Trump Is Acting As If He Could Gaslight The Coronavirus Away-- Too Bad Normal People Will Die, Not Just His Followers

Polling has shown that almost a third of Americans believe whatever Trump says. Despite Trump's delusional bragging at Fox's Scranton town hall on Thursday, the Trump Regime has entirely botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. Testing is the key to community transmission and less than 2,000 people have been tested, almost exclusively people with symptoms or known exposure. The modest goal-- a sensible one expressed by Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, was a million people tested by yesterday-- considerably more than 200. (CoronaCzar Pence said a million and a half tests would have been done by today.)

The L.A. Times reported that "Federal officials said nearly 1 million tests were expected to be available by the end of this week. But in California, one of the country’s hardest-hit regions with 60 cases, the total testing capacity is limited to only 7,400 through the weekend, according to the California Department of Public Health. The inability to test widely and swiftly for the novel coronavirus has impeded the country’s ability to beat back the spread of the virus, experts say. Without testing, public health officials don’t know where the virus is spreading and where to target efforts to contain it." See, sometimes it actually matters who you vote for. Wait for a month or two to process that, when people you know are dead or dying.

Toluse Olorunnipa, a Washington Post reporter, wrote thatTrump himself is the greatest obstacle on responsible coronavirus messaging. "As leading public health experts from across the government have tried to provide clear and consistent information about the deadly coronavirus, they have found their messages undercut, drowned out and muddled by President Trump’s push to downplay the outbreak with a mix of optimism, bombast and pseudoscience. Speaking almost daily to the public about an outbreak that has spread across states and rocked the markets, Trump has promoted his opinions and at times contradicted the public health experts tasked with keeping Americans safe. The president has repeatedly misstated the number of Americans who have tested positive for the virus and claimed it would 'miraculously' disappear in the spring. He has given a false timeline for the development of a vaccine, publicly questioned whether vaccinations for the flu could be used to treat the novel coronavirus and dismissed the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death rate estimate, substituting a much lower figure and citing a 'hunch.'"

Even as pusillanimous and spineless a figure as Lindsey Graham told CNN's Manu Raju in an impromptu interview while he was sashaying down the hall near his office that Trump should pay attention to scientific facts and stop pulling lies out of his ass. "I don’t know what he was talking about," said the South Carolina Trumpist. "I would encourage the president, if he’s going to report things, to make sure that the science is behind what he says. I listen to the scientists when it comes to the numbers."

Remember when Trump's chief economic adviser, the coked up and alcoholic freak Lawrence Kudlow claimed last week that "We have contained this; I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.". Yesterday he was on CNBC urging American workers should "stay at work" despite coronavirus. CNBC reporter David Faber points out that the former FDA commissioner has criticized the administration for "encouraging people to do things that they shouldn't" which helps spread the virus. Kudlow says to just avoid Seattle and California. He sounded drunk-- and besides, he says, only 20% of Americans who get it will die... so-- worst case scenario-- just 65 million Americans. What's to worry?





Trump's political advisors have told him that coronavirus could kill his reelection efforts, primarily because his regime's response has been doomed from the start. "The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working... [T]he administration’s rosy messaging was fundamentally at odds with a growing cacophony of alarm bells inside and outside the U.S. government. Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administration’s insistence that containment was-- and should remain-- the primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake. In congressional testimony, in medical webcasts and in private discussions with health officials, they warned that the unique features of this flu-like virus made it impossible to control, and that the administration must use any time that containment measures might buy to prepare the country for an inevitable outbreak. The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house."

In a world linked by tens of thousands of flights a day, it’s nearly impossible to completely contain the transmission of an infectious disease like COVID-19, in part because people carrying the virus do not necessarily show symptoms. An effective response, experts say, would have required that administration officials capitalized on the temporary delay of new infections offered by containment strategies in order to aggressively prepare for inevitable outbreaks. But not one of the dozens of experts, doctors or former public health officials who spoke with Time thought that the Trump administration used that delay effectively.

...The problem, they say, is partly that the administration misallocated limited resources. By being told to focus on monitoring a small number of quarantined travelers returning to the U.S., public health departments were not fully engaged in preparing mitigation efforts in communities, where we now know the virus was already infecting more people. Healthcare workers could have used that time to coordinate with hospitals, track suspected cases, funnel resources to diagnostics, prepare vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, and promote mitigation measures, such as isolating known cases outside of a hospital.

Instead, the administration telegraphed that such mitigation work would only be necessary if containment failed. “Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that,” Nuzzo tells Time. “Sending the message that we are stopping this at our border, keeping this from coming in from China, has a psychological impact not on just on the American people but on practitioners as well.” The President’s repeated assertions that the containment strategy was working also diminished the sense of urgency, causing delays in community preparedness, public health experts and doctors told Time.

“Quarantines are intended to buy us time. Did we make good use of the time? No-- and now we’re hustling,” says Steve Morrison, the director of the CSIS global health center and a former State Department official who served in the Clinton administration.

The Trump Administration only last week began authorizing disease surveillance within major American cities, where the medical community has been blind for weeks to the expanding number of new cases. Additionally, the drive to quarantine individuals from certain countries-- China, Italy, Korea-- discounted those from other nations, where the virus was also being transmitted. Taken together, the federal government’s singular focus on containment came at the expense of a more comprehensive-- and more effective-- approach, Nuzzo said.

In ideal circumstances, infectious disease experts tell Time, the government would also have focused on mobilizing capacity to test for COVID-19 prior to the first reported case on U.S. soil. It would have sent test-kits to hospitals and clinics around the nation to identify any new infections and, armed with that data, officials would have tailored a rapid response, issuing public recommendations on sanitation practices, when to seek medical treatment, and how to limit the spread of the disease.

Instead, public health departments in some parts of the country were blindsided. As experts predicted a month ago, some state coronavirus hotlines and hospitals have been overwhelmed.

The administration’s failure to quickly disseminate enough working COVID-19 test-kits has also had lasting repercussions, likely exacerbating the spread of the disease and robbing public health officials of vital data about the spread of the virus.

...“Given the features of this virus, we knew from the onset that it’s not the type of virus that is amenable to containment,” says Luciana Borio, who served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the White House National Security Council from 2017 through 2019 and as chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration. “And that only works if you use the time really wisely. It’s possible that the time that it bought us wasn’t used in the best possible manner to help us get ahead of the curve in terms of preparing the homeland for the eventual epidemic.”

Public health and infectious disease experts have been urging the Trump administration to take actions to mitigate an outbreak for more than a month. As early as Jan. 28, Borio, along with former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, began publishing op-eds highlighting the ways the U.S. healthcare system needed to prepare. The first one was titled “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They warned that more cases in the U.S. were inevitable, that the CDC would struggle to keep up with the volume of screenings, and that hospitals and public health workers needed to prepare for an influx of patients. While U.S. containment measures could stall an outbreak, they wrote that officials needed to start testing patients with symptoms who had not traveled to China.

Several former government officials also warned Congress in early February to resist the temptation to focus on travel bans and restrictions from affected areas. “Congress should press the administration for the science behind recently announced quarantines….and inquire as to the effectiveness of the measures being implemented,” Ron Klain, who served as Ebola response coordinator under President Barack Obama, told Congress on Feb. 5. He called the travel ban a “band aid.”

Other former U.S. officials have put it more bluntly, calling the administration’s focus on restricting flights and quarantining travelers the “original sin” of the Trump administration’s response. “The containment strategy was doomed from the start,” says Jeremy Konyndyk, who directed USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Ebola outbreak and is a member of the World Health Organization committee overseeing health emergencies.

The containment measures were meant to buy the Trump administration time to move aggressively, but they didn’t do that, Konynkyk added. “What did you do with the delay?” he tells Time. “If you buy time, you need to use that time to prepare. It’s insane to me that they’re still harping on containment and travel controls and keeping the disease out when that is not going to be the driver of transmission at this point.”

Even as the coronavirus spread from Asia to Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and North America, and tracking and quarantining travelers became increasingly ineffective, the White House doubled down, insisting that containment was working. For weeks, both the President and administration officials repeatedly claimed that the decision to impose travel restrictions and quarantines was the reason for the low number of cases, and that the media and Democrats were exaggerating the threat. In fact, the low number of cases appears to be due to the fact that very few people were being tested for the disease.

“We have had tremendous success, tremendous success, beyond what people would have thought,” the president said at a Feb. 27 press conference in which he often appeared to contradict his own administration’s health officials. “At the same time, you do have some outbreaks in some countries-- Italy and various countries-- are having some difficulties.”

Two days later, the administration increased travel restrictions on South Korea, Iran and Italy, and a man in Washington state-- who had not been to any of those countries-- became the first to die of COVID-19 on American soil.

“Every state should be in the middle of mitigation planning at this point,” says Paul Biddinger, director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s an urgent need. Everything we’ve seen indicates this disease will be widespread within weeks, not months.”

Once it became clear that the crisis was unavoidable, the administration should have pushed harder, Nuzzo says. “What was missing was the sense of urgency. They were still so mentally focused on ‘we just have 15 cases.’”

So now the White House is left looking at how to mitigate the effects of their incompetnce. The Washington Post reported yesterday, for example, that "White House officials are considering deferring taxes for industries hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, including the cruise, travel and airline industries, among other options and speculated that "The discussions are a sign that the White House is grappling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, while publicly downplaying the financial pain." And,yes, it would be a shame if there's no Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year or-- if they foolishly decide to go forward-- there are no fans watching the events. The NY Times reported that "the option that nobody in the Olympic movement wants to talk about... [is] just 10,000 athletes competing in front of seas of empty seats. As the coronavirus continues to spread, with more than 3,000 deaths and 90,000 documented cases worldwide, sporting events without fans are edging toward becoming a kind of new normal." That report is insane-- it won't be sporting events without fans; it will be no sporting events period, especially not international competitions. Closer to home, the city of Austin canceled SxSW which was do to start in a few days.

We are devastated to share this news with you. “The show must go on” is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.

As recently as Wednesday, Austin Public Health stated that “there’s no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer.” However, this situation evolved rapidly, and we honor and respect the City of Austin’s decision. We are committed to do our part to help protect our staff, attendees, and fellow Austinites.

We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU. For our registrants, clients, and participants we will be in touch as soon as possible and will publish an FAQ.

We understand the gravity of the situation for all the creatives who utilize SXSW to accelerate their careers; for the global businesses; and for Austin and the hundreds of small businesses-- venues, theatres, vendors, production companies, service industry staff, and other partners that rely so heavily on the increased business that SXSW attracts.

Politico's Jake Tapper and Anna Palmer didn't beat around the bush yesterday, going right to the point that Trump and his henchmen will never mention publically: "What if this is only the beginning of the coronavirus economic downturn? Imagine if stocks keep on slipping and, even more concerning, if Americans truly stop traveling domestically and internationally over the spring and summer. Many of the members of Congress we spoke to this week were worried about the virus reemerging this fall, pressing the pause button on the economy again. Could Congress be forced into some kind of economic stimulus this spring or summer right before the election? Could Washington be forced to try to help airlines, hotels and even individuals in the middle of a political season? More bluntly: Would Democrats want to vote for any kind of bailout package that could help with President Trump’s reelection? And could Trump’s administration handle a legislative crisis with precision under pressure?”

And to cap off the week, the L.A. Times' Melissa Healy reported that "The global outbreak that has sickened nearly 100,000 people across six continents may actually be fueled by two variants of the same coronavirus: one older and less aggressive and a newer version whose mutations may have made it more contagious and more deadly, according to a controversial new study. Chinese scientists who compared the genetic sequences of 103 viral samples from patients infected with COVID-19 said their evidence suggests that the virulent version of the coronavirus-- which they tagged the 'L-type' version-- was the dominant strain in the earliest phase of the outbreak that began in Wuhan late last year. That strain, they said, appeared to recede as the epidemic progressed. But among samples collected later, as COVID-19 spread across China and into other countries, a variant of the virus they dubbed the 'S-type' was more common, the scientists reported. They suggested that the genetic makeup of the S version more closely resembles coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins, the animals that are thought to have incubated the virus before it jumped to humans. And they surmised that it is a less virulent version. The findings suggest the S-type version of the coronavirus may have escaped its animal hosts earlier than previously believed-- and that it may have been circulating longer without causing enough illness to set off alarm bells."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Presidential Spokesgoon Sarah Huckabee Sanders: She was gone for 81 days, but White House Communications Director Bill Shine was "relocated" and out from the White House attic closet, a closet like the one her parents must have kept her in for the first 18 years of her life, came Sarah to show the assembled press folks her mastery of depraved lunacy. Once again, Trump had need of her. To him, and maybe to him only, things just weren't insane enough since her disappearance. Once again, he needed "The Specialist." He needed the one person who can almost match him in his arrogance and babbling insanity. It was as if her role was to emphasize that there would be at least 6 more weeks of Devil propelled mayhem. At least. 6x6x6 in fact.

It's almost as if the Trump White House has their own version of The Bat Signal, only it throws the image of a cackling witch across the Washington sky. In any event, on Monday, there she was, hair washed, trimmed, uncaked and unknotted, face washed, and ready to go. Trump had new tropes to project on to others, most obviously the one about Democrats hating Jews. She vomited it out there as if her head, if that is her head, was doing high speed 360 degree spins that no priest in the world could stop. She even combined the "Democrats hate Jews" with "Democrats Rip Babies From Their Wombs." All in one sentence. She relished her evil. You could see Goebbels on her shoulder, egging her on. She stopped just short of telling the assembled press corps that democrats eat fetuses but you could tell it was right on the tip of her multi-forked demon tongue. Maybe next time.

The press? Why are they even there? They get all dressed up for this. Nice professional business clothes. I've seen geeks bite the heads off of live chickens on carny rows in places like Florida and Alabama. Believe me, you don't have to get dressed up. If the press shows up at all, the next time they should dress with the respect that Sarah Huckabee Sanders deserves. Cut-off sweatpants and a mustard-stained tie-dye Bugs Bunny t-shirt will do the trick. Bring some cotton candy. Don't ask questions. Just watch. Just stare at her until she gets so frustrated and flustered that she loses it completely and the Secret Service carts her away on a wagon. It can't happen soon enough.

Oh, and Donald, if you're reading this; I couldn't help but notice that Sarah's hands are bigger than yours. Much bigger. How does that make you feel? Do you wanna talk about that?

Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake At Night? Try The Doomsday Clock For A Truthful State Of The Union

The Swamp by Nancy Ohanian

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

Tick Tock. The good folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have returned to wind their Doomsday Clock. Last Thursday at the National Press Club a group of well-credentialed speakers, including former California Governor Jerry Brown and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, underscored the organization’s warning that we have established residence in “the new abnormal.” Watch the press conference and supportive videos here.

The Doomsday Clock was set last year at a two-minutes until midnight, (midnight being the endgame), and there it now remains. There’s little comfort to be had in standing on what University of Chicago astrophysicist Robert Rosner characterized as a precipice we’d best quickly leap back from. Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson stressed that the clock remaining where it is, the closest it has been to world catastrophe, is not stability, but “a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world.”

William Perry said the organization views our current situation as precarious as it was in 1953, in the gloom of the Cold War while the Korean War still raged. Jerry Brown said, “The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger….the business of everyday politics blinds people to the risk, we’re playing Russian Roulette with humanity,” with the danger of an incident that will kill millions if not igniting a conflict that will kill billions.

Brown told journalists while they may love the Trump tweets and news of the day, “the leads that get the clicks,” the final click could be a nuclear accident, a mistake. “It’s hard to even feel or sense the peril and danger we are in, but these scientists know what they’re talking about, and I can say, based on my understanding of the political process, the politicians, for the most part, do not.” Referring to Congress’s inaction on related matters, Brown called it “massive sleep walking all over the place.” He committed to spending the next few years doing everything he can to “sound the alarm and get us back on the track to dialogue, collaboration and arms control.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Doomsday Clock are creations of a group of scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project. The clock’s current position was determined by a group of scholars and scientists that includes fifteen Nobel Laureates. These are serious people. It is heartening to see their avoidance of political talking points or partisan tilt in favor of Joe Friday’s focus on “just the facts, ma’am.” Just the chilling facts that let the chips fall where they may. About thirty-three minutes into the conference Jerry Brown gave a Dutch uncle talk to Democrats who maintain the attack mode on Putin on all matters without holding open the option for nuclear dialogue. It brought to mind the discussions of Washington’s bipartisan War Party prompted by William Atkin’s recent critique of NBC and MSNBC.

The Bulletin has been criticized for going beyond the original nuclear realm to include a number of other perils. But it seems if there is one thing we’re learning now from climate and polar ice studies and being slapped around by extreme weather events, it’s that seemingly unrelated factors cascade and overlap, interacting and accelerating in ways we hadn’t understood. No doubt more surprises will come. Certainly the impacts of climate change on food and water supplies, on ocean health and on migration will bear on political systems and on future tensions and conflicts. Perhaps it is too far afield, but a case could be made to include prospects of financial meltdowns from bankers behaving badly. Economic calamities have lit a lot of fuses throughout history.

Stanford cyber expert Herb Lin focused on the ongoing debasement of institutions that hold leaders accountable. While nuclear risks and climate change lead the concerns, that witches brew is now put into the blender by the misinformation on steroids enabled by the Internet. Says Lin, "Events in 2018 have helped us to better understand an ongoing and intentional corruption of the information environment. Our leaders complain about fake news and invoke alternative facts when reality is inconvenient. They are shamelessly inconsistent.”

So we have Information warfare combining with information overload to compromise the public’s ability to absorb and analyze critical issues. Among other things, information warfare delegitimizes the values and truths embodied by science, causing a cheapening and distrust of all information, opening a Pandora’s Box of distortions that allow the public and politicians to avoid grappling with the serious issues before them.

Fine by me if the experiences of the past few years inoculate the public with a healthy cynicism, offering some protection from the gatling guns spewing talking points. But if the public discards the legitimacy of scientific thought and proof, not so good.

Here’s a few excerpts from The Bulletin statement on the Doomsday Clock:

Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats-- nuclear weapons and climate change-- were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

In the nuclear realm, the United States abandoned the Iran nuclear deal and announced it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), grave steps towards a complete dismantlement of the global arms control process. Although the United States and North Korea moved away from the bellicose rhetoric of 2017, the urgent North Korean nuclear dilemma remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the world’s nuclear nations proceeded with programs of “nuclear modernization” that are all but indistinguishable from a worldwide arms race, and the military doctrines of Russia and the United States have increasingly eroded the long-held taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.

On the climate change front, global carbon dioxide emissions-- which seemed to plateau earlier this decade-- resumed an upward climb in 2017 and 2018. To halt the worst effects of climate change, the countries of the world must cut net worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to zero by well before the end of the century. By such a measure, the world community failed dismally last year. At the same time, the main global accord on addressing climate change-- the 2015 Paris agreement-- has become increasingly beleaguered.The United States announced it will withdraw from that pact, and at the December climate summit in Poland, the United States allied itself with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait (all major petroleum-producing countries) to undercut an expert report on climate change impacts that the Paris climate conference had itself commissioned.

Amid these unfortunate nuclear and climate developments, there was a rise during the last year in the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums, including particularly social media, nationalist leaders and their surrogates lied shamelessly, insisting that their lies were truth, and the truth “fake news.” These intentional attempts to distort reality exaggerate social divisions, undermine trust in science, and diminish confidence in elections and democratic institutions. Because these distortions attack the rational discourse required for solving the complex problems facing humanity, cyber-enabled information warfare aggravates other major global dangers-- including those posed by nuclear weapons and climate change-- as it undermines civilization generally.

First clock, 1947

Worrisome nuclear trends continue. The global nuclear order has been deteriorating for many years, and 2018 was no exception to this trend. Relations between the United States and both Russia and China have grown more fraught. The architecture of nuclear arms control built up over half a century continues to decay, while the process of negotiating reductions in nuclear weapons and fissile material stockpiles is moribund. The nuclear-armed states remain committed to their arsenals, are determined to modernize their capabilities, and have increasingly espoused doctrines that envision nuclear use. Brash leaders, intense diplomatic disputes, and regional instabilities combine to create an international context in which nuclear dangers are all too real.

A number of negative developments colored the nuclear story in 2018.

First, the United States abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement that imposed unprecedented constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and allowed unprecedented verification of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities. On May 8, President Trump announced that the United States would cease to observe the agreement and would instead launch a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran. So far, Iran and the other parties have continued to comply with the agreement, despite the absence of US participation. It is unclear whether they will keep the agreement alive, but one thing is certain: The Trump administration has launched an assault on one of the major nuclear nonproliferation successes of recent years and done so in a way that increases the likelihood of conflict with Iran and further heightens tensions with long-term allies.

Second, in October the Trump administration announced that it intends to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which bans missiles of intermediate range. Though bedeviled by reciprocal complaints about compliance, the INF agreement has been in force for more than 30 years and has contributed to stability in Europe. Its potential death foreshadows a new competition to deploy weapons long banned. Unfortunately, while treaties are being eliminated, there is no process in place that will create a new regime of negotiated constraints on nuclear behavior. For the first time since the 1980s, it appears the world is headed into an unregulated nuclear environment-- an outcome that could reproduce the intense arms racing that was the hallmark of the early, unregulated decades of the nuclear age.

…even as arms control efforts wane, modernization of nuclear forces around the world continues apace. In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin described an extensive nuclear modernization program, justified as a response to US missile defense efforts. The Trump administration has added to the enormously expensive comprehensive nuclear modernization program it inherited from the Obama administration.

Andrew Wheeler by Nancy Ohanian

Ominous climate change trends. The existential threat from human-caused global warming is ominous and getting worse. Every year that human activities continue to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere irreversibly ratchets up the future level of human suffering and ecosystem destruction that will be wrought by global climate disruption. The key measure of improvement on the climate front is the extent of progress toward bringing global net carbon dioxide emissions to zero. On this measure, the countries of the world have failed dismally.

Global carbon dioxide emissions rates had been rising exponentially until 2012 but ceased growing from 2013 to 2016. Even if this emissions plateau had continued, it would not have halted the growth of warming. Net emissions need to ultimately be brought to zero to do so, given the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for up to thousands of years. The ominous news from 2017 and 2018 is that world emissions appear to have resumed their upward climb.

Even nations that have strongly supported the need to decarbonize are not doing enough. Preliminary estimates show that almost all countries contributed to the rise in emissions. Some countries, including the United States and some members of the EU, increased their emissions after years of making progress in reducing them.

The United States has also abandoned its responsibilities to lead the world decarbonization effort. The United States has more resources than poorer nations have; its failure to ambitiously reduce emissions represents an act of gross negligence. The United States stood alone while the other G20 countries signed on to a portion of a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to tackle climate change. Then in 2018, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, the United States joined with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait-- all major oil producers-- to undercut a report on the impacts of climate change.

Freedom of the Press, Money and the Media by Nancy Ohanian

The threat of information warfare and other disruptive technologies. Nuclear war and climate change threaten the physical infrastructure that provides the food, energy, and other necessities required for human life. But to thrive, prosper, and advance, people also need reliable information about their world-- factual information, in abundance.

Today, however, chaos reigns in much of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums for political and societal discourse, we now see national leaders shouting about fake news, by which they mean information they do not like. These same leaders lie shamelessly, calling their lies truth. Acting across national boundaries, these leaders and their surrogates exacerbate existing divisions, creating rage and increasing distrust in public and private institutions. Using unsupported anecdotes and sketchy rhetoric, denialists raise fear and doubt regarding well-established science about climate change and other urgent issues. Established institutions of the government, journalism, and education-- institutions that have traditionally provided stability-- are under attack precisely because they have provided stability.

In this environment, communication inflames passions rather than informing reason.

Many countries have long employed propaganda and lies-- otherwise known as information warfare-- to advance their interests. But a quantitative change of sufficient magnitude qualifies as a qualitative change. In the Internet age, the volume and velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude. Modern information technology and social media allow users easy connectivity and high degrees of anonymity across national borders. This widespread, inexpensive access to worldwide audiences has allowed practitioners of information warfare to broadcast false and manipulative messages to large populations at low cost, and at the same time to tailor political messages to narrow interest groups.

By manipulating the natural cognitive predispositions of human beings, information warriors can exacerbate prejudices, biases, and ideological differences. They can invoke “alternative facts” to advance political positions based on outright falsehoods. Rather than a cyber Armageddon that causes financial meltdown or nationwide electrical blackouts, this is the more insidious use of cyber tools to target and exploit human insecurities and vulnerabilities, eroding the trust and cohesion on which civilized societies rely.

The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse. In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it. Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage. If unchecked, such distortion will undermine the world’s ability to acknowledge and address the urgent threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change and will increase the potential for an end to civilization as we know it. The international community should begin multilateral discussions that aim to discourage cyber-enabled information warfare and to buttress institutions dedicated to rational, fact- based discourse and governance.

Particularly regarding the 2016 election, Russia and fake news have become inseparable to many. My lingering view remains that any impact from Internet mischief the Russians did during elections was a blip next to all the rot that’s been flying about for years, much of it funded by homegrown dark money and most of it owing to good old-fashioned American lack of integrity. On the other hand, I don’t have a cell phone, am not on cable and have never been on Facebook, so maybe I’m just clueless about how easily people are significantly swayed by a select few of the gazillion bits of information firehosing them, even those bits that people happily cobble into personal echo-chambers. But it seems that folks who are birthers and such don’t have to depend on the far flung for nonsense readily available and riding down a hotel escalator. The American realm of carefully calculated election misinformation from incognito sources is wonderfully underscored by the POV film Dark Money. It shows how dark money, ramped up by Citizens United, distorted elections in Montana, targeting both Democrats and Republicans who didn’t do a sufficient kowtow to the big money. Not to Putin’s druthers, but to the big money, to polluters, Koch brothers allies, ALEC objectives and such. But I digress, because that’s the beauty of a blog post.

Back to bombs. According to the Federation of American Scientists, nine nations together have about 15,000 nuclear bombs, most far more powerful than those used on Japan, 1,800 of those possessed by the US and Russia are kept on high-alert status. Ride along with Major Kong here, and sing along with Vera Lynn here on “We’ll Meet Again,” as humanity exits stage left. Here’s a version picking some of the 331 atmospheric tests the US conducted from 1945 to 1962. Try the comfort of the largest bomb exploded, the Tsar Bomba, aka Ivan, aka Vanya, here. If you’d like to explore the impacts of a single one megaton bomb, (eighty times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but tiny compared to some modern bombs), as well as the global impacts of an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, perhaps a conflict between Pakistan and India, here you go. Perhaps pass these along to George W. Bush so he has a better idea of how to look for a WMD, maybe at a correspondents dinner.

By the way, do you think kids in the Fifties might have had a few issues to work out later?

Actions and statements by Trump figure significantly in the clock’s advancement in 2017 to two and a half minutes before midnight. A then-incoming President Trump made alarming statements regarding nuclear proliferation, the prospect of using nuclear weapons and his opposition to US commitments on climate change. And in 2018 he helped move the clock ahead thirty seconds with actions like pulling out of the Iran agreement. By the way, that idiocy is greased by nuclear power Israel, Sheldon Adelson and their American neocon minions like John Bolton. Invading Iraq wasn’t enough horror.

Trump also announced his intent to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that for decades was a lynchpin for global arms control.

I do wish Trump luck for a good follow-through with North Korea that might relax the minute hand a bit. The world needs a win.

Trump recently reincarnated the illusion of a global defense system. A worthy critique by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, is his essay Donald Trump’s Mission Impossible: Making His Unrealistic Missile Plan Work, is here.

That man behind the curtain has nothing on Trump. Now we have the news of Trump’s latest misdirection, Venezuela. In 1975 I traveled overland to South America. Two impressions of Venezuela linger, the startling transition over a few hours going from snow in the Andes to the streamy tropics below, and the surreal feel while waterskiing between the oil derricks in Lake Maracaibo. Like slicks on the water, oil money was everywhere, a pleasant-looking lifestyle for many of the privileged youths darting about in convertibles filled with cheap gas. I can’t grasp the changes since then. Whatever way out of the miseries of a failed state might be found, it’s hard to imagine lighting the fuse for a civil war would prove beneficial. Perhaps Venezuelans will come knocking seeking asylum, quoting Trump’s description of their plight, never mind contributing US pressures. In any case, Venezuela should give us pause at how fast things can change.

Tick Tock.

STAT: Get Someone To Read The First Amendment To Señor Trumpanzee

As we saw Sunday evening, the new poll from NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that 62% of voters believe Trump lies about the Mueller investigation, up significantly from last summer when voters were asked the same question. As the poll was being released by the two news outlets, Trump was howling about how unfairly he's being treated. Never having read the Constitution he'd superficially pledged to uphold, the doofus was whining about how what he decides is "unfair news coverage," by Saturday Night Live should be "tested in courts." The screw-pot seems to have actually cracked up. And yet... when we polled Twitter over the weekend, just 12% of respondents predicted Trump would be in a mental institution by 2021.

People often confuse his severe mental health issues-- not to mention lack of intelligence-- with his cunning and self-obsession. And then there's his colossal ignorance. I know he's heard of the First Amendment, but I wonder if he knows what it means. It's fairly simple but he has an extremely short attention span and hates to read. I doubt any judge, even one of the ignoramuses he appoints, would doubt a Saturday Night Live sketch is protected speech.

On the other hand, media doesn't have a license to break laws and it certainly appears that a major newspaper did exactly that during the wo16 election cycle, carefully and consciously trying to rig the election for one candidate while damaging his opponents. Sunday the New York Times' Jim Rutenburg broke a fascinating piece on huge media conglomerate that was then a firm Trump ally: More Powerful Than a Russian Troll Army: The National Enquirer. “The most powerful print publication in America," wrote Rutenberg, "might just be the National Enquirer. It functioned as a dirty-tricks shop for Donald J. Trump in 2016, which would have been the stuff of farce-- the ultimate tabloid backs the ultimate tabloid candidate-- if it hadn’t accomplished its goal.”

The Enquirer’s power was fueled by its covers. For the better part of the campaign season, Enquirer front pages blared sensational headlines about Mr. Trump’s rivals from eye-level racks at supermarket checkout lanes across America. This stroke-of-genius distribution apparatus was dreamed up by the man who made The Enquirer the nation’s biggest gossip rag: its previous owner, Generoso Pope Jr.

The Enquirer’s racks, under the current chief, David J. Pecker, were given over to the Trump campaign. This was a political gift even more valuable than the $150,000 that The Enquirer paid in a “catch-and-kill” deal with the former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.

Wondering what The Enquirer’s covers were worth to the Trump campaign, I called Regis Maher, a co-founder of Do It Outdoors, the national mobile and digital billboard company. He said a campaign with that level of national prominence would cost $2.5 million to $3 million a month.

“It’s such a powerful placement,” Mr. Maher said. “Everybody’s gotta go to the grocery store.”

With the news last week that The Enquirer had admitted to federal prosecutors that it made the catch-and-kill payment to influence the election, it’s worth stepping back and appreciating the unlikely role played by the supermarket tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., in electing the 45th president of the United States.

Now that federal prosecutors have cleared away some of the fog that shrouded the 2016 campaign, it’s easy to see that The Enquirer was more than just a publication that puffed up Mr. Trump while going after his rivals.

It was the real-world embodiment of the fantasy online world of trolls, Russian and domestic, who polluted the political discourse. From its perches at Publix and Safeway, it was often doing the same job as Alex Jones, of the conspiracy site Infowars, and the more strident Trump campaign surrogates on Twitter and Facebook.

The Enquirer spread false stories about Hillary Clinton-- illnesses concealed, child prostitution, bribery, treason. Each cover trumpeting these tales was arguably more powerful than a tweet from an account with millions of followers.

It’s a shame it went this route, because The Enquirer was built to cover Mr. Trump’s wild ride. If it had only stuck with its original mission-- digging up dirt on the rich and famous, without a care for the rules of traditional journalism-- it would have had the tabloid story of a lifetime.

Instead, it refused to unlock its vault of Trump tips and stories as it promoted him as America’s savior. Actually, make that the world’s. As one Enquirer report in early 2016 had it-- from “a source close to Donald’’-- even President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wanted him to win the White House.

“It was like a double whammy,” Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign communications director, told me. “They could have been covering all of Trump’s misdeeds. But, instead, not only were they not reporting on that, they were a pipeline from dark-net conspiracy theories to grocery-store lines.”

With its online cohorts, American Media Inc. helped build a distortion machine that so polluted election news cycles that, for its more receptive audiences, Mrs. Clinton not only deserved to lose the White House, she deserved time in the big house.

Before making her its main target, the machine chewed up Senator Ted Cruz. It ran unsubstantiated allegations of extramarital affairs against him at a time when he was proving himself Mr. Trump’s most stubborn Republican challenger.

The only person quoted by name in the affairs piece was Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, who was quoted as saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” (Mr. Stone, who communicated with top campaign officials through the election, is under investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.)

One passage in the Cruz story caught my eye. Citing a report in Radar Online-- a gossip outlet also owned by A.M.I.-- The Enquirer claimed that “an individual purporting to be a representative of the hacker group Anonymous posted a disturbing Twitter video that threatens to expose ‘very dirty secrets,’ including information about Ted ‘visiting prostitutes.’”

Here’s an odd thing. Radar attributed the provenance of this supposed Anonymous video to an obscure Twitter handle with only a few thousand followers that has since gone dormant. A review of the account’s activity found tweets and retweets of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages relating to Europe, as well as a critique of the United States policy on Libya linked to a video from RT, the Russian state-financed cable network.

It makes you wonder if the inquiring mind of Mr. Mueller would like to know more about The Enquirer than he has let on. (Federal prosecutors in New York have led the investigation of A.M.I.)

Once Mr. Cruz was out of the way, two people familiar with A.M.I.’s operation told me, the company pulled up files on the Clintons that it had collected over decades-- some two dozen cardboard boxes filled with promising material.

A.M.I. began a painstaking effort to sort through the old clips and tips concerning “pay-for-play” deals, rumors of affairs and Vince Foster conspiracy theories. But as the campaign wore on, The Enquirer’s covers favored stories similar to those coursing through Infowars, Russian trolldom and, increasingly, your uncle’s Facebook feed.

According to one headline, Hillary was “Corrupt! Racist! Criminal!” In another, she was “Eating Herself To Death!”

The Enquirer also reported-- make that “reported”-- that she had suffered “three strokes,” had “liver damage from booze,” and was prone to “violent rages.”

A couple of weeks before Election Day, as Russian bots pushed a narrative into Facebook of a “Clinton body count,” an Enquirer cover line screamed: “Hillary Hitman Tells All.”

The false narratives built to a frenzy that included an appearance by the A.M.I. chief content officer Dylan Howard on Infowars and a cover promising that Mrs. Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin were “Going to Jail” for “Treason! Influence Peddling! Bribery!”

Inside were the unsubstantiated claims that Mrs. Clinton had “covered up a child sex scandal”-- which echoed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy-- and that her relationship with Ms. Abedin had “lesbian undercurrents.”

For those who were seeing the same bilge online, The Enquirer’s headlines and stories may have increased their doubts about the Democratic nominee. For those seeing such stuff for the first time, right next to the gum and candy, the false coverage may have been revelatory.

Placement on nationwide checkout lines was perhaps Mr. Pecker’s greatest gift to Mr. Trump, and it’s something that he inherited from Mr. Pope.

Watching his circulation plateau as his readers moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, Mr. Pope struck a deal with major grocery chains: He would build new racks to put magazines at eye level near the cash registers, arguing that more sales for him meant more profit for them, too.

“It gave us complete exposure, saturation, whatever you want to call it,” his son Paul David Pope told me on Friday.

As the younger Mr. Pope’s history of the family business, The Deeds of My Fathers, shows, The Enquirer was known to pull off an occasional “catch-and-kill” deal in the old days, including one involving Senator Edward M. Kennedy in a bid for access to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But the tabloid usually raised hackles not because the stories it published were false, but because of its methods. This was a publication so hungry for celebrity dope that it sneaked a reporter-- disguised as a priest-- into Bing Crosby’s funeral.

“I am sure my father’s intention with his media empire was not to be used after his passing as an outlet for fake news,” the younger Mr. Pope said.

I asked a friend of mine, a renowned attorney if the Enquirer is protected by the First Amendment or if they could be held accountable for, in effect, spending millions of dollars, towards Trump's presidential run. He thought about it for a couple of days and said it's very complicated. "A simple, and simplistic, answer is that what The Enquirer did with Cohen is exactly the same as what Cohen did with The Enquirer, for which he was found guilty of felony. Under that analysis, the First Amendment is irrelevant.

A more nuanced analysis would have to consider these issues:

• Under Citizens United, you can do anything you want to influence an election, as long as you don’t coordinate with the candidate or the campaign. Cohen clearly coordinated with the campaign. It’s not clear whether The Enquirer did, unless you want to impute Cohen’s connections to The Enquirer.
• In my opinion, the Enquirer doesn’t have a freedom of speech argument, because it was suppressing speech. That being said, The Enquirer not only has a freedom of speech argument, but also a freedom of the press argument. Cohen is not “the press,” so it’s possible that Cohen doing it could be illegal, but The Enquirer doing it might not. (Same thing with Assange, by the way.)
• On this subject, it’s clear that endorsements are not illegal contributions to a campaign. It’s not really clear where you draw the line on that. (In Florida, there is a statute drawing the line.) I think that it would be hard to equate a mistress payoff to an endorsement, but I’m sure Giuliani would try.
• FECA governs “anything of value made [or spent] by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” The underlying argument, which Giuliani has made ad nauseum, is that if the motivation was to keep Melania from bludgeoning Trump to death in his sleep (on those rare occasions when they were in the same room at night), then that’s not an election expenditure. I think that it’s obvious that The Enquirer was trying to influence the election, but a jury might or might not agree.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

So Señor Trumpanzee has learned that when he searches google and other social media for "facts" that support his "achievements" and his far, far right conservative views, and even polls that show he is the "most popular president of all time, more popular than Lincoln" and loved by all, well, more often, much more often, the opposite information shows up. Trumpanzee finds that very bothersome and said so a few days ago. Damn if his computer doesn't reveal that reality has a liberal bias!

Poor little Trumpanzee. He thinks google should be just like his rallies, Republicans in congress, and his BFF Vladimir Putin. He thinks google should be a feedback loop of positive reenforcement and cheering for his mayhem. He thinks the entire internet is "rigged" against him.

It seems Doofus-in-Chief got his feelings crushed when, needing some of that positive reenforcement for all of the damage he is deliberately doing to America and the world, he sat down and started searching for his name and the alternative facts and delusions he believes in and those around him also believe in. You know, things like "global warming is a hoax" and the like. Betraying a complete lack of understanding about algorithms, he even thinks that google promotes President Obama's speeches over his. He's so deranged and paranoid that he probably thinks the word algorithm is a liberal plot against him because it says Al Gore.

Can't you just see him sitting at his computer and looking for proof that LeBron James and Maxine Waters have lower IQs than, not only his but that of any white person? Can't you just see him reaching for the phone to call Tucker Carlson or David Duke to ask them where they get their information? And, why would he do this when he has a whole staff of white supremacists? Hell, Stephen Miller, the pride of Duke University, is just down the hall. I guess Stephen must have been out to lunch.

Here's a thought, Donnie; next time you get the urge to google, why not avoid the frustration by following these three easy steps: 1) pull the computer power plug out of the outlet. 2) grab a metal fork. 3) While securely holding the fork, jam it into the outlet where the computer plug once was. You'll like Einstein in no time.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Sigh, there's so much flatulent gas being passed by conservatives since Roseanne Barr gave such a loud and proud perfect example of what lies in the black hearts of Trumpies.

On the one hand, they can't stand the idea that anyone, especially an African-American athlete, would be against police brutality towards minorities. I mean, where's the fun in not being able to murder innocent black people? Damn Colin Kaepernick! Things were bad enough when they took away Saturday Night Lynching Parties! I told ya it was a slippery slope! On the other hand, when one of their fellow Trumpies uses a centuries old slur comparing an African-American woman to an ape and gets fired for it, well, that's just not fair. It's inhuman treatment, I tell ya! She's being mistreated!

Remember when the FOX Newsies were calling Michelle Obama an ape? Remember when they objected to her sleeveless dress? Damn! Keep those brown arms covered! Sooo unsightly! Of course, it's ok for them to stare at pictures of Melania Trump wearing a thong and do what ever they do. She's white!

A lot of the Republican gas this week has centered around playing the victim and whining that Roseanne "got fired because the media is a bunch of liberals" so those who attack righties get off without any punishment. Yeah? Tell that to Kathy Griffin.

Another big cloud of Republican fart gas the last few days has been something to the extent of "Well, libtards call Trump an orangutang (We here at DWT like to call him Trumpanzee), how's that any different than calling Valerie Jarrett an "ape?" Simple really. Trump gets called an ape because of his behavior not because of his race, and he's often insulted in that way by his fellow caucasians. Calling an African-American person an ape is an ages old way of saying their race is lesser, inferior. It started as a way to control, demoralize, and justify.

Don't try to explain any of this to Republicans, though. Trump is their guy. They voted for him and they would again. A perusal of web sites and facebook pages today tells me you should save your breath. Confront them with non-alternative facts, ie. the real kind, and they'll just scream "Fake news! Fake News! Fake News!" at you. "Fake News! Fake News! Fake News!" It's the loudest fart in the world. Tremendous. The biggest. The best. By the best people. Very fine people.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Ain't no maybe about it! Yes, you may have read such things on Facebook. No doubt you heard them on FOX "News," too. Sean Hannity devoted hours and hours promoting the conspiracy that Seth Rich was murdered by the Clintons, presumably when they weren't running that child sex slave ring in that Maryland pizza joint; if you watch FOX "News" that is.

If you believe this kind of stuff (As we know, there's tons more than just the four things in this meme's list), you'd probably readily believe your glassy-eyed weirdo neighbor who has a Trump lawn sign, a MAGA hat, and an Ann Coulter blow-up doll, when he tells you that the saucer people landed in his backyard yesterday so he had them in for some dinner and Jesus talk.

For Republicans, it's all just a day in the life.