April 13, 2020

Oh Thank God: Trump Appoints Ivanka and Jared to Council to Reopen America

Oh Thank God: Trump Appoints Ivanka and Jared to Council to Reopen America

Pop quiz time! An unprecedented pandemic has killed more than 118,000 people worldwide and infected more than 1.9 million. The U.S. just surpassed Italy as the country with the highest number of deaths. As a result of people necessarily being told to stay home, i.e. the only way at this point to slow the spread, the economy is in shambles. Almost 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment, with some predicting that 20 million will be out of work by the end of the month. Economists believe the chance of a recession within the next twelve months is 100%, with many saying the country is already in one. You, as president, are in charge of said country. What do you do? If you’re Donald J. Trump, you (1) resist mass testing or really any semblance of a plan for developing virus-tracking measures that could, in theory, help some parts of the population safely return to work, and (2) appoint your idiot daughter and son-in-law to your economic task force, because scarily, in a family of certifiable morons, they’re considered the smart ones.

Yes, the latest disturbing development in our national (and global) nightmare is the news that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner will be on the White House’s council to reopen America. While the duo needs no introduction at this point, for those not entirely clear what their qualifications are to sit on this council, they include, in the case of Ivanka: a failed clothing line, a knack for not knowing how words work, the inability to obtain a top secret security clearance without President Daddy demanding it, and a grasp of the current situation so strong that she thinks quarantined parents have time to take up new instruments and brush up on Greek and Roman mythology. And what does the Boy Prince of New Jersey bring to the table? With a CV as long as his, it’s hard to hit on all of his accomplishments, but some of the highlights include: paying more than $1 billion for an aging skyscraper on the eve of the financial crisis, a career as a slumlord, convincing his father-in-law to keep the 2019 shutdown going based on a delusional bet that he could convince Nancy Pelosi to pay for the border wall, and, of course, telling the president the coronavirus was not a “health reality.”



NB, not a single health expert on this panel.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-council-to-reopen-america

April 12, 2020

Should Covid testing be used with all fatalities, or reserved exclusively for the living?

Upon reading articles that suggest many potential Covid deaths are not being counted but that an increase in demand at funeral homes, etc., exceeds the reported numbers of Covid fatalities, I'm struck by the conundrum:

Unless the number of tests available is adequate to test both the living and the dead, should we focus these on the living and put questionable fatalities aside, or somehow split the number of test kits?



This dilemma is brought to you by Trump and the Republican Party.

NB: Inspired by this thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213273046

And by this report: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus-deaths-new-york-city.html

And by this video: https://vp.nyt.com/video/2020/04/10/85977_1_10vid-Hart-Island_wg_720p.mp4

April 10, 2020

This photo choked me up, a little..

Originally posting the image to Instagram, a woman known on Twitter as @allie211, an emergency room nurse in Morristown, shared a photograph of a man outside her hospital holding a sign that says, "Thank you all in emergency for saving my wife's life. I love you all." Writer Harlan Coben shared the image and it took off from there.

Well then.

April 9, 2020

"Dereliction of Duty": Speaker Pelosi Tweets a video condemning Trump's Negligence and Deceit

"This is a dereliction of duty."

We need to prosecute this evil man.


https://twitter.com/TeamPelosi/status/1247891764750348289
Thank you, Madam Speaker.

April 7, 2020

Barack Obama, my President, Tweets out earlier today...

Sharing Senator Warren's outline for how our federal government should be meeting this moment.

Thanks, Obama!

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1247233987304660993

April 6, 2020

Trump not happy with HHS Inspector Christi Grimm

Threatening words today during the presser when a journalist mentions her critical remarks.

"When was she appointed? No, tell me know, when was she appointed?" Trump to journalist.

Background:

HHS Watchdog Finds Federal Gov’t Partially Responsible For Medical Supply Crisis

By Cristina Cabrera

April 6, 2020 12:03 p.m.

Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department, released a report on Monday that found the “significant challenges” hospitals are grappling with in treating COVID-19 were partially due to the federal government’s flailing response to the outbreak.

In a survey held from March 23 to 27, hospital workers informed Grimm’s office that they had not been sufficiently informed of the process of obtaining crucial medical supplies from the federal government’s national stockpile.

One medical staffer told the inspector general that the means to receiving those supplies posed “a major challenge” and that the equipment that the hospital did get were inadequate.

“Some hospitals noted that at the time of our interview they had not received supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile, or that the supplies that they had received were not sufficient in quantity or quality,” Grimm wrote.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hhs-inspector-general-report-federal-government-partially-responsible-medical-supply-shortage

April 4, 2020

The New Yorker: "Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders"

A good read:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/reality-has-endorsed-bernie-sanders



Credit to Hill TV on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/HillTVLive/

April 3, 2020

Trump attacks Schumer for impeachment in letter about coronavirus crisis

Source: Axios

President Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of being "missing in action" during the coronavirus crisis, writing in a scathing letter on Thursday that Schumer's focus on the "ridiculous impeachment hoax" resulted in New York being ill-prepared for the pandemic.

Why it matters: It's a blistering response to Schumer urging Trump to assign a senior military officer to enforce the Defense Production Act to produce more medical supplies.

The big picture: The president formally authorized the use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic ventilator production on Thursday, and said he had appointed White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to enforce the act last week.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-schumer-impeachment-4455884d-14c1-4a7d-9886-de158667bc57.html

---

Read the actual letter, it's piss-poor behavior for any public servant, much less an elected servant.

Here's a direct link to read the letter, in case you don't see the link in the Axios article:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6824332-Trump-letter-to-Schumer.html

excerpt:

“If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy’,” Trump wrote.

Wow. Just wow.

April 2, 2020

Peter Navarro @ Trump Presser just now, "we're doing these things in 'Trump Time'"

Peter Navarro speaking.

Fuck you assholes.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1245840611418267649?s=20

Fuck you and fuck your group and your PR crew of liars.

Fuck. All of you. Adding details as they come in.

https://twitter.com/kenolin1/status/1245840710726606848?s=20

April 2, 2020

Embedded link includes Trump's worst attacks on journalists.

The headline seems not to match the video, but the video is well worth watching and sharing.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barack-obama-donald-trump-coronavirus-climate_n_5e843653c5b6871702a6e17d