Vicious Psychopath Michael Caputo Is Being Paid By The Taxpayers

As you know, Trump only hires the best people. An acolyte first of Ollie North and then of Roger Stone, Michael Caputo was appointed assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services by Trump, despite having no experience with healthcare, other than his own very severe mental illness. Instead, he has spent much of his adult life living in Russia trying to polish Putin's image and as a swampy Florida spin-doctor and lobbyist. A sexist pig and overt racist, Caputo's loyalty lies with Putin and Trump, not with the U.S. He is almost universally considered a Russian agent. Although if he ever thought of modeling himself on the characters from The Americans, that was a non-starter from the git-go.

Crazy fascists Stone and Caputo

Yesterday Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lena Sun, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind Helderman wrote about Caputo urging Trump supporters "to prepare for an armed insurrection after a contested election and accused government scientists of 'sedition' in a Facebook Live chat that he described in detail to the Washington Post on Monday."

Trump installed Caputo in April after weighing whether to fire Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar over a series of damaging stories about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, according to three current and former White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes discussions. Allies persuaded Trump to not make such a change amid a pandemic, but instead to bring in Caputo, the officials said. (Trump denied reports that he was considering firing Azar at the time.)

Almost immediately, Caputo began exerting control over officials’ public appearances and statements; by early summer, he had extended that scrutiny to scientists. He and an adviser have faced mounting criticism in recent days for interfering with the work of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seeking to change, delay or kill weekly scientific reports they thought undermined Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control. Caputo has also sought to wield influence over when government scientists appear on television, telling officials that he approves such bookings.

Caputo is viewed as a Trump loyalist, but several White House officials said his behavior has been erratic and some of his ideas have been regarded as extreme. For example, he proposed the federal government spend millions of dollars on a professionally directed and produced documentary about the administration’s race to develop vaccines that he wanted to air at film festivals, said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The idea was rejected by White House communications aides.

In the Facebook video, Caputo criticizes government career scientists, the media and Democrats, The Times reported and Caputo confirmed. He said he was under attack by the media and that his “mental health has definitely failed.”

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” Caputo said in the video, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”

Caputo also said the CDC, which is part of HHS, had a “resistance unit” that aimed to undermine Trump. Without offering any evidence, he also accused scientists “deep in the bowels of the CDC” of giving up on science and becoming “political animals.”

They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” he said in the video. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”

He also predicted that Trump would win the election but that Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, would refuse to concede. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he warned in the video. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Several Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), called late Monday for Caputo’s firing.

“Secretary Azar has a basic responsibility to ensure our public health experts are able to do their jobs, our covid-19 response is not undermined by misinformation or conspiracy theories, and the data used to inform our efforts is free of political interference,” Murray said in a statement.

Noting that Caputo has said the president asked him to oversee a $250 million campaign “intended to help America to get back to normal,” DeLauro said, “We now know this is a propaganda campaign that must be defunded immediately. It is not the mission of the Department of Health and Human Services to get the President reelected.”

House Democrats on the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis also announced that they had launched an investigation into political interference in the CDC’s science reports on the pandemic.

The White House declined to comment on the controversy Monday.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes conversations, a White House official said the president was aware of Caputo’s comments but that his job appeared to be safe for now. Nonetheless, the official said, some advisers were arguing Caputo should be demoted or removed because of concern that he could damage the administration’s efforts to build public confidence in a prospective coronavirus vaccine.

The official said the White House has also recently expanded its coronavirus vaccine messaging team, detailing staffers from other agencies in an “end run” around Caputo.

Senior White House aides have previously warned Caputo that some of his public comments crossed a line. Caputo deactivated his personal Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday.

HHS released a statement describing Caputo as “a critical, integral part of the President’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the covid-19 pandemic.”

Several current and former administration officials have expressed frustration that Caputo seems more focused on the president’s political fortunes than on combating the pandemic. Caputo denied that, saying that while he cares about the president’s electoral prospects, he is most worried about the deaths and suffering caused by the pandemic. He noted he has urged friends to wear masks. “If you don’t wear a mask, you’re part of the problem,” he said in the interview.

...During the video, Caputo said questioners asked whether he would stay in the job because of mounting criticism of his team’s interference in the work of CDC’s weekly scientific missives aimed at the nation’s doctors, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. He said he expected to remain in his post.

Caputo was an unusual choice for the top health communications job in the government, especially in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century. A New York public relations specialist and political consultant, Caputo served as campaign manager to controversial businessman Carl Paladino in his unsuccessful bid for governor of New York in 2010. Caputo began working with Trump in 2014, first to assist Trump’s unsuccessful bid to buy the Buffalo Bills that year and then, in 2016, to assist Trump’s efforts in the Republican primary for president in New York.

Caputo remained in the public eye, particularly after the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in 2017. In frequent interviews, Caputo bemoaned the investigation and the effect it had on Trump allies who faced hefty legal bills as they received subpoenas and requests for interviews with investigators. When the investigation wrapped, Trump hosted Caputo for a meeting in the Oval Office and took pictures with his family.

Caputo himself drew the attention of Mueller’s investigators in part because he had had contact with a Russian who offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

In May 2016, Caputo said, a Russian man approached his then-business partner, Sergey “George” Petrushin at an art gallery opening in Florida, claiming to have information that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. Petrushin connected him with Caputo, who arranged for him to meet with political operative Roger Stone, a longtime friend.

According to the Mueller report, which described the episode, investigators found no link between the Russian man’s outreach and the broader effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

As a political adviser and public relations specialist, Caputo also had lived for a time in Moscow in the 1990s, where he worked on a campaign reminiscent of “Rock the Vote” on behalf of then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Returning to the United States, Caputo took a contract in 2000 working for the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States. He later told the Buffalo News that he was “not proud of the work,” adding, “at the time, Putin wasn’t such a bad guy.”

By midday yesterday, Politico reported that Caputo called an emergency staff meeting to apologize for drawing negative attention to the Regime's so-called health care strategy "and signaled that he might be soon departing his role." By the end of the day, the backlash was so intense that Trump is reported-- not confirmed yet-- to have told Azar to order Caputo to "resign" so he can focus on his mental health. He also deleted his Twitter account (Caputo, not Trump). UPDATE: They just announced that Caputo is taking a "leave of absence" until after the election.

Iowans May Not Understand The Nature Of Pandemics-- And They May Not Be The Only Americans Who Don't

In all likelihood Americans will go to the polls in November knowing over a quarter million of our fellow citizens had died-- most needlessly-- because of Republican mishandling on the pandemic. By early next year, deaths will tick up beyond 300,000. How do Republicans defend themselves when it has been their policies and their incompetence that are behind the catastrophe? They deny it. It's a hoax; it's the media out to get them; the numbers are fake; it's just a bunch of fat old people who would have died anyway. Yesterday, Joni Ernst hadn't gotten so much national press for her clueless comments about pandemic deaths since it came out she used to be a hog castrator before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014. As the Washington Post put it Wednesday: "Ernst’s comments echo conspiracy theories pushed by QAnon followers that have been debunked by doctors and public health experts." She told a crowd of Republicans near Waterloo-- hopefully her Waterloo-- that "These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if covid is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?" That's a conspiracy theory straight out of Q-Anon.

Critics lashed out at Ernst over the claim, including Democrat Theresa Greenfield, who is seeking to unseat her in a November election expected to be tight.

“It’s appalling for you to say you’re ‘so skeptical’ of the toll this pandemic has on our families and communities across Iowa,” Greenfield said in a tweet directed at Ernst. “We need leaders who will take this seriously.”

...Her inaccurate figure of 10,000 or fewer covid-19 deaths is similar to a widely spread QAnon meme that misinterpreted a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That study said the coronavirus was the only contributing factor in 6 percent of reported deaths. The conspiracy theory that claims the U.S. death toll is inflated incorrectly assumes that only 6 percent of deaths should be counted in the covid-19 death tally. The study does not support that claim.

In the other 94 percent of coronavirus deaths, the victims had at least one other contributing factor. Those deaths still count toward the overall number of deaths caused by the virus. Health experts have known since the early days of the pandemic that preexisting conditions, such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease, increase a patient’s likelihood to die of a coronavirus infection.

The suggestion that the U.S. death toll has been inflated has been echoed by QAnon accounts and even retweeted by President Trump. When Trump on Sunday retweeted a QAnon follower named “Mel Q” who made the claim on Twitter, the social media site removed the tweet for spreading false information about the pandemic.

In the past week, new coronavirus cases have spiked by nearly 84 percent in Ernst’s state and the death toll increased by 25 percent. Nightclubs, concert venues and sporting arenas are still closed in Iowa, but most other businesses have been allowed to reopen and children are required to attend in-person classes at public schools throughout the state.

The senator’s unfounded claims inspired backlash from some observers, who viewed the remarks as undermining health-care workers who have been on the front lines of the pandemic.

“Senator Ernst is from Iowa, where currently is having one of the WORST #COVID19 OUTBREAKS hotspot in the entire nation as a region, and some say maybe the world,” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist, health economist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted Tuesday in response to Ernst’s comments. “To deny that is to deny the suffering of Iowans.”

COVID-Kim (R-IA)

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds-- backed by a GOP-controlled state legisalture-- has been responsible for one of the worst over-all responses to the pandemic of any governor in America. A 100% Trump puppet, she has consistently ignored science and public health best practices in favor of partisan and ideological gobblygook that has killed 1,125 Iowans. The state reported 646 new cases yesterday, bringing the total to 66,136-- or 20,962 cases per million Iowans-- a far worse rate than any European country, including Spain (10,073 cases per million), Sweden (8,361 cases per million) and Italy (4,470 cases per million).

In 2016, Iowa nearly ceased being a swing state. After two consecutive wins there for Obama, the state's voters overwhelmingly rejected Hillary Clinton's status quo message and Trump won Iowa's 6 electoral votes 800,983 (51.15%) to 653,669 (41.74%). Hillary won just 6 of the state's 99 counties. Two years later, the anti-red wave returned 2 of the state's 3 GOP congressional districts to Democratic hands. And current presidential polling average is firmly back in swing state territory. Trump leads Biden 46.7-45.0%. (1.7 points). The most recent poll from the Des Moines Register is a dead heat within the margin of error-- 44-43% with Trump ahead.

An even more recent Iowa poll by Monmouth shows registered voters giving a slight edge to Ernst over Democrat Theresa Greenfield, 48-45%. The poll results, though, seem to indicate that many Iowans don't understand the nature of pandemics and it is likely to require many more cases and deaths before Iowans will understand how contagious diseases work and how they can be stopped. With many Iowans opting for simplistic partisan tropes to deal with the pandemic, it will be probably some time before Iowa is part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Is Trump's Latest Twitter Rage Proof That He's Insane Or Proof That He Thinks His Base Is? Or Both?

By 6 AM on Sunday, Trump was up and doing what he enjoys most-- raging at his political enemies on Twitter, screaming about cracking down on "agitators and thugs" (for him a synonym for protesters, people of color and Democrats) and fanning the flames of civil unrest. In all, he entertained his followers with nearly 100 tweets and retweets about his great poll numbers-- from a GOP firm that allows their clients to practically pick their own results-- and both defending violent right-wing terrorists and savaging Democratic politicians trying to cope with the Trump-inspired chaos in their cities and states. His armed supporters drove into Portland to do one thing: wreak havoc on Trump's behalf-- a real caravan this time.

I believe someone may have since talked Trump out of going to Kenosha (still not sure), but on State of the Union yesterday Karen Bass (D-CA) explained that Trump’s trip there was "to agitate things and to make things worse... He is campaigning. It is clear his campaign is all about law and order. It is a throwback to the past. And he's going to do everything to disrupt law and order in this time period."

The NY Times' Peter Baker wrote the story everyone else is quoting: Trump Embraces Fringe Theories On Protests And The Coronavirus, although "embraces" is such a Times kind of description for what Trump is actually up to. Baker noted that President Sociopath was claiming on Sunday morning that the "street protests are actually an organized coup d’état against him."

One of the Trumpists was killed in Portland precisely what the country's chief agent provocateur was hoping for. In his weekend diarrhea of hate messaging to his Twitter followers, Trump "embraced a call to imprison Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House, attacked CNN and NPR, embraced a supporter charged with murder, mocked his challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation."

One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough. The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Mr. Trump’s downfall.

“According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the tweet said. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.” Accompanying it was an image of a promo for a segment titled: “America Under Siege: The Attempt to Overthrow President Trump.”

Mr. Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus is only around 9,000-- not 182,000-- because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.

“So get this straight-- based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of a story by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the president, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx.

Over the weekend (Saturday + Sunday), there were 1,325 new COVID-deaths reported. The actual U.S. death total is 187,224, despite the denialism from Trumpist conspiracy theorists encouraged by Trump himself. The half dozen states with the most new deaths this past weekend:

• Florida 163
• Texas 188
• Georgia 133
• California 102
• Alabama 55
• South Carolina 54




Maybe Trump wants to tell their families that they didn't die of COVID and that's it's all a hoax and all about him. It is likely that by election day, something like a quarter million Americans will have been majority of American voters agree that Trump is an unreliable source of information about the pandemic and that, in general, he is untrustworthy and untruthful. Poor thing... must be frustrating for him.

But Mr. Trump also retweeted a message calling for Mr. Cuomo to be locked up because of the high death toll from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes earlier in the pandemic. “#KillerCuomo should be in jail,” said the message by the actor James Woods, a strong supporter of the president’s.

And the president even “liked” a tweet that offered support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter who has been charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot to death in Kenosha, Wis. “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump,” the tweet said.

Mr. Cuomo responded on his own Twitter feed a few hours later, pointing to the Trump administration’s failure to contain the pandemic. “The White House has learned nothing from COVID,” Mr. Cuomo wrote. “National threats require national leadership. It’s been 6 months without a national strategy on testing or mask mandate. Only the federal government has the power to go to war with COVID. They are failing and the nation suffers.”

For his part, Mr. Biden issued a statement condemning the violence in Portland as “unacceptable” regardless of one’s political views and criticizing Mr. Trump for trying to raise the temperature rather than lower it.

“What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?” Mr. Biden asked. “He is recklessly encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong-- but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is.”

...Trump repeatedly assailed Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland for resisting federal help and delighted in showcasing a peaceful protest held at the mayor’s own home on Friday, even retweeting a post accusing the Mr. Wheeler of “committing war crimes.” Rather than calling for calm, Mr. Trump seemed to justify aggressive action against demonstrators by his supporters.

“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Mr. Trump wrote, as he retweeted a journalist’s post reporting that Trump supporters were firing paintballs and pepper spray, including at the reporter. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”

Mr. Trump plans to travel on Tuesday to Kenosha, where emotions have been raw since the police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times, leaving him paralyzed. The president’s trip has caused concern that he could inflame the situation. He made no comment on the shooting for days until he was asked about it on Friday in an interview with WMUR of New Hampshire during a visit to the state.

“It was not a good sight,” he said. “I didn’t like the sight of it, certainly. I think most people would agree with that. But we’ll be getting reports in very soon, and we’ll report back.”

His Twitter comments on Kenosha, however, have focused on restoring order in the streets. The president’s string of Twitter messages trailed off on Sunday morning before he got into his motorcade and headed to his golf club in Virginia, where he was greeted by a handful of protesters, including one dressed as a grim reaper holding a sign that said “183K,” referring to the number of people in the United States who have died from the coronavirus.

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian told NPR that Trump shouldn't come to his city tomorrow. "Realistically, from our perspective, our preference would have been for him not to be coming at this point in time... All presidents are always welcome and campaign issues are always going on. But it would have been, I think, better had he waited to have for another time to come... Peaceful protests are not a problem. Our biggest problem really did come from people coming from outside the area and causing a great deal of damage and destruction."

Meanwhile Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was more explicit. He told John King on Inside Politics that "You look at the incendiary remarks that the President has made, they centered an entire convention around creating more animosity and creating more division around what is going on in Kenosha. So, I don't know how given any of the previous statements that the President made that he intends to come here to be helpful. And we absolutely don't need that right now." 

Josh Paul is Wisconsin's Attorney General. He made some good points yesterday about why Trump should not show up in Kenosha tomorrow. He end his Twitter stream by reminding people that "While Donald Trump has spoken about law and order, he has pardoned his allies, flouted the law, and spewed hate and division, day after day, from our highest office. He is a catalyst for chaos and a threat to the rule of law."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Yep. As the meme says, he really did say that and, of course, the 2020 Republican Death Cult Con-Vention is upon us and we're already hearing much more of the same. Along with their usual NAZI words and Third Reich symblism, we can expect to hear little else from such a collection of grifters, con artists, and white supremacy goons. Here's the prelude to the uber fear-mongering quote in tonight's meme:

If you want a vision of your life under Biden presidency think of the smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town and every single town in America. You're not gonna have law and order.

He could have just added, "You already have that with me so what have you got to lose! Stay the course! Stay with the chaos you know!"

Speaking of Trump saying "What have you got to lose?," Mr. Grand Wizard of Presidents also recently said:

Many blacks did go out and vote for Hillary 'cause they liked me. That was almost as good as getting the votes, you know, and it was just great.

That's one more revealing statement from from a white supremacist president. One more revealing statement for the white supremacy movement. In that statement, Trump points up, in just a few words, his cynicism, his contempt for African-Americans and how much it matters to him that people show their love for him. Blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere. That's not a good quality in a president of anything and some of the world's most evil leaders have used it to play Trump like the diseased orange fiddle that he is. Which brings us to QAnon, the new love of the Republican Party and their Dear Leader.

QAnon's popularity is growing by leaps and bounds within the Republican Party and will continue to do so because now Trump has embraced this group of mega-MAGA conspiracists. They can be seen in force at Trump rallies and other places wherever large numbers of maskless Republicans get together to spread COVID-19. They proudly wear their QAnon T-shirts and buttons right along with their MAGA hats.

The merger of QAnon and the Republican Party was a natural. It was inevitable. QAnon people actually believe that Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the world are being ruled by a satan-worshipping cannibalistic cabal of child-eating pedophiles. They believe Trump will protect them from the flesh eaters just like all Republicans believe he will protect them from the kind of chaos he's already created. Somehow that all makes sense to their fawlty minds. They believe that people such as Tom Hanks and Hillary Clinton are card carrying members of the cabal. I guess it just wasn't enough for Republicans to believe that Planned Parenthood locations are wet markets for "baby parts." Tom Hanks? They believe Hillary Clinton is running a pedo sex slave ring out of a pizza shop in the "suspiciously named" Friendship Heights, Maryland, but Tom Hanks? This is Salem stuff, folks. Of course, they believe those Salem women deserved to be burned. "Nasty women." It's a republican thing. Anyway, Trump embraces these wackos not just because he apparently believes as they do, no surprise there, but because, as he says, "They like me."

Conspiracy Fantasists! Felons! FOX "News" Goons! Freaks Of All Kinds! Get Ready For The 2020 Republican Con-Vention!

-by Noah

It's almost convention time! Now that Donnie Psycho's COVID-19 indifference has spread the virus so bigly, tremendously, and powerfully, that he has been bigly, tremendously, and powerfully forced to bigly, tremendously, and, powerfully alter his 2020 Republican Death Cult Freakfest, his bigly, tremendously, and powerfully organized campaign loon staff are bigly, tremendously, and powerfully putting together a bigly, tremendously, and powerfully not so exciting con-vention that will blend virtual and in person speeches, workshops, and events. We at DWT feel bigly, tremendously, and powerfully privileged to have received an outline of some of the Republican National Committee's planned features. As usual, masks are verboten. Here's a tentative schedule that we have obtained from Barack Obama's spies and can reveal at this time:

• Day One: Opening night benedictions from an undisclosed location by famed Alabama Judge Roy Moore, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. Then the Ceremony Of The Burning Cross, a ceremony in which a runner who has run with a burning cross all of the way from Selma, Alabama to the White House lawn marks the official beginning of the festivities. After that, William "Jabba The Fixer" Barr will deliver a PowerPoint lecture on how to build a Third World legal system and circumvent existing laws and the Constitution itself. Melania Trump will then take a few minutes off from fantasizing about Justin Trudeau and close the evening with a speech entitled "America, I really Don't Care, Do You?"

• Day Two, Morning Session: Oh Bondage, Up Yours! Mike Pence and Lindsey Graham will lead a live, in person demonstration on how to build a Backyard Detention Center using nothing but dog cages and plastic barrels easily purchased online. "Mother" will appear but not speak.

• Day Two, Afternoon Session: In Putin We Trust! Moscow Mitch McConnell and Devin Nunes will deliver a ZOOM lecture on the aims of Republican foreign policy. Vladimir Putin will join in as a special honored guest.

• Day Two, Night Session: TBD? Lots of secrecy around this one! All we know at press time is that the Tuesday night session will involve Don Jr. and Eric. You know they'll come up with something great! The suspense is killing us!

• Day Three, Morning Session: A Cornucopia of Conspiracies! Trump Medal Of Freedom winner Rush Limbaugh, Roger Stone, and Alex Jones will lead a hot ZOOM Webinar discussion of the latest in Republican conspiracy theories. Be there early. Session begins at 4:00am and runs 'til noon! Crushed Adderall and Meth will be available for all attendees! Topics touched on will include Alien DNA and Demon Sperm, plus old favorites about Obama's birth certificate (with Special Guest Pam Geller). Obama being secretly gay, Michelle Obama being secretly a man, Chem Trails, Cancer causing windmills, Migrant Caravans. Child Labor Camps On Mars, Pizza Palace Pedophiles, The Deep State, Justice Scalia Was Murdered, Mail-In Ballots And Other Voter Fraud, Hillary Murdered Vince Foster, What About Her Emails, Cruz's Dad Killed JFK, Fake Hurricane Death Tolls, The Bowling Green Massacre, Jersey City Muslims Cheering 9/11, Crisis Actors At School Shootings, Newtown Never Happened, Black People Killing South African Farmers For Their Land, Jade Helm, CrowdStrike, The Great COVID Hoax, Trump Tower Wiretaps and much, much more! Q Anon will join in via twitter only.

• Day Three, Afternoon Session: The Confederate Hall Of Heroes! Obama's spies tell us the afternoon session will feature a tour of the new Confederate Hall Of Heroes and a Hamberder Picnic now being eagerly assembled by Trump staff in the White House State Room, led by Ivanka Trump dressed up as Miss Find Something New. Ivanka is showing the staff how to build a tent for "social distancing" using just brooms. Plexiglas and extra fine linen sheets. After the virtual convention, the sheets will be charitably donated to her father's favorite chapters of the KKK.

• Day Three, Night Session: North Korea's Kim Jong-un will lead a special, by invitation only, demonstration on how easily he and his agents can and will hack American voting machines using a list of key voting precincts provided by Trump himself. Mike Lindell, aka the My Pillow guy, will introduce Mr. Kim.

• Day Four (FOX "News" Day!). Please note: All FOX "News" Day sessions will be held in an arena. Site to be determined. Platters of GOYA beans, GOYA appetizers, GOYA entrees, and GOYA smoothies will be served. Be sure to arrive on time. Doors close promptly and tightly at 8:15am. Masks are strictly forbidden: Morning Session: Starting at 8:30am, Laura Ingraham will begin the day by leading a 1/2 hour workshop for all Republican delegates on the proper way to do a "Heil Hitler" salute. Attendance is mandatory. All delegates, congressmen and Senators will attend and master the salute, or else. The rest of the morning (and into the afternoon) will feature a whining 8 hour "Best Of White Supremacy" harangue by Tucker "TikI Torch" Carlson. A large FOX "News" Burning Cross Candle™ will be featured and a "Black Lives Don't Mean Shit" banner has already been made and delivered personally to Carlson for use as a backdrop.

• Day Four (FOX "News" Day!), Special 4 Hour Cocktail Time Session: Sean Hannity will lead a discussion with Der Homeland Security Kaiser Wolf on the use of United States military troops and paramilitary groups against United States citizens. Hannity's homemade GOYA Bean Wine and more GOYA delights will be served! Topics will include "How To Disappear Anybody" and how to take over a state legislature. A reenactment of the armed shutdown of the Michigan legislature will follow. All assault weapons will be fully loaded to give this get together a real sense of excitement! Bring your MAGA earplugs! Bring your own assault rifles and, definitely, gas masks!

• Day Four (Fox "News" Day!), Night Session: Rudy Giuliani will deliver a 4 hour address in his underwear. Plastic sheeting and hazmat clothing will be supplied for those filming the event in a remote studio, location unknown but probably somewhere in Ukraine.

• Day Five: On day five, our psychopathic president will give his bigly, tremendously powerful self-aggrandizing and self-loving acceptance speech via Zoom from the oval office in the newly named GOYA Beans White House Corruption Centre in a language known only to him. Then, when the speech is finally over, a few select republican notables in KKK outfits will beat paper mache likenesses of Dr. Anthony Fauci with baseball bats.

Conspiracy Theories Aren't Just For Right Wing Imbeciles

Pew took a look at the kinds of people most likely to believe that the pandemic was planned. Katherine Schaeffer reported that 71% of Americans "have heard of a conspiracy theory circulating widely online that alleges that powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak. And a quarter of U.S. adults see at least some truth in it-- including 5% who say it is definitely true and 20% who say it is probably true, according to a June Pew Research Center survey. The share of Americans who see at least some truth to the theory differs by demographics and partisanship. Educational attainment is an especially important factor when it comes to perceptions of the conspiracy theory. Around half of Americans with a high school diploma or less education (48%) say the theory is probably or definitely true... That compares with 38% of those who have completed some college but have no degree, 24% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 15% of those with a postgraduate degree."

Partisan affiliation also plays a role in perceptions of the theory. About a third (34%) of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP say the theory that powerful people intentionally planned the COVID-19 outbreak is probably or definitely true, compared with 18% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. It’s worth noting there is no significant difference in how likely partisans are to have heard at least a little about the theory: 72% of Republicans have heard of the claim, compared with 70% of Democrats.

Conservative Republicans are especially likely to see at least some truth in the theory: Roughly four-in-ten (37%) say it is probably or definitely true. This contrasts with 29% of moderate and liberal Republicans, 24% of moderate and conservative Democrats and 10% of liberal Democrats.

That said, make what you will out of the video above, circulating online among left-wingers.

The breakdown in accepted, shared societal "knowledge" is something that can be blamed on... you know who: the Orange Menace, who, like any authoritarian figure, needs to be able to define Truth or-- at the very least-- cast doubts on any shared vision of objective reality. Trump's been working on that kind of manipulative tactics for his entire public life.

Yesterday, CNN reported that "Trump's new political self-preservation effort to show he has a grip on a pandemic that is killing hundreds of Americans every day is being exposed by his refusal to share the stage with scientific experts-- or the facts. On a day that laid bare his refashioned campaign strategy, Trump... tried to show he is managing the fight against Covid-19 after weeks of neglect. [The putrid Orange Mance] has been flailing for days, as a vicious surge in infections races across the sunbelt, caused in part by governors who heeded his calls to open states before the pathogen was suppressed."

The anchor of Trump's new, punchier briefings is a scripted opening in which he cherry picks the most hopeful aspects of a pandemic that has destroyed the rhythm of American daily life and turned the economy upside down. Wednesday was yet another tragic day, with another 1,195 new deaths and 71,695 fresh infections.

In his two briefings so far, his rejigged approach seems more like a cosmetic political exercise than an attempt to provide the country with meaningful public health advice as the pandemic gets worse.

And the new tone detected by some political commentators did not survive a Fox News interview in which the President again doubted the value of diagnostic testing, which scientists say is crucial to isolating newly infected patients and stopping the spread of the disease.

...Trump, however, went on to make misleading statements that would never have been uttered by a public health expert but that he seems to think are politically helpful. He blamed migrants from Mexico crossing the closed border for causing a spike in cases, along with young people attending anti-racism protests.

The President also claimed that kids with strong immune systems don't bring the coronavirus home and that all schools can open in the fall. He did not provide any scientific evidence for the assertion or explain, for instance, why children who often pick up the flu and colds in class would not be at similar risk for transmitting the coronavirus.

And yet again, Trump claimed falsely that the United States is doing "amazing things" in comparison to other countries as it fights the virus. In fact, the US lags fellow highly industrialized nations in suppressing infection curves and leads the world in infections and deaths.

...Trump's approach to managing the virus-- that tends to put his own political interests ahead of science-based reasoning-- extends to reopening schools, which he wants to do so that the country will look like it's back to some semblance of normality ahead of the fall election.

But experts disagree with his calls.

..."He wants to open the schools, regardless of what the science says. And the science is pretty clear. If you open schools in areas or school districts where there's a high level of virus transmissions, say if you were going to do this in Houston today or San Antonio or Phoenix, it will fail," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University.

"It will fail because not only are the kids transmitting the virus but adults, vendors are going in and out of the schools," Hotez said on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."

"What will happen within two weeks, teachers will start going into the hospitals, going into ICUs. It'll be bus drivers, cafeteria workers and parents will start getting sick. It's untenable. It's not sustainable."

So Trump finally cancels the live GOP convention in Charlotte Jacksonville... while insisting that in-person schools must be opened.

Leave It To Trump To Turn Masks Into A Divisive Political Weapon To Kill Americans

Back To School With Betsy And Donald by Nancy Ohanian

There are 22 states without statewide mask mandates. How the hell is that even possible? Well, let's begin by pointing out that of the 22 states, 20 have Trumpist Republican governors, one (Wisconsin) has a cowardly moderate Democrat who got barked at by the Republicans in the state legislature and state supreme court so he announced he was "giving up" and one (Wisconsin) has a worthless conservative Democratic governor who served in Congress as though he was a Republican anyway. Several of the states have pandemics that are completely out of control and dangerous not just for their own states but for the entire country, if not the world. These are the states without mask mandates, along with how many new cases each reported on Monday-- and the number cases they have per million residents.

• Florida +10,347 (16,780 cases per million Floridians)
• Georgia +2,452 (13,711 cases per million Georgians)
• Tennessee + 1,639 (11,678 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Arizona +1,559 (19,946 cases per million Arizonans)
• South Carolina +1,459 (cases per million South Carolinians)
• Mississippi +1,251 (14,747 cases per million Mississippians)
• Ohio +1,230 (6,519 cases per million Buckeyes)
• Minnesota +903 (8,353 cases per million Minnesotans)
• Wisconsin +703 (7,388 cases per million Cheeseheads)
• Indiana +635 (8,497 cases per million Indianans)
• Missouri +603 (5,836 cases per million Missourans)
• Iowa +527 (12,441 cases per million Iowans)
• Utah +409 (20,769 cases per million Utahns)
• Idaho +393 (8,542cases per million Idahoans)
• Oklahoma +168 (6,427 cases per million Sooners)
• North Dakota +107 (cases per million North Dakotans)
• Nebraska +264 (11,811 cases per million Cornhuskers)
• Alaska +75 (2,664 per million Alaskans)
• South Dakota +37 (8,979 cases per million South Dakotans)
• Wyoming +61 (3,779 cases per million Wyomingites)
• New Hampshire +46 (4,596 cases per million Granite Staters)
• Vermont +10 (2,180 cases per million Vermonters)

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp demands to go down in history as the worst governor of all... by suing cities and counties that pass their own mask mandates. And just as Señor T finally tweets out a picture of himself in Lone Ranger drag! That was the day after he got the crap kicked out of him by Chris Wallace in the middle of the Trumpanzee heartland: Fox News. Wallace was gentle compared to what Maddow of Chris Hayes would have done but he landed punch after punch right in that ugly face, as we noted yesterday. It must've shocked more than a few Fox viewers. "One of the greatest frustrations President Trump’s foes have," wrote Aaron Blake for the Washington Post "is how infrequently he’s called out-- in person-- on his bizarre theories and his 20,000 falsehoods and misleading claims. While journalists fact-check Trump relentlessly, there are relatively few instances in which he has received pushback to his face, in part because it takes a certain deftness and, arguably in even larger part, because he submits to so few interviews outside the Fox News and conservative media bubble." But on Sunday Wallace called him out on his lies and gaslighting.

The president has for months lodged and repeated a series of false statistics and dodgy ideas about the coronavirus outbreak. And in a matter of minutes, Wallace cast a spotlight on almost all the big ones.

Trump pushed back on questions about the ballooning number of cases we face, as he often has, by wrongly suggesting that this was a matter of increased testing. Wallace noted that the rising test-positivity rate and the comparisons we see in most other countries-- particularly Western Europe-- show our situation is particularly bad.

Trump then reverted to his fallback-- the number of deaths we’ve seen-- and things quickly went off the rails for him.

When Trump claimed the United States had one of the lowest mortality rates in the world-- or even the lowest-- Wallace made him prove it. Trump couldn’t, because it isn’t true.

The below is a lengthy exchange, but it’s worth [watching] in full:





Or not. Not only didn’t Wallace claim the United States had the worst, but Trump didn’t prove the opposite either. Wallace cut to a voice-over.

“The White House went with this chart from the European CDC, which shows Italy and Spain doing worse, but countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better,” Wallace said. “Other countries doing better, like Russia, aren’t included in the White House chart.”

So not even the cherry-picked data that the White House furnished backed up Trump’s claim. (In fact, the U.S. mortality rate ranks on the high end of all countries, according to Johns Hopkins University.)

Apparently unchastened by this, Trump later decided to repeat another false claim-- and was again exposed.

Trump again claimed, as his campaign ads have, that Joe Biden wants to defund the police. In fact, Biden has said explicitly that he disagrees with that idea.

“Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders,” Trump said. “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”

But just as with the mortality rates, Trump promised proof that didn’t exist. As Wallace said in yet another voice-over, “The White House has never sent us evidence that Bernie-Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police, because there is none. It calls for increased funding for police departments that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs like mental health counseling.”

Republicans have indeed tried to substantiate Trump’s claim by noting that Joe Biden called for redirecting police funding-- arguing that’s in line with the defunding movement. But even if you accept that strained argument, the proof Trump offered didn’t at all prove what he claimed.

The confidence Trump displayed in his false claims was truly something to behold. (“Ready?” “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”) The question has often been whether he truly believes his own hype or is just committed to the lie. Either way, Wallace laid it bare.

In between these rare live fact checks was arguably an even worse moment for Trump.

Trump has downplayed the coronavirus threat from the very beginning, but rarely has his dismissiveness been revealed so plainly. Trump continued to press Wallace on the metric he argues is most important, and he challenged Wallace to show a chart on deaths. Wallace noted that we’re seeing around a thousand per day, at which point Trump reverted to another fallback: blaming China.

“They should’ve never let it escape; they should’ve never let it out,” Trump said. “But it is what it is.”

It is what it is. With nearly 140,000 deaths. Expect that to feature in some anti-Trump campaign ads.

Wallace’s ability to reinforce Trump’s constant lack of specificity stretched into a conversation about schools. Wallace asked Trump what would seem to be a pretty simple question: He noted that Trump said schools are teaching students to hate America, and he asked where Trump was seeing that.

“Now they want to change 1492, Columbus discovered America,” Trump said. “You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 Project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know."

The reference was to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which has been a lightning rod in conservative circles for its portrayal of slavery’s role in our country’s origins. Wallace quickly noted, “It’s slavery,” not redefining when our nation was founded.

“That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know,” Trump said. “They just want to make a change.”

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Wallace later raised Trump’s attacks on Biden’s sharpness, and when Trump trotted out his claims to acing a cognitive test, Wallace was ready. As The Post's Philip Bump has noted, the kind of test Trump has bragged about is remarkably simple because it aims to ferret out obvious mental impairments. Wallace noted that he can attest to this, because he took a similar exam.

“It’s not the hardest test,” Wallace said. He noted that one question asked him to identify an elephant by looking at a picture of one.

Trump then conceded that some questions are easy but then remarkably contended that some are difficult as the test goes on: “But I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions.”

Wallace shot back: “Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.” He began counting: “Ninety-three.”

In other circumstances, this could have come off as overly adversarial. But Wallace was putting his finger on the ridiculousness of the claim-- just as he had so many times previously in the interview.

These were the kinds of things that have been pointed out ad nauseam outside the audience of the president; Wallace just had the venue and the wherewithal to actually press him on them. And the result was something unlike we’ve seen thus far in Trump’s presidency.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

That's one small coughing fit for a man; one giant coughing fit for all humankind!

I hereby nominate Jim Carrey for the 2020 Nobel (or as the Big Orangalunatic would say, Noble) Prize for trolling. No? OK, let's at the least give Mr. Carrey a Medal Of Freedom.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

If you watch or listen to the RCM (Republican Conspiracy Media) like FOX "News," Alex Jones, Sinclair, or ONE "America," the mindless conspiratorial frenzy you will witness about what Republicans call "Obamagate" is not only a thing to behold but a thing for shrinks to study for the next several centuries (if we last that long). Sure, their Dear Leader threw the term out there as a distraction but that in no way means that he and his mentally ill followers don't take it seriously. It's part of their sick religion.

I peep in on the RCM loons from time to time only because in doing so it's so easy to see what republicans are thinking on any given day. They give me material to write about. It also saves a bus trip to the nearest mental hospital and it's just like having a oneway mirror look at the inmates of Planet Republiana. Alex Jones and Tiki Torch Tucker alone provide an endless supply of tragicomedy! And no, I have no sympathy or compassion for any of them. Doing so would be an immoral act.

I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Obama either (for reasons I've spelled out elsewhere) but at least he was both a patriot and sane, unlike so many of his mentally crippled detractors. He also never told all of America to ingest or inject anything that would have a good chance of killing them.

It's amazing to watch these media oracles of Trumpism. They have been dancing around "Obamagate" with their hands raised in exultation, like it's the new golden calf. Meanwhile, they try to come up with even a definition of what "Obamagate" is but, no surprise, all of it comes out as idiots speaking in tongues. Even Trump, the most pathetically delusional of all Republican icons, has trouble saying exactly what it is but why would that stop any of these nutjobs? To them, it's just some sort of all-meaning, all-knowing word that they can glue any of their crypto-factoids and hallucinations to. They still can't get over the fact that a black guy won the presidency with a majority of votes not just once but twice. It was as if the world had spun off into an alternate universe. It still doesn't compute in their fractured minds and it never will. They just can't get over it. It was an event so contrary to everything they want from the world, so on and on they go, wailing into eternity. Not only that, he once wore a tan suit!

With this in mind, I submit tonight's meme. The countdown to when the "information" the meme posits becomes programming fodder for these crazies will begin the moment any of these typical Republican goons see it. It will become Republican gospel "truth" if it hasn't already. How could it not? It drops so many sacred touchstone names that turn their soulless eyes glassy and drives them all out to Pluto and so far beyond that they'll need their Space Force to get there.

Suggestion: If you want to bigly set off any republicans you have the misfortune to know, just tell them the Obamagate is code for Obamathegreat and that the word 'Obamagate' was planted in Trump's Adderall-addled brain by a White House double agent staffer, and it's all part of the great "liberal conspiracy" against them all! They'll instantly be wondering and obsessing about who done it. The finger pointing and further conspiracy creation will become a giant communal explosive scream of angst and they'll reaching for their sedatives as fast as human hands can move. They'll be freaked out for hours, foam emanating from every orifice. When that happens, tell them to drink some Hydroxy and shoot up some Lysol.

Say What You Will About China... They Have A Gold Standard Way To Open Up Businesses

You don't need to watch this whole long video. I have it started at a spot that explains how China has been able to successfully reopen businesses. That's the part that's important to listen to. There is a difference between opening up willy-nilly (the Texas and Florida model) and opening up safely (the China model). I left in a short intro by Chris Martenson, but the stuff about the epidemic prevention measures by the guy in the red shirt with the British or Australian accent-- at around the 7 minute mark-- is what we need to hear. He discusses 6 categories of things that will protect workers as we reopen offices, factories, stores, etc. They are mandated by law in China-- what Martenson calls a "no b.s. sort of approach." Listen to what he says about masks; this is crucial and a major problem for Republicans.

• health checks
• social distancing
• personal cleanliness
• no touching of anything
• disinfection of facilities
• eating and smoking rules

Last week, Mike Davis, predicted at Jacobin that the way the U.S. is reopening will send us to hell. "People desperately need to go back to work and save what they can of their lives. But heeding the siren call of the MAGA demonstrators, puppets on strings manipulated by hedge funds and billionaire casino owners, to 'reopen the economy' would only result in tragedy." He then asks his readers to consider 4 points:

• Sending millions of people back to work without protection or testing would be a death sentence for thousands. Thirty-four million workers are over fifty-five; ten million of them over sixty-five. Millions more suffer from diabetes, chronic respiratory problems, and so on. Straight from home to work to ICU to morgue.
• Millions of our “essential workers” face intolerable hazards because of the shortage of protective equipment. It will be weeks, at best, before there will be an adequate supply for medical workers. Workers in warehouses, markets, and fast food have no guarantee of ever receiving masks, unless legislation compels it. If this is a war, Trump’s refusal to use existing laws to federalize the manufacture of masks and ventilators is a war crime.
• The proposal to test people’s blood and then issue back-to-work certificates if they have the right antibodies is mere fantasy at the moment. Washington has allowed more than a hundred different firms to sell serological kits without human trials or FDA certification. The results they give are all over the map, just a mess. It may be weeks or longer before public health workers have reliable diagnostics to use. Even then it would take months to test the workforce and it’s doubtful that enough people would have the antibodies to safely staff all the closed businesses.
• The most heroic assumption is that a vaccine could be available by spring 2021, although no one knows how long its conferred immunity would last. Meanwhile, hundreds of research teams and smaller biotech firms are working on medicines that will reduce the risk of respiratory failure and serious heart or kidney damage. But this sprawling scientific experiment lacks coordination and funding from Washington.

"Nothing," he concluded, "is as emblematic of the Trump administration’s total dereliction of duty than the fact that on the same day that the president was bragging of the United States’ 'unmatched scientific and technological superiority,' the New York Times was devoting a page to 'How to Sew a Mask at Home.'"

Yesterday, Max Boot explained why these crackpot Republican death cult conspiracy theories are more dangerous than ever. "Every great disaster of the past century has brought forth conspiracy-mongers," he explained "What’s different about this particular moment in conspiracy history? Three things, I think. First, conspiracy theories spread more efficiently by social media than by previous communications media. The online world is a post-truth space where there are no undisputed facts, only competing narratives, and even the most deranged claims (e.g., QAnon) can aggregate an audience. Second, the stakes are higher now. It doesn’t much matter if someone thinks that UFOs landed at Roswell, N.M., or that Elvis is still alive-- but it matters greatly if someone thinks that the coronavirus isn’t real or that a vaccine may be more dangerous than the disease. Such beliefs, if they become widespread, pose a danger to public health. Indeed, anti-vaccine activists are already a menace. Third, we now have an unhinged conspiracy-monger in the White House."

A couple of days ago, John Pavlovitz wrote about how badly the white evangelical church in America has failed us all-- "fully, grievously, irreparably... The irony in place, is that despite all their sanctimonious sermonizing and finger-wagging condemnation and sky-is-falling histrionics, the white Evangelical Church has enabled, nurtured, and championed more inequity and more misery in these days than any other entity-- and there is no close second. For the disparate masses of the world, the Church has become a barrier to belonging, a sanctuary for supremacy, and a hostile presence for the least of these... But more than anyone-- the white Evangelical Church has failed Jesus."

He's talking about Trump's people-- his last remaining base of support other than Big Money. He wrote that they've misappropriated Jesus' likeness, hijacked Jesus' name, and weaponized Jesus' message into something grotesque and oppressive-- and it is rightfully repelling good people. If not for the white Evangelical Church, people might see the peacemaking, wound-healing, leper-embracing, crowd-feeding Jesus that deserves to be seen-- and run toward it. If not for them, religion might not be a trigger of the worst abuse and the greatest harm and the worst violence that has visited them. If not for the White Evangelical Church, Christianity might be the refuge for the hurting and the hopeless that it was intended to be-- and it can be again." I thought what followed would be the perfect way to start a Sunday in the Age of the Pandemic:

Followers of Jesus can be the healers and lovers of people that we were called to be if we have the courage to be, if we have the strength to oppose this bitterness, to reject it, and to leave it.

So cue the exodus, throw open the doors, and let the good people stream out of the pews and into the streets. May that thing become a deserving dead relic of the distant past; a dusty museum of another fully fallen empire.

Let us set a table big enough for everyone who has been failed by this Frankensteined freak show claiming to be of God, and let us remind people that where Jesus is, there is good news for the poor, embrace for the unloved, rest for the weary, and a belly-busting meal that demands no prerequisite but hunger. Let us make sure love gets the last, loudest word.

Yes, the white Evangelical Church has failed us, but followers of Jesus will not fail him-- and we will not fail one another.

Want to know why the U.S. is going to have hundreds of thousands more cases and more deaths than need be? Here's why:

How many masks do you see in that demonstration? Or in this one below? Not even the cops are wearing masks! No wonder Minnesota has been spiking like mad! There were 840 new cases yesterday, bringing the total to 19,845-- not because of the governor, but because of the idiots like the ones in this clip. Minnesota has a frightening 3,519 cases per million and, unfortunately, is headed for a horrible Wave II. Tragic!