The America First Problem

“As we outpace what we need we’re going to be sending [ventilators] to Italy,” Trump insisted at his coronavirus briefing. “We’re going to be sending them to France.” https://t.co/1iE0uCD9wz

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 31, 2020

It's hard for me not to hear that Trump envisions ventilators sent all over the world "as we outpace what we need" without sarcastically wondering if he might consider "America first". After all, in the weeks after the first COVID-19 case was detected in the US, instead of ramping up national stockpiles and proceeding with a plan for testing and containment, the administration thought to bundle up medical supplies for China. Which was awful nice of the US, truly. Maybe it was supposed to help with trade talks or something. But it didn't do much for us here (and makes a bit of a mockery of the claims that the Obama Administration left stockpiles so low--so, after three years, we had enough to give away? And Trump and friends couldn't figure out how to fix that? At some point, Trump gets to own the results of his particular form of leadership. (And yes, the problem is his.)

I guess I also wonder about this because there's a nonzero possibility that all states are not going to be treated equally. Beyond his petty slams at Governors Whitmer and Inslee for not being sufficiently grateful for his interest in doing his job and his fairly straight-forward discussion of the need for Governor Cuomo to basically kiss his ass publicly to get what he needs (for the people of New York, who last I checked were Americans), there's little things like the 170 broken ventilators that were sent to California. I'm not saying something like that was on purpose. I've just got no reassurances from available data that it can be ruled out. When Illinois gets a shipment of the wrong type of masks, certainly it could be just a clerical issue, but is it, though?

I note with a little irony that some stooges for the administration are admitting that Trump didn't have his eye on the ball, but whiffed the potential pandemic response because of the impeachment. To which I guess I'd have to say, he should have realized he didn't have the range for the job before he tried fancy extras like extorting foreign allies if he couldn't hang. Also, too, the Republicans in the Senate acquitted him (despite his having pretty much used Godfather-esque language to shake down a foreign leader) even if they should have realized his general attitude towards government was self-directed. Except for the one guy who--get this, was a nominee for that job and had an appreciation for the intelligence involved. Also ironically, this scenario was a part of the discussion for whether this exact attitude of Trump's was reason enough for him to be removed:

Serving as one of several expert witnesses in the first public impeachment hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Karlan said:

"Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that's prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for? What would you think if that president said, 'I would like you to do us a favor? I'll meet with you, and send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.'

Wouldn't you know in your gut that such a president has abused his office? That he'd betrayed the national interest, and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process? I believe the evidentiary record shows wrongful acts on those scale here."

Karlan used this analogy to contextualize Trump's broad efforts to urge Ukraine into launching investigations that would aid his reelection campaign.

And just like a Republican president before him, it wasn't that he was never warned that there would be a problem with a potential pandemic, or that he had inadequate warning about this one (regardless of whatever happy horseshit we suspect China was putting out so as not to looked weakened). We had the intelligence. Trump just didn't see fit to act. Maybe he might have even considered waiting a virtue, against messing up his economy with uncertainty, or letting bad infection counts mess with his poll numbers. He could allow a little epidemic (as a treat) and then somehow, things would shake out (a vaccine or a cure) and he'd be golden again! (He doesn't know any better. He doesn't know that you can't just change the label on a flu vaccine and confuse the new bug with it. His fixation with chloroquine stems from the same hope for a miracle delivery.)

And he believes his flummery over how good testing is going now ("we're testing more than anyone else!") as if in denial that we're doing more testing, in part, because of the poor start we had. He has told governors he "hasn't heard" there was a problem with testing, which is dangerously absurd.

Trump hasn't. in all of this, been putting America first at all. He's using press conferences with random CEOs who praise his leadership to the high heavens (like the "My Pillow" guy!) to look in charge when he should probably shut the heck up, and leave the talking to the experts. "America First" was always just a racist slogan to discuss a certain kind of white, English-speaking American who Trump wanted to represent. And now his failure to actually know how to put anyone besides himself first is going to get that American's mom-mom killed. And his Administration's attitude to non-citizens, like the folks who plant and pick our food and work in our food producing factories? Here, in what some people still call a "first world" nation, we very probably will even see food shortages.

How was anyone, so unaware and ignorant of what even made America livable, going to make America great? How would this flag-humping signifier pretend to put America First, when he himself is only tolerable to a certain population (who somehow can't separate his reality show self from the one in the mainstream news) once he wrapped himself in a flag and had solemn grifting snake oil squeezers rap Biblically over him? His core is nuclear waste.

Of course he's incapable. He will never put America first, and will play games with aid, and people will die. Didn't you all watch Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria? When he threw paper towels and lied about how much aid they already got and slandered people because he didn't want them to get more? And how he denied the death toll because it made him and his response look bad? And they are Americans. And we are all seeing what that Puerto Rico treatment looks like when applied all over the rest of the US.

"America first" was a slogan. The truth is Trump does Trump. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ride it Like a Cowboy

So, this was a thing that got said out loud where the people could hear yesterday:

“Ride it like a cowboy. Just ride it. Ride that sucker right through,” Trump said, as seen in the C-SPAN video below. “And I thought about it,” Trump admitted, adding that 1.6 million to 2.2 million people would die if he had simply decided to “ride it.”

And he thought about it. So, you know, if the US manages to pull out of the pandemic with deaths in the low six figures, you should be feeling pretty good about things. Because he was thinking about it.

Yee hah, motherfuckers.

(Also, he was probably given to listening to the low-ball figures, of course.)

The Post-Pandemic

As is sometimes the case, regular commenter Formerly Amherst got me to thinking a bit on a different tangent. I don't like the idea of prognostication where serious events are concerned all that much, for the most part, because I think people have a tendency to ascribe their own meanings and desires on things. Where the coronavirus is concerned, I've already noticed with distaste that some people are viewing it in "cleansing" terms--always a bad sign. I don't think much of people who imagine that a random RNA replicant was sent by some fate to rid the planet of, well, you name it. Old folk. The sick. The poor. The Blue State liberal menace. The Red State conservative menace. The people of XYZ religion. The lousy secularists. To give us something greater than war to worry about. To wipe out the lesser virus, humans, who have been mucking the planet up. Etc. It's a very ugly game some people play--and the only way to win at being human is not to play.

I also don't like the habit of thinking that a sufficiently tragic episode of history will necessarily be didactic. The idea that "Now people will--(do the thing I've always really hoped they would)" is natural, but people often do carry multiple, mixed, and even muddled messages away from events. There is a logic to assuming that people will, after a massive worldwide healthcare crisis, come away with dramatically different opinions about how health care is managed, such as incurring an interest in truly universal "free" (as in "provided as a fully-funded right of all planetary citizens") healthcare--but logical assumptions seem to have little to do with actual human behavior. The human mind has a weird trick of using current events to reinforce one's own priors, even when counter-intuitive.

We're talking monkeys. If that sounds like I'm shrugging at the business of guessing what folks will do--bingo. Look at the differing responses people are having right now to the potential for disaster staring them in the face. The aftermath won't look much different. Fingers of blame will be pointed, but it will be spread around enough to be thinned out. Some people will look back, after a plausible or even implausible interval, to say "Things weren't even all that bad."

Disease Rules Everything Around Me

"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they have 2 ventilators." -- Trump suggests Cuomo is exaggerating about the medical gear he needs to keep people alive pic.twitter.com/ADZb8fznOw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2020

My work schedule this time of year usually disrupts my posting somewhat, and in that sense, nothing has changed. The staff of the floor of the building where I work has been reduced to something like a tenth of the usual workforce. It's about the same throughout the downtown area. My usually forty-odd minute commute is a near-thirty minute breeze. But there's a pulse of low-level stress, dislocation and uncertainty. Some of the people I'm talking to in the course of my work have lost their jobs or have their money-making opportunities severely reduced. They might love to go back to work, and yet--

They don't want to be sick. They don't want the people around them to be. They can't afford to be out of work, but they also sure as hell don't need corona in their lives. I'm in the NY/PA/NJ tristate area, and there are people who don't want to be outside if they can help it. I sympathize. I feel weird about that "Everybody wants to get back to work" construction though--Trump doesn't talk to everybody, and not everybody even stopped working. I want people to stay home. I want vulnerable people to stay safe. I want people to avoid having to go to the hospital right now, because things are not, as Trump wants to believe, levelling off. I want health care workers not to be worked to death. Things won't be miraculously better by Easter, for a kind of special resurrection of our social life.

I hate posting about everything through the view of the pandemic. For me, so far, it has mostly been a bloody boring inconvenience, but tinged with the incredible sorrow that it has been a nightmare and a tragedy for others, and was nursed along at the teats of ignorance and neglect. The voices of people who think it is okay to send people back into regular contact with one another for the stimulation of the economy are something worse than fiends--they are fiendish fools. Billionaires want people to go back to work--and they are the class of people who think they can finagle their own personal ventilator, if it worst comes to worst. Imagine this line of thinking:

Dick Kovacevich, who ran Wells Fargo & Co. until 2007, wants to see healthy workers below about 55 or so to return to work late next month if the outbreak is under control. “We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said Kovacevich, who was also the bank’s chairman until 2009. “Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”

This "flu-like experience" of which Kovacevich speaks? Can involve death and orphaning of one's little children. Is this tough-minded capitalism pose prepared for the widows/widowers and orphans? ("Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses? If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.") Young workers, it turns out, are not invincible. It isn't that "some may even die"--some most certainly will. Without mitigating the spike in infections and hospitalizations, this supposed "stop the financial bleeding" thinking is simply wrong, though. The workers are also your customers, the consumers. The workforce itself, the lifeblood of everything, is at risk. Fuck the capital--save the people!

For those who need a religious lens to look at this, think of this as a time of jubilee. Let's put a pin in the stock market for a minute, and release the bonds of the worker and consider paid the debts of the bondman. (See also: Do not muzzle the ox that treads the grain.)

And for what it's worth, there is a spirit of judgment from a certain giddy and ignorant corner about the affliction of blue states over red states, which seems to be in the same state of mind as Trump's potential determination to withhold aid to states that don't flatter him aren't working with him acceptably. Trump has singled out Cuomo, Inslee and Whitmer as being governors that haven't directed the correct pleasant-smelling offering in the general direction of his taint. This isn't too far away from being a self-fulfilling prophecy--at first. But I wonder what exactly red states will be going through in the future as the disease continues, and whether, once things are proceeding, they have the infrastructure to save lives and hold back the human toll. And I hope they do. But they need to heed science, not Trump.

I don't think I can avoid my future posts being at least tangentially concerned with covid-19 (Hey 19-no we can't dance together--no we can't talk at all!) for the foreseeable.

But just to leave a little bad taste in your mouth, I came across one of Trump's former serious fans who might have spit him out because he was lukewarm, Pastor Wiles (anti-Semite bigot). Trump has enjoyed saying that no one knew how much covid-19 would be a wasting force in our world, but Wiles as early as January 29 viewed this as a "purge". Even though some of the people who succumb to covid-19 will be of the formerly faithful and COVID-19 denying, still some will enter out from the mouth of the crucible, and feel no heat. This is because, verily, they are numb. (But they could fucking read a book or something.)

And don't get me started on the paranoia of the president who thinks that governors could even be asking for ventilators and all just to fuck with him. Or his belief that "the media" (journalists) might cover whether things he says and does happened and/or actually helped at all, instead of what they generally tend to do, which is not helping.

Anyways, everything looks like viral content to me. How are you all doing?

Trump Shares His Innermost

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

Honestly, we are not barbarians, and I don't think doctors are still curing the clap with a heated wire rammed up the "you know what". If anything is still working in 15 days, I guess that's a blessing. But outside of that context, I don't really understand what Trump is saying, here. Other than I recognize his problem is very bad, indeed. And most probably the clap. And will certainly take more than 15 days to sort out, anyroad.

Was Man Made for The Economy or....?

There is an argument that with respects to coronavirus and its effects on the market, cooler heads should prevail and we should jump-start the corporations that are about to start bleeding capital along with their putative stock value by bailing them out, and well, maybe smaller businesses should get cheap loans or whatever, and a little bit of a payroll tax cut and a wad of cash on the nightstand should be just fine for the working folks. 

Those people should be pilloried. At best. The reason everything is falling apart isn't because the businesses are fucked. It's because the people are. We're fucked. We're mortal. We've built a widely interconnected just in time financial universe, and time is out of joint. We can't travel or function as we once did, and the economy is a lagging indicator of what is happening to us. To people. 

Extreme measures to flatten the virus “curve” is sensible-for a time-to stretch out the strain on health infrastructure. But crushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond. Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) March 23, 2020

I am considered an "essential employee" because of my government work, and my husband and brother are both in food retail. We haven't stopped working. We've worked more. But this thing about assuming that some people, the workers lower on the chain, the presumably younger ones considered at "a lower risk" should be exposed (and therefore be at a risk of exposing others, like our parents) is a tip--we're invaluable and expendable at once. We are revenue-producers and without value in ourselves. We serve the economy, and not the other way about. And our pneumatic lungs juice the wheels of commerce!

Let's consider the possibility that maybe the stock market and the health of capital shouldn't be a stand-in for the health of humanity. Maybe the important thing is that people can eat. Stay in their homes. Have access to health care. Have basic security. And that mere suffering mortals aren't born into this world to make rich people richer. What if the maxim that "Man was not made for the Law, but the Law for Man" carried over to the economy? What if no one gave a good honest fuck if the stock price of every major industry fell through the floor and then another floor and then another, but we just focused on whether human beings could afford to live?

I don't know how long the virus is going to affect everything, I only know that the length is up to us, and if we want any kind of society, we need to take a long view. We need to protect one another. That is what society means. We take a hit for one another if we need to. If my husband cuts your meat, if my brother stocks your shelves, if my sister-in-law nurses your sick, if my brother-in-law keeps your machines running, you stop seeing our service as a right the economy deserves, but the lifeblood of the economy itself. We are it. The food service worker, the farmer, the bus drivers and train operators, the people out here, right now. The EMT and cops and firefighters and the other frontline folk the rich want to starve money from (because taxes pay salaries for some folks, don't you know). The health care workers whose hospitals might be starved for money, but who are keeping humans alive, or devoutly trying to. You tend to the people first. You backstop the people doing the work. Then maybe, we can worry about the "poor" money.

But people who don't understand that the only value money has is it's fungibility for real work and real goods, and is not valuable in itself? These people! How do they price/value themselves?

I don't know. But the idea that the stock market is more of a metric for our overall health than the evidence that a virus is killing folks is absurd and insane.

Let Us Prey 2: Betrayal

Sen. Ron Johnson has called on people to have some “perspective” while the nation deals with the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that “no more than 3.4 percent of our population” is in danger of dying from the virus https://t.co/alToDF3xtH

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 19, 2020

The above comments of Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin that, welp! only 3 or 4 out of every 100 Americans will die, so, whevs, reminds me an awful lot of Rick Santelli's awful determination that we should just get the whole corona thing over with, at what he then supposed was 2% lethality, over with. It's sick. It's partially sick because the needless deaths of so many from mayhem that could have been averted by better policy is a failure of government to do job one: protect the welfare of our citizens. But it's also appalling to imagine that enormous a loss without knock-on effects to, for example, the economy, or on mortality by other means of people due to the overwhelming of our health infrastructure.

But it gets sicker--he was one of the several Senators who have been caught out having sold off a significant amount of stock in anticipation of the coronavirus' spread fuxxoring the market.

He sat in intelligence briefings that advised him of the potential harms of a pandemic, spread insane talk about how okay it is to only lose 3-4 out of 100 people, and instead of doing anything to affirmatively address stopping the spread of the virus, made sure he protected his own substantial personal wealth.

Senator Richard Burr, back in February, knew very well what was coming, and said as much at a fundraiser. He anticipated, at least while he was amongst high-dollar donors, that there would be school shutdowns and business shutdowns, and cast gloom he never did publicly. And he also dumped stocks ahead of the market starting to crash with bad coronavirus news.

Senator Kelly Loeffler also had put a positive outward face regarding the Trump Administration treatment of the pandemic situation, but made sure she protected herself against the gathering economic storm. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma also looked out for Number One while treating his constituents like number two.

This is a betrayal of the public trust. They took care of themselves and did not raise a finger for their constituents, as if they never considered they had any responsibility to do so. It is somehow both shocking and not. After all, weren't these same folks not that long ago acquitting the corona-denier in chief? And somehow, I think this is just the surface of a deeper rot.

A Person of Her Word

Important announcement.
From Oahu, Hawaiʻi. #StandWithTulsi pic.twitter.com/XcHshtgVYA

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 19, 2020

I have talked my share of smack about Rep. Gabbard with respects to her penchant for going on Fox News to run down fellow Democrats (I have kept my opinions of her "present" vote regarding the Trump impeachment to myself), but I have to give her credit for doing as she said she would--throwing her support to the probable nominee at the end of her race. I see the endorsement as also being a measure of saying she isn't planning a third party run, and I think she can certainly try to run for congress again. She's leaving on an honorable note, and I respect that. I'll go so far as to say I'm pleasantly surprised.

Her endorsement may piss off people who saw her as aligned with Sen. Sanders, but being aligned on some policies or political views doesn't always mean automatic support. Her support can't do Sanders any major favors and it isn't owed (as I've said about Senator Warren as well). It's entirely her choice to make as an independent person. She using her endorsement to say something about the status of the primary.

The Primaries May Not Be Over, But I Am

Bernie Sanders will assess his presidential campaign after the Vermont senator's poor showing in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, his campaign manager says https://t.co/1rt2f5RGkJ pic.twitter.com/JGSazOFRiy

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 18, 2020

Former VP Joe Biden decisively won the three primaries held on Tuesday. Based on the current....everything! even holding future primaries has become more onerous. Also onerous--the task of trying to overcome a delegate deficit when two very important things affect the outcome: past performance and future expectations. At this point, there will be voters who submit Biden votes just to end it. The upcoming primary calendar and general Democratic polling aren't showing wins for Sanders. There isn't a lot of room his campaign has, at this point, to change things up. Both of these candidates have strong name recognition, and it is very unlikely that voters are making up their minds at the last minute at this point, as they may have done in the Iowa caucus.

Marco Rubio is a US Senator

This is a screenshot because, oh my! it will surely be deleted, but you know what? He did. He Tweeted it. Marshall law.

UPDATE: But what he's saying is, unfortunately, completely necessary. People do get to speculating, and run their mouths from zero to FEMA camps without any proof.

Let Us Prey

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne is not about to cancel church or prevent congregants from shaking hands because they are not a bunch of "pansies." pic.twitter.com/C36kBIEWqF

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 15, 2020

I'm not sure if this bravado is more like snake handling, poison-gargling, or just a bit of fire-walking, but I'm also thinking that the pastor doesn't entirely know what it's more like, himself, he just knows it feels good, so he's doing it.

There's comfort, after all, in believing one's community and faith is bigger than something like germ theory, or the advice that "liberal media" gives:

“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” an Arkansas pastor told me. “In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism.”

Liberalism, science, being a "pansy"--it's all the same thing.

Here for a Good Time, Not a Long Time

So I was home alone today, because "social distancing" is basically a lifestyle choice I've been engaging in long before it became popular, and I noticed a white plastic tent set up across the street in my neighbors' driveway. My brain being my brain, I peered out at it, just a little worried--hazmat containment? Shit has hit the fan.  Then I noticed there was nearly no one around, but there were coolers and a folding table inside. It's a party tent.

A St. Pat's party. Two dozen of their friends and fam, drinking beer in a closed space. Why not?

Well, because the governor here cancelled schools and stuff for a reason. These people could just drink at their own homes, but no. There's a quirk of the mind for many people, I guess, to look at what they consider commonplace and just not see that circumstances have changed. It's the quirk where people are still going into crowded restaurants and bars and whatnot. Hell, same as people swarming to get toilet paper and hand sanitizer at the stores because why wouldn't a store be a fine place?

People aren't quite grasping that the problem isn't hanging around people that seem sick; it's hanging around people who seem well, for now.

I also see people who are still leaning into the idea of COVID-19 being a hoax or overblown. They want to thumb their noses at the wet blankets and no-funningtons who are trying to tell them how to live their lives. It bothers me how many adults with responsible jobs (like, I dunno, United States legislator, or whatever) who have that attitude.

It's just the wrong way to go about things. It's better to prepare to prevent a disaster than manage a crisis. And nobody urging extreme caution right now wouldn't actually prefer to be proven very much mistaken. At which point, any number of "Hey we didn't all die!" parties can be thrown.

I don't think the math looks great, though. People are strange, and some take more time to adjust to things than they actually have.

The Man Just Isn't Right

Trump sent supporters a signed stock market chart from this afternoon, screenshots of TV coverage of the stock market, and a message saying, “From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!” From @jamiegangel: https://t.co/IYX6vZOu8O

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 14, 2020

Trump wanted to demonstrate that he could so open his mouth and not spook the markets after a disastrous show the other night. That he's smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. And for a shining moment, the Dow figures rose. Rose! It's just after the final bell that everything got really weird and people started to realize we never left TrumpWorld. There were signs.

Like the way Trump takes no responsibility for anything, ever.

"No, I don't take responsibility at all": Trump on his botched coronavirus response https://t.co/5RxVrjFgxx

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) March 14, 2020

See, that's it, right there. That's the pull-quote for his entire Administration. He doesn't take any responsibility at all. It'll show up in his obits. It may very well be the Trump Doctrine.

Also, it turns out he more or less invented a website that will be "very quickly done, unlike others of the past" that is being worked on by Google, except what the entire fuck. Dr. Debbie Birx held up a flowchart of the process of the website that might could be eventually a thing, which looked like she had one poster-board and just remembered it was science fair day. (Or rather some WH staffer made her Vanna White that shit.)

(She deserves better than this sort of thing. But I am not the one today.)

There was so much handshaking going on, too. Which is not recommended by the CDC, especially when it seems like Trump has just been basically wandering through a miasma of infected people the last couple of weeks. Mar-a-Lago should pretty much be considered a hotspot, right now. We're up to about four known COVID-19 positives. And Trump is still gonna, like, function there this weekend. 

That's some pretty wild stuff. Also wild--Trump still doesn't really seem to want people to actually get tested for Coronavirus, because it still would look really bad. For him. He doesn't get it. 

Which is not to say I think this has anything to do with what the stock market likes (it isn't my metric or priority), but I find it amazing that, considering people are sick/dying/could go out of work/lose loved ones, he's crowing about the stock market rise as an indicator of his ratings. Because he pulled off a successful spot. And he distracted from the fact that we are way beyond containment of the corona outbreak here (because I think West Virginia* is the only state not reporting a patient, and that does not mean they haven't got one) and our strategy for mitigation and ramping up to have equipment available for treatment of the most sick among us is still sketchy, because we've lost so much time to people having to stop and get out of the clown car, and kiss Trump's ass to keep things going. 

None of this looks good, and it's because it isn't. I'm sure you've heard this from me before. 

UPDATE: I'm not trying to bust on WV or anything, but they closed schools without any tested cases. The only state that has no cases, but they did close schools. I will take no further comments on what's up with that.  These folks know that testing or not, they likely do have cases, and it's better to take action before you are just reacting to an out of control thing. I love you WV! You are doing it right!. Because what are the actual odds they really haven't a case? It's not great. 

Why Trump is Scared of Joe Biden

Joe Biden lambasted President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying in a speech Thursday that it has "laid bare the severe shortcomings of the current administration" https://t.co/SEt5oLglji

— CNN (@CNN) March 13, 2020

Joe Biden has been in the arena in a way Trump simply has not, has taken harder hits, and keeps his shit together, which is something Trump simply can't do. Trump has said that no one in the US had the coronavirus issue on their radar four weeks ago, but it turns out, Biden did, earlier than that. Back when Trump's sleepy Commerce Secretary was telling us the coronavirus was a boon for job creation, Biden already recognized the problems because he'd been in the arena when H1N1 and ebola crises went down. And actually, despite Trump's shameful comparison:

The Obama Administration was completely proactive in a way that the Trump administration has not been with COVID-19, and did so during an economic crisis (not actually fiddling about, as the Trump folks have, exacerbating an economic crisis on top of the public health emergency). People who were there can attest to what was accomplished:

Facts: The Obama administration tested 1 million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first US diagnosed case.

The first US #coronavirus case was 50+ days ago. And we haven't event tested 10,000 people yet. https://t.co/LxRH62NIDw

— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) March 13, 2020

The tests, that's the thing. Everyone knows Trump is lying about how easy it is supposed to be to get tested. It keeps looking more and more like Trump was personally involved in testing being restricted to "keep the numbers down", and the lie came early. And is exactly what we all thought:

A previous tweet of this quote did not make it adequately clear that it is Trump who did not push for adequate testing, not Secretary of Health and Human Services Azar. Here is the whole quote for context. @ddiamond pic.twitter.com/ZZ2aPF53m6

— Fresh Air (@nprfreshair) March 12, 2020

Trump is the reason there isn't adequate testing because he wants to "keep the numbers low". To keep his approval rating higher. Because he is an inadequate little bitch. Trump was on top of the crisis--not as a public health issue to protect Americans, but as a public relations issue to protect himself while he was dealing with impeachment and the whole Iran thing which has flared again. Trump is inadequate. Unable. Incompetent.

And for all that he wants to smear former VP Biden, the man looks presidential compared to Trump's flailing. Joe wouldn't lie to us. But we know Trump lies all the time. Even Trump's biggest fans know he lies (even if they don't want to admit it). But he is lying about a disease that can kill folks, maybe not you, but maybe your elderly/physically vulnerable relative or neighbor. And he's doing it to make his polling numbers look good. What kind of person does that? The people who are being hung out to the wind are his fellow citizens, his fellow Americans. He can try to blame the tragedy on a "foreign virus" but at the end of the day, he gets judged on his own actions, and he's coming off unprepared to do what's right, and all too prepared to do what is convenient and wrong.

When it comes down to character in a crisis, Trump doesn't have it. He doesn't belong in this office.

Germnobyl

President Trump for the first time on Wednesday night acknowledged the seriousness of the coronavirus. He blamed European and Chinese people for bringing the outbreak to the U.S., describing it ominously as a “foreign virus.” https://t.co/tRMWVM69QB

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 12, 2020

It's very disturbing to me that Trump still seems to see the coronavirus as more of an economic disruption than a health care crisis, that there is a lack of transparency in the decision-making processes, that the delays in testing still don't seem to be being addressed while the administration is touting low infection figure that are not valid because of the lack of testing (and this is an unfolding major issue for many reasons), and with his speech last night, the president looked, well? Not great. The travel restrictions don't make sense, and in conveying them in his stilted TelePrompter speech, some of the details conveyed were just wrong and had to be clarified after the fact. This does not instill confidence at all.

We need leadership, not denial; expertise, not excuses. But what we have is Trump.

The Anti-Malarkist

WATCH: "You’re full of sh*t," @JoeBiden tells a man who accused him of "actively trying to end our Second Amendment right."

"I support the Second Amendment," Biden adds while vising under-construction auto plant in Detroit. @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/sueOSBaY9P

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 10, 2020

The above video shows former VP Joe Biden giving what-for to someone over the idea that wanting some firearms regulations is the same thing as being against the Second Amendment--he said the guy was full of shit, and as talking points go, Biden is correct. Even Antonin Scalia in the Heller decision recognized that the Second Amendment wasn't an absolute right to all and any gun ownership. Talking points themselves are full of shit.

You can't reason with people that way. The premise of the argument "You gun control people are taking our guns" starts with a straw man; it implies a belief that people making regulation arguments are acting in bad faith. That's not a discussion, it's just a fight. It's a bad faith fight.

Biden wasn't having it, and said so. This was re-tweeted by the Trump campaign, by the NRA and by some Sanders supporters as if to imply he doesn't speak respectfully and has (maybe) lost his mind out here.

But a lot of people, me included, read that as "The man said, 'No Malarkey', and he meant it." Do you drag something into the sphere of respectability for someone who already isn't respecting you? Or do you let them know? Joe saw something and he said something.

That We Know Of

President Trump has not been tested for coronavirus, White House press secretary says:

"He has neither had prolonged close contact with any known confirmed COVID-19 patients, nor does he have any symptoms." pic.twitter.com/zzAOhPZWLq

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 10, 2020

At this point, Trump has been in contact with numerous people who were at CPAC and came into contact with the infected individual from New Jersey, including Mick Mulvaney, Mark Meadows and Matt Gaetz. So I really wonder about this odd "prolonged close contact" verbal configuration--when it's the president, why wouldn't you just test to get it out of the way? Test all of these people who were in contact at CPAC and at AIPAC. It just makes sense, after all--if you want to demonstrate the virus isn't as catchy as all that, display results, or at least let people (who obviously have lives they would like to get along with) know whether their self-sequestering is necessary or not.

Is it really that Trump hasn't had prolonged exposure to an infected person, or is it just: not that we know of? Wouldn't a person like Trump have some curiosity about that?

It's a deeply peculiar choice, but then, the decisions made so far about who gets tested and when have been fairly bone-headed. It's really as if, for some reason, a highly individual aversion to bad news was being catered to by people who should understand that facts don't care about the feelings of individuals, even if they do work in the Oval Office. This kind of bullshit is tactically wrong, devastating as policy, and strategically a nightmare for actually addressing the very real problem of an outbreak, the size of which isn't being ascertained because the necessary investigation isn't being done.

In the real world, disruptions to regular business are already very much occurring as events and classes and other occasions of human pooling are being suspended. When events like concerts and conventions are disrupted, entrepreneurs and contractors lose money. The 2000+ point drop in the Dow wasn't about a hoax. It was about a real impact the economy is experiencing from the virus and the lack of faith investors have that the leadership exists to address it. Trump has met with business leaders--but it really would have been swell if he gave more of an ear to the scientists.

And why does the testing still seem to be so regulated? Again, the broadest cast would reveal the best picture of where people are being infected, who is vulnerable, where closures and quarantines need to be in effect. Catching the disease early might even improve outcomes, especially for patients who have compromised health for whatever reason.

Trump seems like he would prefer not to know, and thinks that means everyone else should prefer not to know. But now knowing is bullshit, and he is a fool and a coward if he thinks that is the right call

Flailing

I don't actually think the way Trump Tweets conveys anything of reassurance that he is a capable and competent leader who can actually handle a single crisis, let alone several at once.  One of the reasons for this being that, when shit is hitting the fan, he's hitting the shitter and Tweeting.

JFC, This is How We Get Trump

Hard to imagine this after that 1st debate last June... https://t.co/pJWEB8CTNZ

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) March 8, 2020

Is this woman brand new? Has she never covered a presidential election before? Is she unfamiliar with how politics in general works? Are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris strangers to this person who got a job in the news business just yesterday? Is water the least bit moist? How many fingers am I holding up right now?

I bet you all know how many fingers I am holding up, right now, and also, which ones.

Just Getting This Off My Chest

There's something about the prospect of the remaining couple of weeks of a two-man contest between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders that I am not looking forward to. I have a lot of respect for both men and I could vote for either of them and justify my vote entirely. But the prospect of the next few weeks (I genuinely think it will only be a few weeks) of randos and not-so-randos trying to talk shit about Bernie's heart and Joe's brain is basically going to bring us all down to the fucking floor of the discourse. 

It just didn't have to be like this, and a part of me feels deeply it shouldn't have been. When I say "heart" and "brain", I'm talking about the literal organs of two gentlemen in their seventies, amply gifted with both, metaphorically. They are both older than my dad, and I'm as old now as Obama was when he ran--twelve years ago. They are both older than Trump, who, despite the fluffing by his flacks, flunkeys and fawners, is, under the bronze paintjob and teased hair helmet, looking especially decrepit and deluded these days. 

Capitalism is Sick

#BREAKING
WATCH: Rick Santelli suggests infecting everyone with coronavirus — to lessen the economic impact
https://t.co/NskH4LuIS9

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 5, 2020

It's hard to think of a more apt encapsulation of what is wrong with the short-term gain, small-picture view of modern capitalism: in the clip above, CNBC's Rick Santelli, famous for his inane "moral hazard" rant that launched the Tea Party movement, thinks it would be a great idea if everyone just got COVID-19 at once so we could all get it out of our system.

Except that is not how anything works. I mean, we aren't actually talking about a 2% lethality rate (which is bad enough compared to ordinary flu) but possibly 3.4% even assuming adequate healthcare infrastructure. The figure I'd be concerned about is the 15-20% who require hospitalization. Under a scenario in which everyone was infected at once, the healthcare system would be too overwhelmed to accommodate care for all those seriously afflicted, and the lethality rate would soar because people who need ventilators, etc., would not get that care. The afflicted would include health care workers. Ordinary diseases and injuries would still occur, in some cases as secondary opportunistic infections for people already afflicted with COVID-19.

Beyond the nightmare this poses for health care, work productivity and consumerism would be at a standstill. Shelves would go empty. The likelihood of price gouging (like we're seeing with masks and hand sanitizer, but for things like tinned beans and bottled water), looting or riots would increase. Weather events like flooding, severe thunderstorms, straight line winds, blizzards, etc., major fires, accidental explosions through things like gas leaks, would all have more devastating impacts on local communities because the emergency support would be down. People would lose their habitations and not have the means or support structure for easily finding temporary shelter. Suicide rates would climb. Substance use/abuse would climb. Service industries could just go under. People who live paycheck to paycheck would go under. People who can't afford an unplanned $2000 emergency would go under. There would be misery for everyone.

And no, the stock market would probably not rebound in a short time after all that.

She'll Persist

Warren on sexism in the 2020 race: "That is the trap question for every woman. If you say yeah, there was sexism in this race, everyone says, 'Whiner.' And if you say no, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, 'What planet do you live on?'" https://t.co/7eG9ZYlQsW pic.twitter.com/zMy5ohtbgd

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 5, 2020

Knowing this was coming doesn't make it feel any less disappointing, but she isn't done fighting, because she promised. She has said in the past that good policies were what mattered to her, more than becoming president for herself. She will just be working towards them in the US Senate, just as before. I feel like I've already written up my feelings about whether she owes anyone an endorsement in 2016, and whether gender has anything to do with it feels self-evident to me. I think the timing was right--she could have stayed in for another debate, but that would not have helped anyone in any way at all.

I just think she would have been great at being president, is all.

In Fairness to Mayor Bloomberg

Breaking News: Michael Bloomberg is dropping out of the 2020 race, wrapping up a costly bid that failed to win over moderates as they converged around Joe Biden https://t.co/dHP79vzCrC

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 4, 2020

You know, I've talked a lot of crap about Mike Bloomberg, but I will give it to him, he bowed out gracefully after Super Tuesday established that his high-spending bid wouldn't get enough traction to be competitive. Also, in the man's favor, he has a contempt for Donald Trump that seems like a living, breathing, palpable thing, and I have to respect that.

There is a Metaphor in Here

🚨 SYMONE SANDERS FROM OUTSIDE 🚨 pic.twitter.com/5zLMp28pwl

— The Recount (@therecount) March 4, 2020

If you watch the above video of Symone Sanders just up and hauling off a protester while Jill Biden guards her husband, I feel like that says an awful lot about work in this Democratic primary. Biden was protected and promoted this evening in large part by Black and women voters. For all that anyone might want to ding his campaign turnabout on the donor class or elites or the establishment, the fact is--working class people, and marginalized people, and all kinds of people actually in fact voted for him. You can't take away from that by mislabeling his support.

Here's what they want: to beat Trump because he's actually, actively harmful to them. Biden's successes this evening come from the hopes of lots of people for a government that recognizes them, and it wasn't brought about by money. It was brought about by people believing in the network of goodwill he got from the people who said they would stand with him, because they knew what he stands for. And when I see anyone denigrating that as if the people who stood in line and took the time out of their day to make their vote were somehow dazzled into it by some nefarious fuckery--shit, I don't have to agree with it to acknowledge it for what it is. These people believe he can beat Trump. They believe he has the coalition.

Having a team matters. Being a part of a big thing, matters. It might not be a revolution, but it is not nothing.

But before I get into anything to do with these results (which aren't all in yet) can I vent on the subject of Elizabeth Warren?

Game Theory Stuff

When @NikolenDC asked @MikeBloomberg if he wants a contested convention Bloomberg said, “Well I don’t think I could win any other way.” pic.twitter.com/WzX2DPMK3V

— Tim Perry (@tperry518) March 3, 2020

Despite all of the "blocking Bernie" stuff you hear out there, circling the wagons around Biden also has a lot to do with just trying to hork a mess of votes away from Bloomberg so he doesn't make this happen, because we are not all out here living for that kind of drama.

Or at least, I'm sure the hell not.

Anyway, Bloomberg's argument is "Do you want to beat Trump or not?" I think beating Trump with a progressive matters.

Biden Had a Heckuva Night

Former Democratic rivals Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke are all uniting behind Joe Biden's presidential bid. Meantime, Bernie Sanders appears positioned to seize a significant delegate lead on Super Tuesday. https://t.co/YugdYOdTDg

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2020

It sure looks like South Carolina had more of an effect on this race than I had thought, resulting yesterday in Senator Amy Klobuchar dropping her campaign (when she had sounded very fired up still on Sunday), and then Biden received a triple endorsement: Klobuchar, Buttigieg (whom Biden likened to his son, Beau), and Beto O'Rourke. That's not all:

All day Monday, the campaign pushed out one endorsement after another: 100 leaders in Massachusetts, 30 officials in Virginia, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, major congressional leaders in Texas and California, local leaders in North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. Biden's sudden resurgence — his ability to at least partially clear the field and coalesce support — could prove to be a major turning point in a volatile 2020 primary.

I think SC basically was a "proof of concept" behind the idea of Biden's campaign, and lots of Democrats would like to get on to the business of beating Trump. To me, that's pretty understandable. We just have to see what today brings.

UPDATE: Right now, I'm just rooting that this cat has a very poor showing:

Bloomberg gets on the porch and says he’s spoken with both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

“I thought both of them behaved themselves,” he says. “I felt sorry for them but I’m in it to win it.” pic.twitter.com/suZZyb6gBr

— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) March 2, 2020

"Behaved?" Like they were kids or something? Behaved! But also because he is a Republican.

South Carolina Shaped Things Up

Of all the primaries thus far, it seems to me that South Carolina's has been the most consequential. Former VP Joe Biden won handily, moving him to second in delegate count and first in popular votes, and giving his campaign a much-needed fund-raising boost that demonstrated there still is life in it. In his third time at running for the presidency, this was the first time that Biden had won a state.

That's really something to think about. That's persistence. It also shows that sometimes, the goodwill that a candidate needs to have is built up over a long time. It's about a long record forged on doing the things that were right for the time, and showing the kind of decency and compassion that stirs something in people. It isn't about being the perfect candidate, but being trusted. People in South Carolina who voted for Joe Biden knew who he was. They trust him. 

The decisive win lead Tom Steyer to bow out, but he is still in the political fight. He made a good statement about his goals:

“I, of course, will be supportive (of the nominee). I’ve said since the beginning, every Democrat is a million times better than Trump -- Trump is a disaster,” Steyer told his supporters. “Let me say this, we’re in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham is a disaster, he’s a disaster for the people here. So of course I’ll be working on that. Let me say one last thing, when the Lord closes a door, he opens a window.”

Maybe it isn't in the cards to be president--but it certainly is possible to positively influence a senate race (or so) and in doing that, continue the fight against the Trump regime. Steyer might not have been the likeliest candidate, but his support for the environment and his concern for our society shows a lot of decency, and I can't fault him for trying to create a platform within his campaign--but I think a supporting role just makes more productive sense and appreciate what he has done and can continue to do.