Dominic Cummings’s perfectly reasonable not at all crazy explanation for that little side trip to Barnard Castle is that his eyes were wonky from his bout with COVID-19 so before driving himself and wife and child back to London from Durham he would take a little test drive (with child) to find out if he could see well enough to drive. As one does.

Oh nothing, just hanging a governor in effigy, just your normal Sunday outing.

What started out as a freedom-loving celebration of the Second Amendment ahead of Memorial Day turned into Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear being hanged in effigy and protesters chanting outside the governor’s mansion.

Not that that’s a very big jump. A “freedom-loving celebration of the Second Amendment” is actually a freedom-for-me violence-promoting celebration of guns and white supremacy.

The Second Amendment rally, meant to inspire people “about what it really means to be FREE,” according to Take Back Kentucky, attracted at least 100 people to the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort on Sunday.

Again, it’s important not to take the rhetoric at face value. Second Amendment rallies are about worship of gun violence at the hands of white men, and no one else; they’re not about rights in general or freedom in general.

Pastor Cliff Christman said that law isn’t relative, and to understand the country’s laws, one should understand Biblical law.  

“This has been one of the biggest shams in world history,” Christman said. “Grown men have been hiding in (their) homes nearly wetting their pants over this invisible enemy that nobody sees. Where is it at? Let it come out and face us. I serve the one true and living God who conquers all enemies. Why should we give our freedom and our liberties up for such fear (and) propaganda and all the garbage that is coming out of Frankfort today?”

Because more people will die if you don’t; that’s why. The virus doesn’t care about your god or your freedom or your liberties or your guns.

As the rally wound down, organizers led the remaining crowd to the governor’s mansion to attempt to hand-deliver a request for Beshear to resign. Groups carried signs reading “Abort Beshear from office” and “My rights don’t end where your fear begins” to Beshear’s home and chanted, “Come out Andy” and “Resign Andy.”

Nobody came out. Some state troopers stood around watching, and nothing in particular happened.

The crowd returned to the capitol, at which time an effigy of Beshear was hung from a tree outside the Capitol while “God Bless the U.S.A.” played over the loud speaker.

Right, God bless the USA and lynching and murder by gun. Bless bless bless.

The effigy bore a sign that read, “sic semper tyrannis,” which means “thus always to tyrants.”

No shit, Sherlock; it’s also famous as the slogan John Wilkes Booth shouted after he shot Lincoln. Proud motto of the slaveowning South!

Trump’s busy weekend:

As the death toll in the coronavirus pandemic neared 100,000 Americans this Memorial Day weekend, President Trump derided and insulted perceived enemies and promoted a baseless conspiracy theory, in between rounds of golf.

In a flurry of tweets and retweets Saturday and Sunday, Trump mocked former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s weight, ridiculed the looks of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and called former Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton a “skank.”

He revived long-debunked speculation that a television host with whom Trump has feuded may have killed a woman and asserted without evidence that mail-in voting routinely produces ballot stuffing.

In short he carried on like an angry disordered incel who lives on Twitter and potato chips, rather than a normal dim-witted president like a Bush or a Reagan.

Trump’s barrage of social media attacks stood in sharp contrast to a sober reality on a weekend for mourning military dead — the number of Americans whose lives have been claimed by the novel coronavirus has eclipsed the combined total of U.S. deaths from wars in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.

And some share of those lost lives were lost because he is a bad incompetent self-dealing head of state, who spends his time insulting people on Twitter rather than managing a pandemic.

In 2014, Trump had criticized President Barack Obama for playing golf when there were two confirmed cases of Ebola in the United States.

“He’s played a lot of golf, there’s no doubt about it,” Trump said then, in a telephone interview with the “Fox & Friends” program, on which hosts had noted disapprovingly that Obama had done so 200 times as president at that point, six years into his presidency.

Yes but Trump is white, ok?

Trump’s Twitter barrage on Saturday evening included crass descriptions of women viewed as his adversaries.

Retweeting one supporter in rapid succession, Trump blasted doctored images of Pelosi and two images of Abrams to his more than 80 million Twitter followers. Abrams, who is under consideration as a vice presidential pick by Biden, had “visited every buffet restaurant in the State,” Trump’s retweet said.

“To protect PolyGrip during this pandemic, we have developed 2 options. With the DJT option, she will be able to tongue and adjust her dentures more easily,” Trump retweeted, showing doctored images of Pelosi’s face, one with a “Trump 2020” mask over her mouth and the other with silver duct tape. “With duct tape, she won’t be able to drink booze on the job as much. Which do you think she will prefer? #maga #tcot #kag,” Twitter user John K. Stahl had tweeted.

Pelosi’s office has repeatedly said she does not drink alcohol.

Stahl’s Twitter profile describes him as a retired tech executive and conservative. Trump appears to have scrolled through the account and retweeted numerous posts that praised Trump, criticized Democrats and the news media or voiced support for Trump’s view, which is not based on fact, that mail-in voting invites fraud.

As any president would, because that’s what presidents do, especially during a rapidly-spreading pandemic.

Trump also claimed Sunday that hydroxychloroquine has “tremendous rave reviews,” despite studies showing that it can be dangerous.

In a Sinclair Broadcasting interview, Trump politicized a study from Columbia University indicating that had stringent social distancing been in place a week earlier, the United States could have prevented 36,000 coronavirus deaths through early May — about 40 percent of fatalities reported to date.

“Columbia University is a liberal, disgraceful institution, to write that,” Trump said in the interview broadcast Sunday. “I saw that report from Columbia University and it is a disgrace that they would play right to their little group of people to tell them what to do.”

Yes, so liberal and disgraceful to tell people how to avoid being infected and infecting others. Good people just get on with things, and bury the dead as needed.

Good timing.

Boris Johnson says everything Dominic Cummings did was fine and according to the rules and what anyone would do. This is bewildering to most observers because of all the rules Cummings broke.

Facing intense pressure to explain why Cummings appeared to have flouted lockdown rules by driving more than 260 miles to his parents’ estate in Durham with his wife and young son after his wife became ill, the prime minister said Cummings had simply been trying to keep his family safe.

“I have had extensive face-to-face conversations with Dominic Cummings and I have concluded that in travelling to find the right kind of childcare, at the moment when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus – and when he had no alternative – I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent,” Johnson said. “And I do not mark him down for that.”

So then all families with children can drive hundreds of miles to move in with older relatives when one parents is infected? That’s just fine is it?

Calling some of the allegations against Cummings “palpably false” – but not saying which – Johnson continued: “I believe that in every respect he has acted responsibly, legally and with integrity, and with the overriding aim to stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives.”

That makes no sense.

The prime minister insisted that Cummings’s trip was in line with restrictions on movement in place at the time, and that people could use their own discretion in similar circumstances.

If they’re friends with Boris Johnson, that is.

“Looking at the very severe childcare difficulties that presented themselves to Dominic Cummings and his family, I think that what they did was totally understandable,” he said

But they’re the same childcare difficulties that present themselves to any family with children. There’s nothing unique about them. All parents of young children are terrified about what will happen if one or both of them get the virus. Is Boris Johnson so privilege-blinded that he doesn’t grasp that? Or just lying.

Birx says Trump does wear a mask.

White House public health adviser Dr Deborah Birx is appearing on Fox News Sunday and according to Fox News Sunday, she says: “President Trump does wear a mask when he is unable to social distance from others.”

There’s one slight snag though: she also says she doesn’t actually know that, she just assumes it.

“I’m not with him every day and every moment so I don’t know if he can maintain social distance. I’ve asked everybody independently to really make sure you wear a mask if you can’t maintain the six feet,” Birx said.

“I’m assuming that in a majority of cases he’s able to maintain that six feet distance.”

And that he wears a mask the rest of the time, but since that’s the whole issue, assuming isn’t really apropos.

Pressed by host Chris Wallace if she felt Trump should be setting an example to the country by wearing one in public, Birx said: “The president did wear a mask while he was less than six feet… where that was important, while he was travelling last week.”

Whenever he was “less than six feet”? Or just for 30 seconds on one occasion and the rest of the time just breathing all over everyone? Facts this time, not assumptions.

Surprise surprise, Trump continues to be a jackass.

After playing golf yesterday, Donald Trump was back on the fairways at his course in Virginia today. According to CNN’s Manu Raju, this is the president’s 266th trip to one of his golf clubs since he took office.

Photos from Saturday, showed the president failing to observe social distancing and shaking hands during his round as the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the US approaches 100,000.

See that, America?? That’s FREEDOM.

The beach is not for you, peasants.

Public health officials promote exercise and fresh air during citywide lockdowns, and virologists have said it’s largely safe to be outside as long as people observe physical distancing. But, as the Guardian reported earlier this week, 100 million Americans, especially people of color and poor communities, don’t have access to a decent park or public space, which includes beaches.

…

Now, as many communities in the north-east start to open up, they have decided to keep their shores closed to outsiders. In Connecticut, home to what Kahrl calls the country’s most “exclusionary coastline”, beaches are requiring residential passes to park near the shore. In Long Island, a cluster of suburbs near New York City, county officials have made it clear that people from the city are not welcome.

Wo. Not cool. Public land is public land. There are a number of city parks on the water in Seattle – some on Puget Sound, some on Elliott Bay, some on Lake Washington, one surrounding Green Lake; I’ve never been asked to show proof of residence at any of them. (There is also one private beach up in the northwest corner, and it annoys me. It’s fenced off.) Public land is public.

Oyster Bay, a quiet hamlet on Long Island with private beaches, normally allows non-residents to visit the beach on weekdays, but not on weekends. Throughout the pandemic, however, all of its beaches have remained closed to outsiders.

Joseph Saladino, the Oyster Bay supervisor, said the hamlet has erected barriers at the local train station, and entry points to the beach to make sure that only residents can enter. “We understand the beach offers a place for recreation but also an emotional renewal of sorts,” Saladino said. But he said the restrictions were necessary to keep the capacity under 50%, and protect the residents who pay taxes in Oyster Bay.

People in Manhattan pay taxes in Manhattan, that doesn’t give them the right to keep everyone else out of Manhattan. It doesn’t work like that.

Public space advocates agree there is a real risk of beachgoers posing a threat to public health – young people in Miami during spring break in March, for example, ended up spreading Covid-19 to other parts of the country because the beaches were completely unregulated and had no distancing restrictions.

Unlike parks, many beaches have also been at least partly closed throughout the lockdown, and when they open people might seize the opportunity in droves. “I think there will be a flood of users,” Walker said.

But the solution, she said, is not restricting access to beaches. It’s continuing to open more public spaces, like pedestrian roadways, and coming up with community-driven, creative ways to remind people to take precautions. In Detroit, for example, there was a project to open urban beaches for residents. And Walker pointed out artists making public health signs instead of law enforcement.

You could also have maximum occupancy rules but apply them to everyone, local or not. Public land is public land.

Also, again, publicly saying Joe Scarborough murdered a woman who worked for him.

Updating to add a new one:

Trump’s conversation with the rest of us is at a new level of horror.

President Donald Trump on Saturday shared a series of messages containing sexist taunts and personal insults against prominent female Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.

And that’s putting it mildly.

In one message shared by the president, John Stahl, a conservative who gathered only 3% of the vote in his bid for election to California’s 52nd House district in 2012, called former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a “skank.” 

And the president of the US endorsed and shared that misogynist garbage.

In another messages shared by Trump, Stahl aimed insulting jibes at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the mid-term race for the governor’s office in Georgia, and is a leading contender to be nominated Joe Biden’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket. 

Trump also shared this one:

And more.

This is hell, nor are we out of it.

More on that old favorite, Trump’s hatred of reading:

After failing to read about the coronavirus, Trump failed to respond to it. It’s not a stretch to say that if the president read, thousands of lives might have been saved.

Trump’s ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, speculated that Trump has never read a single book in his adult life, not even a book about him or “by” him, of which there are 17. Trump pretends to have written more books than he pretends to have read.

…

When Megyn Kelly asked him about the last book he read, Trump replied, “I read passages. I read areas. I’ll read chapters. I don’t have the time.” Trump didn’t have time to read the last book he read.

Well, to be fair, reading a book takes up to several hours.

Reading — even about oneself — requires focus, and Trump has none. “It’s impossible to keep him focused on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes,” Schwartz said.

We’ve noticed. He can’t focus long enough to finish his own sentences – he interrupts himself with a new train of thought mid-sentence, to the frequent befuddlement of onlookers.

Trump’s non-reading evinces not stupidity so much as incuriosity. Narcissists are easily bored, and Trump is no exception. In his 1990 book, Surviving at the Top, which he didn’t write, Trump says that travel, exercise, and successful people bore him. “I get bored too easily,” he says. “My attention span is short.”

Can you imagine being bored by travel?

Trump’s former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn allegedly wrote in an email, “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

He seems to read some tweets though. That’s pretty impressive.

David Graham in the Atlantic:

Imagine that the White House chief of staff wrote a secret memo, at the behest of the president of the United States, to the Treasury secretary and the director of the Office of Management and Budget. In the carefully hidden memo, the chief of staff directs the two to secretly and illegally cut off all federal funding to two key swing states, both led by Democratic governors, with the goal of rigging turnout in favor of the president’s party in the 2020 election.

Now imagine that the memo leaked to The Wall Street Journal, which splashed the story across its front page. The other major papers would quickly follow. Cable news would cover it wall to wall. There would be congressional investigations.

Now imagine Trump simply did it all in the open…as he did a few days ago.

It’s not illegal and he has no right to punish the state.

He did it to Nevada, too.

Mind you, the tweets are not identical to Graham’s imagine this scenario: Trump in the tweets threatens what he will do, while the imagine this scenario has Trump actually ordering the funds cut off. It’s not a small difference, because Trump is a bully and a blowhard, and he doesn’t carry out everything he threatens.

But what he did do is way more than bad enough.

Here we have two cases of Trump tweeting threats to states that have sought to expand access to voting by mail as a response to the pandemic sweeping the nation, which has already killed nearly 100,000 Americans (you know, the one Trump has repeatedly declared victory over). And for good measure, he’s tagged Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, OMB Director Russ Vought, and the Treasury Department.

And we’re allowed to have voting by mail, and he’s not allowed to stop us.

It’s a crime to try to withhold funds appropriated by Congress in order to interfere with voting. The effort to expand access to mail-in voting is an obviously reasonable response that’s designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while also allowing the most people to exercise their right to vote. Ideally, this wouldn’t be a partisan matter. Yet Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from these states because he contends that sending out absentee-ballot applications will benefit Democrats.

In other words he’s threatening to withhold federal funds from these states in order to rig the elections in his favor. Not permitted. Not ok. Not cool.

Further to this whole vexed topic of sensible precautions to protect self and others versus batshit-crazy opposition to sensible precautions to protect self and others on the grounds of FREEDOMFREEDOMFREEDOM – the governor of North Dakota wishes people would just stop vexing.

“This is a … senseless dividing line,” Burgum said, according to a Washington Post report, “and I would ask people to try to dial up your empathy and your understanding.

“If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidate they support. They might be doing it because they’ve got a five-year-old who’s been going through cancer treatments.”

They also might be doing it because other people might have children going through cancer treatments. They also might be doing it in the hope and expectation that everyone else will do it too and that fewer people will be infected as a result. They might be doing it because they’re adult, responsible, decentish people. (I say decentish because it really doesn’t take much generosity or virtue to wear a fucking mask.) They might be doing it for the same reason they don’t keep their foot on the accelerator when they see a child run out in front of their car. They might be doing it so as not to kill people, as well as to avoid being killed themselves or causing their children to be killed.

It’s one of those things you do when you live among people. Living among people has some benefits that make up for the inconvenience – like a regular food supply, clean water, electricity, communications, entertainment, education – quite a lot of benefits really. We live among people so we can’t drive our cars absolutely anywhere – into their gardens for instance, or into playgrounds, or down the sidewalk. We live among people so we can’t let our pet lions run free. We live among people so we can’t play our trumpets outside at 3 a.m. We live among people so when there’s a highly contagious pandemic raging we have to make certain changes to our everyday behavior once we leave the house. Yes that is in some sense a diminution of our precious freedom, but it’s a very god damn trivial sense in the circumstances. There’s no actual reason to refuse, and to insist on endangering other people so that your nostrils can get a sunburn. There’s no real principle at stake. It’s all just pseudo-political bullshit, and it relies on a disgustingly ruthless indifference to other people.

Martin Pengelly on Trump’s fun day out:

Early on a fine morning in Washington DC, the president was seen by reporters “in his typical golf wear of white polo shirt and white baseball cap … before he departed the White House” for an undisclosed location. Secret service agents accompanying the president were photographed wearing masks. Trump was not seen to cover his face.

The agents protect Trump; Trump deliberately puts the agents at risk.

As of Saturday morning, more than 1.6m cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed in the US, with the death toll approaching 100,000.

…

Trump’s fondness for golf has been a constant source of controversy, not least for its cost to the taxpayer and its benefit to his family business.

Famously, on the campaign trail in 2016 he told supporters: “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

But in fact he’s found time to play golf more than 200 times.

When Barack Obama was president, Trump often criticised him for the amount of time he spent on the fairways. On Saturday, even as Trump travelled to his course in Virginia, a tweet from October 2014 was much remarked upon.

It said: “President Obama has a major meeting on the NYC Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!”

It’s ok when white guys do it.

A tale of two headlines:

God how I hate him. Not Daniel Dale; Trump.

I hate him. I hope he dies in the night.

Speaking of Trump gasping every few words this morning…how about that physical he never finished?

It’s been more than six months since President Donald Trump claimed to have started his annual physical at Walter Reed hospital but the White House is declining to explain why he has yet to complete the yearly doctor’s examination.

It’s not because he’s in perfect health, we know that much.

Asked in early March about when he would complete his physical, the president told reporters, “I’m going probably over the next 90 days. I’m so busy, I can’t do it.”

But he’s not “so busy.” We know that. He spends hours every day tweeting, and hours every day watching Fox.

That’s another “how to be normal” item, that photo. That way he flaps his hands out while keeping his arms clamped to his sides so that he looks like a stuffed toy with big webbed feet but no arms and legs. He does it a lot.

God we’re stupid.

In the last few weeks a spate of American stores have made headlines after putting up signs telling customers who wear masks they will be denied entry. On Thursday, Vice reported on a Kentucky convenience store that put up a sign reading: “NO Face Masks allowed in store. Lower your mask or go somewhere else. Stop listening to [Kentucky governor Andy] Beshear, he’s a dumbass.”

What can be the point? It’s a respiratory disease, spread via coughs, sneezes, breathing, spitting – it spreads from the face. Why would you not want to wear a mask around people, given that the disease can kill a lot more readily than, say, a cold? Why turn it into a matter of political flagwaving? You might as well say it’s liberal bullshit to look before crossing the street.

Anti-lockdown protesters have argued that it is anti-American for the government to curtail people’s freedoms in order to reduce deaths as a result of Covid-19. Meanwhile, store owners tell customers what they can and cannot wear before entering, and customers cough in the faces of workers in the name of freedom.

The freedom to infect other people isn’t a human right.

Here he is saying it himself in his own hoarse breathless wheezy is he choking voice.

Notice how long it takes him to figure out what “mosque” spells.

Notice how he’s gasping between words.

“…over the past what now seems like a long period of time.”

Bit of a snag while he spells out “identifying.” That’s a hard word to read, isn’t it. I-denti-fying.

“…churches, synagocks, n………………………………….mosques, as essential places that provide [looks up, glares into the camera] ESSENTIAL servissuss.”

“Some governors have deemed licker stores n abortion clinics essential serivissus” [looks up] “snot right.”

“Sime currecting this injusstiss” [he’s slurring a lot today] and calling [looks up to glare] HOUSES OF WORSHUP ESSSENCHUL.”

“If there’s any question they’re gunna hafta call me but thur not gunna be successful in that call.”

“These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united”

Are they? Really? Is it all one direction? Is there no holding our society apart through rivalry and sectarianism? Is there no keeping people disunited over religious differences? And even if it’s true about the together and united, does it have to happen in groups of people in closed buildings during a pandemic? Can there not be services via Zoom? Don’t religious people want to help and shield their co-believers?

“Many Americans embrace worship as an essential part of life.”

While others embrace lying and bullying and grabbing women by the pussy. We know. Still doesn’t mean they can’t suspend in-person worship during a pandemic; still doesn’t mean they can’t do the worship at home.

He really does sound in bad shape today – breathless, gaspy, unable to speak clearly.