What went wrong? No battery in the smoke alarm:

The disastrously tardy, inadequate, confused, and (for many citizens) confusing response of the federal government to covid-19, both before and after the first case, derives from too many factors to list here, but I’ll mention two: failure to appreciate the sars and mers warnings, both delivered by other coronaviruses; and loss of capacity at high government levels, within recent years, to understand the gravity and immediacy of pandemic threats. The result of that loss is what Ali Khan means by lack of imagination. Beth Cameron, a former head of the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense on the National Security Council staff, calls it the absence of “the

Trump decided Lincoln would be a good look on him.

President Trump gave a two-hour interview to Fox News on Sunday night in the Lincoln Memorial. His mix of self-pity and self-congratulation was startling, especially given the backdrop, as more than 67,000 Americans have been killed by an invisible enemy that has yet to be contained and the country plunges deeper into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Yebbut look. Lincoln. Trump is another Lincoln. Right? Sure.

“They always said … nobody got treated worse than [Abraham] Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse,” said Trump, pointing toward the statue of a president who was assassinated days after winning the Civil War. “You know, I believe we’ve done

Thank you for your poetry submission to @NewYorker. We get 1,000s of submissions each day from the president and can only read a small fraction. After careful consideration, we felt that, while full of creative punctuation, this did not suit our editorial needs at this time. https://t.co/nPhSD14FSH

— Joel Stein (@thejoelstein) May 3, 2020

… Read the rest

The historian Eric Foner from a talk at Swarthmore in 2013:

One other point, and this I think is important to anybody here who is studying in a history class, you will have heard about this, not necessarily, but reconstruction is a prime example of what we call the politics of history. I’m not just talking about a historian is a Democrat or a Republican or something like that, I’m talking about the way historical interpretation both reflects and helps to shape the politics of the present, the time that is the historian is writing in.

For many, many years, certainly into the, well past the middle of the 20th century, what we call the old or standard view

The headline:

Female spaces need better protection after trans woman sex assault on girl, say campaigners

The subhead:

Campaigners have called for greater protection of female-only spaces after a trans woman sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet.

How do they know the perp is a trans woman? How do they know the perp is not just a man who claims to be a trans woman so that he can use the women’s toilets for the purpose of assaulting girls? How does anybody know that? How can can anybody ever know that? Given the adamant ideology that a trans woman is anyone who claims to be a trans woman (and that said trans woman is also a … Read the rest

Robert Reich on Trump’s kill them all plan to “re-open the economy”:

Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.

But of course the economy isn’t going to “come roaring back” no matter what Trump does. But never mind that, he’s going to force a re-opening no matter how many people die gasping for breath.

Step 1: make it a choice between the virus and starvation.

Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.

Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting

The dictator dictates:

The White House has blocked Dr Anthony Fauci from testifying to Congress, saying it would be “counterproductive” for the senior member of the White House coronavirus taskforce to talk about the government’s response to the pandemic in a House committee hearing.

“Counterproductive” to whom? What product would Fauci’s testifying be counter to? Why would it be bad for Congress to oversee the Trump administration’s incompetent response to a pandemic that has killed 70 thousand of the country’s people in a few weeks?

On Twitter on Saturday morning, Trump insisted it was safe for the Senate to return to the Capitol.

…

“Likewise the House, which should return but isn’t because of Crazy Nancy P[elosi],” Trump added.

Oh well if you’re going to threaten the employees ok then.

The mayor of an Oklahoma city amended an emergency declaration requiring customers to wear face masks while inside businesses after store employees were threatened with violence.

Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce announced the change Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the declaration took effect.

“In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse,” City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. “In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm.”

So rules that protect public safety are no longer rules that … Read the rest

The Oxford Student Union votes to ban everything.

A motion which mandates the Oxford University Student Union (SU) to condemn the use of “hateful material” in mandatory teaching was passed in Student Council this Thursday.

The motion also resolves to create a new SU Policy, entitled “Protection of Transgender, Non-binary, Disabled, Working-class, and Women* Students from Hatred in University Contexts”.

Note that transgender comes first and women come last (and have an asterisk, which oh what now).

Named the ‘Academic Hate Speech Motion’, the motion sets to establish a new policy on hate speech within the University to include ‘incitement of hatred on the grounds of gender identity, disability, and socio economic status, including to trans, non-binary, disabled,

Trump has opened up a huge jar of stupid today. It’s a good thing he doesn’t have anything important to do, because where would he find the time?

I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well! https://t.co/mIWVeRMnOJ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020

Oh yes that nice Mr Kim who murdered his brother and Otto Warmbier and who knows how many thousands of North Koreans. How lovely that he’s back and well.

The Russia Hoax is the biggest political scandal in American history. Treason!!! Lets see how it ends???? https://t.co/VRsVdiQrsf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020

Border Wall is going up FAST. Over 172 miles already built. 450 miles by early next

It was in the daily briefing for weeks, but he never reads the daily briefing (or anything else), so oh well.

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

But the president has no attention, so his attention can’t be called to things.

For weeks, the PDB —

So I remained curious about Gazi Kodzo who wrote that pair of tweets about Anne Frank the BECKY the KAREN. I found his Twitter is suspended. His Facebook is not. He’s full of revolutionary zeal about all the beckies and karens who raised an eyebrow at his karening of Anne Frank.

Late on April 30:

For all y’all using dead African and Indigenous jews as a way to un-mayo Anne Frank! #2BFrank She is a Karen! Listen to an actual African Indigenous Jew! Our Comrade Yismael Asher Yehauda

The link is to Black Hammer:

#2BFrank Black Hammer is too busy doin the work protecting poor and working class colonized people, organizing against ongoig colonial genocide, to give two

About that “Karen” thing…

Take Anne Frank for instance:

Was Anne Frank a “Karen”?

In since-vanished but much-screenshotted (and still search-appearing) tweets, Gazi Kodzo, someone evidently of YouTube activist fame/notoriety, pointed an emoji middle finger at… Anne Frank?

As one does.

A BECKY as well as a KAREN.

To be sure, there is plenty of room to point out that we’re better at shock-horror at genocides Over There than at genocides Right Here. That probably applies to humans in general as well as USians in particular. But it’s surprisingly easy to talk about that without calling Anne Frank either a Becky or a Karen, and by the same token it’s easy to talk about it without calling anyone a … Read the rest

Uh oh, it turns out that lockdown presents problems for trans people. Why did no one think of this?? Why did no one put a stop to the whole thing?! All these selfish privileged exclusionaryist people for whom lockdown is such a massive party, what were we thinking?

International transgender rights groups are warning [that] global coronavirus lockdown restrictions have led to trans people being denied healthcare. Many have had surgeries delayed, and some are struggling to access hormone therapy and counselling services.

But is that healthcare? Are the surgeries in question health-preserving? Is hormone “therapy” meant to make men resemble women and women resemble men really therapy?

And, even if you think they are, are they urgent? Are … Read the rest

It’s a long thread so I’ll just quote the rest.

It was reported and got me a 12-hour ban from Twitter. I was forced to delete the tweet. Thing is, the people who espouse trans-activist rhetoric are, mostly, people interested in global betterment and social justice. They’re good people, aren’t they? I started thinking. Why do good people believe bad ideas? And from that base, why do ALL people believe bad ideas. And then, why do good people ENFORCE bad ideas? The answer, I think, is that they are not given any choice. There is no discourse, there is only what is permissible and what is not.

There is some choice here though. There is more than there was … Read the rest

A Twitter troll is the PR honcho for the Trump DHHS.

The top spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly directed crude and sexist comments toward women in now-deleted tweets, a CNN KFile review finds.

Michael Caputo, who just started at the department in April, called several women on Twitter “dogface” and made crude insinuations and sexist comments aimed at former FBI attorney Lisa Page prior to joining HHS.

He deleted them but the archive has them.

Caputo called Page a “jezebel,” and a “notorious homewrecker.” He tweeted a picture of Page writing, “sedition is nearly as fun as someone else’s husband.” Caputo said he believed “woke women of the #Resistance” supported Page

The Guardian Live reports:

The executive director of the World Health Organization reiterated that the group believes coronavirus came about naturally, despite Trump’s dubious claims that he has seen evidence it was created in a Chinese government lab.

“Dubious claims” is too polite. “Stupid reckless lies” is closer, but doesn’t capture all that’s wrong with his habit of making shit up and throwing it at people who irritate him.

Just yesterday, Trump claimed he had seen evidence that coronavirus was made in a lab in China’s Wuhan region, which saw the first outbreak of the virus. Asked what evidence he had seen, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

More lies.

The

That “patriot” riot in Lansing yesterday…

A sign currently on the lawn: pic.twitter.com/sPqeCfVUQ0

— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) April 30, 2020

… Read the rest