President Super-Spreader Does Nevada

Trump's hate rally in Henderson, Nevada Sunday night was another super-spreader event in a state struggling with a dangerous second spike. Yesterday, Nevada reported another 277 cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's total to 73,814, a terrible 23,964 cases per million Nevadans, the 11th worst in the country. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Trump losing Nevada by 6 points-- Biden 46.5% to Trump 40.5%. Hillary-- having run up a big margin in Clark County (Las Vegas) and having won Washoe County (Reno) narrowly-- beat Trump in the Silver State 539,260 (47.9%) to 512,058 (45.5%).

Sunday night, Governor Sisolak (D) was not at the rally. He was on Twitter letting Nevadans know what a selfish and reckless move Trump's packed, largely maskless rally was.

NBC reported that there were thousands of people packed indoors and violating state pandemic laws. "Henderson authorities said in a statement late Sunday that officials warned the event organizer in writing and verbally that they must obey the governor's directives, which include not gathering in groups larger than 50 people, wearing face coverings and social distancing. In response to criticism the campaign received for holding the indoor rally, Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign 2020 communications director, said in a statement, 'If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the president of the United States.' The president had also held a rally on Saturday on the tarmac of Nevada’s Minden-Tahoe Airport where most people were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing. Reacting to the rally Sunday night, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted that the president is 'deliberately killing people.' Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) tweeted Monday, "Trump is using his position of power to spread COVID-19. People died after his last indoor rally.'"

And not wasn't on Democrats who were outraged by COVID-Mary's rallies. NBC reported that "Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush, tweeted Monday, 'Indoor rallies are irresponsible. Covid-19 is real and this was a bad idea.' The anti-Trump group of Republicans called The Lincoln Project tweeted, 'Thinking about how Donald Trump knew that coronavirus was airborne and deadly, and still chose to have an indoor rally.'"

Former Jeb Bush Communications Director, Tim Miller, who now writes for the conservative Bulwark labeled the rally in Henderson reckless, atrocious and deceitful, noting that "the spittle was flying [and] so were the lies." He downgraded the event from super-spreader to mini-spreader because so few people turned out, noting it "was Trump’s first indoor rally since the Tulsa disaster that cost Brad Parscale his job and after which Herman Cain lost his life. This latest public-health monstrosity came on the heels of the president, at a separate maskless gathering earlier in the weekend, mocking his opponent Joe Biden for having followed responsible social-distancing protocols."

For those who have been beaten down by the Trumpian disaster porn, rallies such as this don’t really make a mark any longer. The cable networks and even the three C-SPANs landed on the BORRRRING side of the ledger: None of them chose to air the event. And for political junkies and Trump-watchers, these rallies increasingly have the feel of a boring nostalgia act with a lead singer halfheartedly crooning his old hits. And there’s something to be said for that.

But it is important to take a moment to shake yourself free from the blunting effect of the orange Trumpian film that has subsumed our daily lives (and here in northern California, our atmosphere). Seen with fresh eyes, the Henderson rally was truly a shocking and unimaginably wheels-off undertaking given that it came amid a pandemic that is still killing a thousand Americans a day and with wildfires making much of the West Coast uninhabitable.

And so over the course of the president’s interminable harangue, I began to jot down the moments that stood out, beginning with his foray into the insane #Obamagate conspiracy. As Trump began a side-bar about Obama supposedly being caught spying on him, he eyed an attendee who was beginning a “Lock Him Up” chant. He then egged on the overwhelmingly unmasked crowd into a frenzy in which they projected airborne spittle throughout the building in an attempt to will to life the fantasy that their wannabe strongman president might jail his predecessor, the first black president, for an imaginary crime.

This was not the only coronavirus projectile laden with racial invective emitted by the attendees. Following the removal of a protester-- presumably a Black Lives Matter activist, although it wasn’t clear from the video-- the crowd began bellowing that oh-so-clever parlay: All Lives Matter. All Lives Matter.

(At this point it should be noted that the CDC recommends a good way to lessen your coronavirus risk is to avoid gatherings with singing or shouting. If you are going to be in such a location, they recommend a mask.)

In addition to basking in the two racist chants, the president said that his opponent is a Communist (“c-word”) who would eliminate the suburbs and allow anarchists to burn down Hispanic businesses. He fabricated a charge about the Democratic governor of Nevada tampering with ballots, declared that football is “boring as hell,” made fun of Chris Cuomo’s ratings, “joked” about running for a third term, and said flag burners should go to jail for one year. He shouted “I love the Hispanics,” lied about what was said at the DNC, reintroduced the bigoted dog-whistle use of and exaggerated emphasis on the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama (which he had told Bob Woodward he only does in private), said that NASA was almost closed before he got into office and had grass growing on the runways (?), and he once again implied support for extrajudicial killings by U.S. marshals. The only time he acknowledged that his campaign event was running afoul of state regs was when he ambiguously implied that he would help attendees if the governor comes after them. He never recommended that the attendees take any health precautions, despite the advance team building in a nice six-foot bubble between him and his fans.

...Everything about it was fucking appalling.

In fact it was so appalling that it would stand out as the single most appalling and reckless political event hosted by any presidential nominee in my lifetime before yesterday by a long shot, if you just didn’t count anything else that Donald Trump did.

And that’s the problem. Somewhere along the way he removed many people’s ability to be appalled. We have become numbed. Too many regional news outlets either won’t cover the event at all or will have headlines like “Donald Trump Makes Appeal to Hispanics At Nevada Rally.” The national Democrats will let Gov. Sisolak get in his licks, but otherwise move onto something else.

Just because we have become immune to his behavior doesn’t mean it should be treated as if it is one side of a two-sided coin. Just because he lies so cavalierly doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with it. Just because his oh-so-unsubtle race-baiting is part and parcel of his presidency doesn’t mean we should just let All Lives Matter chants pass by the wayside. Just because we have become bored by our #takes and have run out of new and clever angles for analyzing our malign president doesn’t mean we should say nothing at all.

All the president’s grotesqueries matter. This is just the latest.

Amanda Carpenter is another #NeverTrump Republican-- former communications director for Ted Cruz and speechwriter for neo-Nazi Jim DeMint-- and she was more interested in obsessing over how so many Republican elites are abandoning Trump. Her Bulwark column Monday was all about "the breaking points for these various White House staffers, cabinet secretaries, political advisers, and others-- the moment when each decided he or she just couldn’t stick with Trump anymore. Because we can learn a lot about Trump and the overall effect he is having on our country by studying what made these individuals-- from revered military leaders to Trump’s sleazy surrogates-- finally snap." Let's look at one example-- "Mad Dog."

Of the men and women who have served Trump and gone on to publicly speak against him, perhaps no one’s words carry more weight than Trump’s former defense secretary James Mattis. Theoretically, the “warrior monk” General “Mad Dog” Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, who once led Central Command, should have been a good fit inside the Trump administration.

But Trump is a reckless force that not even a military general with 40 years experience could counsel. Mattis walked out on Trump in December 2018 when the president ignored his advice and abruptly pulled troops out of the Middle East. Mattis is quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, as saying, “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.”

That’s not the only deep disagreement he’s had with the president, though. When Trump used military force to disperse protesters in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square, Mattis took the rare step of issuing a public statement on the matter, putting it in no uncertain terms that Trump has crossed an intolerable line.

Mattis said he was “angry and appalled” at the president’s actions, and “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.” He went on, “We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” Then he called for the adoption of a “new path” that could only be interpreted as one leading away from Trump.

Carpenter concluded by noting that "Trump pushes people to take unethical, dangerous, and even criminal actions for his benefit. That’s just who Trump is. He tries to corrupt those around him. This is why-- in addition to the desire to sell books-- so many people have been coming out in recent weeks to explain their disenchantment with Trump. They know that if he gets a second term, he will keep corrupting America, too."

Trump's Super-Spreader Event-- Bringing The Hate To Freeland, Michigan

RealClearPolitics' current Michigan polling average shows Trump down by 4.2%-- but the poll includes a made up poll by Republican Party disinformation group, Trafalgar (that has Trump up by 2 points, the only poll out of dozens this year showing Trump winning in Michigan. Even Rasmussen, also a Republican polling firm, showed Trump down by 8 points-- 51% to 43% on Thursday. Without cheating, Michigan is unlikely to be in Trump's column in November.

Detroit News poll this week

On Thursday, Michigan reported 983 new COVID cases, bringing the state's total to 120,846, which translates to 12,101 cases per million Michiganders, significantly below the national average of 19,904 cases per million residents. 6,894 Michiganders have died of COVID, 690 deaths per million residents. Trump's event Thursday is sure to result in hundreds of more cases in a state that has been successfully flattening the curve but not allowing events like the one Trump just hosted.

In Freeland, about 5,000 people came out to bask in the ugly divisiveness and hatred Trump employs at his rallies. No social distancing no masks. The super-low-IQ crowd seemed happy with Trump's excuses for the revelations in Woodward's book that he lied about the pandemics danger. Excuse #1: Bob Woodward is a "whack job." Trumpist goons tracked down local NY Times reporter Kathy Gray and kicked her out for reporting on Twitter that the crowd was basically maskless.

Reporting on Trump's latest super-spreader event for the Detroit News, Craig Mauger wrote that "Trump took credit for rescuing an already revived auto industry and told his supporters their votes 'will save America' as he roared back into Michigan for his first campaign rally in the state since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. 'After the last administration nearly killed the U.S. auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry,' said Trump, making a questionable claim as he took direct aim at Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. After winning Michigan by 10,704 votes in 2016, the Republican president is hoping for a repeat on Nov. 3. Much of his speech Thursday night outside of an airport hangar in Freeland focused on what he considered his accomplishments related to the state and criticisms of Democratic leaders in office here... 'No president has done for Michigan what President Trump has done for Michigan,' said Trump at one point, before adding, 'I am going to remember Michigan.'"

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told CNN he was "pretty puzzled" and "rather disheartened" by Trump’s crowded campaign rally in Michigan-- at which few of the several thousand attendees could be seen wearing face masks and virtually none appeared to be practicing social distancing.

After Trump's rally, Fauci's boss, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins told Sanji Gupta and Anderson Cooper: "How did we get here? Imagine you were an alien who landed on planet Earth, and you saw that our planet was afflicted by an infectious disease and that masks were an effective way to prevent the spread. And yet, when you went around, you saw some people not wearing them and some people wearing them. And you tried to figure out why, and it turned out it was their political party. And you would scratch your head and think, 'This is just not a planet that has much promise for the future, if something that is so straightforward can somehow get twisted into decision-making that really makes no sense.' As a scientist I'm pretty puzzled and rather disheartened."

I've been saying since April that it's going to take a million deaths before the Trump crowd-- personifications of the word "idiot"-- can be persuaded to take the pandemic seriously. It's a shame that it won't just be a million Trumpists who die, but normal people as well. I may have been wrong; it could take 2 million. Yesterday Time Magazine reported that "Among the world’s wealthy nations, only the U.S. has an outbreak that continues to spin out of control. Of the 10 worst-hit countries, the U.S. has the seventh-highest number of deaths per 100,000 population; the other nine countries in the top 10 have an average per capita GDP of $10,195, compared to $65,281 for the U.S. Some countries, like New Zealand, have even come close to eradicating COVID-19 entirely. Vietnam, where officials implemented particularly intense lockdown measures, didn’t record a single virus-related death until July 31."

At this point, we can start to see why the U.S. foundered: a failure of leadership at many levels and across parties; a distrust of scientists, the media and expertise in general; and deeply ingrained cultural attitudes about individuality and how we value human lives have all combined to result in a horrifically inadequate pandemic response. COVID-19 has weakened the U.S. and exposed the systemic fractures in the country, and the gulf between what this nation promises its citizens and what it actually delivers.

Although America’s problems were widespread, they start at the top. A complete catalog of President Donald Trump’s failures to address the pandemic will be fodder for history books. There were weeks wasted early on stubbornly clinging to a fantastical belief that the virus would simply “disappear”; testing and contact tracing programs were inadequate; states were encouraged to reopen ahead of his own Administration’s guidelines; and statistics were repeatedly cherry-picked to make the U.S. situation look far better than it was, while undermining scientists who said otherwise. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told the journalist Bob Woodward on March 19 in a newly revealed conversation. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Common-sense solutions like face masks were undercut or ignored. Research shows that wearing a facial covering significantly reduces the spread of COVID-19, and a pre-existing culture of mask wearing in East Asia is often cited as one reason countries in that region were able to control their outbreaks. In the U.S., Trump did not wear a mask in public until July 11, more than three months after the CDC recommended facial coverings, transforming what ought to have been a scientific issue into a partisan one. A Pew Research Center survey published on June 25 found that 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said masks should always be worn in public, compared with 29% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

...Americans today tend to value the individual over the collective. A 2011 Pew survey found that 58% of Americans said “freedom to pursue life’s goals without interference from the state” is more important than the state guaranteeing “nobody is in need.” It’s easy to view that trait as a root cause of the country’s struggles with COVID-19; a pandemic requires people to make temporary sacrifices for the benefit of the group, whether it’s wearing a mask or skipping a visit to their local bar.

Americans have banded together in times of crisis before, but we need to be led there. “We take our cues from leaders,” says Dr. David Rosner, a professor at Columbia University. Trump and other leaders on the right, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, respectively, have disparaged public-health officials, criticizing their calls for shutting down businesses and other drastic but necessary measures. Many public-health experts, meanwhile, are concerned that the White House is pressuring agencies like the Food and Drug Administration to approve treatments such as convalescent plasma despite a lack of supportive data. Governors, left largely on their own, have been a mixed bag, and even those who’ve been praised, like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, could likely have taken more aggressive action to protect public health.

Absent adequate leadership, it’s been up to everyday Americans to band together in the fight against COVID-19. To some extent, that’s been happening-- doctors, nurses, bus drivers and other essential workers have been rightfully celebrated as heroes, and many have paid a price for their bravery. But at least some Americans still refuse to take such a simple step as wearing a mask.

Why? Because we’re also in the midst of an epistemic crisis. Republicans and Democrats today don’t just disagree on issues; they disagree on the basic truths that structure their respective realities. Half the country gets its news from places that parrot whatever the Administration says, true or not; half does not. This politicization manifests in myriad ways, but the most vital is this: in early June (at which point more than 100,000 Americans had already died of COVID-19), fewer than half of Republican voters polled said the outbreak was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole. Throughout July and August, the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force was sending private messages to states about the severity of the outbreak, while President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence publicly stated that everything was under control.

Some incredulity about the virus and public-health recommendations is understandable given the reality that scientific understanding of the newly emergent virus is evolving in real time. The ever shifting advice from health officials doesn’t instill public confidence, especially in those already primed to be skeptical of experts. “Because this is a new infectious disease, a new virus, we don’t have all the answers scientifically,” says Colleen Barry, chair of the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I think that creates an environment that could potentially erode trust even further over time.” But the trust fractures on partisan lines. While 43% of Democrats told Pew in 2019 that they had a “great deal” of trust in scientists, only 27% of Republicans said the same.

Truly worrying are the numbers of Americans who already say they are hesitant to receive an eventual COVID-19 vaccination. Mass vaccination will work only with enough buy-in from the public; the damage the President and others are doing to Americans’ trust in science could have significant consequences for the country’s ability to get past this pandemic.

There’s another disturbing undercurrent to Americans’ attitude toward the pandemic thus far: a seeming willingness to accept mass death. As a nation we may have become dull to horrors that come our way as news, from gun violence to the seemingly never-ending incidents of police brutality to the water crises in Flint, Mich., and elsewhere. Americans seem to have already been inured to the idea that other Americans will die regularly, when they do not need to.

It is difficult to quantify apathy. But what else could explain that nearly half a year in, we still haven’t figured out how to equip the frontline workers who, in trying to save the lives of others, are putting their own lives at risk? What else could explain why 66% of Americans-- roughly 217.5 million people-- still aren’t always wearing masks in public?

Meanwhile, back in Freeland, some Democratic smart ass-- Republican dumb ass?-- played an old Credence Clearwater Revival anthem to rev up the maskless crowd of dummies, "Fortunate Song," a stinging condemnation of rich draft dodgers like Trump, written in 1969, when Trump was dodging the draft.

Some folks are born, made to wave the flag
Ooh, their red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain't me
It ain't me
I ain't no senator's son, son
It ain't me
It ain't me

I ain't no fortunate one, no
Some folks are born, silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, y'all
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yeah

It ain't me
It ain't me
I ain't no millionaire's son, no, no
It ain't me
It ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Yeah, yeah
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask 'em, "How much…

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

We now know what the president knew and when he knew it. He knew that COVID-19 was a mortal threat to untold numbers of Americans and elected to do nothing about it. We know, in fact, that he knew at least as early as the first week in February of this year. That was when he admitted, on tape no less, to writer Bob Woodward, that he knew what was coming. Then, he lied to our faces repeatedly, just as any true psychopathic killer would. This is who he is. I've been saying it for months. It didn't take any stroke of genius on my part, just a bit of perception. He is what he is. Once you know what he is, his actions or lack thereof can only be interpreted in one way. Still, a lot of people who are smart enough to know better chalked up what Trump said to stupidity. Not me. Even a stupid person, when faced with the ever-growing crisis of a pandemic, doesn't do the wrong thing or make the wrong decision every single damn time. A person that does that is doing it deliberately. A person who puts the premature deaths of tens of thousands of people and then hundreds of thousands in motion is a mass murderer, a serial killer, a psychopath. For Christ's sake, stop trying to pass this asshole off as just a narcissist!

President Psychopath did everything to actively prevent the government from responding to the crisis. He had the warnings and silenced the CDC. He'd already literally thrown away the government's pandemic response playbook. He didn't issue timely orders for more testing kits. He didn't immediately issue orders for more PPE. He didn't issue orders for the manufacture of additional hospital equipment. He even shipped PPE reserves to China. He deliberately wrecked any possible federal response. Then he played games with state governors who didn't praise him and watched the virus spread. All the while, he lied right to our faces. "Like a miracle, it will go away." People trusted that. Thousands of them died.

The blood of nearly 200,000 Americans is on Trump's hands and that's just the "official count." That blood is also on the hands of the entire White House staff, the cabinet who has repeatedly failed to invoke the 25th Amendment, congressional goons like Gym Shower Jordan, Traitor Devin Nunes, and Louis Gohmert, and, last and most prominently, the blood soaked Moscow Mitch McConnell and all of his gang of $enators who could have so easily voted to remove their Dear Leader from office and sent him off to the scrapheap of history. They could, infact, do it today, but they are complicit at best and as sick as Trump is at worst. None of them have ever moved to protect this country. Merely voting them out of office will never be enough.

Trump and his gang of sociopathic miscreants and psychopathic dirtbags all knew what was coming. They were privy to the intelligence. They knew way before Trump spilled the beans to Woodward. They knew way before Woodward could ever confirm it. They said nothing. They even made jokes about wearing masks and criticized fellow politicians and citizens who did and asked them to do so as well. They set forth a lethal pattern of behavior that is still being followed across the nation. Case in point: South Dakota, where a homicidal maniac of a Governor named Kristi Noem decreed that no masks need be worn at Trump's disturbing mockery at Mt. Rushmore, at the huge annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, and then the South Dakota State Fair which just ended on Labor Day. Each event was a super-spreader event of the kind that Trump dreams of. Well done, Governor Noem! Are you cruisin' for a Trump Medal of Freedom? You won't get it Kristi, at least not before your idol gets his Nobel and his ugly mug carved on your mountain.

Trump had options. He could save lives or he could be the instrument of human misery and death. He chose the latter. He is what he is.