From a New Yorker interview with Fran Lebowitz:

Has this crisis shown us anything about Donald Trump that we didn’t know before?

No. Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him. But the single most dangerous thing about Donald Trump is how unbelievably stupid he is. It’s not the most dangerous thing in someone who has no responsibilities, but in a President it’s the most dangerous thing.

His absolute belief in himself, that is something that is not going to ever change. And he doesn’t care. When people say he’s not showing enough empathy—he doesn’t know what it means. Whenever he uses the word “love,” which he does occasionally, I think of the word “algebra,” because I don’t know what algebra is. I took Algebra 1 four times, because I failed it four times, and I still don’t know what algebra even means. I know the symbols. And that is what love means to Donald Trump.

I think he knows what the word “love” means in one of its senses – he loves fast food, he loves grabbing women by the pussy, he loves insulting people, he loves applause, he loves attention, he loves center stage, he loves a parade. But in a sense that goes beyond personally relishing a treat – no, I think she’s right, he doesn’t get that.

As for empathy – no question, he has no clue what that might be.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba at Miscellany Room 4:

Screechy Monkey wrote:

Actually, following some links from that Pharyngula comments section, the asterisk is supposed to indicate that trans* covers both transsexual and transgender people.

And transfemine, transmasculine, transfemme, transcetera. Like the LGBT… alphabet soup itself, the T keeps splintering into ever more narcissistic subsets. Geek humor: it’s almost like a “recursive” acronym/initialism. Example: GNU, which stands for “GNU is not UNIX.” Ha. Funny, right? No, I’ve never understood the purported humor, either.

Sastra wrote:

I was also unaware of how trans ideology had morphed into the idea that science had done away with the two sexes by introducing a science-based gender identity — and that failure to agree was a form of murder.

That’s exactly how I found my way back here. I checked out of the online atheist/skeptic blogosphere around 2011 when drama was infecting everything. (“Sexual harassment!” “Rapey!” “Racist!” “Sexist!”) I’d mostly ignored the gender-theory stuff. Even when Bill Nye stepped in it with his show, I figured the blow-back was just from right wing religious nutjobs. It was only last year, about this time, actually, that I happened to watch a doc about the Evergreen College affair and read The Coddling of the American Mind.

That spurred research into the efficacy of trigger warnings and safe spaces, which, of course, exposed me to a whole bunch of vocabulary I’d been ignoring. There followed a bunch of youtube searching on pronouns, gender, gender identity, sexual differentiation, and gender identity disorder/dysphoria. Then a slew of hours on JSTOR searching for the same things and related psychological phenomena, etiologies, comorbidities, and treatments. And even more hours digging through philosophy journals for anything vaguely non-gobbledygook explicating the epistemological basis for treating “I feel like an X, therefore I am an X” as an authoritative statement.

The void that stared back at me was an answer all on its own.

So now I’m apparently one of those “anti-SJW bigots” or something, simply because I refuse to convert to Wokism or even recite the Wokecene Creed. On the bright side, it is, at least, a fascinating time to be alive if you’re interested in religion as a phenomenon. We get to see in real time how new religions form, take hold, spread, and gain temporal power. Wheee?

Artymorty wrote:

That’s the problem when a supposedly progressive website prioritizes being “friendly” over the hard work of critical thinking (it’s right there in the blog title): when you turn your brain off and just feel the good vibes, maaaan, it’s very easy to be misled by bad actors. That’s why all those hippie-granola California/Portlandia types keep getting sucked into cults and persuaded by superficial arguments like anti-vax which feel “nice” on the surface but are deeply unscientific and irrational upon critical inspection. There’s nothing rational about prioritizing “friendly” at all costs. It’s actually kinda cowardly, and kinda narcissistic.

If’n you look at ’em, a lot of the responses to Sastra could have been taken verbatim from skeptic-religious discussions. That nominal atheists could deploy them unironically is depressing, since it reveals the sort of lazy cognition that brought them to their atheism in the first place. Rigorous analysis of evidence and argument was not the genesis of their unbelief; following people who gave them goodfeels was.

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 curve is flattening. Go us.

In an interview, Inslee, a Democrat, shared fresh details on how President Trump’s lack of “urgency” is directly contributing to equipment shortages hobbling response efforts — and hinted at an alarming scenario ahead.

Gathering up the swabs necessary for testing and similar details were delayed for weeks because Trump was interposing his useless ass between them and us.

Inslee asked one CEO if her company could do double shifts to increase production of the transport medium for tests.

“She said, ‘Well, maybe — we have to find a way to finance that,’” Inslee told me. This surprised him, because it seems like something the federal government should already be communicating with such manufacturers about.

“I would have thought the federal government would have talked to every single manufacturer in the nation who either makes this, or could make this, by this point, and said, ‘Look, we’re going to finance a double shift,’” Inslee told me. “That hasn’t happened.”

Look, Trump just doesn’t have time, ok? He’s got to devote all those hours every day to the press briefing rally, and the rest of the hours are hardly enough to keep up with Fox-watching and tweeting.

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 recognition for non-binary identities in the political process.

He? So the plaintiff isn’t non-binary?

In any case – this is what I’m saying. The hell with “recognition for non-binary identities in the political process.” The political process isn’t about “recognizing” every silly fad-identity teenagers come up with, nor should it be.

“For me as a trans person trying to engage with local politics, it was disheartening that there were only two options at county level. You have to declare that you’re male or female,” said Derek Gaskill, who identifies as trans masculine. 

Me me me me, says narcissistic goon Derek Gaskill who thinks his her their fantasies are more important than political realities.

Gaskill and his fellow plaintiffs — who are vying to represent sections of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant — all filled out petitions in March with signatures from local voters to run for county committee in the June and November elections. However, they left the gender field blank because the sheets only had the options of male or female. 

They identify across a spectrum of gender non-conforming identities, including non-binary, genderfluid, genderqueer, or transgender, according to the lawsuit, which was organized by the reform-oriented club New Kings Democrats.

This isn’t reform, though, it’s reaction. It’s a campaign to take rights away from women.

The plaintiffs argue that the Kings County Democratic County Committee must strike down its gender parity rules, based off of state election law, which mandate that each county election district and each state assembly district must have a certain number of men and women representing the areas. For example, each assembly district has to be represented by one male and one female district leader.

While these rules were originally intended to encourage more women to join the historically male-dominated political sphere, they further the exclusion of non-binary people, according to Gaskill. 

They still are intended to make it possible for more women to join the historically male-dominated political sphere, and that goal is far more important than the wounded vanity of Gaskill and her his their self-obsessed friends.

“I think it’s important to discuss and honor the progress that was made with these rules, but it’s equally important to remember that a lot of women’s rights movements have excluded trans people,” he said. 

No, it isn’t; it is not more important. And look what this fucking fool is saying: that “trans people” (who are just women and men who claim to be men and women) matter more than women. This ff is saying that women’s rights movements have excluded trans people while not saying that centuries upon centuries of male domination have excluded trans people. Somehow it’s all the fault of women’s rights, while patriarchy gets to run away laughing.

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. They told her if people from any other agency visit her next time, their approach can be different and not nice. The men left after talking to her for about 15 minutes. This attempted bullying is beyond deplorable and unacceptable. Bangladesh government must stop such harassment and afford my mother all necessary protection.

/Tasneem Khalil

Who does more to “tarnish the image” of Bangladesh, Tasneem or the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency?

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 Institutes for Medical Research in New York City, gave an even more pointed assessment of the French research.

“The study was a complete failure,” he said. “It was pathetic,” added Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.

Therefore, of course, Trump will talk it up even more often and louder.

How did Trump get such a bug up his ass about it?

On March 16, Musk, the Tesla CEO, tweeted that it “maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.”… Two days later, Breitbart and The Blaze wrote glowing articles about chloroquine.

Ah, that’s how. It’s the Right-wing Drug of Choice. Trump talked it up the next day.

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 Donald Trump, was among those who were portraying reaction to the virus as overblown as recently as a month ago, accusing opponents of the president of weaponizing the outbreak to hurt him politically and suggesting the virus might be the work of North Korea and China.

Hey, you know what? The only reason the pandemic can “hurt Trump politically” is because he criminally ignored and minimized it, making the outbreak in the US worse than it would have been had the government acted swiftly. That’s his doing, not Pro Publica’s or the Times’s. Trump criminally trespassed on all of our lives and safety.

[Falwell] contended that there were witnesses for both cases of alleged trespassing, telling Starnes that there were no-trespassing signs posted at “every entrance” barring everyone from the campus except students, faculty and staff, or those with official university business.

If that’s true it’s paranoid and weird and creepy. There’s a bible college at the bottom of the hill I live on, and I regularly walk through its campus, which has a very pleasant front lawn with tall trees. It’s wide open.

See? Nice trees, and wide open. It’s Christian, yes, but it’s also part of a big city, and it doesn’t try to keep the rest of us out. Does Jerry Falwell 2 have something to hide?

David McCraw, in-house counsel for the Times, said in a statement, “Julia was engaged in the most routine form of news gathering: taking an outdoors picture of a person who was interviewed for a news story.” McCraw said Rendleman had been invited to campus by one of the students interviewed for the article.

Does Falwell allow that? Are students required to get his permission to invite people in?

“Liberty” my ass.

H/t Sackbut

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 in Berlin, Pervitin was introduced in 1938 and marketed as a magic pill for alertness and an anti-depressive, among other uses. It was briefly even available over the counter. A military doctor, Otto Ranke, experimented with Pervitin on 90 college students and decided, based on his results, that the drug would help Germany win the war. Using Pervitin, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht could stay awake for days at a time and march many more miles without resting.

Carrying all that heavy equipment. It couldn’t be done without the drug.

A so-called “stimulant decree” issued in April 1940 sent more than 35 million tablets of Pervitin and Isophan (a slightly modified version produced by the Knoll pharmaceutical company) of the pills to the front lines, where they fueled the Nazis’ “Blitzkrieg” invasion of France through the Ardennes mountains. It should be noted that Germans were not alone in their use of performance-enhancing drugs during World War II. Allied soldiers were known to use amphetamines (speed) in the form of Benzedrine in order to battle combat fatigue.

Better living through chemistry.

Speaking of levity…

Price Jones and Joel Dziak

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 senators to let this obviously terrible person – terrible in their terms as well as ours – do whatever comes into his rotting head.

A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They’re the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection. But the Trump era is a bad time for safeguards. Trump’s eye has turned to the IGs, and Republican senators have forsaken them — no hearings, no media blitz, only a few meek chirps of mild concern. Even the self-anointed patron saint of IGs, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, has abandoned them.

What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the inspector general community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and authoritarianism is eyeing this republic like lunch. It’s down to the people. There is a chance in November to reclaim this land for democracy.

But there is every sign that nothing will stop them.

Well this is horrifying.

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 get to…erm…nothing.

Not very inspiring, is it.

More glorious Trump in his glory.

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.

“He made a mistake, he had a bad day.” Yes, it’s a mistake to try to get your crew off a ship infected with a deadly virus.

I’m sure he didn’t, but why is that?

Trump doesn’t find it awkward though. Trump doesn’t find anything awkward. Trump doesn’t know what “awkward” is.

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 that deceit with attacks on any source of information that is not Trump-approved.

And this isn’t just normal Partisan Bickering, or even intensified Partisan Bickering – it’s nihilistic destructiveness.

Recently, CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski pointed out on Twitter that McEnany said during the February 25 edition of Trish Regan’s now-cancelled Fox Business show, “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn’t it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.”

Yes, our current situation is so refreshing.

In response to Democrats calling for Trump to do more to protect the country from coronavirus, McEnany wrote a Fox News op-ed on March 1 saying, “President Trump has proven himself the professional – the adult in the room as Democrats act like small children, incapable of stepping up to the task at hand and certainly incapable of leading the nation.”

And much more in the same vein.

Another sudden dunking in the pool of shit.

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.

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 General Christi Grimm, following a report from her office that described widespread testing delays and supply issues at the nation’s hospitals.

“Another Fake Dossier!” Trump tweeted, mentioning Grimm’s tenure as inspector general during the Obama administration. He didn’t mention, though, that Grimm has been serving as a federal watchdog since 1999, spanning administrations of both parties.

So fucking scary. His rancid hide comes before everything, including the survival of 327 million people.

Trump’s targeting of Atkinson drew an unusual rebuke from Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department who also oversees a council of inspectors general. Horowitz said Atkinson handled the whistleblower matter appropriately and defended the broader IG community.

“The Inspector General Community will continue to conduct aggressive, independent oversight of the agencies that we oversee,” he said in a statement after Atkinson’s ouster. Atkinson, too, issued a lengthy statement Saturday accusing Trump of removing him for following whistleblower laws.

But nobody can stop him, apparently.

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 news conference in which he suggested the coronavirus would soon go away on its own in the United States.

“When you have 15 [coronavirus cases], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump said.

This is the problem with putting a conceited ignorant corrupt incompetent in the White House.

The memo said stock up on ventilators and PPE now, as a matter of urgency. Trump of course never read it, because he never reads anything.

The Associated Press’s Michael Biesecker reported on Sunday that a review of federal purchasing contracts “shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.”

“By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile,” Biesecker added. When asked about the federal government’s slow response, Trump’s line has been that the states should have done more on their own.

…

Then, during a Fox & Friends interview on March 30, Trump said of the coronavirus pandemic that “nobody could have predicted something like this.” But the memos indicate Trump’s own advisers had not only anticipated it but tried to warn him about it.

Nobody could have except everybody.

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 supposed to be our stockpile,” he explained haughtily to reporters. “It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

…

During his 39 years on Earth, Kushner has continuously failed upwards. Despite being an unremarkable student, he got a place at Harvard; according to spokespeople for Kushner Companies, this was unrelated to his dad giving $2.5m to the university. After buying a skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market, Kushner was miraculously bailed out by a company with links to the government of Qatar – just months before a potentially ruinous $1.4bn mortgage was due. Wherever Kushner is, questionable deals, questionable ethics and a crowd of yes men seem to follow. The world is constantly remade to reflect the reality that he wants to see. Indeed, shortly after the backlash to Kushner’s comments about the federal stockpile, the government’s website appeared to change to more closely reflect Kushner’s assertions.

And the stakes have risen.