We can read the whole thing.
Here is Dr. Rick Bright's full statement, just emailed out by the law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks which will be representing him as he files a whistleblower complaint.
(First reported by @maggieNYT) pic.twitter.com/oQ3j9Z17SK— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) April 22, 2020
Reporters had better grill Trump hard at today’s government-funded campaign rally.… Read the rest
How to deal with a pandemic if you’re Donald Trump:
The director of the office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine says he was abruptly dismissed from his post in part because he resisted efforts to widen the availability of a coronavirus treatment pushed by President Donald Trump.
Dr. Rick Bright had led BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, since 2016 until Tuesday, when was reassigned to a narrower position.
Brilliant. Let one festering shit’s vanity and spite decide who leads vaccine development at the height of an emergency in which the vaccine will save thousands of lives. What do people’s lives matter in comparison to Donald Trump’s ego?
… Read the restHe also announced he will file
For such a rich country we sure do a wretched job of making sure everyone is ok. Some economists notice.
In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, turning up for work due to a lack of sick pay, and dying because of health inequalities.
The Nobel prize-winning economist said: “The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.”
That’s because there isn’t one. We’re all about making rich people ever richer, while ensuring poor people stay poor, and that in emergencies they die. … Read the rest
I wish NPR would not clean up Trump’s blurts to make them sound less deranged. That’s not their job.
NPR:
President Trump says the U.S. Navy should fire on Iranian boats if they continue to harass U.S. warships in the Gulf, a move that raises the prospect of open hostilities between the two rivals.
What Trump actually said:
I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2020
He didn’t say “the Navy should,” he said he has instructed the Navy to. He didn’t say “fire on,” he said “shoot down and destroy.” He didn’t say “on … Read the rest
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more deadly because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”
CNN reported what Redfield said. The tyrant wasn’t … Read the rest
A woman protesting Tennessee’s COVID-19 lockdown this week carried a startling sign that recommended sacrificing “weak” people to reopen the state’s economy.
Local news station News Channel 9 has captured a photo of the sign, which read, “Sacrifice the weak — reopen TN [Tennessee].”
It was a small protest, with “dozens” of people.
The station also reports that many of the people at the rally were not practicing social distancing and were not wearing protective face masks, as has been recommended by public health officials as a way to slow down the spread of the disease.
So I guess they’re sacrificing themselves. Maybe that’s what the sign meant?
… Read the rest"Sacrifice the Weak" – imagine not
Oh and by the way – also famine.
The world is at risk of widespread famines “of biblical proportions” caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN has warned.
David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said urgent action was needed to avoid a catastrophe.
A report estimates that the number suffering from hunger could go from 135 million to more than 250 million.
Those most at risk are in 10 countries affected by conflict, economic crisis and climate change, the WFP says.
The fourth annual Global Report on Food Crises highlights Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti.
The East African countries are already faced with the … Read the rest
More than 1,500 people in the US died from the coronavirus on Monday, bringing America’s death toll to nearly 43,000, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at President Donald Trump’s tweets Tuesday morning.
In a string of posts that began a bit after 6 am Eastern time, Trump lambasted MSNBC in particular, and the “Lamestream Media” in general, ghoulishly bragged about his “great ‘ratings’” during daily press briefings ostensibly about a pandemic, fudged polling numbers to inflate his popularity, and promised to bail out the US energy industry. To close out the morning, he retweeted posts from someone with the handle @SexCounseling.
It’s interesting that he doesn’t … Read the rest
The Justice Department will consider taking legal action against governors who continue to impose stringent rules for dealing with the coronavirus that infringe on constitutional rights once the crisis subsides in their states, Attorney General William Barr said.
…
“We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that’s reasonably safe,” Barr said. “To the extent that governors don’t and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce — our common market that we have here — then we’ll have to address that.”
…
Trump tweeted over the weekend that his supporters should “liberate” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia — three states with Democratic governors and strict stay-at-home orders.
And now here’s Barr … Read the rest
There’s a pandemic raging, and what is the president of the US thinking about? Himself. Himself, his glory, his fame, his awesomeitude, his adoring fans who adore him.
Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as “nuts” as people are saying. He’s worse. Such hatred and contempt! I used to do his show all the time before the 2016 election, then cut him off. Wasn’t worth the effort, his mind is shot!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2020
Such hatred and contempt, shouts Donald Trump, who spits hatred and contempt at everyone who doesn’t grovel to him, including the person he just called Morning Psycho. His mind … Read the rest
Neither rain nor sleet nor a pandemic stays these tweeters from their venomous attacks on insubordinate women.
Women who support #LGBTQ rights can often feel bullied by all the transphobic pile ons from the sinister @AllianceLGB (whoever they are). Here’s one of many messages I’ve had. tonight. Name withheld out of fear of intimidation. pic.twitter.com/pNBXY0Xovq
— JOHN NICOLSON M.P. (@MrJohnNicolson) April 21, 2020
He doesn’t know who they are, yet he knows they are sinister. How does that work?
Note that he’s not just an MP, he’s also a journalist. Is that how journalists operate? Call people sinister and then say you don’t know who they are?
Also “fear of intimidation” forsooth – what about the intimidation of an MP … Read the rest
Charles Blow says stop running the press briefings.
Around this time four years ago, the media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks what is known as “earned media” coverage of political candidates. Earned media is free media.
The firm computed that Donald Trump had “earned” a whopping $2 billion of coverage, dwarfing the value earned by all other candidates, Republican and Democrat, even as he had only purchased about $10 million of paid advertising.
How does he do it? By being so grotesque we can’t ignore him. He’s “newsworthy” in that sense…so, he gets free advertising that less grotesque candidates don’t get. I think there’s a bit of a downside to this.… Read the rest
This is Trump’s unfathomable narcissism captured in 48 seconds – in fact not even the full 48, he says it in the first 25. It’s not that we hear about ventilators a lot because people die without them, it’s not that we hear about testing a lot because without it we don’t know if the curve is flattening or rising; none of this is about the pandemic and survival and mass casualties, it’s all about unfairly criticizing Trump for not being able to find his own ass in a brightly lit prison cell.
… Read the restTrump suggests that demands for more testing, just like requests for ventilators, are part of a political conspiracy meant to take him down — not necessary measures
George Packer also says the US is a failed state. (“Also” because I say that too…though not every ten minutes, as I would like to.)
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
Not all Americans, it didn’t. Trump’s reign of terror has done wonders in that direction. A country that can elect a Donald … Read the rest
Ok that’s enough of this pesky social distancing shit, time to get back to the gym!
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that certain businesses in the state would be able to reopen this week in a “small step forward” out of the social distancing measures meant to mitigate the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Kemp, a Republican, said specifically that fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, hair and nail salons, and massage therapy businesses can reopen as early Friday, April 24.
Because gyms and bowling and hair/nail salons are such vital industries.
Notably, no local ordinance can restrict the openings, which will be implemented statewide.
Goodness, yes, that is notable. It means those pesky big-city liberals in Atlanta can’t … Read the rest
In case you’re keeping track of the pattern of men calling women various words suggesting infestation/contamination – here’s one from NZ:
TWO BINS ONE FOR TERFS AND ONE FOR THE OTHER VIRUS
— Morgan Godfery (@MorganGodfery) March 22, 2020
Men have been starved for the joy of calling women germs, viruses, insects, plagues, for decades, so naturally they greeted the advent of Trans Activism with sobs of joy and relief. At last at last it’s ok again to call women garbage and a virus in one sentence.… Read the rest
Someone tell Ivanka that real princesses don’t sit at home making shadow puppets https://t.co/KvwXPl3xYm
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) April 20, 2020
I’m impressed by that. She’s not dropping in to play Lady Benevolent and then go away again, she’s doing scut work with no trace of glamour to it.
Princess Ivanka? Not so much.… Read the rest
Originally a comment by Rob on A table.
There is ample evidence (and in some quarters acknowledgement) that the US is undercounting deaths in retirement homes, amongst the homeless and especially just deaths at home. NYC acknowledged they simply stopped counting those because they were not testing bodies, yet the home death rate went from around 25 per day to 250 per day. Do the maths on that one.
So far NZ has had 12 fatalities. One at home, 10 in hospital of which I think 9 were associated with rest home clusters (7 from a dementia care facility in my city), which just shows how awful the disease is when it hits such places.
We have been very … Read the rest
The “protests” are being orchestrated.
Conservative activists are demanding governors lift orders designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the recommendations of public health officials. Trump, who has clashed with Democratic governors over how soon to reopen the US economy, tweeted his support on Friday, in an unprecedented endorsement of civil disobedience by a sitting president.
Civil disobedience and violence. Unprecedented indeed.
… Read the restYet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama
What governors have to do to keep the president from stealing supplies they need to deal with a pandemic:
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker organized secret flights bringing millions of masks and gloves to the state from China on charter jets in an effort to bypass potential Trump administration efforts to seize the products, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Trump not only doesn’t help governors (Democratic governors at least) get needed PPE, he actually steals it from them after they’ve procured it.
… Read the restThe Sun-Times cited a source familiar with the purchases, who said the details were kept secret “because we’ve heard reports of Trump trying to take PPE in China and when it gets to the United States.”
…
“The supply
