Month: April 2020

Common sense and science aren’t in conflict. Here’s Washington Governor Jay Inslee:

“The most dangerous element in my state today is the virus of complacency,” Gov. Jay Inslee told FRONTLINE in an interview on April 10. “We have to be just as diligent for the next several weeks as we were in the last several.”

Inslee’s comments, part of the upcoming FRONTLINE special Coronavirus Pandemic, come amid an ongoing power struggle between governors around the country and President Donald Trump over when states should start easing regulations shutting down businesses and public gatherings.[…]

“Today, all leaders have the biggest challenge to make sure people understand that as the sun comes up and the daffodils come out, we’ve got to double our efforts,” Inslee told FRONTLINE. “Because you have — you can have as many fatalities as the curve comes down as when the curve was going up. And if you relax too soon, the curve just can rebound and start right back up again.”

Inslee, a former Democratic presidential candidate, has publicly feuded with Trump since a tweet in which Inslee told his followers that the fight against the novel coronavirus would be more successful if “the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth.” In response, Trump referred to Inslee as a “snake.”

In his interview, Inslee steered clear of the spat, but said the initial federal response to the crisis had been “extremely disappointing and disheartening,” he said, “downplaying what was an emerging problem, that could only be explained by someone who had their eye on the Dow Jones, rather than an eye on the epidemiological curve.”

The governor also said more federal assistance was needed to produce the necessary kits and equipment needed to conduct widespread testing for COVID-19.

“We need the president to help ignite a national mobilization of the manufacturing base of the United States,” he said. “We got to develop our own in the months to come, so that we can reopen our economy and we can test people as we need to,” he said. “We need that national response.

“Can you imagine if on December 8, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had given a speech saying, ‘Good luck, Connecticut, building those battleships. We’ll be right behind you?’ No,” said Inslee. “[We] really need more leadership out of the White House,” he said. State leaders, he said, are doing things together “as much as we can,” he added. “But we could use some presidential help.”

Today, Inslee said his state – like many others —  has struggled to find personal protective equipment, even bidding against other states to secure what’s needed. “I’m sure that the suppliers are having a field day,” he said. “It would be much more efficient economically and otherwise if the federal government was playing a more vigorous role.” […]

“We have to be very convincing,” he added, “because the truth is that we will save many, many, more people.”

Good luck with that. Just read the post below to see what an uphill climb we are going to have. Millions of Trump Death Cultists are determined to kill themselves and take a whole bunch of the rest of us with them and Trump is encouraging them.

The test results came back on Easter Sunday. Tammy had been feeling “kind of crappy” when she went to her doctor in rural southeastern Oklahoma last week. A sign of possible pneumonia prompted her to get a coronavirus test later that day at the McCurtain County Health Department in Idabel.

When it came back positive, Tammy, who spoke on the condition that CNN not use her last name to protect her privacy, had already quarantined herself. Isolated, she decided to write her governor, Kevin Stitt, the first-term Republican and one of just 8 governors in the US to resist issuing a statewide stay-at-home-order. Tammy had voted for Stitt but she didn’t agree with his decision.Her message to him was simple: “Shut this mess down.”

Just as cases are starting to plateau in some big cities and along the coasts, the coronavirus is catching fire in rural states across the American heartland, where there has been a small but significant spike this week in cases. Playing out amid these outbreaks is a clash between a frontier culture that values individual freedom and personal responsibility, and the onerous but necessary restrictions to contain a novel biological threat.

The bump in coronavirus cases is most pronounced in states without stay at home orders. Oklahoma saw a 53% increase in cases over the past week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over same time, cases jumped 60% in Arkansas, 74% in Nebraska, and 82% in Iowa. South Dakota saw a whopping 205% spike.

The remaining states, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming each saw an increase in cases, but more in line with other places that have stay-at-home orders. And all of those numbers may very well undercount the total cases, given a persistent lack of testing across the US.

Fact check: Trump wrongly declares some states don’t have ‘any problem’ with coronavirusThis trend undermines the notion perpetuated by President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies that the restrictive social-distancing measures aren’t necessary in rural America — and that these states even offer a model for reopening the country.

“If you look at Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota — that’s a lot different than New York, it’s a lot different than New Jersey,” Trump said at Thursday’s coronavirus task force briefing, adding that 29 states are “in that ballgame” of being ready to be reopened first.”We have large sections of the country right now that can start thinking about opening,” Trump added.

Here’s how they think about this:

A married couple from New Berlin who wished to not disclose their names attended with masks and joined the group on the sidewalk.

“It is happening – COVID-19 is out there and we have to be cautious – but I think as far as businesses are concerned I think that should be a personal decision,” said the woman. “I think it’s just a decision people should be able to make on their own. And if you come down with it and you die, well then that’s on you. It’s a decision that you have to make. If I die because I came here today, well, I guess…”

She shrugged.

“I guess I said my piece. We’re retired. Social security and fortunately have a pension as well. But there’s a lot of people who are really struggling out there. The disease is real and so is what’s happening to people that don’t have COVID-19 and to their livelihood.”

People are struggling, for sure. The government should do more to help them get through this so they don’t have to feel so desperate. But rushing out into the streets or lifting the social distancing guidelines is a ridiculous way to deal with this. Life isn’t going to go back to normal for them as long as sane people don’t want to take their lives in their hands to go out and get an ice cream cone. And, needless to say, it will force workers to make the choice of whether to die or keep their paycheck as they find in states like this that they can no longer get unemployment if their employers says they can go back to work.

I guess the part about it being contagious and killing people who didn’t make the decision to die is just too abstract for people like this. Basically they are saying we all must play Russian Roulette with our lives so they can have their freedom and liberty to kill themselves. It’s insanity.

The notion of sacrifice for the greater good only applies to their “freedom.” So much so that the rest of us must sacrifice our lives to preserve it for them. They have no obligation to reciprocate.

Here they go again:

The Republican leader of the state Assembly said Friday he would likely sue Democratic Gov. Tony Evers over his authority to shut down the economy as the partisan divide widens over how to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re angry, we’re frustrated and we’re trying to push back in every way that we can,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester said on WISN-AM (1130).

He said lawmakers would likely have a legal strategy by next week. They want to be sure any lawsuit they bring is legally sound so it doesn’t result in a court decision that upholds Evers or increases his powers, Vos said.

“One potential for us would be to say where in the statutes does it allow the government and especially the people at WEDC or the people at DHS to pick and choose how businesses operate? That is not part of an order to contain a spread. You cannot say it’s legal for you to buy flowers at a Walmart but it’s not legal for you to buy flowers at a flower shop,” he said, referring to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and the state Department of Health Services.

Vos’ push for legal action comes as a handful of Republicans in the state Senate call for firing Evers’ health services secretary and the governor’s opponents plan a rally to protest his stay-at-home order.  The Evers administration on Thursday extended the stay-at-home order until May 26 and canceled classes for the remainder of the school year, enraging Republicans.

In a statement, Evers said he had taken those steps to protect the public.

“My bottom line is keeping people safe,” his statement said. “Folks are scared and they need to know who they can trust. They should trust science. They should trust our public health experts. And they should be able to trust their elected officials to make the best possible decisions based on science and facts.”

Vos told WISN host Jay Weber that he understands the importance of social distancing and taking other steps to reduce the spread of the pandemic that has killed 197 in Wisconsin and nearly 148,000 worldwide. But Evers should not be making decisions about the issue alone, he said.

“Nothing in the constitution or the statutes should give one person unlimited power to shutter our economy and cause people to lose their jobs,” Vos said.

Evers should increase testing and set clearer metrics on when the state will reopen, Vos said. He suggested that if the state had seven days in a row of declining infections, it could have a phased reopening of its economy over three weeks.   

He also floated the idea of allowing people to get haircuts and letting students return to school for the first week of June so they could have “a semblance of normalcy before summer.”

Evers spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff noted Wisconsin does not yet meet guidance set by President Donald Trump on when to reopen. And even when it can begin to reopen, schools should still remain closed under Trump’s guidelines.  “Curious (if) any Republicans have said whether they disagree with the president,” she said by email. 

The pushback from Vos comes as GOP state Rep. Shae Sortwell of Gibson urged people to attend a protest April 24 at the state Capitol. More than 2,500 people have indicated on Facebook they plan to attend.

“From an outsider looking in, it feels like the 2010 Tea Party movement on steroids,” said Mark Block, an early Tea Party organizer who went on to manage Herman Cain’s presidential run in 2012.  Madison Elmer, who lives in Walworth County, said she organized the rally after seeing the toll being taken on her friends’ and neighbors’ mental health.

“People losing their jobs and losing their businesses they had dreamed of and finally made happen and probably wouldn’t be able to open back up,” said Elmer, 33. “I was sick of not doing anything about it, so I got the idea to start my own little rally.”

That small gathering exploded into a full protest after Evers extended the order to stay home until the end of May. Vos said it was up to individuals on whether to attend. 

“There is nothing that is going to convince me that somebody should have to say that their constitutional rights should be abrogated by a politician,” Vos said. “What they should do is make their voice heard.” Vos said the state Senate should not confirm Andrea Palm as Evers’ health services secretary. She has been serving in that role for nearly a year and a half without confirmation.

Some senators on Thursday called for firing her, but Vos cautioned that would not result in changes to how the administration operates.  “That’s kind of a secondary issue because whoever Tony Evers picks, the next lackey is going to do the exact same thing,” Vos said. 

He said rather than filing a lawsuit, legislators may try to pass a bill to change the state’s response to COVID-19. But he noted Evers could veto any legislation and said it was unlikely Republicans could reach an agreement with him. 

“It’s like drawing an inside straight,” he said. “It’s pretty close to impossible.”

Evers this week said he is working with the governors of other Midwestern states on a regional approach to decide when to reopen the state. Vos said he should be working with Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature instead.  “It seems he’s giving more ability of the governor of Illinois and the governor of Michigan to influence his decisions than he is the constitutionally equal branches of government,” Vos said.

“Basically what he does is he sits down with his minions inside his office, reaching out to very few people. They then make a decision and they come and tell us like it’s an edict, like we’re subjects of the king.”

You know who that actually describes, right?

Here’s Vos dressed in full protective gear telling everyone how safe it was to vote a couple of weeks ago

What the hell is wrong with these people?

“Animal Farm” was George Orwell’s satirical allegory of a popular revolution gone wrong. He was writing about Stalinism, of course. The animals’ founding ideal, “All animals are equal,” devolves over time with the addition of “but some animals are more equal than others.” The Russian revolution had not eliminated class struggle, only redefined the ruling class.

This country’s founding “all men are created equal” was never true. Women were second-class citizens and “other Persons” (slaves) were property. Efforts over two and a half centuries at forming “a more perfect Union” have met with some movement toward realizing the original ideal. Quite a bit of blood has been spilled securing what “equal” there is. Nonetheless, the human dynamics that ruined the animals’ experiment in self-government in Orwell’s tale have worked just as quietly at ensuring some persons are more equal than others in our system.

It was always so. It’s just that “persons” now includes legally constructed artificial ones: corporations.

There is no time this morning for another disquisition on that subject. But there is a pressing example of our government’s creeping preference for private, profit-driven artificial persons (and their owners) over new “other Persons.” Support for persons operating collectively in support of the “general welfare” has eroded over time. Profit-driven persons are more equal in the eyes of an American ruling class now more equal than almost anywhere else in the world.

Sarah Jones at New York Magazine’s Intelligencer examines the dire financial situation facing the U.S. Postal Service. The former Cabinet department is authorized in the U.S. Constitution as one of those not-for-profit, general-welfare functions the framers envisioned as government’s responsibility. Now an independent executive branch agency, the USPS employs over 600,000 persons, many of them veterans and members of minorities. Like schoolteachers, they stand between privatizers and their profits.

As on Orwell’s farm, “some persons are more equal than others” has slowly crept into the way government officials see the business of governance. The notion that it is government’s job to provide postal services universally and at a uniform price on a not-for-profit basis to all states and territories has adversaries. Profit-driven adversaries.

Jones begins by laying out USPS’s current dilemma:

As Americans shelter in place across the country, the U.S. Postal Service has assumed special importance in their lives. Postal workers deliver medicines and toiletries; in states that allow voting by mail, they help democracy function. But the economic crisis created by the novel coronavirus has dealt a serious blow to the USPS, and the Trump administration isn’t prepared to help. The recent stimulus package omitted any assistance for the USPS, which employs over 600,000 people. “We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it,” an anonymous White House aide told the Washington Post. “I don’t know if we used the V-bomb, but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that.”

Though the pandemic has created an acute crisis for the USPS, the postal service has been vulnerable for a long time. To conservatives, it’s an obstacle in the path to small government, and some support its full privatization. A 2006 law requiring the postal service to fund retirement health benefits ahead of time created further financial strain. The Trump White House may believe it has a rare opportunity before it to allow the USPS to die. That would be a disaster for workers, and for the millions of Americans who rely on the postal service.

Jones spoke with Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) about the acute challenges the service now faces. The union represents around 200,000 postal service workers, and is asking Congress in its next stimulus package for the same kind of bailout funding it so generously provided to the airline industry.

Read the interview here and please urge your congresscritters to allocate some “Benjamins” to saving Benjamin Franklin’s baby. Don’t let the disaster capitalists turn over this universal service to the private sector and add to the instability in people’s lives wrought by the pandemic.

Dimondstein talks about the stability universal health care would bring to people’s lives and to the general welfare:

Let me give you an example in this moment, about how important society-based health care is versus employer-based health care. Our people have good health care. And we’re still paying tons of money and getting less year after year after year. Now look at what’s happened in this crisis. Millions and millions of workers who are in unions, including many who aren’t in unions, that had employer-based health care lost it overnight. It is not society-based. There’s no stability now. People have to make a choice between paying rent and seeing a doctor during this crisis.

The other part of it is, if we don’t have a collective approach to each other, we all suffer. Because if the person standing in line with us at the grocery store in a pandemic doesn’t have health care and they’re sick, we’re going to be sicker. And so I think that one of the lessons we learned from this tragedy is that we truly have to be our brother’s keeper. And what better way to make sure that health care is not just based on profit, but that it’s there for everybody?

Not to mention postal services.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Even worse than usual. And there can no longer be any doubt what these atrocities are for. They are the replacement for his rallies. He’s barely even talking about the catastrophic emergency we’re all living with right now anymore.

Trump attacks media for reporting stats indicating US has more coronavirus deaths than China: "China's number 1. Just so you understand. China is number 1 by a lot. They are way ahead of us in terms of death. It is not even close. You know it, I know it, they know it." pic.twitter.com/X06QJvfimH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

"We started off with a broken system. We inherited a broken, terrible system. And I always say it — our cupboards were bare. We had very little in our stockpile": Trump tries to blame Obama, who left office in 2017, for a virus that reached the US in 2020 pic.twitter.com/YwMSPkjmw8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

"Mike Pence is a phenomenal guy. He is making the commencement address right now at the Air Force Academy where they are being very politically correct. 10 feet apart." — Trump pic.twitter.com/YEwjUDrMS5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

Here is the conclusion of one of the most unhinged and bizarre rants I have ever heard Trump go on. Keep in mind this is a press briefing about a pandemic that is killing over 1,000 Americans each day right now. pic.twitter.com/3PGe9MsOQb

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

Trump attacks the media for not reporting what he thinks are the correct number of coronavirus deaths in China, even though his own government health agencies are citing the same number. pic.twitter.com/ykS1ucDFZY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

"It could have been billions of people if we had not done what we did" — Trump absurdly claims that his move to restrict travel from China saved a billion or more lives pic.twitter.com/GbkI4ozs8F

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

"The Christian faith is treated much differently than it was, and I think it is treated very unfairly." — Trump accuses AOC and Ilhan Omar of being biased against Christians and for Muslims pic.twitter.com/IDUJvsR6SX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

Trump rants about Iran, accuses John Kerry of breaking the law, lies about tariffs, and botches facts about the Chinese economy — all in this one clip pic.twitter.com/F3IjR160Xm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020

That was a bad one. Maybe the worst yet.

Tom Nichols on twitter noted that he was more petulant and defensive today than usual, speculating that it probably means a very bad story is about to drop. It’s hard to know how anything could be worse what we’re going through but I suppose that’s possible.

He also misses golf and his rallies and Mar-a-lago and all the stuff he usually does to distract him from the job he doesn’t know how to do. It’s just as likely he’s bored and tired and cranky. Somebody needs to give the big toddler a bottle and put him to bed.

I wouldn’t have any pity for this guy except for the fact that he’s paying the full price for Trump’s criminality while Trump and his corrupt spawn are getting off scott free.

So I hope he makes some money off this deal. That alone is enough for Trump to lose his shit:

Michael Cohen has been spending his time behind bars writing an explosive tell-all book about his stint as President Trump’s personal lawyer and plans on releasing it before the election, according to three people familiar with the project. 

Cohen, Inmate No. 86067-054, is being released early from federal prison because of concerns over coronavirus and after spending 14 days in quarantine will be reunited with his family and serve the rest of his three-year sentence at home. 

Trump’s former fixer, who had been serving time at the minimum security facility in Otisville, New York, for financial crimes—including illegal hush-money payments to a Playboy playmate and a porn star who claimed they had affairs with Trump—had been slated for release in November 2021. 

[…[

Rumors of Cohen, 53, penning a lurid expose on Team Trump have been swirling for years. The Daily Beast first reported in February 2018 that Cohen was shopping a book, tentatively titled Trump Revolution: From The Tower to The White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump, and he later reached an agreement with Center Street, the conservative imprint of publishing house Hachette, to publish it. 

At the time Cohen told The Daily Beast “I have been working on a book and am extremely thankful that it has been well received and sought after by multiple publishers.”

His House testimony will be remembered as one of the most dramatic from the Trump era witnesses. I hope he has something to reveal that will make Trump squeal.

Rick Wilson, the sharpest of all the Never-Trumpers takes on the “protesters”:

Donald Trump fired the first shots in the COVID Civil War this week, a modern-day Jefferson Davis of the Pro-Plague States of America sending his opening salvo from Fort Twitter at Democratic governors who dared to question if it wasn’t just a wee bit early to end the stay-at-home orders in states still far to the left of the peak.

He started the week with claims of “total authority” and then cried about a supposed mutiny by mouthy state leaders. By Friday, he was up to calls to “liberate” states. 

Who does he want people to rise up against, exactly: People who don’t want to die? People who don’t want protesters spreading a deadly disease that’s already killed 34,000 Americans? Governors who swore an oath to serve their states and protect their citizens? Science? Medicine?

Whatever the enemy, the Trump horde is lurching toward it with protests “breaking out” in state capitals across the land filled with MAGAmericans clad in their Red Badge of Credulity hats and carrying the banners of Esoteric Trumpism. Events in Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and California have popped up in the last 36 hours, with more on the way. 

In Ohio, one striking photograph showed the screaming faces of Trump supporters pressed against the glass doors of the state capitol, their incandescent rage caught in a single moment of fury. Surrounding capitols, blaring horns, they’re ready to protest side by side, fighting social distancing to the death. 

First of all, you should understand that none of this—zero, zip, nada —is organic. None of this is real. Every bit of it is being pushed on Trump’s behalf via the twin modalities of our doom: Fox and Facebook. 

Just as the Tea Party had a brief, organic origin story but was soon managed, harnessed, controlled and weaponized, so too is today’s Trump movement. The crowds showing up for these “liberation rallies” are lowing cattle, led down a chute to be fed or slaughtered, depending on the day. Their ignorance of their own state as philosophical zombies whose lives Trump is literally willing to sacrifice for a tiny bump in the stock market is breathtaking. Dying for a second-order economic effect will show the libs, right?

It goes on…

What with the states being forced to get together in regional compacts to deal with the epidemic because the Trump administration is so incompetent along with the prospect of (what, border checkpoints?) between states if we want to keep these plague carriers from infecting the rest of us, I think we are seeing the American society’s fault lines start to open up — bigly.

Keep your fingers crossed that we get through the next six months without completely imploding. And let’s hope these little right-wing revolutionary cosplayers have their fun and then go back inside without killing too many people in the meantime.

He’s telling these braindead , astro-turfed, pro-Trump “protesters” to defy the social distancing which means he’s telling them to go out and contract the virus and give it to other people. He is encouraging deadly behavior.

And he’s doing it in the most obnoxious way possible. Seriously, you couldn’t make this up:

34“I call these people modern-day Rosa Parks. They are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties,” Moore told The Washington Post, in one of at least three instances of this astonishing comparison.

He also told CBS News: “It’s interesting to me that the right has become more the Rosa Parks of the world than the left is.”He said in a YouTube video quoted by The New York Times: “We need to be the Rosa Parks here, and protest against these government injustices.”

It doesn’t get any worse than this. Not only is it an entirely inappropriate protest analogy, the fact that black and brown people are being hit especially hard by this makes it downright abhorrant.

The Trump Death Cult is out of control. It’s not enough that they are suicidal. I guess that’s their right. But they are trying to take the rest of us down with them. And they’re doing it in the most repulsive way possible.

Beaches in Florida were crowded with thousands of people just 30 minutes after reopening yesterday, despite the state recording its highest one-day increase in coronavirus cases.

Florida Department of Health said confirmed cases in the state rose by 1,421 Friday, the highest daily increase so far, bringing the total number of cases to 24,753.

The total number of deaths has now reached 726.

Despite the increasingly worrying statistics, thousands of people returned to the beach at 5pm when it was officially reopened to the public with photos showing visitors walking, fishing and exercising their dogs.

Florida is one big petrie dish isn’t it?

You probably know some: politicians more interested in being somebody than in doing something. They crave the fame, the title. As social climbers, maybe even more fame and a grander title than the one they have now. But they aren’t that interested in the job itself. Both major parties have them.

The acting president is one of those. He claims all of the power and none of the responsibility. Plus credit whether or not he’s due any.

It’s why Donald Trump claimed “total” authority this week over state governments’ decisions to lift social-distancing restrictions and restart their economies. A day later, he claimed he was “authorizing” governors to make their own decisions. Because if he gives an order he has no authority to give and states ignore him, he’s even more of a public laughingstock.

Avoiding responsibility is why Trump claims authority he won’t use under the Defense Production Act to order private industry to produce the medical supplies needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. If he wields the power he claims, he takes responsibility for the pandemic response.

Donald Trump thinks he’s leading the most powerful country on the planet by following the Pottery Barn rule.

We need a national testing strategy the White House refuses to propose and lead. Yet, even as states report shortages “in testing supplies and shortages of PPE for people doing the tests,” Trump claims his administration has provided all the testing capacity states need to fight the pandemic. But if he has, where are the pallets and pallets of testing supplies? What a tremendous, self-glorifying photo-op for a man infatuated with game-showmanship. You’d think he’d jump at that opportunity:

Mike Fraser, executive director for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “There’s a big disconnect with what the White House says and what’s happening on the ground in states.”

So, Trump insists governors handle it. He’ll claim credit if things go well. He won’t accept responsibility if things go badly. He’ll blame governors and mayors for that. Especially Democratic ones.

After boasting on Wednesday that the Senate had confirmed a “record numbers of federal judges and appellate judges and two Supreme Court judges,” he whined that they had delayed in approving other nominees. Trump claimed the power to adjourn Congress if they continue holding pro forma sessions and not allowing him to make recess appointments. (That’s not how it works.)

“I have a very strong power,” said Pro Forma the First. “I’d rather not use that power.”

"Why won’t Trump ramp up the needed testing himself? If he does, he’d be taking more ownership of the outcome, should there be a second wave. This way he can blame the states if things go wrong — never mind that this could result in more deaths." https://t.co/t0uW1g06x2 https://t.co/QiEmcDl4xf

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) April 17, 2020

Donald Trump is worse than a paper tiger. He’s pathetically weak and hopelessly gutless at a time the country needs a strong leader. People are dying. #ResignTrump

Update: Added Greg Sargent tweet I just saw. Illustrates the point.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

For the first time ever, the kennel cages at this South Florida animal shelter are empty because all the dogs have been adopted. Watch the staff celebrate: pic.twitter.com/VdwhcpXWy3

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) April 17, 2020

Here are some links from the Humane Society:

• What is the Humane Society of the United States doing to address the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis?
• What is being done at the state level?
• Should I have a preparedness plan for my pet(s)?
• Can my pet get COVID-19?
• How can I keep my home clean AND safe for my pets?
• What can I do to help animals and shelters during this crisis?
• Do you have resources specifically to help animal shelters and rescues deal with COVID-19?
• Where can I get help if I am experiencing financial hardship and need help covering costs for pet care?
• What about small businesses that serve the needs of pet owners?
• How can future pandemics like COVID-19 be prevented?
• Additional resources

Here’s a cute zoo animal slideshow. Enjoy: