What’s the problem.

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258493374623109128 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258494242156097543 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258495369161441283 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1258504108270551040

We’re toast.… Read the rest

And now filthy Barr’s filthy Justice Department has dropped the charges against filthy Michael Flynn, who confessed to them twice.

Breaking News: The Justice Department is dropping charges against the former Trump aide Michael Flynn, a stark reversal for a defendant who has pleaded guilty twice.https://t.co/0rGTWklHnN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2020

Drop It Now is the new Lock Her Up.

Joining @msnbc now to talk about this outrageous decision by the Justice Department.

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) May 7, 2020

Justice Department drops Flynn case, arguing that the interview in which by his own admission he lied should never have been conducted in the first place. The decision comes after enormous pressure from Trump to

… Read the rest

It’s almost as if they can’t make their case without lying and failing to define terms. Meredith Farkas at American Libraries Magazine:

In February, the controversial Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) booked a room at Seattle Public Library (SPL) for a public event. WoLF denies the existence of transgender individuals and portrays trans women as dangers to cis women.

One: anything can be called “controversial.” Farkas’s article is “controversial.” Feminism is “controversial.” Libraries are “controversial.” Two, WoLF does not “deny the existence of transgender individuals.” It denies that trans people can literally change their sex. Three, trans women are men, so of course they are potentially dangers to women. Four, there is no such thing as “cis” women, there are … Read the rest

Bloomberg April 28:

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that compels slaughterhouses to remain open, setting up a showdown between the giant companies that produce America’s meat and the unions and activists who want to protect workers in a pandemic.

Which is more important – the continued ability to eat far more meat than is either necessary or healthy, or the survival of people who work in meatpacking plants? Tough question, isn’t it.

Using the Defense Production Act, Trump is ordering plants to stay open as part of the critical infrastructure needed to keep people fed amid growing supply disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak. The government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance.

The government … Read the rest

NBC has a slightly different account of what Trump & goons did about the CDC report on re-opening: NBC says they sent it back to the CDC requesting revisions, as opposed to shelving it. Maybe different unnamed officials are telling different reporters different things.

The White House sent back guidelines it received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month on how businesses, schools and other organizations should reopen with a request for revisions, two administration officials said. The White House coronavirus task force, which is headed by Vice President Mike Pence, viewed the CDC’s advice as overly restrictive and in some cases thought it undercut the White House’s three-phase guidelines for opening up the country, released

… Read the rest

Meanwhile Trump’s concern for everyone else’s health and safety continues to not exist. AP reports:

The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.

Nah, they said. Too much trouble, they said. Too protecty. We want to get all those proles back to work now, not baby them and pamper them and wrap them in cotton.

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and

… Read the rest

Oops.

One of President Donald Trump’s personal valets, who works in the West Wing serving the president his meals among other duties, has tested positive for coronavirus, the closest the virus is known to have come to the president, said a White House official.

But Trump has since tested negative, Hogan Gidley hastens to assure us.

The White House did not say when the person developed symptoms or when the president was last exposed to the individual, who[m] Gidley described as a military official. It can sometimes take several days for the virus to appear on a test once a person has been infected.

…

“This guy is close” to the president throughout the day in terms of

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Oh of course they are. Trump and his goons are “questioning” the stats. Naturally.

President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.

It’s actually about 30 deaths total, and a few hundred cases. Way less than the flu, and less than falling off the barn while taking a selfie.

A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.

In other words someone in Trump’s gang expects … Read the rest

No disgruntled people allowed.

Trump said Dr Rick Bright, the vaccine expert who has said he was demoted for refusing to promote hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment, is a “disgruntled guy.”

“I never met him, I know nothing about him, but he’s a disgruntled guy,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.

If he never met him how can he know he’s a disgruntled guy?

“I never met him, I know nothing about him, but he’s a disgruntled guy,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “And I don’t think disgruntled people should be working for a certain administration.”

But everyone who works for Trump is disgruntled. They’re all disgruntled at Democrats, uppity women, uppity … Read the rest

It’s a tough job but other people have to do it.

President Donald Trump fixed his course on reopening the nation for business, acknowledging that the move would cause more illness and death from the pandemic but insisting it’s a cost he’s willing to pay to get the economy back on track.

Because he’s confident that he won’t be the one paying it. (He has no reason to be confident of that, especially given the way he keeps gathering people around him with not a mask in sight, but he doesn’t bother with reasons.)

On his visit to a Phoenix Honeywell International Inc. factory producing medical masks, Trump encouraged Americans to think of themselves as “warriors” as they consider

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Sigh.

There is still time to nominate an outstanding female pharmacy professional here: https://t.co/sH5t0wHYBU pic.twitter.com/CP6zUWzb4W

— PJ Careers (@PJ_Careers) May 5, 2020

Sounds good! But wait.

Hi, We are referring to an individual who is born female and identifies as female and/or an individual born male and now identifies as female. Thanks, SK

— Royal Pharmaceutical Society (@rpharms) May 6, 2020

So it’s open to men, so bang goes yet another award intended for women.… Read the rest

One Texas boss is telling the workers: no masks allowed.

That’s what a back-of-the-house employee at a Hillstone Restaurant Group establishment in Dallas was told last week, as restaurants prepared to reopen at 25% capacity, according to CBS Dallas.

That employee, who did not want to be identified publicly, expressed discomfort and was told to think about it—and then was removed from the schedule, the employee told CBS Dallas’ Brooke Rogers.

If you’re not willing to die on the job, you’re fired.

The employee said management also told her that face masks don’t complement the restaurant group’s style or level of hospitality.

Oddly enough that’s true of pretty much all restaurants, as well as shops, bars, theaters, offices, schools … Read the rest

Wut?

I asked ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ why he didn’t wear a mask at the Honeywell plant yesterday. He said he had worn one. I said we did not see him wearing one. He said he wore one backstage and the Honeywell chief said it was not necessary to wear in the plant. pic.twitter.com/4KYvq3J6yE

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) May 6, 2020

So…he wore one somewhere behind the scenes where no reporters could see him, but not in the plant he was there to visit.

I’m gonna call that a brazen lie, on the grounds that what the fuck would be the point of wearing it “backstage” and not wearing it in the plant where he could infect the workers or vice … Read the rest

Trump is ok with it if lots more people die because he tries to “re-open” the economy.

President Donald Trump said in an exclusive interview with ABC “World News Tonight” Anchor and Managing Editor David Muir on Tuesday that “it’s possible there will be some” deaths as states roll back restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus, acknowledging that it was the choice the country faces to reopen and jumpstart the economy.

…

In addition to the president’s acknowledgement directly to Muir that it’s “possible there will be some” deaths as a cost of reopening the country, the president also acknowledged during his visit to Arizona that there will be some who are “affected badly” by

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Urgent matters:

https://twitter.com/PolicyFor/status/1257734990441390080 https://twitter.com/PolicyFor/status/1257734993134211072

How can anyone be dim enough to think that because Jane Wellmeaning from Accounting signs herself “Jane Wellmeaning she/her” therefore the organization is “trans-inclusive”? What do the two even have to do with each other?

Nothing really; rather, it’s a shibboleth, a hoop to jump through, a symbol, a test, a genuflection, a self-advertisement, a blockade, a display of heightened sensitivity and (much as I hate to say it) virtue. Yes, it’s that stale trope virtue-signaling. It’s not a trope I love because it’s applied way too broadly and often, and in my view not always fairly. But this? It’s such a crappy and stupid idea in the first place, and so irrelevant to pretty … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Freemage on But he’s the second Lincoln.

I went to The Lincoln Project’s website:

OUR MISSION

Defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.

We do not undertake this task lightly nor from ideological preference. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain. However, the priority for all patriotic Americans must be a shared fidelity to the Constitution and a commitment to defeat those candidates who have abandoned their constitutional oaths, regardless of party. Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.

I have two issues with them.

1: Too little, too late. This group should’ve been paying for ads and stirring up conflict with the Orange … Read the rest

Trump thinks it’s time to put this whole pandemic thing to bed.

Trump administration officials are telling members and staff of the coronavirus task force that the White House plans to wind down the operation in coming weeks despite growing evidence that the crisis is raging on, Maggie Haberman reports.

Ok it’s raging on but it’s boring, all right? Trump has tv to watch and lies to tell, and this whole “task force” caper is a big yawn now.

A top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who has helped oversee the task force, Olivia Troye, has told senior officials involved in the task force to expect the group to wind down within weeks, a notice echoed by

… Read the rest

Remember when Trump removed Rick Bright as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority? And we were told he was working on a whistleblower report? He’s filed the report.

A federal scientist who says he was ousted from his job amid a dispute over an unproven malaria drug promoted by President Trump said on Tuesday that a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly pressured him to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the clients of a well-connected lobbyist, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.

It’s marketing again. Marketing über alles. Yes yes yes pandemic we know we know but steer the $$$ to the LOBBYIST.

Dr. Rick Bright, who was the director of

… Read the rest

Francine Prose has thoughts on Trump’s cult of callous brutalism:

[U]ltimately our president’s failure of empathy is less disturbing than the ways in which it appears to resonate with his supporters. He and his allies have framed our response to the crisis in terms of partisan politics, to imply (incorrectly, as the polls suggest) that tough conservatives are eager to get back to work sooner than scaredy-cat, stay-at-home progressives.

The flag-waving, gun-toting, defiantly unmasked protesters storming the capitol buildings in Michigan and Wisconsin would seem to support that view.

Indeed they would, and isn’t that bizarre. A virus isn’t political. It’s not “liberal” or “hard left” or even “socialist” to want to avoid a lethal virus and to avoid … Read the rest