The Lancet has an editorial on Trump and the CDC:

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation’s public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC’s Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control. How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public’s health?

Right-wing politics is how.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC’s leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Call me crazy but I think public health shouldn’t be a political issue. Rich people can get sick too, plus they suffer torments when they can’t shop for gold-plated running shoes and platinum caviar.

The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today’s complicated effort.

But a person like that would be a threat to Trump, at least in Trump’s eyes, so no dice.

Hold the phone – women can get periods!

Who knew?

Yes, we know, because “trans guys” are women, and “non-binary people” are people and some people are women.

Maybe this whole thing is just a movement of people who long to be teachers but don’t want the grind of teaching second grade, so they make shit up in order to “teach” us it.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Trump decided to try to demonstrate that he’s smarter than Anthony Fauci.

[I]t’s becoming clearer and clearer that reopening the country is Trump’s only plan for reviving the economy. The new stimulus package is, as Trump accurately declared, dead on arrival. The Federal Reserve is low on options. The White House has now essentially bet everything that states loosening restrictions will spur growth in time for November’s election. Fauci’s words of caution are an obstacle at a moment when the economic outlook is grim.

Has anyone bothered to tell Trump that rolling out the red carpet for a pandemic and waiting for the applause as tens of thousands more people die is not a winner either? Just saying “Fauci’s wrong Fauci’s wrong Fauci’s wrong” isn’t going to kneecap the virus. And you know what else? Causing another surge of the virus isn’t going to bring the economy back; rather the reverse.

Plus there’s that whole thing of risking thousands or tens of thousands of lives for the sake of his personal greed for attention. It’s not a great look.

Trump is frustrated that Fauci is eclipsing him in surveys on public trust, most recently the CNN/SSRS poll this week. Officials say Trump has long held out some resentment that Fauci is respected and liked by people he has struggled to convert.

Diddums. It’s so unfair that we trust Fauci more on issues to do with contagious diseases and how to manage them than we do Trump. Trump knows how to con people into buying crap condos! All Fauci knows is a lot of stuff about diseases and contagion and treatments. It should be no contest!

Trump’s irritation at being publicly undermined has been evident in conversations with his friends and aides, when he’s complained that Fauci doesn’t seem to be on his side.

Waaaah, my side, me me me me me me me, waaaaah, he should be kissing my ass, waaaaah, everything is about me.

The busy busy president who is working so hard found time to do a long interview with Fox News this morning, in which he told an exciting story about Obama something something something.

With such bad news on the human and economic fronts, perhaps it’s not surprising that Trump seemed to be most excited about pushing his new “Obamagate” conspiracy theory about his predecessor, Barack Obama. While Trump himself hasn’t been able to explain what exactly “Obamagate” is, the general idea is that Obama was part of a conspiracy to use an FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia to undermine his presidency before it even began.

…

“If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would’ve been in jail a long time ago, and I’m talking with 50-year sentences,” Trump claimed. “People should be going to jail for this stuff … this was all Obama. This was all Biden.”

What stuff though? What stuff? He never says. This what? What this? He never says.

He also said Russia longed for Clinton and didn’t want Trump.

This claim is at odds with the consensus conclusion of the US intelligence community, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and even the words of Vladimir Putin himself — all of them affirming that Russia wanted Trump to win. But if viewers were hoping that Bartiromo would push back by pointing out the obvious, they were disappointed.

Because Fox is allied with…Russia?

It doesn’t make any sense except as pure unsullied My Team versus Their Team.

No more talk? That’ll be the day.

Rick Bright is testifying before the House today.

The tone of Dr Bright’s testimony during this hearing is one of urgency.

Just now he warned that “The window is closing to address this pandemic because we still do not have a standardized coordinated plan to take our nation through this response.”

…

Bright, during this hearing, said that his increasingly urgent warnings about the coronavirus spread caused a “commotion” and he was pushed out of meetings as a result.

The Guardian has more up close reporting on the Michigan dramatics:

Despite a thunderstorm with heavy rains, dozens of protesters are on the Michigan State Capitol steps and lawn calling for an end to Michigan’s stay-at-home order, and demanding governor Gretchen Whitmer’s resignation.

The protest is organized by Michigan United For Liberty, a militia group that’s suing Whitmer over her orders.

The demonstrators include a small number of militiamen carrying assault rifles, and the protest is part of a high-tension week in Lansing.

It’s very banality of evil though, isn’t it. Geezers in chunky white trainers and rain jackets – they don’t look very scary. But it’s a mistake to think that appearances matter in that way. Not all murderous fascists look like Timothy McVeigh.

After armed militia members glared and shouted at the legislature on April 30 during a heated debate over extending Whitmer’s stay-at-home order through the end of May, Democrats called for a ban on guns in the State Capitol building.

They charge that the protests are no longer about the stay-at-home orders, but a forum for intimidating Democrats in the legislature.

The two seem to be basically intertwined. The connection doesn’t seem necessary or inherent, but it’s there.

The Michigan fascisti are at it again.

Despite heavy rain, armed protesters gathered Thursday at the State Capitol in Michigan in what the organizing group, Michigan United for Liberty, a militia group, has branded “judgment day.”

It’s their third gun-toting tantrum over the lockdown and the fact that the governor is a woman and a Democrat.

Ahead of Thursday’s protest, comments were made in private Facebook groups threatening Gov. Whitmer and lawmakers with violence, according to reporting by the Detroit Metro Times.

But hey by all means let them carry their assault weapons into the capitol.

Concern about Thursday’s gathering was higher than previous protests. But rain and an interruption in planning — Facebook reportedly removed the organizers’ private group from their platform for inciting violence — may have curbed the crowed which seemed substantially smaller than two weeks ago. That was when armed protesters brought signs that compared Gov. Whitmer to Hitler, showed nooses and confederate flags. Some signs read, “Tyrants Get The Rope.”

It’s judgement day! But it’s also raining so…meh…I’m staying home and watching tv.

Meanwhile guns guns guns GUNS.

After the second protest, state Democratic lawmakers requested that the Michigan Capitol Commission ban guns on the premises. On Monday, the Democratic attorney general issued an opinion saying the appointed body had the authority to do so, warning against a “powder keg dynamic” created by heavily armed protesters.

But the commission said nah let’s do a study instead.

The Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mike Shirkey, later called the notion of a gun-ban “cowardly” in a floor speech, calling for protesters who are threatening on Thursday to be arrested by state police.

It’s “cowardly” to want not to be gunned down for being a Democratic legislator? It’s easy for a Republican to say, isn’t it, because the gun lunatics aren’t threatening Republicans. Basically the disagreement is over whether or not it’s ok to kill/threaten to kill Democrats inside the capitol, and Republicans are saying hell yes it’s ok.

“This is a terribly concerning development in that we have legislators who are showing up to work wearing bulletproof vests. That is disenfranchising thousands of people in our state if their legislator doesn’t feel safe enough to go to work and to do what their job is,” said Whitmer in her interview on The View.

And it’s true on a national level. We’re being steadily trained to fear that right-wing lunatics will perform an armed coup. Such things do happen, and it’s getting more and more obvious that we’re now the kind of place where such things happen.

Pray for rain, I guess.

Speaking of magical thinking and reckless behavior – the Wisconsin Supreme Court has thrown out the stay home order.

In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state’s stay at home order, handing a defeat to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in his administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

And consigning who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people to a hideous death, and more to a horrible illness that can take weeks to recover from and leave permanent damage to the heart, brain, blood vessels, kidneys, lungs – pretty much everything.

In its order, the Supreme Court said Evers’ stay at home order is “invalid, and therefore, unenforceable,” so some businesses and restaurants presumably may open immediately. But some counties, such as Dane, have already issued replacement orders enforcing the elements of the governor’s order, and therefore must remain closed.

The virus will probably take note of this show of defiance and decide to leave Wisconsin entirely alone. Right?

I keep wandering into magical thinking myself – I see more people out and about and think “Oh it must be getting bet – NO, stupid, people are getting more reckless.” I’m betting we all do that, not least because it’s normally a pretty good indicator. “Lots of people around here, probably not many tigers.” Normally pretty good, but then there can be the unexpected tiger.

The WHO warns us not to think all the tigers will go somewhere else.

Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan warned against trying to predict when the virus would disappear.

He added that even if a vaccine is found, controlling the virus will require a “massive effort”.

…

“It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” Dr Ryan told the virtual press conference from Geneva.

“HIV has not gone away – but we have come to terms with the virus.”

And, as Fauci reminded us at one of the early briefings, there is effective treatment for HIV.

Their stark remarks come as several countries began to gradually ease lockdown measures, and leaders consider the issue of how and when to reopen their economies.

I think the gradually easing idea is magical thinking too. “If we just walk very carefully over the chasm we’ll be fine.” That doesn’t appear to be the case with this virus.

Dr Tedros warned that there was no guaranteed way of easing restrictions without triggering a second wave of infections.

“Many countries would like to get out of the different measures,” the WHO boss said. “But our recommendation is still the alert at any country should be at the highest level possible.”

Dr Ryan added: “There is some magical thinking going on that lockdowns work perfectly and that unlocking lockdowns will go great. Both are fraught with dangers.”

I’m finding magical thinking quite hard to avoid. I keep thinking stupid things like we’ve waited it out, we’ve diluted it, we’ve spread it so thinly that it won’t get us, etc etc – and then I slap myself up the head. I’ll be thinking the same thing an hour later though.

Remember on Monday Trump shouted that the numbers were coming down all over the country? The hell they are.

At a fraught press briefing on Monday, the president declared: “All throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”

Yet county-specific figures show a surge in infection rates in towns and rural communities in red states such as Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota, according to data tracking by the New York Times.

…

In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and Central City, Kentucky – a predominantly white town of 6,000 people which saw a 650% week-on-week increase. Muhlenberg county, where Central City is located, has voted Republican in every presidential election since 2004, with Trump winning 72% of votes in 2016 – the biggest ever victory for the party.

Yet he failed to protect them from the virus. Sad.

Many of the new emerging hotspots, both rural and urban, are in states where governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders, or are following Trump’s advice to relax lockdown restrictions despite public health warnings about the dangers of doing so too soon.

Fake news?

They’re going after Fauci, because of course they are.

Yesterday, Fauci said during the Senate’s hearing that there are serious consequences if cities or states in the United States reopen too quickly: “There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control,” he said.

Fauci’s warning contradicts the stance of Trump and Republicans who have been gunning for* a swift reopening to save the economy and took Fauci’s statement as a personal attack.

[*not “gunning for” but advocating for – I can’t offhand think of a parallel metaphor for that]

Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, sparred with Fauci during the hearing yesterday when asking the epidemiologist why schools can’t reopen if children are seeing low virus-related death rate.

“As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all,” Paul said. “I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make the decision.”

Rude piece of crap. Of course he’s not, nor does he claim to be. He gets to give the government the best possible medical advice, because that’s his job.

Later, on Fox News, host Tucker Carlson repeated Paul’s criticism of Fauci, saying: “He is not, and no one is, the one person who should be in charge when it comes to making long-term recommendations. This guy, Fauci, may be even more off-base than your average epidemiologist.”

This guy, Tucker Carlson, may be and is an ignorant hack who will say anything, no matter how crazed and mendacious, to prop up Bad Orange Man.

On deck tomorrow:

Rick Bright, former director of a key office in the Department of Health and Human Services, will testify in front of the Senate tomorrow that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and there will be dramatic consequences if the US fails to develop a national coordinated response, reports CNN.

Documents of the prepared testimony indicate that Bright plans to tell Congress that he fears “the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged” without a response “based in science”.

“Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be [the] darkest winter in modern history,” Bright is expected to warn.

Let’s not do that. Can we not do that? I’d rather not do that.

Some people think so:

The sun had not been up for an hour when the president of the United States, in his ninth tweet of the day, said MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough might be a murderer.

His exact words?

“When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”

This isn’t random person making noise on Twitter, this is a head of state, a head of an all-too-powerful nuclear-armed state.

Many of the 18,000 false and misleading claims in our Trump database feature overheated rhetoric. Few of them rise to these vicious heights.

…

Trump first lobbed this conspiratorial charge at Scarborough in November 2017. The president is referring to the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old aide who worked for Scarborough when he was a Republican member of Congress representing Florida’s 1st Congressional District.

The circumstances of Klausutis’s death have spawned conspiracy theories, but authorities never suspected foul play. Her death is not an unsolved mystery or a cold case waiting for answers. Klausutis’s death on July 20, 2001, was ruled accidental and the police concluded there was no reason to further investigate. A police investigator told The Post in 2017 that authorities had left “no stone unturned.”

The Post gives it 4 Pinocchios and wishes it had more to give. The White House has refused to comment.

Henning Schroeder at The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota:

Before the trophy went to Adolf Hitler, German Emperor and King of Prussia Wilhelm II held the award for Most Hated Man on Earth. And while Hitler’s Third Reich has become the ultimate go-to place for much journalistic handwringing about the horrible times we are living in, in reality it feels like we are still stuck in Wilhelm’s Second Reich — it’s Kaiserzeit in America. Donald Trump and the last German Emperor have a lot in common, the vanity, insecurity, the penchant for bombast and persönliches Regiment (personal rule), to name just a few. In Wilhelm’s case the brakes on his impulsive and egotistical personality came off after he fired Bismarck, the experienced chancellor he inherited from his father, and surrounded himself with sycophantic generals and noble toadies who went along with his imperial fantasies and straight into World War I.

We had a little conversation about that exact parallel a couple of days ago at the Miscellany Room, via What a Maroon:

This popped up in my Facebook memories from two years ago. No one even tried to guess who it was referring to. Any guesses here?

“He believed in force, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ in domestic as well as foreign politics… [He] was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics… [His] personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives…, as with asserting his will.”

It was that very Kaiser, child of Queen Victoria’s firstborn Vicky.

I am reminded of those spineless Wilhelmine characters every time I am watching a White House press briefing. It’s not so much the bumbling fool at the microphone who advertises Clorox for healing the nation. That’s to be expected from someone who has been in sales all his life. What’s truly troubling is the backdrop of supposedly educated advisors and cabinet members who gaze at the president nodding their heads like bobble toys every time he opens his mouth. Not much different from Wilhelm’s bootlicking court jesters.

The boot in the face, the brute   
Brute heart of a brute like you.

The Globe and Mail reports:

Organizations across Canada that work to help sexually exploited women and girls say the Liberal government has decided not to renew federal funding they rely on, forcing them to close programs.

Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, said her organization will have to close its federally funded anti-sex-trafficking program. The program operated for five years and served more than 3,000 trafficked, prostituted, sexually exploited and at-risk women and girls.

So Trudeau is pro-trafficking then?

Under the program, women and girls could access their services immediately, Ms. Walker said. They could drop in to the centre when they needed clothing or to be some place warm, and staff members helped them access health facilities and education. The federal funding also helped public awareness initiatives, with members of LAWC visiting schools and teaching students about the tactics of traffickers, such as luring.

Pro-trafficking and anti-providing services for trafficked women and girls. Sweet.

Sex trafficking has not slowed down because of the pandemic, according to Ms. Walker. She said her agency has received six phone calls from parents whose daughters were lured online to “remove their clothes and masturbate.” The girls’ actions were videotaped and posted on the Internet.

“Trafficking will never slow down,” Ms. Walker said.

But funding will always disappear.

Trump & his Goons want the CDC to fix the death count for them.

President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they’re pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government’s response to the pandemic.

The numbers are too big, Trump explains.

Officials inside the CDC, five of whom spoke to The Daily Beast, said they are pushing back against that request, claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate at a time when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of the coronavirus is counted. Scientists and doctors working with the task force, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said the U.S. death-toll count is likely higher than is being reflected in government data sets. And several local officials in hot spot areas said they’ve seen hundreds if not thousands more deaths over the last two months than in the same time period over the last several years. They presume many of those individuals contracted the coronavirus. 

Yebbut the numbers are too big. Make them smaller.

“I don’t worry about this overreporting issue,” Bob Anderson, the chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch in CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told The Daily Beast. Anderson’s team is in charge of aggregating, calculating, and reporting coronavirus deaths for the agency. “We’re almost certainly underestimating the number of deaths [in the country].”

What would he know about it?!! They should have Jared Kushner doing the counting.

The pressure being placed on the CDC is yet another tension point between the agency and the White House that has erupted over its handling of the coronavirus. Those tensions have reached a boiling point over the last several weeks as the CDC has worked to publish its guidelines for states working to reopen their local economies. The guidelines, which provide detailed information about how local officials can begin to allow some residents to attend religious gatherings and summer camps, were contested by White House officials who sought to shelve many of the agency’s recommendations. 

Thank god that during the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen we have White House officials who try to bully and silence the CDC.

Once you start a fight, be sure to keep it going forever, because that will make you look Tough and Resolute and Manly despite the weird goldy combover.

The Guardian explains:

At a briefing in the White House Rose Garden, [ Weijia ] Jiang asked the president why he continues to claim – wrongly, as he did again on Tuesday – that the US is performing better than other countries in terms of testing for coronavirus.

“Why does that matter?” asked the reporter, who was born in China and came to the US at the age of two. “Why is this a global competition when, every day, Americans are still losing their lives?”

It was a pissy question, and she asked it in a pissy voice. A round of applause for the CBS News reporter.

“They’re losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK?”

The president called on another reporter but she paused as Jiang interjected: “Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically?”

And he flounced out of the press briefing.

His comment was condemned as racist by some commentators.

Yes it was.

I hadn’t heard of Orange Man Bad. Apparently it’s a meme about how stupid the libtards are for caring that Trump is bad. A Republican takes issue with that thought.

Amidst this death and destruction the president of the United States has been spending his days pecking around on his iPhone, tweeting that certain cable TV hosts are murderers and dogs and that the husband of his top strategist is a “moonface” loser. Oh, and he claimed—again—that the opposition party and the American media are “The Enemy of the People!”

…

The malignant self-obsession and childish vitriol only scratches the surface of the man’s flaws. His compulsions aren’t hidden or covered up. They are broadcast for the entire country to see, for hours on end, every day, late into the night.

It’s not deniable, so his fans have to embrace it, which is where “Orange Man Bad” comes in.

To these Trump supporters, and cos-play non-supporters, it is only the simpleminded folk who cling to the superstitious belief that a bad man having the most important job in the world is a serious concern. Those of us who are bothered by the insane ravings of a narcissistic imbecile aren’t able to see the big picture.

…

The Orange Man Bad practitioners would argue that they are simply trying to expose the shallowness of Trump’s opposition, the weakness of their argumentation.

To put it another way, pointing out that Trump is bad is too obvious.

Well sure it is, but whose fault is that? His badness is indeed shriekingly obvious, but way too many people voted for him anyway.

[T]he plain fact is that Donald Trump is not just a bad man. He is an avatar for iniquity and immorality and selfishness. He runs the table on the seven deadly sins and demonstrates not a trace of any of the four cardinal virtues. He possesses not a single character trait that you would want your child to fully emulate. He cares about nothing and no one besides himself.

And that’s all we need to know, isn’t it. He literally does care about nothing and no one other than his empty hollow echoing self, we can see him doing it every day, and it’s sickening.

Republican Kentucky senator says uppity black former president should Keep His Mouth Shut.

Last week, remarks by Obama were leaked to Yahoo News that were highly critical about Trump and his administration, seeming to break a convention in US politics that former occupants of the White House rarely criticize their successors.

Does that convention apply to private conversations though? I don’t think so. Obama’s remarks were leaked.

But really that’s beside the point; I wouldn’t think McConnell had more of a case if Obama had made his remarks in an editorial in the Washington Post. Conventions are all very well but Trump is not a normal “occupant of the White House.” It’s not just that he has bad policies, it’s not even just that he has bad policies plus he’s dimwitted and untalented (like Bush and Reagan). It’s a whole lot more than that.

Plus, if we’re talking about conventions, there’s also a convention that the Senate isn’t supposed to ignore a president’s nomination for the Supreme Court on the ludicrous grounds that there will be an election in almost a year. Really though that’s not so much a convention as a constitutional duty.

Asked about Obama “slamming” the administration for its response to the coronavirus outbreak, he said: “I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut.

“You know, we know he doesn’t like much this administration is doing. That’s understandable. But I think it’s a little bit classless frankly to critique an administration that comes after you.”

Ah, classless. Yes. Unlike the deeply classy Trump, who vomits out public insults hundreds of times a day, who brags about grabbing them by the pussy, who bragged about wanting to fuck his own daughter, who has the ugliest tackiest trashiest pseudo-Versailles living room on the planet – that Trump.