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babylonsister
babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
March 14, 2020
Andrew Gillum found in Miami Beach hotel room with suspected drugs, police say
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article241165641.html
Andrew Gillum...
So disappointed. There goes all that potential.
https://politicalwire.com/2020/03/13/gillums-overdosing-companion-was-a-gay-escort/
Gillum’s Overdosing Companion Was a Gay Escort
March 13, 2020 at 9:41 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 378 Comments
The Daily Mail has more on Andrew Gillum’s strange encounter last night: The married father-of-three, who narrowly missed out on becoming Florida’s first black governor, was with a “hunky gay escort found naked and overdosing on crystal meth in a hotel room.”
Andrew Gillum found in Miami Beach hotel room with suspected drugs, police say
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article241165641.html
March 14, 2020
President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak. The move will free up more federal aid to go to states and municipalities battling the spread of the deadly illness, which the World Health Organization classified as a pandemic on Wednesday.
more...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/national-guard-activated-in-six-states-to-help-fight-coronavirus/ar-BB119YVS?ocid=sf2
National Guard activated in six states to help fight coronavirus
How the heck will they curtail the spread of this virus?
National Guard activated in six states to help fight coronavirus
Ellen Mitchell
3 hrs ago
Roughly 400 National Guard personnel have been activated in six states to help curtail the spread of the coronavirus, with another 600 expected to join them within 24 hours, the National Guard Bureau announced Friday.
"As of this morning, about 400 Air and Army National Guard professionals in six states - Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, New York, Rhode Island and Washington - are providing personnel in support of civil authority at the direction of their governors in response to COVID-19," the National Guard said.
"As other states are requested to support civil authorities, those numbers will change rapidly. By the end of the day we expect that number to approach 1,000," the statement read.
"As other states are requested to support civil authorities, those numbers will change rapidly. By the end of the day we expect that number to approach 1,000," the statement read.
President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak. The move will free up more federal aid to go to states and municipalities battling the spread of the deadly illness, which the World Health Organization classified as a pandemic on Wednesday.
more...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/national-guard-activated-in-six-states-to-help-fight-coronavirus/ar-BB119YVS?ocid=sf2
March 14, 2020
03/13/2020 08:30 am ET
Please Stop Treating Me Like I’m Disposable When You Talk About The Coronavirus
“If you care about people, then care about vulnerable people as well.”
Zipporah Arielle
Guest Writer
I read this message or some variation of it over and over again in the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak. It came from many people and many places. It was on Twitter, on TV, in newspaper articles. None of the people who gave this message seemed to consider the possibility that they might be delivering it to someone who could fall into one of those categories of vulnerable populations — nor did they seem to notice that it painted those populations as being disposable.
snip//
This is one of those situations where our actions become about more than just ourselves. Your decision to go to a club despite feeling unwell, your neglect to wash your hands after touching the banisters in public stairwells, your dismissing the outbreak as something you don’t have to pay attention to because it won’t affect you — there is a very real likelihood that those sorts of behaviors will have a very real impact on those like me, who do have compromised immune systems.
The best thing you could do to keep others safe is take precautions. Learn about social distancing. Avoid going out into crowded places, wash your hands frequently and stay home if you feel sick. Fight for paid sick leave. I’m asking for your help in keeping me and others like me safe.
Show immunocompromised people that you know that we matter, and take small steps to show us we’re not alone in facing this daunting virus.
If you care about people, then care about vulnerable people as well. Take care of others by taking care of yourself — not just now, but after COVID-19 has slowed its spread, too. How we talk and what we do now matters. We’re here, and we are not disposable.
Please Stop Treating Me Like I'm Disposable When You Talk About The Coronavirus
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/disabled-immunocompromised-people-coronavirus_n_5e6a6acfc5b6dda30fc51c2f?fbclid=IwAR2EWjJ7XZqQ1CQqvis-gFDydSvkiJgy2WFAPf4K4VkUgWHarktfZAVNiGo03/13/2020 08:30 am ET
Please Stop Treating Me Like I’m Disposable When You Talk About The Coronavirus
“If you care about people, then care about vulnerable people as well.”
Zipporah Arielle
Guest Writer
“It’s fine, you don’t need to worry. It’s not a big deal. Only certain vulnerable populations, like the elderly and those with certain preexisting conditions, will be affected.”
I read this message or some variation of it over and over again in the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak. It came from many people and many places. It was on Twitter, on TV, in newspaper articles. None of the people who gave this message seemed to consider the possibility that they might be delivering it to someone who could fall into one of those categories of vulnerable populations — nor did they seem to notice that it painted those populations as being disposable.
snip//
This is one of those situations where our actions become about more than just ourselves. Your decision to go to a club despite feeling unwell, your neglect to wash your hands after touching the banisters in public stairwells, your dismissing the outbreak as something you don’t have to pay attention to because it won’t affect you — there is a very real likelihood that those sorts of behaviors will have a very real impact on those like me, who do have compromised immune systems.
The best thing you could do to keep others safe is take precautions. Learn about social distancing. Avoid going out into crowded places, wash your hands frequently and stay home if you feel sick. Fight for paid sick leave. I’m asking for your help in keeping me and others like me safe.
Show immunocompromised people that you know that we matter, and take small steps to show us we’re not alone in facing this daunting virus.
If you care about people, then care about vulnerable people as well. Take care of others by taking care of yourself — not just now, but after COVID-19 has slowed its spread, too. How we talk and what we do now matters. We’re here, and we are not disposable.
March 14, 2020
Former Judge Resigns From the Supreme Court Bar
In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, he detailed why he’s lost faith in the court.
By Dahlia Lithwick
March 13, 20203:22 PM
James Dannenberg is a retired Hawaii state judge. He sat on the District Court of the 1st Circuit of the state judiciary for 27 years. Before that, he served as the deputy attorney general of Hawaii. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, teaching federal jurisdiction for more than a decade. He has appeared on briefs and petitions as part of the most prestigious association of attorneys in the country: the Supreme Court Bar. The lawyers admitted to practice before the high court enjoy preferred seating at arguments and access to the court library, and are deemed members of the legal elite. Above all, the bar stands as a sprawling national signifier that the work of the court, the legitimacy of the institution, and the business of justice is bolstered by tens of thousands of lawyers across the nation.
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of that bar since 1972. In his letter, reprinted in full below, Dannenberg compares the current Supreme Court, with its boundless solicitude for the rights of the wealthy, the privileged, and the comfortable, to the court that ushered in the Lochner era in the early 20th century, a period of profound judicial activism that put a heavy thumb on the scale for big business, banking, and insurance interests, and ruled consistently against child labor, fair wages, and labor regulations.
"This is wrong. Period. This is not America."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/judge-james-dannenberg-supreme-court-bar-roberts-letter.amp?fbclid=IwAR2vOHKPRWrOlZgt6W5uv9SUbLKsP1mGV95HJKWN1hQJcGEQUOvVcmCwaNoFormer Judge Resigns From the Supreme Court Bar
In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, he detailed why he’s lost faith in the court.
By Dahlia Lithwick
March 13, 20203:22 PM
James Dannenberg is a retired Hawaii state judge. He sat on the District Court of the 1st Circuit of the state judiciary for 27 years. Before that, he served as the deputy attorney general of Hawaii. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, teaching federal jurisdiction for more than a decade. He has appeared on briefs and petitions as part of the most prestigious association of attorneys in the country: the Supreme Court Bar. The lawyers admitted to practice before the high court enjoy preferred seating at arguments and access to the court library, and are deemed members of the legal elite. Above all, the bar stands as a sprawling national signifier that the work of the court, the legitimacy of the institution, and the business of justice is bolstered by tens of thousands of lawyers across the nation.
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of that bar since 1972. In his letter, reprinted in full below, Dannenberg compares the current Supreme Court, with its boundless solicitude for the rights of the wealthy, the privileged, and the comfortable, to the court that ushered in the Lochner era in the early 20th century, a period of profound judicial activism that put a heavy thumb on the scale for big business, banking, and insurance interests, and ruled consistently against child labor, fair wages, and labor regulations.
The Chief Justice of the United States
One First Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20543
March 11, 2020
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.
This was not an easy decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends.
I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism” are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.
Your public pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other way around.
I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.
Please remove my name from the rolls.
With deepest regret,
James Dannenberg
Supreme Court John Roberts Judiciary
One First Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20543
March 11, 2020
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.
This was not an easy decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends.
I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism” are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.
Your public pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other way around.
I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.
Please remove my name from the rolls.
With deepest regret,
James Dannenberg
Supreme Court John Roberts Judiciary
March 14, 2020
coronavirus 5:49 P.M.
This Will Get Worse
The grim math of a coronavirus future.
By Josh Barro
March 10 was just a few days ago, but it already feels very far away — before the NBA season was suspended, Tom Hanks tested positive, and a national state of emergency was declared. On that date, Think Global Health, which is a project of the Council on Foreign Relations, produced a report that includes a data table that tells us how many people in the U.S. might ultimately die from COVID-19 under a variety of different assumptions. In the top-left corner, the table shows a scenario where 0.1 percent of people in the U.S. contract the virus and 0.1 percent of those die from it, leading to a bit more than 300 deaths. That’s the best corner of the table. We like that corner. What we don’t like is the bottom-right corner of the table, which contemplates 50 percent of the American population contracting the virus and one percent of those dying. If we end up in that corner, about 1.6 million of us will die.
We could land anywhere in the table. Beyond that, unfortunately, I can’t offer much more specific guidance — in fact, depending on which experts you ask, we could land outside the table, too. But our knowledge about our lack of a knowledge is a kind of knowledge. The coronavirus endgame depends on a series of unknowns. We keep getting more data, but we still don’t know how inherently infectious or deadly this virus is. We don’t know how well we as Americans will respond and are responding to those risks of infection and death: how effectively we will reduce its spread, ensure that our hospitals are capable of handling a flood of sick patients, and heal those who are in the hospital. The early public response was abysmal, but we don’t know how quickly, or dramatically, that is changing. And, in large part because of the appalling failure of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure an adequate supply of usable testing kits, we don’t know how bad the virus outbreak in the U.S. is already. However bad it is, things will get worse.
snip//
It is possible, as countries ramp up their testing and surveillance capacity, we will increase our capability at managing the outbreak by identifying and isolating individuals with the infection, allowing us to reduce our reliance on population-level containment measures — this has been key to South Korea’s success at slowing the growth of new infections with less-severe restrictions on social activity than we are seeing in China or Italy. On Friday, the president held a press conference to tout expanded testing but dodged a question about when those tests would actually become available. And even at South Korean levels of social disruption, epidemic containment would require a more intense and prolonged change to the American way of life than a lot of people and even policy-makers have yet to recognize.
The even less palatable option is to try to let it run its course in the most orderly manner possible. After a large fraction of the population is infected — 40 to 70 percent are the numbers I tend to hear thrown around — many people will have developed antibodies, making it increasingly difficult for the virus to find vulnerable hosts to infect and causing the epidemic to ebb naturally. The big problem with this outcome is that it would entail a very large number of deaths even if the infection fatality rate proves to be on the low end of the estimates.
And then there is the Italy problem. There, as in the U.S. and everywhere else, hospitals have limited capacity to treat patients with severe lung illnesses. If the health-care system gets overwhelmed with an enormous number of COVID-19 cases requiring intensive care, the quality of care will deteriorate and a larger fraction of patients will die than would die in a well-functioning health-care system. This is why people keep talking about the need to “flatten the curve”: Merely slowing the growth of the epidemic, even if it doesn’t reduce the ultimate number of cases, would lessen the pressure on the medical system is considerably. But as I have reported this story, I have gotten an increasingly sinking feeling about the “flatten the curve” discourse for reasons that have to do with the other variable in the table: the fatality rate per infection.
snip//
As with any crisis, there is also overreaction among the population. But on balance, there is still more underreaction. There is also the problem of delayed reaction. Lessler, the Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist, noted a way in which this epidemic tricks people into panicking when it’s too late. “If people are only going to start taking the actions they should when they start to see a lot of people dying around them, it’s already too late,” he says. When you combine the substantial period from infection to death with exponential growth in infections, the number of deaths you see around you is likely far lower than the number of deaths you are about to see. The people who stand to die within the next 30 days may not even be very sick yet. And when they get very sick, the hospitals may be overwhelmed and ill-prepared to respond. This is the corner Italy backed itself into. We might be headed there, too.
This Will Get Worse
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/coronavirus-will-get-worse-in-america.htmlcoronavirus 5:49 P.M.
This Will Get Worse
The grim math of a coronavirus future.
By Josh Barro
March 10 was just a few days ago, but it already feels very far away — before the NBA season was suspended, Tom Hanks tested positive, and a national state of emergency was declared. On that date, Think Global Health, which is a project of the Council on Foreign Relations, produced a report that includes a data table that tells us how many people in the U.S. might ultimately die from COVID-19 under a variety of different assumptions. In the top-left corner, the table shows a scenario where 0.1 percent of people in the U.S. contract the virus and 0.1 percent of those die from it, leading to a bit more than 300 deaths. That’s the best corner of the table. We like that corner. What we don’t like is the bottom-right corner of the table, which contemplates 50 percent of the American population contracting the virus and one percent of those dying. If we end up in that corner, about 1.6 million of us will die.
We could land anywhere in the table. Beyond that, unfortunately, I can’t offer much more specific guidance — in fact, depending on which experts you ask, we could land outside the table, too. But our knowledge about our lack of a knowledge is a kind of knowledge. The coronavirus endgame depends on a series of unknowns. We keep getting more data, but we still don’t know how inherently infectious or deadly this virus is. We don’t know how well we as Americans will respond and are responding to those risks of infection and death: how effectively we will reduce its spread, ensure that our hospitals are capable of handling a flood of sick patients, and heal those who are in the hospital. The early public response was abysmal, but we don’t know how quickly, or dramatically, that is changing. And, in large part because of the appalling failure of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure an adequate supply of usable testing kits, we don’t know how bad the virus outbreak in the U.S. is already. However bad it is, things will get worse.
snip//
It is possible, as countries ramp up their testing and surveillance capacity, we will increase our capability at managing the outbreak by identifying and isolating individuals with the infection, allowing us to reduce our reliance on population-level containment measures — this has been key to South Korea’s success at slowing the growth of new infections with less-severe restrictions on social activity than we are seeing in China or Italy. On Friday, the president held a press conference to tout expanded testing but dodged a question about when those tests would actually become available. And even at South Korean levels of social disruption, epidemic containment would require a more intense and prolonged change to the American way of life than a lot of people and even policy-makers have yet to recognize.
The even less palatable option is to try to let it run its course in the most orderly manner possible. After a large fraction of the population is infected — 40 to 70 percent are the numbers I tend to hear thrown around — many people will have developed antibodies, making it increasingly difficult for the virus to find vulnerable hosts to infect and causing the epidemic to ebb naturally. The big problem with this outcome is that it would entail a very large number of deaths even if the infection fatality rate proves to be on the low end of the estimates.
And then there is the Italy problem. There, as in the U.S. and everywhere else, hospitals have limited capacity to treat patients with severe lung illnesses. If the health-care system gets overwhelmed with an enormous number of COVID-19 cases requiring intensive care, the quality of care will deteriorate and a larger fraction of patients will die than would die in a well-functioning health-care system. This is why people keep talking about the need to “flatten the curve”: Merely slowing the growth of the epidemic, even if it doesn’t reduce the ultimate number of cases, would lessen the pressure on the medical system is considerably. But as I have reported this story, I have gotten an increasingly sinking feeling about the “flatten the curve” discourse for reasons that have to do with the other variable in the table: the fatality rate per infection.
snip//
As with any crisis, there is also overreaction among the population. But on balance, there is still more underreaction. There is also the problem of delayed reaction. Lessler, the Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist, noted a way in which this epidemic tricks people into panicking when it’s too late. “If people are only going to start taking the actions they should when they start to see a lot of people dying around them, it’s already too late,” he says. When you combine the substantial period from infection to death with exponential growth in infections, the number of deaths you see around you is likely far lower than the number of deaths you are about to see. The people who stand to die within the next 30 days may not even be very sick yet. And when they get very sick, the hospitals may be overwhelmed and ill-prepared to respond. This is the corner Italy backed itself into. We might be headed there, too.
March 13, 2020
Clyburn Compares GOP Bowing To Trump To Nazi Germany
The Democratic Congressman, who gave Joe Biden a boost in the primaries, says he’s “trying to sound the alarm.”
By Eric Lutz
March 13, 2020
In a new interview airing Sunday, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn—one of the most powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill—likened Republicans under Donald Trump to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. “I used to wonder: How did the people of Germany allow Hitler to exist?” the House Majority Whip said in the Axios on HBO interview. “But with each passing day, I’m beginning to understand how. And that’s why I’m trying to sound the alarm.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1238408209062195200
Hitler comparisons tend to be notoriously hyperbolic. But Trump’s nationalism, policies, and embrace of authoritarian leaders have invited such analogies, including from Clyburn in the past. Republicans’ efforts to protect Trump at all costs—and creepy dear leader-style treatment from supportive TV hosts—have resembled how an autocrat wields power.
That has dramatically raised the stakes for this year’s election, which has been framed as more than a partisan fight, but a struggle for the soul of the country. “Our very democracy is at stake in this election,” Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden said after notching several more primary wins this week, including in Michigan. “With Donald Trump as president, our core values, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America, is truly at stake.” Clyburn has helped to dramatically shift the trajectory of the election, endorsing Biden ahead of the primary in South Carolina and reviving a campaign that had appeared to be foundering. That decision was personal—he and Biden are close friends—but it was also calculated. The influential South Carolina representative had appeared concerned that progressive Bernie Sanders, who led the Democratic primary after the first three contests, would be unable to beat Trump and allow Republicans to prevail in down-ballot races. “He has said to me the future of the country is at stake, and if we lose to Donald Trump, it would be devastating for generations of African-Americans to come,” Representative Cedric Richmond, a friend and ally of Clyburn, told Politico ahead of the endorsement. “I know that’s what he’s thinking about when making this important decision.” When he eventually endorsed Biden, he invoked the need for voters to reject Trump’s vision for the country. “This campaign, this year, is about the goodness of America,” he said in South Carolina in February. “And our candidate is a real good man.”
Clyburn Compares GOP Bowing To Trump To Nazi Germany
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/clyburn-compares-gop-bowing-to-trump-to-nazi-nazi-germanyClyburn Compares GOP Bowing To Trump To Nazi Germany
The Democratic Congressman, who gave Joe Biden a boost in the primaries, says he’s “trying to sound the alarm.”
By Eric Lutz
March 13, 2020
In a new interview airing Sunday, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn—one of the most powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill—likened Republicans under Donald Trump to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. “I used to wonder: How did the people of Germany allow Hitler to exist?” the House Majority Whip said in the Axios on HBO interview. “But with each passing day, I’m beginning to understand how. And that’s why I’m trying to sound the alarm.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1238408209062195200
Hitler comparisons tend to be notoriously hyperbolic. But Trump’s nationalism, policies, and embrace of authoritarian leaders have invited such analogies, including from Clyburn in the past. Republicans’ efforts to protect Trump at all costs—and creepy dear leader-style treatment from supportive TV hosts—have resembled how an autocrat wields power.
That has dramatically raised the stakes for this year’s election, which has been framed as more than a partisan fight, but a struggle for the soul of the country. “Our very democracy is at stake in this election,” Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden said after notching several more primary wins this week, including in Michigan. “With Donald Trump as president, our core values, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America, is truly at stake.” Clyburn has helped to dramatically shift the trajectory of the election, endorsing Biden ahead of the primary in South Carolina and reviving a campaign that had appeared to be foundering. That decision was personal—he and Biden are close friends—but it was also calculated. The influential South Carolina representative had appeared concerned that progressive Bernie Sanders, who led the Democratic primary after the first three contests, would be unable to beat Trump and allow Republicans to prevail in down-ballot races. “He has said to me the future of the country is at stake, and if we lose to Donald Trump, it would be devastating for generations of African-Americans to come,” Representative Cedric Richmond, a friend and ally of Clyburn, told Politico ahead of the endorsement. “I know that’s what he’s thinking about when making this important decision.” When he eventually endorsed Biden, he invoked the need for voters to reject Trump’s vision for the country. “This campaign, this year, is about the goodness of America,” he said in South Carolina in February. “And our candidate is a real good man.”
March 13, 2020
The psychology behind why toilet paper, of all things, is the latest coronavirus panic buy
By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Updated 5:14 PM ET, Mon March 9, 2020
(CNN)Masks were the first to go. Then, hand sanitizers. Now, novel coronavirus panic buyers are snatching up ... toilet paper?
Retailers in the US and Canada have started limiting the number of toilet paper packs customers can buy in one trip. Some supermarkets in the UK are sold out. Grocery stores in Australia have hired security guards to patrol customers.
An Australian newspaper went so far as printing eight extra pages in a recent edition -- emergency toilet paper, the newspaper said, should Aussies run out.
Why? Toilet paper does not offer special protection against the virus. It's not considered a staple of impending emergencies, like milk and bread are.
So why are people buying up rolls more quickly than they can be restocked?
Reason 1
People resort to extremes when they hear conflicting messages
snip//
Reason 5
It allows some to feel a sense of control
The psychology behind why toilet paper, of all things, is the latest coronavirus panic buy
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/health/toilet-paper-shortages-novel-coronavirus-trnd/index.htmlThe psychology behind why toilet paper, of all things, is the latest coronavirus panic buy
By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Updated 5:14 PM ET, Mon March 9, 2020
(CNN)Masks were the first to go. Then, hand sanitizers. Now, novel coronavirus panic buyers are snatching up ... toilet paper?
Retailers in the US and Canada have started limiting the number of toilet paper packs customers can buy in one trip. Some supermarkets in the UK are sold out. Grocery stores in Australia have hired security guards to patrol customers.
An Australian newspaper went so far as printing eight extra pages in a recent edition -- emergency toilet paper, the newspaper said, should Aussies run out.
Why? Toilet paper does not offer special protection against the virus. It's not considered a staple of impending emergencies, like milk and bread are.
So why are people buying up rolls more quickly than they can be restocked?
Reason 1
People resort to extremes when they hear conflicting messages
Steven Taylor is a clinical psychologist and author of "The Psychology of Pandemics," which takes a historic look at how people behave and respond to pandemics. And compared to past pandemics, the global response to the novel coronavirus has been one of widespread panic.
"On the one hand, [the response is] understandable, but on the other hand it's excessive," Taylor, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, told CNN. "We can prepare without panicking."
The novel coronavirus scares people because it's new, and there's a lot about it that's still unknown. When people hear conflicting messages about the risk it poses and how seriously they should prepare for it, they tend to resort to the extreme, Taylor said.
"When people are told something dangerous is coming, but all you need to do is wash your hands, the action doesn't seem proportionate to the threat," he said. "Special danger needs special precautions."
"On the one hand, [the response is] understandable, but on the other hand it's excessive," Taylor, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, told CNN. "We can prepare without panicking."
The novel coronavirus scares people because it's new, and there's a lot about it that's still unknown. When people hear conflicting messages about the risk it poses and how seriously they should prepare for it, they tend to resort to the extreme, Taylor said.
"When people are told something dangerous is coming, but all you need to do is wash your hands, the action doesn't seem proportionate to the threat," he said. "Special danger needs special precautions."
snip//
Reason 5
It allows some to feel a sense of control
The people who are stocking up on supplies are thinking about themselves and their family and what they need to do to prepare, Taylor said -- not healthcare workers, sick people or even regular folks who might run out of toilet paper sometime soon.
But people only act that way out of fear. Fischhoff said that preparing, even by purchasing toilet paper, returns a sense of control to what seems like a helpless situation.
"It's all due to this wave of anticipatory anxiety," Taylor said. "People become anxious ahead of the actual infection. They haven't thought about the bigger picture, like what are the consequences of stockpiling toilet paper."
But people only act that way out of fear. Fischhoff said that preparing, even by purchasing toilet paper, returns a sense of control to what seems like a helpless situation.
"Depending on how people estimate the chances of needing the toilet paper, the hassle might be worth it," he said. "If it gave them the feeling that they had done everything that they could, it might free them to think about other things than coronavirus."
March 13, 2020
"Let me repeat. Coronavirus is not Trump's fault."
Reprinted from: ?Jane Kraft? to 2020 Election
I’m so tired of seeing the right accuse the left of blaming the new disease on Trump. For the record NO ONE is blaming the President for the virus. Let me repeat. Coronavirus is not Trump’s fault. Here’s a detailed list of what we are blaming him for:
Trump declined to use the World Health Organization’s test like other nations. Back in January, over a month before the first Co-vid19 case, the Chinese posted a new mysterious virus and within a week, Berlin virologists had produced the first diagnostic test. By the end of February, the WHO had shipped out tests to 60 countries. Oh, but not our government. We declined the test even as a temporary bridge until the CDC could create its own test. The question is why? We don’t know but what to look for is which pharmaceutical company eventually manufactures the test and who owns the stock. Keep tuned.
In 2018 Trump fired Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossart, whose job was to coordinate a response to global pandemics. He was not replaced.
In 2018 Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC director for medical and biodefense preparedness left the job. Trump did not replace Dr. Borio.
In 2019 the NSC’s Senior Director for Global Health Security and biodefense, Tim Ziemer, left the position and Trump did not replace the Rear Admiral.
Trump shut down the entire Global Health Security and Biodefense agency. Yes, he did.
Amid the explosive worldwide outbreak of the virus Trump proposed a 19% cut to the budget of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention plus a 10% cut to Public Health Services and a 7% cut to Global Health Services. Those happen to be the organizations that responds to public health threats.
In 2018, at Trump’s direction, the CDC stopped funding epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries including China.
Trump didn’t appoint a doctor to oversee the US response to the pandemic. He appointed Mike Pence.
Trump has on multiple occasions sowed doubt about the severity of the virus even using the word hoax at events and rallies. He even did it at an event where the virus was being spread. Trump has put out zero useful information concerning the health risks of the virus.
Trump pretended the virus had been contained.
Trump left a cruise ship at sea for days, denying them proper hospital care, rather than increase his numbers in America.
Repeat. We do not blame Trump for the virus. We blame him for gutting the nation’s preparations to deal with it. We blame him for bungling testing and allowing it to spread uninhibited. We blame him for wasting taxpayer money on applause lines at his rallies (like The Wall). We blame him for putting his own political life over American human life. I hope this clears things up.
In 2018 Trump fired Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossart, whose job was to coordinate a response to global pandemics. He was not replaced.
In 2018 Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC director for medical and biodefense preparedness left the job. Trump did not replace Dr. Borio.
In 2019 the NSC’s Senior Director for Global Health Security and biodefense, Tim Ziemer, left the position and Trump did not replace the Rear Admiral.
Trump shut down the entire Global Health Security and Biodefense agency. Yes, he did.
Amid the explosive worldwide outbreak of the virus Trump proposed a 19% cut to the budget of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention plus a 10% cut to Public Health Services and a 7% cut to Global Health Services. Those happen to be the organizations that responds to public health threats.
In 2018, at Trump’s direction, the CDC stopped funding epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries including China.
Trump didn’t appoint a doctor to oversee the US response to the pandemic. He appointed Mike Pence.
Trump has on multiple occasions sowed doubt about the severity of the virus even using the word hoax at events and rallies. He even did it at an event where the virus was being spread. Trump has put out zero useful information concerning the health risks of the virus.
Trump pretended the virus had been contained.
Trump left a cruise ship at sea for days, denying them proper hospital care, rather than increase his numbers in America.
Repeat. We do not blame Trump for the virus. We blame him for gutting the nation’s preparations to deal with it. We blame him for bungling testing and allowing it to spread uninhibited. We blame him for wasting taxpayer money on applause lines at his rallies (like The Wall). We blame him for putting his own political life over American human life. I hope this clears things up.
March 13, 2020
The sick joke of Donald Trump's presidency isn't funny any more
Richard Wolffe
The coronavirus outbreak has revealed the full stupidity, incompetence and selfishness of the president to deadly effect
@richardwolffedc
Fri 13 Mar 2020 10.27 EDT
For three long years the world has been treated to the sick joke of Donald Trump’s presidency. Some days were more sick than others. But now the joke is over.
So is the entire facade of the Trump White House: the gold-plated veneer of power and grift will be stripped bare by a global pandemic and recession.
Of all the obituaries we’ll read in the next several weeks, every one will be more meaningful than the political end of a former reality-TV star.
But make no mistake. The humanitarian crisis about to unfold will consume what’s left of this president and the Republican party that surrendered its self-respect and sense of duty to flatter his ego and avoid his angry tweets.
Trump was right about one thing, and only one thing, as the coronavirus started to spread across the world. The sight of thousands of dead Americans will hurt him politically. It will also hurt many thousands of Americans in reality.
more...
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-donald-trump-presidency-sick-joke?fbclid=IwAR1iNTsMd-JlB3Jggw5-x7Ig1G4_E4lM2TcmPrUEDlMGaYKXD8w3a6HM5mM
The sick joke of Donald Trump's presidency isn't funny any more
The sick joke of Donald Trump's presidency isn't funny any more
Richard Wolffe
The coronavirus outbreak has revealed the full stupidity, incompetence and selfishness of the president to deadly effect
@richardwolffedc
Fri 13 Mar 2020 10.27 EDT
For three long years the world has been treated to the sick joke of Donald Trump’s presidency. Some days were more sick than others. But now the joke is over.
So is the entire facade of the Trump White House: the gold-plated veneer of power and grift will be stripped bare by a global pandemic and recession.
Of all the obituaries we’ll read in the next several weeks, every one will be more meaningful than the political end of a former reality-TV star.
But make no mistake. The humanitarian crisis about to unfold will consume what’s left of this president and the Republican party that surrendered its self-respect and sense of duty to flatter his ego and avoid his angry tweets.
Trump was right about one thing, and only one thing, as the coronavirus started to spread across the world. The sight of thousands of dead Americans will hurt him politically. It will also hurt many thousands of Americans in reality.
more...
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-donald-trump-presidency-sick-joke?fbclid=IwAR1iNTsMd-JlB3Jggw5-x7Ig1G4_E4lM2TcmPrUEDlMGaYKXD8w3a6HM5mM
March 12, 2020
Coronavirus is the Trump catastrophe we’ve been terrified of
It’s Hurricane Maria all over again, but the storm is coming for us all.
By Matthew Yglesias on March 12, 2020 2:30 pm
snip//
Thousands of Americans died because the confluence of events in Puerto Rico posed a genuinely hard problem. It was a big storm. It hit an island that had significant preexisting economic weaknesses including problems with its electrical infrastructure. The overall political situation there was bad for reasons that predated Trump and had little to do with him. But the president’s job is to handle hard problems. And he couldn’t do it. Instead, he whined, he lied, he bragged, he shifted blame, and in the final analysis, the suffering was enormous.
The spectacle left us with two options for hope. One, maybe the whole thing was a consequence of Trump’s racist and self-interested instincts. Maybe a problem that impacted a larger, whiter, and less politically disempowered population would get a stronger response. (To be clear: This is a deeply dark option.) Two, maybe Trump’s luck would hold up and he’d just muddle through four or eight years without ever facing a really big crisis.
But his luck has run out.
On Wednesday night, Trump took the rare step of delivering a formal address to the public from the Oval Office. It turned out to be a catastrophe. If you’d asked me Wednesday morning, I would have said, “How bad could 10 minutes of reading a speech from a teleprompter possibly be?” The answer turns out to be worse than I’d thought.
The entire focus of the speech was wildly misguided, focused on ginning up xenophobia and restricting travel from abroad when the coronavirus is already spreading seemingly uncontrolled inside the United States.
But even within the narrow premise that delivering an Oval Office address about new restrictions on European travel was a good idea, Trump screwed it up beyond belief.
more...
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/12/21176750/trump-coronavirus-response-disaster?fbclid=IwAR17_VXhta3fVveXWYQKYYv32uQvva6NhVu5IT73VzH-urSOuSP22NFNHtU
Matthew Yglesias: Coronavirus is the Trump catastrophe we've been terrified of
Coronavirus is the Trump catastrophe we’ve been terrified of
It’s Hurricane Maria all over again, but the storm is coming for us all.
By Matthew Yglesias on March 12, 2020 2:30 pm
snip//
Thousands of Americans died because the confluence of events in Puerto Rico posed a genuinely hard problem. It was a big storm. It hit an island that had significant preexisting economic weaknesses including problems with its electrical infrastructure. The overall political situation there was bad for reasons that predated Trump and had little to do with him. But the president’s job is to handle hard problems. And he couldn’t do it. Instead, he whined, he lied, he bragged, he shifted blame, and in the final analysis, the suffering was enormous.
The spectacle left us with two options for hope. One, maybe the whole thing was a consequence of Trump’s racist and self-interested instincts. Maybe a problem that impacted a larger, whiter, and less politically disempowered population would get a stronger response. (To be clear: This is a deeply dark option.) Two, maybe Trump’s luck would hold up and he’d just muddle through four or eight years without ever facing a really big crisis.
But his luck has run out.
On Wednesday night, Trump took the rare step of delivering a formal address to the public from the Oval Office. It turned out to be a catastrophe. If you’d asked me Wednesday morning, I would have said, “How bad could 10 minutes of reading a speech from a teleprompter possibly be?” The answer turns out to be worse than I’d thought.
The entire focus of the speech was wildly misguided, focused on ginning up xenophobia and restricting travel from abroad when the coronavirus is already spreading seemingly uncontrolled inside the United States.
But even within the narrow premise that delivering an Oval Office address about new restrictions on European travel was a good idea, Trump screwed it up beyond belief.
more...
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/12/21176750/trump-coronavirus-response-disaster?fbclid=IwAR17_VXhta3fVveXWYQKYYv32uQvva6NhVu5IT73VzH-urSOuSP22NFNHtU
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