Yes, he really did say it. Here he is saying it.

CNN has more:

President Donald Trump is hoping for a “miracle” that will make the coronavirus disappear but tanking stock markets and signs the disease is stalking America are delivering their verdict on his scattershot management of the crisis.

…

“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump said at the White House Thursday as the virus marched across Asia and Europe after US officials said the US should brace for severe disruption to everyday life.

The President also warned that things could “get worse before it gets better,” but he added it could “maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.”

Yes but just “seeing what happens” is not going to cut it. There are things people have to do – like wearing protective gear around infected people. Miracle-awaiting passivity is not our only or best option.

There are also signs that the White House is more concerned with its political plight than the burgeoning crisis.

An order for public health officials to clear all television appearances with the White House meanwhile raised the question of whether Trump will prioritize science as the threat from coronavirus rises or his own political standing.

That right there? That’s the wrong kind of action. Preventing public health officials from informing us is not the way to go. Error, error, return to starting position.

As television news channels devoted wall-to-wall coverage to the coronavirus, government public health officials were nowhere to be seen. Sources told CNN that all media appearances have to now be cleared with Pence’s office. The move could deprive Americans of sober, science-based advice from some of the best public health experts in the world.

Could? Almost certainly will, unless someone reverses the order.

CNN has reported that Trump has been angered that government health experts have contradicted his attempts to downplay the threat from the virus by saying it is all but “inevitable” the US will be affected and there will be severe disruption.

The revelation will do little to quell suspicions that Trump is trying to suppress damaging information to pacify the markets and protect himself politically and gets to the fundamental issue of the administration’s squandering of public trust. His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday that potential disruptions to everyday life, such as school closures and impacts on public transportation, are likely. But his advice to people worried about the market reaction to the outbreak was to “tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket, don’t do anything, just stick your head in the sand for 24 hours – on the 25th hour everything will be fine again!

None of this inspires confidence.

The briefing, led by CDC Director Robert Redfield and NIH infectious disease specialist Tony Fauci, was called to update members [of Congress] on the state of the coronavirus’ spread.

Redfield stressed that the risk to Americans remained low. But Fauci was more blunt, according to one person in the room, telling lawmakers that they need to accept there will be many more cases in the United States.

Fauci said the coronavirus is “unlikely to disappear” any time in the near future, according to the person. The remarks contradicted Trump’s declaration Thursday night that the disease was “going to disappear” one day “like a miracle.”

Siiiiigh.

Fauci also emphatically denied reports that the White House is preventing him from speaking publicly about the virus. Vice President Mike Pence’s office had asked him to delay pre-scheduled television hits and seek renewed clearance to do the appearances in the wake of Pence’s appointment as response leader, he said.

How is that not preventing him from speaking publicly about the virus? Looks oddly like it to me.

Asked about an HHS whistleblower complaint alleging the department dispatched unprotected workers to aid coronavirus evacuees from China, the officials did not directly contradict the allegations, lawmakers said. But they insisted that they believed everyone was properly trained and protocols were followed.

That is really not the issue. Nobody cares what they “believed.” The issue is what they did, and didn’t do.

Robert Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, emphasized that no response workers had gotten sick while receiving the evacuees. But Rep. Mark Takano (D-Wash.), who represents a district where one of the Air Force bases that received evacuees, said he found the administration’s response lacking.

Fucking hell, not getting the disease does not mean you’re not contagious! This is the problem with putting Trump’s caddies and burger-fetchers in charge of things like the national health.

We’re doomed.

Sister Outrider is not submitting.

And Oger is still gloating and bragging and lying about it today.

What laws? What law is there that makes “transphobia” a crime? How can there be any such law when “transphobia” is so broadly defined (or more like undefined)? How can there be a law saying we must not say that men are not women? Oger considers it “transphobia” to see him as the smug entitled bullying man he is, but less ideologically warped people do not.

Oger is all too obviously getting a sick twisted thrill from forcing women, especially women who have been raped and women who provide services for them, to agree with him that he is a woman. He’s failing to force us all though, so nyah.

That’s sad. It’s a program for women, but the women in the program had to put up with Morgane Oger inserting himself (yes) into the meeting.

Late last night –

Why is he talking about himself in the third person? Why did he put his own name in quotation marks? Who knows. The important thing is, everything is all about him.

The WHO has other priorities.

The coronavirus outbreak has reached a “decisive point” and has “pandemic potential”, World Health Organization head Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus says.

…

For a second day, more cases have been reported outside than inside China.

Iran and Italy have become major centres of infection, with people travelling from there spreading the virus further afield.

Yes but how will all this affect Trump? That’s all that matters.

So Pence’s press secretary is filtering what we get to learn from the government about this potential pandemic. They’ll be sending it to Fox News for approval next.

Oh, man, here we go. The Trump gang is getting it wrong already. Very very wrong.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.

The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.

The whistleblower is seeking federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She was told Feb. 19 that if she does not accept the new position in 15 days, which is March 5, she would be terminated.

In other words as with everything the Trump gang does, they’re doing it wrong and trying to silence people who warn us – and this time it’s a potential pandemic they’re getting wrong.

The complaint alleges HHS staff were “improperly deployed” and were “not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency situation.” The complaint also alleges the workers were potentially exposed to coronavirus because appropriate steps were not taken to protect them and staffers were not trained in wearing personal protective equipment, even though they had face-to-face contact with returning passengers. The workers were in contact with passengers in an airplane hangar where evacuees were received and on two other occasions: when they helped distribute keys for room assignments and hand out colored ribbons for identification purposes.

In some instances, the teams were working alongside personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in “full gown, gloves and hazmat attire,” the complaint said.

What did they think the CDC people were doing that for? A joke?

The whistleblower, in her complaint, states that “appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor, or test [the workers] during their deployment and upon their return home.” The repatriated Americans were among those evacuated from Wuhan and quarantined on military bases in California and Texas because they were considered at high risk for contracting the flu-like illness.

About 14 personnel from the Administration for Children and Families, or ACF, were sent to March Air Force base in Riverside County, Calif., and another team of about 13 ACF personnel were sent to Travis Air Force in Solano County, Calif., according to the complaint and the whistleblower’s lawyer, Ari Wilkenfeld.

Oh gee guess what – guess who else is in Solano County.

In Solano County this week, the first U.S. patient was confirmed to be infected with coronavirus who did not travel to a region where it is spreading or have known contact with someone diagnosed with the disease.

That’s who! The one who was in the news because of the mystery around how the infection happened. It’s a mystery no more.

After their deployments, the workers returned to their normal duties, some taking commercial airline flights to return to their offices around the country, the lawyers said.

So bang, there goes any chance of not spreading it here. Over.

Democracy Now has a brief but terrible report:

In Mexico, a radio broadcaster was shot to death Tuesday afternoon outside her home in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She was known as Bárbara Greco on air. The 37-year-old had recently spoken out on violence against women and children in Mexico in response to the recent killing of a 7-year-old girl in Mexico City. Her friends and colleagues reported that her real name was Teresa Aracely Alcocer. Last December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Mexico had suffered the second-highest number of journalist killings in 2019, after Syria.

The punishment for speaking out on violence against women and children is…death by violence.

The loathsome Morgane Oger is gloating about Vancouver’s withdrawal of education funding for Vancouver Rape Relief, because VRR is an all-women organization.

A “purity test” he calls it. A man who pretends to be a woman calls a women’s organization for women who have been raped “a supremacist organization with a purity test on womanhood”…because it doesn’t agree with him that he is a woman. It’s as if Michael Bloomberg were a trans poor person and accused people who don’t agree that he’s a poor person “supremacists” conducting “purity tests.” Women are women, only women are women, men are not women, men are men – none of that is purity, it’s just humdrum daily reality, that doesn’t magically become something else just because we tell it too.

“Standing strong”=defunding part of VRR’s work.

It’s not VRR who should be embarrassed.

The organization does “recognize female persons to be female”; it doesn’t recognize male people as female, nor should it.

The male entitlement rises off Oger like steam.

Last summer Twitter permabanned Roger Dubar of Satiria. Of course it did.

A brand-new ideological view of “gender identity” has appeared, never before seen in history. It holds that the only difference between men and women is self-declared “gender identity”. It insists, regardless of their biological sex, that gender non-conforming people are the gender they say they are. It also insists that it is hate speech to even suggest that no one ever believed these ideas before.

…

Biological sex has real-world implications, in medicine, women’s sports, women’s prisons, statistical reporting, criminology, sexual attraction and in many other areas. Sex remains a protected characteristic in human rights law, despite the best efforts of some trans rights activists to change that. Expanding the definition of “women” to include men makes the word meaningless. Ironically, trans activists claiming that sex reduces womanhood to a matter of “biology” instead want to make being a woman nothing more than a personal belief.

If it were nothing more than a personal belief we would be able to declare ourselves men and see sexism vanish overnight.

I became interested in all this a few years back when I was describing in a Facebook thread my own experiences growing up as gender non-conforming . A trans teenager told me to go and kill myself and said they could not wait until all the “TERFs” were dead.

This level of deranged hatred from purported progressives, together with episodes like ambivalence on the Left to the murder of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (who, apparently, had it coming) led me to start the satirical account Satiria as a creative outlet.

Naturally Twitter isn’t going to put up with that sort of thing.

What we need is more shouty honest tell it like it is guys, right?*

Bernie Sanders’s performance in the last debate before Super Tuesday was a bellowing, boorish mess. The Vermont senator’s signature response when challenged was to pump up the volume, as though persuasiveness were measured in decibels. It was particularly excruciating to watch Pete Buttigieg attempt to inject some facts and reason into the proceedings, only to be interrupted again and again by Sanders’s shouting.

When I expressed dismay to a Democratic friend, he assured me it was just “Bernie being Bernie.” At least Sanders, the argument goes, speaks his mind. He is not scripted. He is true to himself. He may not play by the normal political rules, but he is the kind of outsider who will shake up the establishment.

That Democratic friend needs to watch some videos of Trump being Trump, speaking his mind, not being scripted, being true to himself, not playing by the normal political rules, being an outsider, shaking up the establishment – so that he can remember what a disaster that crap is.

[B]oth men have benefited from a certain definition of political authenticity that allows them — no, encourages them — to be unpleasant, ill-mannered loudmouths. The identification of authenticity with incivility and spontaneity is one of my pet peeves. And now my pet peeve has blossomed into a crisis of democratic values.

It’s one of my pet peeves too (mind you, it’s one of approximately 50 thousand), and you know what else? It’s only men who can convince people this makes sense; women are not allowed to come across as blunt but honest, rude but spontaneous, loud but energetic.

It is worth noting, first, that speaking your mind without filters is not a sign of political authenticity; it usually indicates a basic lack of respect for others. In almost any human interaction other than politics, Sanders’s outbursts on the debate stage would be taken as a sign of general jerkness. For Trump, such gracelessness is a lifestyle. Filtering out the worst of ourselves — demeaning language, crude insults, pushy interruptions — does not hide who we really are. It shows the kind of human beings we want to be.

And more important than that, it avoids causing pain and shame to other people. Demeaning language and crude insults are bad because they wound their targets (and because they encourage other people to do the same thing). First do no harm kind of thing. The demeaning language and crude insults are bad because they wound their targets, and we should want to be the kind of human beings who recoil from doing that.

There is a type of communication that seeks to change minds or clarify important differences. And there is a type of communication intended to establish dominance. The former is essential to self-government. The latter is more appropriate to professional wrestling matches and Trump campaign rallies (but I repeat myself).

…

Second, being unscripted in politics is not a reliable sign of authenticity. It generally comes from the arrogant and lazy belief that anything that pops in your head is worthy of public utterance. Authentic beliefs in politics emerge from reflection and craft. Ideas and policies are refined through the careful choice of arguments and words.

That belief that anything that pops into your head is worthy of public utterance is way up on my list of pet peeves, and makes me allergic to people who babble incessantly the way Trump does.

In the upside-down world of American politics, Sanders and Trump are given credit by their followers for vices that corrupt democracy. Meanwhile, grace, careful rhetoric, learning and governing skill have few practitioners and few defenders.

Well…Obama did get elected, twice. But then so did Bush.

*Editing to add: I have no idea how shouty Sanders actually was and how he compared to anyone else, I was just interested in the point about authenticity and shoutyness.

There’s something hilarious (however depressing) about people announcing some stale wrong pejorative stereotype as if they’d discovered it themselves from their own personal experience and detached observation.

Aw how sweet – the old he thinks/she feels insult, offered with shy sincerity as if no one had ever said it before.

He’s the brains she’s the feefees. Never heard that before.

Is Pence a good choice to lead the US response to the new virus?

“Mike is not a czar,” Trump said. “I don’t view Mike as a czar.”

Pence is not a public health expert, either. Instead, as governor of Indiana, he slashed public health spending and delayed the introduction of needle exchanges, which led to the state’s worst outbreak of HIV.

So he’s not just not a good choice, he’s a specifically bad choice, one with a record of fucking up government response to a contagious disease. Swell.

Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who conducted the research linking the Indiana HIV outbreak to Pence’s policies, tweeted that the decision “speaks to a lack of seriousness by the White House.”

And a lack of competence, and a lack of giving a damn.

Pence also has a history of downplaying the link between smoking and lung cancer, writing in a 2000 op-ed that “despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.”

How is it that he’s not earning a huge salary working for Big Tobacco?

Gotta watch out for that overreach stuff. It can get in your clothes and your pipes and your engines and just mess everything up. Like making lynching a federal crime – that would be a terrible reckless thing to do.

Historic legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime passed the House by near-unanimous consent Wednesday—with four representatives opposing it.

Not because they like lynching – no no. Because they don’t like federal overreach.

Three Republicans voted against the measure: GOP members Ted Yoho of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The chamber’s lone Independent, Justin Amash of Michigan—who famously switched from Republican to Independent over his support for impeaching President Donald Trump—also voted no.

It passed 410 to 4 though.

Although Yoho said he’ll continue to condemn the “horrific act of lynching” and advocate for perpetrators to receive the “harshest penalty under the law,” the retiring congressman also felt the text took away too much power from states and was redundant.

Power to do what? Say that this particular lynching wasn’t a hate crime but a temper tantrum or mistaken identity or purely financially motivated?

“This bill today is an overreach of the federal government and encroaches on the principles of federalism,” the retiring lawmaker told Newsweek in a statement. “Hate crimes fall under the jurisdiction of states, which has led to 46 states producing various hate crime statutes. In my home state of Florida, these crimes are already under state government jurisdiction and are punishable up to death.”

But why not have the whole country on the record? Who is threatened by that?

Soutik Biswas at the BBC on why the Delhi violence has echoes of the Gujarat riots:

What began as small clashes between supporters and opponents of a controversial citizenship law quickly escalated into full-blown religious riots between Hindus and Muslims, in congested working class neighbourhoods on the fringes of the sprawling capital.

Armed Hindu mobs rioted with impunity as the police appeared to look the other way. Mosques and homes and shops of Muslims were attacked, sometimes allegedly with the police in tow. Journalists covering the violence were stopped by the Hindu rioters and asked about their religion. Videos and pictures emerged of the mob forcing wounded Muslim men to recite the national anthem, and mercilessly beating up a young Muslim man. Panicky Muslims began leaving mixed neighbourhoods.

On the other side, Muslim rioters have also been violent – some of them also armed – and a number of Hindus, including security personnel, are among the dead and injured.

It took three days for Modi to appeal for peace.

Not surprisingly, the ethnic violence in Delhi has drawn comparisons with two of India’s worst sectarian riots in living memory. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in anti-Sikh riots in the capital in 1984 after the then prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. And in 2002, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died after a train fire killed 60 Hindu pilgrims in Gujarat – Mr Modi was then the chief minister of the state.

Not a coincidence.

More Trump trying to pull intelligent sentences out of his empty head:

Asked if he was worried about the spread of novel coronavirus in the United States, President Trump said, “No, because we’re ready for it.”

No we’re not.

“It is what it is. We’re ready for it. We’re really prepared,” the President continued. “We have, as I said, we have the greatest people in the world. We’re very ready for it. We hope it doesn’t spread. There’s a chance that it won’t spread, too. And there’s a chance that it will.”

Ah. There’s a chance that it won’t spread, and a chance that it will. What a relief to know that someone is in charge!

“It’s just a question of at what level. So far, we’ve done a great job. When you have 15 people — with this whole world coming into the United States — and the 15 people are either better or close to being better, that’s pretty good.”

And the situation is going to freeze at this stage, so everything is fabulous and we can all go hunt for the hidden ice cream.

Trump said some words to the cameras, in the hopes that everyone would hear the words and feel safe.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the US government response to the novel coronavirus, amid growing criticism of the White House’s handling of the outbreak.

At a wide-ranging White House news conference, the President defended the White House’s response, stressing the administration’s ongoing efforts and resources devoted to combat the virus.

What efforts? What resources?

“Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low,” Trump said.

All what they’ve done?

Trump has been publicly downplaying the novel coronavirus’ effects, because he thinks doing otherwise could cause further panic in the markets — and he’s been frustrated with officials issuing warnings about the unknowns of the virus’s spread. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is one aide who encouraged Trump to downplay the latest developments, at least publicly, one person says.

Yes that’s definitely reassuring, to hear that he’s more worried about the markets than about a pandemic.

The appointment of Pence came after the White House denied it was considering appointing a czar to oversee the administration’s response outbreak.

Trump said Pence would not be a “czar,” but stressed the vice president will be coordinating the efforts.

Well we know he won’t be a literal czar. We’re not stupid. To be a czar you have to be Russian, and named Romanov. We weren’t born yesterday you know.

“Mike will be working with the professionals, doctors and everybody else that is working. The team is brilliant. I spent a lot of time with the team the last couple weeks,” the President said. “But they are brilliant and we’re doing really well and Mike is going to be in charge and Mike will report back to me. But he has a certain talent for this.”

That’s the speech of a child who hasn’t done the homework. That’s someone saying filler-words because he has no idea what else to say. Professionals, doctors, working, brilliant, really well, talent. It means absolutely nothing. He could be talking about 3 people in a sub-basement eating pork rinds and playing poker for all we know. Trump has no clue about any of it.