I guess Marina Hyde is not a huge fan of Trump’s.

A rare moment of unity in the US election, as Donald Trump marked his return to the White House by gasping along with his detractors. On Monday night, the president puffed up the front staircase of his residence, his face coated in several more gallons of paint than the front elevation of the building. “Don’t let it dominate your lives,” he panted of the virus, a bad case of which tends to dominate your death.

…

Still: don’t call him Wussolini. He beat this illness – which he still very much has – like a man. One of the really manly ones, who takes all the best drugs and leaves everyone else exposed and misled and unprotected. Even so, early reactions to the gasping spectacle suggest the move could only have backfired more if Trump had ascended the front steps via a hastily installed stairlift carrying a pack of adult diapers.

Once he’d wheezed through the unpleasantries, all that remained was to remove his mask and set about infecting any remaining staff yet to be exposed to his droplets…

…One current secret service agent assigned to the first family’s detail expressed frustration, telling CNN: “We’re not disposable.” Two housekeeping staff have already tested positive for the virus.

Way to show the socialists, right?

Speaking of physicians who really need to heal themselves, what a striking misinformation campaign it’s been from presidential medic Sean Conley, who has been continually obfuscating about Trump’s condition since calling his symptoms “mild”, only for even the White House to contradict him. For me, that’s the new low. Of course, we now expect the president of the United States to lie as default – to tell us black is white, or up is down, or to claim he never said something he’s on camera saying. But for a professional and senior doctor to mislead apparently without remorse shows how necrotic the body politic has become, from the very top down. The lying, the reality-denying is not a one-off case – it’s the other epidemic.

H/t Omar

It’s That Barrister Again.

Here’s the thing:

They’re not reversible.

Also, comparing puberty blockers to abortion is just random. You might as well compare them to espresso machines or luxury yachts.

It’s not just aides who are at risk in the White House.

The West Wing has reportedly turned into a “ghost town” amid complaints that the White House has failed to trace potential contacts of Trump and his infected aides, with many now working from home even as the president exhorted Americans “not to be afraid of Covid”.

Aides can work from home. You know who can’t?

That has left behind a skeleton staff of about 100 butlers, ushers, cleaners, custodians and maintenance workers, who are often older and drawn from groups at higher risk of developing severe symptoms of the virus, including a butler’s corp that has historically almost exclusively been black.

That work is hands-on, and it’s also not what gets on the news shows.

Members of the Secret Service, who protect the president, have also been thrown into the spotlight with some present and former members complaining anonymously they felt Trump had put service members at risk when they accompanied him on a controversial “drive-by” stunt outside the Walter Reed hospital.

That’s not a feeling, it’s a fact. A frivolous unnecessary trip in a sealed car with someone who has the virus just is risky. Masks help but they don’t make social distancing unnecessary; we’re told to do both. A ride in the car-car with zero ventilation is not doing both.

A still contagious Trump returned to the White House on Monday and defiantly took off his mask on entering the building as complaints grew inside over the lack of precautions taken by the president and his entourage.

Reporting on this has been incensed at his strolling into the building without a mask.

Reports from within the White House paint a picture of workers spooked by a lack of information over when and how certain officials became infected, with many blaming the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for the information vacuum.

Others have pointed to the fact that Trump and his medical team have refused to disclose when the president received his last negative test, making it impossible for many to know if they had contact with him in a period when he was potentially contagious.

Why would they do that? Why would they refuse? No doubt because the information is damning. Did he know he was infected Wednesday? Tuesday? It makes a difference. So he tries to cover his ass at the expense of other people’s safety. Of course he does.

Oh and by the way that’s a big no on the contact tracing.

According to the New York Times, quoting an unidentified official, the White House had decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members who were at the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago for Trump’s supreme court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, where at least eight people, including the president, may have become infected.

Instead, the source told the paper the efforts had been limited to notifying people who came into close contact with Trump in the two days before his Covid diagnosis on Thursday evening.

“This is a total abdication of responsibility by the Trump administration,” Dr Joshua Barocas, a public health expert at Boston University, told the paper. “The idea that we’re not involving the Centers for Disease Control to do contact tracing at this point seems like a massive public health threat.”

Yes but you see they don’t care.

Trump issued a “the flu is worse, COVID is nothing” tweet and Facebook post this morning. For once Twitter and Facebook stomped on it.

Twitter not only flagged it, it veiled it. It doesn’t always take that second step.

Psssssst wanna buy a commemorative coin?

The White House gift shop, which is not affiliated to the White House, has started taking pre-orders for a “President Donald J. Trump Defeats COVID” commemorative coin.

It’s in the same department as the “President Donald J. Trump Walks On Water” coin and the “President Donald J. Trump spins shit into gold” coin.

Note: he has the virus, it caused him two drops in oxygen level and a fever, he tested positive Thursday and the virus is known to get much worse 7 to 10 days after infection, he is in at least two high-risk groups, and…the virus is still infecting thousands of people a day and killing many. Trump hasn’t in any sense defeated COVID. He hasn’t defeated his own case and he hasn’t defeated it as a national disaster.

Ah family life.

It seems Kellyanne picked up COVID at the superspreader event and gave it to her daughter and husband. Then she has the gall to tell her daughter: “You caused so much disruption.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have been in quite such a hurry to leave.

“Gasping” is trending on Twitter.

This is why:

Nick Cohen on the ongoing passion for bullying people into silence:

The current issue of the literary journal The Dark Horse contains a grim and resonant essay by the poet Jenny Lindsay, which shows how Scottish poetry allowed the extremes to define it. In Anatomy of a Hounding she describes the process of humiliation and denunciation she has recently experienced.

…In June 2019 she objected to a writer for the Skinny, who said they believed in ‘violent action’ against Terfs (in this instance lesbian feminists at a Pride March). Lindsay contacted the magazine on Twitter and said:

Hello! One of your commentators here advocates violence against lesbian activists at Pride. I find it extraordinary that such views are given an airing in The Skinny.

It’s The New Progressivism – women are Karens, therefore lesbians are (obviously) Karens. Violence is appropriate for Karens. Why? Because they’re Karens.

You should be able to offer support to transwomen, as Lindsay has done during her career, while deploring incitement to violence against lesbians. Although the magazine privately admitted to her it had made a mistake, Lindsay was publicly accused of transphobia.

And you know what that means. It’s all-out war; no surrender is possible; the defeat must be total.

She was told about private forums where colleagues were denigrating her. Collaborators were warned to steer clear. A young poet she did not know was praised for saying she shouldn’t appear on stage with her at a conference. Other writers agreed, and said they would not share a platform with her. When Lindsay protested, they told her she was ‘punching down’: using her position of power to intimidate a weak, young man.

Because Karen. It’s really very simple.

The anonymous smears, the denigration, the false accusations became so much that the Scottish Poetry Library rather nobly spoke out. It issued a statement saying it supported freedom of expression, inclusivity, collaboration and a respect for pluralism. ‘What we do not support, and will no longer ignore, is bullying and calls for no-platforming of writers in events programmes and in publishing.’

Far from welcoming the library’s stand, Scottish PEN, which once stood for free expression and would come to the aid of writers in trouble, cut Lindsay off at the knees. It said it was ‘disappointed’ by the library’s statement and offered Lindsay no support. As JK Rowling has found, when the pile-ons pile up, Scottish PEN and other free speech organisations duck for cover.

Don’t do it to us, do it to her. Always do it to her.

Witch hunters will tolerate only two possible outcomes to their chase. Either they destroy the heretic by driving her out of work and making her name a by-word for ignominy. Or they force her into a total capitulation. The artist, politician, journalist or left-wing activist must engage in public self-flagellation. They must make an obsequious apology. They must accept that their critics were wholly right and beg forgiveness for the offence they caused.

I am always struck by how no one cares that the apology is fake and has been forced from the target. Sincerity is not required. Rather the accusers demand that their victims bend the knee and acknowledge their mastery. If rape is about power not sex, then witch-hunts are about power not truth.

Exactly. That’s how it was when they tried to do it to me, too. That’s why I was so disgusted by that post of PZ’s (that we were talking about a couple of days ago): it said I had to “own my mistakes” when I didn’t and couldn’t agree that they were mistakes, and I’m sure he knew that perfectly well. He was saying I had to agree with the frothing bullies who comment on his blog, or at least I had to say I agreed with them. But I didn’t agree with them, and he knew that. This means he was saying I had to obey their orders. Why? Why did I have to? And what would it even be worth if I did? What could he possibly think was the point of trying to force me to pretend to think what I didn’t think? Especially when it’s something so batshit crazy and silly and the reverse of what we all know?

But that’s where we are. We are all under orders to say we agree with the trans ideology, and to echo it on all occasions.

But more and more of us are saying “Shan’t” and slamming the door behind us.

MAKE IT STOP

Don’t let Covid dominate your life, the stupid reckless dribbling fool tells us because he’s only a few days into his case and because he had the undivided attention of a whole team of doctors. Yes brilliant advice genius IF you have a mild case but many people DON’T have a mild case so

STOP

TALKING

NOW

I just want to underline how much I hate his high-on-steroids video from yesterday. How much I hate his giddy high-pitched grinning glee.

And especially how much I hate the part that starts 50 seconds in, where he says

It’s been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school, this is the real school, this isn’t the let’s read the book school, and I get it, and I understand it.

I hate the content and I hate the style. I hate the style because his giddy squealy good mood escalates – I hate it because he gets all excited about how well he understands it all now. I hate that because of the thousands he’s killed and the thousands he’s left permanently damaged and because of the disruptions he’s made so much worse by being such a feckless piece of shit.

And I hate the content because he hasn’t learned anything, and he never will, and he’s too stupid and narcissistic ever to grasp that.

I had to get that off my chest. Thank you for your patience.

The CDC says a new thing about how the virus spreads:

Two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed online guidance about airborne transmission of the coronavirus, the agency has replaced it with language citing new evidence that the virus can spread beyond six feet indoors, adrift in the air.

“These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation,” the new guidance said. “Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.”

Or shouting or haranguing…

Despite the time former Vice President Joseph R. Biden spent with President Trump during the presidential debate, Mr. Biden is continuing to campaign because he did not meet the C.D.C. requirement for close contact — less than six feet of distance from an infected person.

But in a statement to the press accompanying the new guidance, the C.D.C. said, “People are more likely to become infected the longer and closer they are to a person with Covid-19.”

Mr. Trump talked loudly and at length during the debate, which experts said could have released ten times as much virus as breathing alone.

Um.

Meanwhile from the other side of the Control Women faction, the Federalist explains us the joy of submission (for women that is; obviously not for men).

I’d like to say it’s just those darned pagan liberals who hate the biblical teaching that wives are to submit to their husbands. But the fact is, feminism has finished its long march through the institutions, and most conservatives have been indoctrinated to hate this teaching as well.

Oh cheer up, bro – feminism is now being dismantled from within and handed over to men who say they are women. You’ve won.

Most of what he says is theological and thus not very relevant to sexism in general. He lets slip an interesting claim though.

The specter of domestic abuse is frequently raised in response to these verses, which, indeed, is a real issue with real victims. Nevertheless, complaining that biblical submission primes women for abuse makes about as much sense as complaining that “honor thy father and thy mother” primes children for abuse.

Why, yes, it does, and that is in fact a lot of sense. There are abusive fundamentalist parents, and they do indoctrinate their children into the idea that their authority is absolute, no matter how violent and/or rapey and/or suffocating.

But it’s all worth it, he says, because dom/sub is erotic.

Submission isn’t an erotic necessity because of the evil patriarchy. It’s an erotic necessity because male submission is fundamentally ugly to women. Women are typically attracted to a man’s confidence and initiative in the face of risk — and therefore not to a man she can lead by the nose because he fears causing a fuss.

So how does this work? What about men interacting with other men? Do they have to keep dominating each other to avoid repulsing each other? So that every encounter is a spiral of dominance that ends in violence?

In some cases, yes, but most of us see that as less than optimal rather than the way things should be.

It’s weird that this Matthew Cochran fella apparently can’t see horizontal relationships but only vertical ones. Do we have to see each other as either dominant or submissive? Can’t we see each other as equals, with whatever differences of personality and opinion we have?

We can, yes, but godbotherers maybe find it more difficult. The god-human relationship is obviously vertical, so fans of the god are conditioned to see things that way. Yet another reason to turn your back on the whole thing.

What was that about a contagious person going out for a joy ride with a bunch of people in a car?

The president on Sunday was sharply criticized for leaving the hospital to greet supporters. Doctors and experts said he put the health of the personnel riding with him in the car at risk.

Let’s go back to 2014 for a moment…

In a pair of 2014 tweets being shared online, Trump attacked a New York doctor who had returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. Craig Spencer’s positive diagnosis set off a sprawling contact tracing effort, made difficult by the fact that he rode the subway, went to a bowling alley and rode in a taxi.

But here, context is key. Spencer did not know he had the Ebola virus when he used public transport or met up with friends. And, critically, people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to show symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.

As such, his travel and activities were not deemed to be a risk to the public because it occurred before he displayed symptoms. No one is known to have contracted the virus from Spencer.

Trump on the other hand…

Trump wanna go home. Trump wanna be free. Trump don’t care all those other people Trump WANNA GO HOME.

Sources told CNN that Trump had demanded to be released from the hospital on Sunday.

Trump, as ever, is concerned about the optics of staying in the hospital, according to CNN’s Jim Acosta. He worries the visual of him being hospitalized “makes him look weak,” a source told the network.

Focused like a laser on the important issue.

Organizations that claim to campaign for or promote or defend women continue to help men take over.

“…to honour, celebrate and champion women’s voices, and to shine a spotlight on phenomenal fiction written by women…a diverse breadth of women’s voices…the voices of women and the experience of being a woman…the word ‘woman’ equates to a cis woman, a transgender woman” which is to say A MAN.

We’re here to celebrate women, we’re here because literary prizes so consistently overlooked women, we set out (as the Orange Prize) to redress that overlooking of women, and now we’re dynamiting the whole idea by including MEN in a prize we set up for WOMEN.

Oopsie.

She seems indignant that she has tested positive after testing negative. But…how else does she think that should work?

And yet…her signature golden cross didn’t work.

Updating to add:

Here’s the video where he giddily tells us he’s going to go outside and visit the fans…he the highly infectious patient is going to skip through the hospital – where he’s been meeting soldiers and first responders, he says, despite that whole HIGHLY INFECTIOUS thing – skip through the hospital and jump in a sealed car with some agents and do what he can to spread the virus even more.

If only this were happening in the real world.

It’s so bonkers and evil I can’t deal with it (except by posting about it until my fingers drop off).

About those steroids…

The White House physician said Sunday that President Donald Trump is now taking another drug for Covid-19, adding to his growing list of treatments for his illness.

Dr. Sean Conley said the president was given a steroid called dexamethasone following “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” meaning his oxygen levels dropped too low.

…

Dexamethasone has been shown to be beneficial in those with severe Covid-19 because it can stop the immune system from going into overdrive. When that happens, the immune system can do more harm than good, attacking the body in what is called a cytokine storm.

However, the drug is not recommended for more mild cases of the disease.

Ah. So that means…

“The fact that he got the steroid sets up a bit of a red flag that there’s something going on here,” NBC News senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres told Kate Snow on Sunday. “I think they might be painting a little bit of a rosy picture for everyone.”

They shouldn’t bother. It’s not as if we want him to be robust and healthy. We want him above all things to go away.

Before his car ride Trump did an idiotic video in which he said he’s learned about the virus. It’s a bit late for that! Plus it’s not true, because his very next move was to do his best to infect his Secret Service agents.

In the video, Trump said (seven months into the pandemic) that he’s “learned a lot about Covid” and saying that contracting the virus has been the “real school”, saying “this isn’t the ‘let’s-read-the-books’ school”.

Wrong again, Bozo. Having it teaches you what it’s like for you to have it, but it doesn’t teach you what it is, how it’s transmitted, how to avoid catching it, how to avoid infecting others, and similar important facts about it. Experience can be useful but it doesn’t teach you everything you need to know.

Also: contempt for books and learning is not cute for someone in your job.

Also: doing your best to infect your Secret Service agents is just plain stupid as well as psychotic and evil.

While Trump said that contracting the virus has allowed him to understand the virus, he chose to get into a car with other people even though he is contagious, something that multiple health experts have pointed out puts others at risk.

I want him to suffer.

Trump’s outing:

No, it really doesn’t, and also the need for the drive n wave was so very very small that it was non-existent.