nationalist or white supremacist even though he's been so open about it. I guess it can be zero surprise that Mulvaney is no different than his predecessor Gen. John Kelly, Stephen Miller or any of the rest of the Trump White House Grand Wizards.

Meanwhile, half of Congress sleeps, half of Congress nods its collective head in approval, and the public does next to nothing to push them into action. As I've pointed out before, FDR used to say that it's up to the public to make politicians act the way they want. Apparently, the voters are happy with the status quo, happy to let fascist corporate boards and CEOs lead them by the nose to their doom and the doom of the U.S.A. It can happen here and it is. Goebbels is laughing.

Missing Church This Morning?

Late yesterday, Only Through US, an organization whose goal is empowering citizens to protect American principles and freedoms from fear-based politics, issued a long-titled press release, Shock and horror are insufficient responses to today’s New Zealand mosques shooting. The White House must be held accountable for elevating white supremacy. Legislators and tech companies must urgently enact policy changes.. It was anything but a religious document.

Friday’s terror attacks in New Zealand are the inevitable and direct result of overt hate speech and dehumanizing language towards Muslims and Islam both abroad and here in the U.S. We must come together as a country to hold accountable those actors--including the president--who mainstream this language. Any response to today’s events must go beyond shock, horror, and condolences. It must be clear that hate speech and fear-mongering towards Muslims, refugees, and immigrants writ-large will no longer be tolerated. In a 77-page manifesto, the shooter praised Trump as a 'symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose'. The shooter joins in a long line of white supremacists such as former KKK-leader David Duke and Richard Spencer in doing so.

Fear-mongering and white supremacy: Beginning with then-candidate Trump declaring that “Islam hates us,” to saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists carrying AK-47s on the streets of Charlottesville and mowing through protesters are “fine people,” to his insistence today-- even after these Christchurch terrorist attacks-- that white supremacy is not a widespread problem, this president has paved the way for the rise of white supremacists.

Action: Congress must pass a collective resolution condemning the president’s repeated endorsements of white supremacy and demand an unequivocal condemnation of white supremacy as terrorism. Congress must finally codify white supremacist violence as terrorism under U.S. law.

Islamophobia: When President Trump retweets anti-Muslim videos from known Islamophobes, that is elevating Islamophobia. When the president bans Muslims from traveling to the U.S., that is legislating Islamophobia.

Action: Enough is enough. Congress must vote to dismantle the Muslim Ban and associated policies. The president must explicitly demonstrate support for Muslim communities affected by these terror attacks as well an ongoing commitment towards the safety and security of those of Muslim faith.

The Role of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, 8Chan, etc: When tech companies are made aware-- by their employees, law enforcement, and outside experts-- that their platforms have become essential organizing grounds for violent white supremacists, violent misogynists, and violent racists, and fail to proportionately respond to make these online communities safe, that is enabling hate crimes and violence.

Action: Congress must give tech platforms a deadline to present a full and detailed accounting of the actions they have taken to make their platforms safe and hate-free. Should the tech companies fail to do so in a timely manner, Congress should consider mandating that the companies temporarily shut down operational functions of their platforms-- from news feeds to content-sharing functions-- until they ensure that these basic safety issues are resolved. Too much is at stake for business as usual.

We should have done more before today, but to be clear, we can do much more starting now.

No talk about thoughts and prayers and words of comfort. And indeed, elected officials in New Zealand put public safety over the profits of gun manufacturers, banning semiautomatic assault rifles less than 24 hours after the Christchurch massacre. Coincidentally, The Atlantic published an essay by Peter Beinert, Secular Democrats Are the New Normal. It was written before a Trump supporter murdered dozens of people worshipping in New Zealand and explained that the American "president" is "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose." In his essay, Beinert made the point that instead of invoking God in their speeches, most of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders identify religion as a source of division. He wrote that "Were a Democrat from the Clinton, Bush, or Obama eras to watch the presidential-announcement video that Beto O’Rourke released on Thursday, they would likely be struck by how it ended. Or, more specifically, by how it didn’t end. O’Rourke did not close with any mention of God. Until recently, farewells that invoke God were standard fare for Democratic and Republican candidates alike. Bill Clinton ended his 1992 convention speech with the words 'God bless you, and God bless America.' At the 1996 convention, he declared, 'God bless you, and good night.' Al Gore finished his 1999 presidential-announcement speech with the words 'May God bless you. And God bless America.' John Kerry closed his presidential-announcement speech in 2003 by saying, 'Thank you, and God bless you all.' Barack Obama ended his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention with the phrase 'God bless you.' (Although Obama didn’t mention God at the end of his 2007 announcement speech, he began it with 'Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us here today.') Hillary Clinton closed her announcement speech in 2015 with 'God bless you. And may God bless America.' O’Rourke exemplifies a new normal. None of the other major white progressive candidates-- Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Kirsten Gillibrand-- invoked God in their presidential announcements either. (Amy Klobuchar, who is running as a comparative moderate, did.)"



Doug Pagitt, a progressive evangelical pastor, is the executive director of Vote Common Good, which has been working with progressive candidates to communicate better with evangelical voters. He told us that "There is great work going on around the country with both the religious community and politicians to make deeper connections with people of faith and Democratic candidates. There is no doubt that the progressive policies of the Democratic party match the convictions and beliefs of Christians and other people of faith. There is no reason for the perceived nor real disconnect." Beinert isn't seeing the granular level Vote Common Good works in, although he's scratching around the edges:

Today’s white liberals don’t only talk about faith less than their predecessors did. They talk about it in a strikingly different way. Earlier Democrats invoked religion as a source of national unity... Today, by contrast, progressive white candidates more often cite religion as a source of division. In his announcement video, O’Rourke boasted that during his Senate campaign in Texas, 'people allowed no difference, however great or however small, to stand between them and divide us. Whether it was religion or gender or geography or income, we put our labels and our differences aside.' The only reference to faith in Warren’s announcement speech was an acknowledgment that 'we come from different backgrounds. Different religions.' The lone reference in Sanders’s was a call for 'ending religious bigotry.' While white progressives once described religion as something that brought Americans together, they’re now more likely to describe it as something that drives them apart.

It’s not hard to understand why. For starters, the percentage of white Democrats who express no religious affiliation has skyrocketed. According to unpublished data tabulated for me last year by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 8 percent of white Democrats expressed no religious affiliation in 1990. By 2016, the figure was 33 percent. In 1990, white self-described liberals were 39 points more likely to describe themselves as Protestant than as religiously unaffiliated. By 2016, religiously unaffiliated beat Protestant by nine points.

Secular Democrats haven’t only grown more numerous. They’ve also become some of the party’s most motivated activists. As The Atlantic’s Emma Green has noted, a PRRI poll taken last August and September found that Democrats who shun organized religion were more than twice as likely to have attended a political rally in the previous year than Democrats who identify with a religious group. Today’s Democratic candidates cannot simply assert, as Obama did in 2004, that “we worship an awesome God in the blue states,” because so many active Democrats do not.

The other reason liberal candidates more often describe religion as a source of division is the rise of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Before Donald Trump, Republican religious discourse was more ecumenical. The 2000 Republican convention featured a Muslim prayer, and George W. Bush regularly spoke about Americans who attended a “church, synagogue, or mosque.” In such an environment, it was easier for Democrats to depict an America divided by race, class, and gender but unified by religious faith, even if different Americans expressed that faith in different ways. Today, by contrast, since more Americans don’t practice a religion, and the president demonizes some of those who do, it’s more natural to describe religion as a rift to be overcome.

But while there are legitimate reasons to talk about religion less (America has become a less religious country) and to describe it more negatively (religious bigotry has risen sharply), doing so could hurt Democrats such as O’Rourke in their efforts to defeat Trump. According to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, while a small plurality of Democrats thinks politicians talk about religion too much, Republicans overwhelmingly think politicians talk about it too little. Among those Republicans are devout Christians who agree with Trump on abortion but consider him a detestable human being, and might be lured into voting against him by a Democrat who both spoke compellingly about a guiding faith and appeared to live by it.

Democratic candidates might be tempted to pursue an opposite strategy: employing secular rhetoric to rouse their secular base. But the Democratic base isn’t overwhelmingly secular; it’s partly secular and partly religious. Republicans, by contrast, are overwhelmingly religious. Which may explain why, according to a 2017 study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, candidates who were perceived as secular experienced a “drop in Republican support that... was not balanced by an increase in Democratic support.”

That’s partly because of African Americans. While many white Democrats want politicians to speak about religion less, black Democrats overwhelmingly want them to speak about it more. When asked in 2016 whether political leaders were talking about “their faith and prayer” too much or too little, black Protestants said “too little” by a larger margin than even Republicans. While only 41 percent of Democrats said it was very or somewhat important that a president shared their religious views, among black Protestants, the figure was 72 percent, again even higher than among Republicans.

All of which may help Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. It’s no coincidence that Harris ended her campaign-announcement speech with the words “God bless you, and God bless the United States of America,” and that Booker ended his speech at the 2016 Democratic convention by declaring, “God bless America.” In his campaign video, a bystander calls out, “2020!” To which Booker responds, “Amen!”

This religious language may reflect a genuine religious belief. But it also bespeaks a political reality: For Harris and Booker, whose path to the Democratic nomination requires winning the black vote, religious language is a necessity. And the same religious language that helps them win over African Americans in the primary may help them win over Republicans in the general election. In their appetite for public professions of faith, black Democrats and white Republicans are similar. It’s white liberals who stand out.

White progressives such as O’Rourke, Sanders, and Warren tacitly recognize that religion is no longer the force for national unity it once was. For Harris and Booker, the intriguing possibility is that it’s still unifying enough to propel them to the White House.

Should You Trust Hillary On Corporate Trade Agreements Like TPP?

Raise your hand if you think Hillary's "adoption" of Bernie's positions of anything is more than just soon-to-be-abandoned primary posturing with no significance regaring her adminisration's future policy agenda. Now go put on a dunce cap and sit in the corner. Sure, she no longer publicly insists that the TPP is the "gold standard" of trade agreements, but there are indications that she's never really changed her mind about the horrible treaty she helped negotiate. Ironically, Trump will hammer her if she backs away from the flip-flop Bernie's campaign forced her to make. So it won't be until after the election that she declares the TPP just needs a couple of minor-- and we mean MINOR MINOR MINOR-- adjustments before it's the gold standard again.

When she was Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell was her top lieutenant on East Asia at the State Department and is now a campaign advisor. He describes the TPP in the same terms Hillary sees it-- a "strategic commitment" to engage in Asia. Nothing to do with the pain and suffering inflicted on American workers or consumers. The 12 nations that are party to it, they insist, account for about 40% of global GDP, and "other" Asian nations are interested in joining. Campbell insists-- as does the entire American corporate/political elite-- that full-scale renegotiation will never happen. He insisnuates that "adjustments" could make it "more politically palatable in the U.S.," although it's worth remembering that many of the worst aspects of the TPP were pushed by the U.S. on behalf of American corporations. "There are always opportunities to adjust on the margins," said Campbell, "and figure out how to ensure that we’ve got an agreement which legislators can sell back home." He was speaking at the Truman Center think tank last week and, of course, refused to provide specifics.

According to Parliamentary testimony from the head of the New Zealand Medical Association, "The longer data protection the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would give biologic pharmaceutical makers will push up the cost of the fastest growing primary health treatment in the country... Biologic drugs account for more than 40 percent of new pharmaceutical products being developed and proposals in the TPP to extend the length of time manufacturers can retain the data in producing those products will delay the introduction of cheaper alternatives." The longer protections for pharmaceutical companies against generic drug makers was something the U.S. insisted on during negotiations, in case you were wondering.



The U.S. presidential election campaign might be a great time to debate the TPP, since Congress won't be permitted to according to the ground rules (Fast Track) passed by the GOP with the help of the New Dems. There are a couple of House races where corrupt TPP proponents like Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL) and Kurt Schrader (New Dem-OR) are facing challenges from progressives based on TPP votes. Tim Canova in Florida and Dave McTeague in Oregon are two of the best examples. But the issue is being studiously ignored by the corporate mass media, which would rather discuss Trump's polling numbers.

There seems to be more of a debate in other countries, at least in the media. In New Zealand, at least the citizens are getting a crash course in what the contours of the destruction headed their way is all about.

The TPP is the product of corporate lawyers converting "trade" to the protectionism sought by corporations for extended patent protections for films and pharmaceuticals at the expense of environmental regulation and worker protections.

The multi-national corporations, with their expanding power and loyalty to none but to profit, pose a threat to democracy and to the balance of planetary life.

It is the position of Pope Francis.

In his two encyclicals, Evangeli Gaudium and Laudato Si, he explicitly links bare-knuckle capitalism with ecological catastrophe and growing economic inequality.

Along with the role of relentless profit-seeking as an end in itself, is the ultimate threat posed by the combination of global warming and planetary plundering and economic inequality to the continuation of democratic government.

Basic to democracy is an informed electorate. Some corporations-- tobacco and fossil fuel industries, for example - have done their best to provide disinformation and to sow doubt about the scientific consensus on the harms caused by their products.

The efforts of tobacco companies to sow deliberate confusion over the harm of their products is now well established through litigation.

Likewise, Exxon is now under investigation, as their own scientists had evidence of atmospheric damage from emissions while the industry funded climate change deniers.

No one enjoys paying taxes, but taxes are necessary if government is to perform its functions of providing for the common well-being. Taxes should be fairly levied and everyone pay their fair share.

When corporations or wealthy individuals hide their assets to shield them from taxation (cf Panama Papers) the burden of making up the shortfall is laid upon the ordinary taxpayer.

A total of 358 of the 500 largest United States-based multi-national corporations have off-shored US$2.1 trillion of profits.

Those profits, if brought back to the US, would generate US$620 billion ($900 billion) in taxes-- that would pay for a lot of jobs repairing America's crumbling infrastructure; salaries for a lot of teachers and firemen; or alleviate the high costs of tertiary education.

Clearly not all corporations are such bad citizens-- some have been beneficial in terms of innovation and creating technology. They function well as long as they are competitive but, alas, corporations have the inherent drive toward monopoly with attendant destructiveness.

The six members of the Walton family, owners of Walmart, have combined assets of US$144.7 billion ($211 billion), more than the combined wealth of the lower 42 per cent of Americans.

Walmart's workers are paid such low wages that they must supplement income with food stamps and Medicaid-- which other taxpayers pay for.

Walmart's history puts the lie to the myth of corporations creating jobs. Jobs are created mostly by small local businesses.

In almost every instance in which Walmart has moved into a community, smaller retailers have been driven out and with them their suppliers-- and the pool of local jobs has dried up.

Beyond the disinformation campaigns, the tax avoidance and evasion, the hollowing-out of communities and the contribution to wealth disparities is the political power exerted.

In 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons and that money equals speech. They spend unlimited funds to influence elections. The Koch brothers, owners of fossil fuel companies, have pledged to spend a billion dollars in 2016 to elect candidates of whom they approve.

Corporations are not necessarily good neighbours; they may not be good for your health or your pocketbook and certainly not for your job, which they will outsource to countries with lower labour standards.

The large multi-national corporations who negotiated the TPP have a track record. Those who advocate our getting into that shark tank need to have better reasons than simply throwing out bumper-sticker words "trade" and "jobs."

Paul Ryan has conspired with the Obama Adminstration to keep the TPP from being voted on until after the November elections. That way vulnerable-ish incumbents won't be accountable to their constituents. Example: if Wasserman Schultz voted for the TPP in October, she would lose her seat to Tim Canova the following month... or she'd be canny enough to vote NO. After the election is over, she's safe to vote in line with the corporate interests that finance her career without having to worry about any consequences until 2018 by which time, Tim Canova may not be running against her and few of her constituents will remember anyway. And so on around the country... forever and ever and ever. Maybe Hillary isn't really the lesser of two evils. And remember, the second TPP is passed, Hillary starts negotiations for a European version.

If you want to stop the TPP, don't vote for Hillary and her corrupt, conservative, corporate wing of the party; support opponents of it to Congress, like these men and women: