If the numbers are bad, here’s what you do: lie about the numbers.

Top Trump officials, huddled in the White House, itself the subject of a coronavirus outbreak, have according to reports begun questioning the number of deaths – and the president is among the skeptics.

He has a lot of practice being a “skeptic” about numbers. When he’s selling a thing, the value goes way up. When he’s reporting that thing to the tax people, the value goes way down. It’s magic.

One common claim is that hospitals receive more money from Medicare if they are treating a patient with the coronavirus compared with other illnesses, and so are inflating their numbers. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota state senator

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More from le jardin des roses:

TRUMP: "I want to make one thing clear. It's very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back." pic.twitter.com/k4CTpyLOy3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

“We’ll fight through it,” he says repeatedly, in his dopy clogged voice. Send me in, coach! We coulda beena contenda. Fight fight fight!

Trump is still out here claiming that the coronavirus will go away on its own pic.twitter.com/8bbFtQJBH6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

“Wheya hadda problem come in, iddl go away, it may flare up, it may not flare up, wll hafta see wut happens but if it does flare up wir gunna pudout the fire, and we’ll pudit out quickly and efficiently, we’ve learned a … Read the rest

Trump is in the Rose Garden right now, taking his idiocy out for an airing.

Trump claims “if we didn’t do any [coronavirus] testing, we would have very few cases.” That's not how reality works. https://t.co/7Xv70M5XuW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2020

He can mean “we wouldn’t have the stats” – which would suit him just fine. He’d love it if we had no clue how bad the pandemic is.

Of course he may also think that not having the stats is the same thing as not having the cases.

https://twitter.com/grahamlampa/status/1261332209316827136

No stats no cases! It would make a nice sign for the MAGAs to carry.

Birx and Fauci have masks on. Trump, Esper, and Azar do not. pic.twitter.com/S3vjUu5L0h

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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

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Hold the phone – women can get periods!

Who knew?

'Trans guys can experience periods and non-binary people can as well' #WednesdayWisdom

➡️ Watch more: https://t.co/99lCfYYRDS pic.twitter.com/8UGMBZ86sB

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) May 13, 2020

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.… Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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.

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“If I were a Democrat instead of a

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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.”

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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.

"We're in deep shit" — Bright talks about a moment from this winter when he realized the US government was unprepared for the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/gT5hCPXmZ6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2020

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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.

Protesters gather outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan. Photograph: Tom Perkins/Tom Perkins for the Guardian

It’s very banality of evil though, isn’t it. Geezers in chunky white trainers and rain jackets – they … Read the rest

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

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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

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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”.

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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.

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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

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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

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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 … Read the rest

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.

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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

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And in good news that makes up for everything, in Costa Rica they've discovered a frog that looks more like Kermit than any other frog. pic.twitter.com/c1LlIbKxjO

— Conrad Brunstrom (@conbrunstrom) May 12, 2020

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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

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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

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