More responses to Billy Bragg’s attempt to tell women what to do:

And from the other direction…

Slogan, slogan, slogan. We give arguments, they reply with slogans. It gets tiresome.

Because the arguments are made in bad faith. Take this one. "A man is stronger than a woman. End of. I win." No one is arguing with that fact. But it does not mean that it is impossible to come up with a means to ensure athletes compete on a level playing field

— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) March 12, 2020

But we already have that. We already have a means to ensure that athletes compete on a level playing field. Men compete against men and women compete against women. That’s it, that’s the means.

Deeply pissed off more than heartbroken in my case, but it comes to the same thing.

Truth.

I can only roll my eyes.

It would be blasphemous to think that Holy Communion could spread viruses, but people were free to choose whether they want to receive it, the Church of Cyprus said on Wednesday.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Holy Synod argued that receiving Holy Communion from the same spoon as hundreds of others was safe for believers.

“It would be blasphemous to think that the body and blood of the Christ could transmit any disease or virus,” it said.

Well maybe so but it isn’t the body and blood of Jesus so……………..

“Christianity’s centuries-old experience has no single incident of such transmission to display.”

As if he could possibly know that.

The news outlets are reporting it now. CNN:

Fabio Wajngarten, the press secretary for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, two sources have told CNN. Bolsonaro’s health is being monitored.

It comes just days after Wajngarten met US President Donald Trump in Florida.

Bolsonaro’s aide posted an image of himself standing with Trump and US Vice President Mike Pence at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.

Trump is calm.

Trump said he was aware of the aide’s diagnosis during remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday.

“We did nothing very unusual, we sat next to each other for a period of time,” he added, referring to Bolsonaro.

Well, yes, and that’s one way the virus can spread. It doesn’t require doing anything very unusual.

Peter Baker in the NYT:

On Wednesday night, President Trump implored the nation’s political leadership to “stop the partisanship” and come together to confront the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday morning, he woke up and immediately issued partisan attacks on Democratic congressional leaders.

You’re thinking that’s inconsistent, aren’t you. Nah. He told other people to stop the partisanship. He’s not other people.

Mr. Trump’s call for a suspension of partisanship lasted just nine hours, at least some of which he was presumably asleep. While some of Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers have urged him to stop fighting and assert more national leadership, the president made clear that it does not suit him.

He made clear that rules are for other people, not for him.

At 6:15 a.m., Mr. Trump went after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, complaining about her resistance to his proposal to cut payroll taxes to juice the economy as it reels from fears of the coronavirus. Lawmakers on both sides have given the idea a cool reception.

In his prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump sounded a different note. “We are all in this together,” he said at the time. “We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family.”

That was an accident. He didn’t mean “we” – he meant “you” and “they.” The speechwriter fucked it up.

Mr. Trump has spent much of the past couple weeks fighting a partisan battle over his handling of the coronavirus. Democrats have sharply criticized him for making false or misleading statements about the outbreak, not taking it seriously enough, failing to act sooner and undercutting the government’s global health apparatus.

Other than that he’s doing a brilliant job.

Hmmyes definitely, because gasoline is most people’s main expense, right? It takes a far bigger bite than housing, food, health insurance – everything, in fact, apart from taxes. No question.

Interesting.

So that’s twice we know of that Trump has been in the vicinity of the virus – at CPAC and at his Florida golf resort.

Which will now have to be closed for some weeks, right?

Updating to add:

Judd Legum of Popular Information reminds us of the backstory.

In 2018, the Trump administration ousted Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer, who served as the Senior Director of Global Health Security. Ziemer was a member of the National Security Council, where he was responsible for coordinating “responses to global health emergencies and potential pandemics.” Ziemer was lauded as “one of the most quietly effective leaders in public health.” His work on Malaria during the Obama administration helped save 6 million lives. 

“Admiral Ziemer’s departure is deeply alarming,” Congressman Ami Bera (D-CA) said in May 2018. “Expertise like his is critical in avoiding large outbreaks.” Beth Cameron, who served on the National Security Council in the Obama administration, said that Ziemer’s ouster was “a major loss for health security, biodefense, and pandemic preparedness” and noted that it “is unclear in his absence who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic.”

Now it is clear: no one. Jared Kushner is doing “research” and Trump is saying words and flapping hands, but no one is in charge of the pandemic.

John Bolton, who was serving as Trump’s National Security Adviser at the time, did not just remove Ziemer. He decided to eliminate the position, and “the NSC’s entire global health security unit.” Bolton also forced out Tom Bossert, a highly regarded expert who was Ziemer’s counterpart at the Department of Homeland Security. “Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced,” Foreign Policy reported in January. 

Trump slashed funding for the CDC’s epidemic prevention activities, forcing the agency to end its work “in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out” in 2018. The program, which started in 2014, was designed to “help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics.” Among the countries no longer included: China.

Good move. Brilliant. Very cost-effective and safety-enhancing.

Who is in charge of the United States’ response to the coronavirus? You might assume it is the CDC. You would be wrong. 

There were several hundred Americans aboard a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, that experienced an outbreak of COVID-19 near Japan. The Americans were evacuated and, before they were flown home, 14 tested positive for the coronavirus. The CDC advised that these infected passengers should not be flown home with the rest of the group, arguing that they could infect the others. 

The CDC, however, was overruled by the “State Department and a top Trump administration health official.” The decision was made even though to government “had already told passengers they would not be evacuated with anyone who was infected or who showed symptoms.” CDC officials were so distraught that they “demanded to be left out of the news release that explained that infected people were being flown back to the United States.” 

Yes but Trump’s uncle was an engineer.

Point entirely missed.

No. That is not what people are concerned about. Of course trans rights are human rights, and of course no one is saying trans people shouldn’t have rights. The issue is special new and frankly peculiar rights, that conflict with other people’s rights at many points. Trans rights can mean the human rights that all people, including trans people, have, or it can mean new invented “rights” that no one has, such as the “right” to force people to agree with one’s personal self-identification no matter what. The first is not an issue, the second is; it does no one any favors to obfuscate this.

So basically “Yes yes women should be safe in prisons, and I’m sure they will be, and yes yes women should be able to play sports, and of course they will be.” An acknowledgement of the issue followed by a total refusal to deal with it. Thanks, bro. Not your rights disappearing, are they.

That would be more impressive if we could be sure Zoe Williams, Lisa Nandy, and Jess Phillips are not hostages – that they are not taking the line they do because they know that otherwise their lives will be made hell. We can’t be sure of that, because we know too well what happens to women who ask searching questions about these new exciting trans “rights.”