It turns out it helps to know what you’re doing.

With coronavirus deaths in the U.S. rapidly approaching 15,000, we are now learning that the federal government’s national stockpile of medical supplies is almost depleted. Meanwhile, the failure to ramp up testing to the needed degree remains a “signature failure,” as the New York Times puts it.

One person who is well positioned to shed light on what all this means is Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state. His state was an initial epicenter, but there are signs the curve is flattening, which means Inslee both has extensive experience of how federal failures hampered the response and is already contemplating what comes next.

Signs the … Read the rest

News from Brooklyn:

A group of non-binary political candidates sued the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the city’s Board of Elections because their ballot petitions only allowed for male or female gender designations, demanding the party drop gender parity rules originally intended to bring more women into the political sphere.

So the thinking is that indulging the frivolous bullshit of calling oneself “non-binary” is actually more important than bringing more women into politics. That takes some staggering level of self-involvement.

News flash: “non-binary” doesn’t matter. It’s not 1950. Just don’t wear the ruffled skirts and lipstick, and get on with your life. Nobody cares whether you’re “binary” or not.

One plaintiff said he was disappointed by the lack of

Meanwhile the ordinary kind of oppression and intimidation continues as if pandemics were not a thing. Tasneem Khalil reports:

Earlier today (April 9) three men from the DGFI (Bangladeshi military intelligence agency) visited my mother Nazneen Khalil at her home in Sylhet. They questioned her about her private life before asking her to talk to me regarding my work as a journalist which in their view “tarnishes the image of the country”. In response, my mother told them that she is not responsible in any way for what I — her adult son — write and how that is interpreted by government agencies. She also pointed out to them that their visit amounts to harassment of a senior citizen.

About that game-changing drug combo…

Trump has been a cheerleader for the drug hydroxychloroquine, pointing in a tweet and in person to a French study as evidence that one particular drug combination might be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”

And ranting and raving about it every chance he gets, in defiance of the advice of all the people who know something about it, as if he were a toddler saying there is too SO a monster in the garden.

But now the medical society that published that French research has issued a statement saying the study “does not meet the Society’s expected standard.”

Dr. Kevin Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein

Jerry Falwell 2 is trying to punish journalists who reported on his endangerment of students at Liberty “University”:

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Wednesday that arrest warrants had been issued for journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica after both outlets published articles critical of his decision to partially reopen Liberty’s campus amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Arrest warrants ffs.

Photocopies of the two warrants published on the website of Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host, charge that Julia Rendleman, a freelance photographer for the Times, and Alec MacGillis, a ProPublica reporter, committed misdemeanor trespassing on the Lynchburg, Va., campus of the college while working on their articles.

…

Falwell, a fierce supporter of President

It was speed wot did it.

In his bestselling book, “Der Totale Rausch” (The Total Rush)—recently published in English as “Blitzed”—Ohler found that many in the Nazi regime used drugs regularly, from the soldiers of the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) all the way up to Hitler himself. The use of methamphetamine, better known as crystal meth, was particularly prevalent: A pill form of the drug, Pervitin, was distributed by the millions to Wehrmacht troops before the successful invasion of France in 1940.

And that’s how the troops were able to keep going all day and all night, which the French had not expected and thus had not prepared for. Bam, game over.

Developed by the Temmler pharmaceutical company, based

Speaking of levity…

Price Jones and Joel Dziak… Read the rest

Walter Shaub wrote a column in the form of a Twitter thread yesterday, and USA Today published it as a column today.

Oversight began only after the Democrats took the House. But Trump’s hold on the Senate was absolute. We don’t know what assurances he received behind the scenes, but we saw even longtime Republican senators abandon previously espoused principles to protect him in plain sight. With that protection, Trump engaged in a previously unthinkable level of resistance to congressional oversight. The collapse of this constitutional safeguard was a potentially mortal wound for our system of checks and balances.

I still don’t know why this happened. I still don’t understand why it’s worth it to all those longtime Republican … Read the rest

Well this is horrifying.

Aerial footage above South Florida shows hundreds of residents risking possible coronavirus exposure — lining up to get paper applications for unemployment benefits as the state tries to fix problems with online filing. https://t.co/5pZApEVjY4 pic.twitter.com/DdiLX2YLrd

— ABC News (@ABC) April 8, 2020

… Read the rest

I’ve just realized something about this whole situation – something very obvious and that we already knew, but I hadn’t quite noticed the issue before. I was doing yet another self-rebuke, of the kind I’m sure we’re all doing (Trump and the generic trumps excepted): the kind that goes “oh shut up, everyone’s in the same boat, stop whining, just shut up and get on with it”…and I realized there’s nothing to get on with. All we can “get on with” is being passive and hunkered down and distant. All we can psych ourselves up to do is stay inside and wait.

It’s seriously weird to give yourself or anyone else a shake and an order to stop complaining and … Read the rest

More glorious Trump in his glory.

Trump announces that the US is freezing contributions to the World Health Organization, which doesn't seem likely to help with the next pandemic pic.twitter.com/6Lrjy9ENDw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2020

Why is he doing that? Because “they missed the call. They coulda called it months earlier, they woulda known, and uh…they should of known, they probably did know, so we’ll be looking into that very carefully.”

Yes, it’s the WHO that knew about the pandemic and did nothing. Not Donald Trump, no no, the WHO.

"The captain should not have written a letter. He didn't need to be Ernest Hemingway" — Trump on Captain Crozier, who wrote a letter expressing concern that his

MediaMatters on Kayleigh McEnany:

In Donald Trump’s White House, dishonesty and antagonism toward the press are requirements for the press secretary. And considering those requirements, no one is better suited for the job than former CNN commentator and Trump 2020 campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany.

This all by itself is an out of the Nazi playbook type of thing. It’s reminiscent of the Museum of Decadent Art: appoint people “press secretary” who are dedicated liars who despise real journalism. It’s bad in itself and it’s also a poke in the eye to everyone who isn’t a monstrous liar and misanthrope.

McEnany has a long history of defending anything Trump says, no matter how brazen the lie may be. She couples

Another sudden dunking in the pool of shit.

Trump's new press secretary was a birther https://t.co/AWmKu50Jjc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2020

Her profile says she’s the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, and it cites Phil 4:6, so I looked up Phil 4:6.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

In other words, don’t bother Trump, just ask god for help.… Read the rest

Kyle Cheney and Connor O’Brien on Trump’s attack on the people overseeing the pandemic response:

President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.

…

Fine’s removal is Trump’s latest incursion into the community of independent federal watchdogs — punctuated most dramatically by his late Friday ouster of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

You know, if they’re really independent watchdogs, it should be impossible for the president to get rid of them.

Trump has also begun sharply attacking Health and Human Services Inspector

Trump keeps saying nobody knew. People did know. People around him knew, and they told him.

On Tuesday, Axios published internal White House memos that make the statements from President Donald Trump downplaying the coronavirus before it became a full-blown crisis look even more willfully ignorant.

[In] A February 23 memo labeled as a “MEMORANDUM TO PRESIDENT” sent through the National Security Agency, then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and the Covid-19 task force warns in its very first sentence that “[t]here is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls.”

Three days later, however, Trump held a

Arwa Mahdawi on the Kushner threat:

On Thursday, Kushner, who has taken on vast responsibilities in the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19, made his first public appearance at the White House daily coronavirus briefing. His moment in the spotlight seemed to serve as a wakeup call for the US. All of a sudden, it was glaringly obvious how dangerous Kushner’s hubris is…

…Kushner was supposedly at the press briefing to explain the work he has been doing. However, despite him repeating the word ‘“data” 13 times, it quickly became clear that he has no idea what he is doing. He doesn’t even seem to know what the purpose of a federal stockpile of medical equipment is. “It’s

Horribly sad and also terrifying.

Major supermarket chains are beginning to report their first coronavirus-related employee deaths, leading to store closures and increasing anxiety among grocery workers as the pandemic intensifies across the country.

You can see how it’s both. Horribly sad for the workers and terrifying for all of us (the workers included) because how will we get food.

A Trader Joe’s worker in Scarsdale, New York, a greeter at a Giant store in Largo, Maryland, and two Walmart employees from the same Chicago-area store have died of covid-19 in recent days, the companies confirmed Monday. In March, a Seattle neighborhood grocer died from the effects of COVID-19.

Though more than 40 states have ordered nonessential businesses to

Another rally.

Trump on hospital workers suiting up and going in: "It's like no different than you watch the war movies or you watch the old clips of war, running up hills. To me, it's the same thing."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 6, 2020

Yes. That’s right. It’s like movies. War isn’t actually a real thing, with real bullets and explosions and death and mutilation, it’s a thing you watch, with suited up guys running up hills. Then you have cookies and milk and go to bed.

Trump: "Even governor Pritzker from Illinois is happy." He adds that Pritzker may not be happy when he talks to the press, but in reality, he's happy, he's a happy man.