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Month: April 2020

Task Force FUBAR

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 3, 2020

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré is best known as the no-nonsense commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. He coordinated military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf region in 2005. Honoré reflected on the Trump administration’s pandemic relief operations with David Begnaud of CBS This Morning.

“The Ragin’ Cajun” didn’t use the words FUBAR or SNAFU, but that’s the gist. Watch:

“It looked like they let the literal wolf inside the hen house.”

Enter presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner who made an appearance Thursday at Donald the Fabulist’s pandemic mini-rally. Kushner’s involvement feels like “Revenge of the Nerds” remade as an epidemic movie for rich, spoiled frat boys. Except it’s not a comedy. It’s Titus Andronicus in business suits. Everybody still dies. But if no one’s head gets baked into a pie, Donald Trump will declare himself the strongliest president ever.

This White House has redefined incompetent. Like his father-in-law, Kushner’s only qualification for any job is being born rich. That accident of birth preceded the accident of democracy that landed him adjacent the apex of American executive power.

Michelle Goldberg describes Kushner this way:

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

With hundreds of thousands of lives on the line, Kushner now fancies himself an expert at pandemic response. He’s made his own projections on medical equipment needs. He believes he knows more about disaster response than governors with years of experience in governance, Goldberg explains:

“Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. … This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.”

https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/1245923841131442179

Kushner allegedly runs a shadow coronavirus task force of business friends operating in violation of multiple laws. He denied that again Thursday despite reports he has control over Federal Emergency Management Agency dispersal of equipment. Some shipments have gone not to outbreak hot spots but to states that have made no formal requests. Equipment goes to whichever governor the president has spoken to on the phone.

A senior official tells the New York Times that Kushner’s team resembles “a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.”

“What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody … you’re trying think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis,” Kushner told reporters in a gobsmacking display of his own and his father-in-law’s lack of self-awareness.

Experts have no idea how the White House derived its projected coronavirus death toll of 100,000 to 240,000. Like everything else these incompetents attempt, it seems to have been made up on the way to the podium.

If there’s any silver lining to this black cloud, it’s that neither Trump nor Kushner has ever made a pie. Not that that would stop them from trying.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election 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.

Blaming the Governors Part XXII

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

Jared gets in on tthe act:

You’ll notice that Trump refuses to blame his governor henchmen. He won’t name the ones who didn’t do what was necessary because they are all members of his cult who were following his lead. It’s just the one’s who have been trying to do everything they can to mitigate the worst of his botched response that get slammed.

And yes, Jared is an insufferable ass, just like his Daddy-in-law.

Trump’s military has been thoroughly corrupted

Published by digby on April 2, 2020
Trump and Melania partying with war criminal Eddie Gallagher and his wife three months ago at Mar-a-lago.

Sigh:

The Navy is expected to announce it has fired the captain who sounded the alarm about an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, according to two U.S. officials.

Capt. Brett Crozier, who captains the Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier with a crew of nearly 5,000 people will be relieved of his command, but keep his rank and remain in the Navy.Crozier raised the alarm earlier this week that sailors on the ship need to be quarantined to stop the spread of the virus. His plea for assistance quickly made headlines.

Crozier sent a letter to the Navy on Monday begging for help addressing the coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship, which was forced to dock in Guam last week. The ship leadership began testing everyone on board. By Wednesday, there were 93 positive test results and more than 1,000 people had departed the ship into isolation on Guam. In total, 2,700 people are expected to disembark the ship this week, with a smaller crew remaining to maintain the ship.

The firing is expected to be announced in a briefing by Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly Thursday evening. The official reason for Crozier’s relief of duty is a loss of trust and confidence, according to the officials who spoke to NBC News.

I will be shocked if we don’t learn that this came from the White House. If it didn’t it almost surely came from a toady at the Pentagon who felt this officer was being “political” by begging to save his crew.

If only he were a war criminal who tortured prisoners and killed innocent civilians, Trump would raise heaven and earth to protect him and we’d certainly have Fox News’ Pete Hegseth championing him on Fox and Friends.

It’s only the sadistic sociopathic “warfighters” they care about. Officers who care about the men and women under their command are nothing but a bunch of lily-livered snowflakes, I guess.

Update: Trump said at his rally today that he doesn’t agree with this decision. Ok. Maybe he’d like to intervene then as he did with Gallagher?

Update II: After seeing the comment, it sounds like Trump doesn’t think he is being punished, not that he doesn’t agree with the decision:

Those special OAN gals

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

Via Mediaite:

One American News (also known as OAN), a pro-Trump news network with a fondness for conspiracy theories, was expelled from the briefing room Wednesday night for ignoring new restricted seating policies that comply with social distancing.

The White House Correspondents Association voted to kick OAN out of rotation after personalities from the outlet circumvented processes designed to keep the press corps safe during the outbreak. When asked to leave Wednesday night, one personality claimed she was a “guest of Stephanie Grisham.” The press secretary has not commented on that claim.

The OAN personality who was asked to leave is Chanel Rion, a reporter who describes herself as “President Trump’s most stalwart graphic warrior against leftism.” She’s more widely known for pushing conspiracies, including peddling the theory that the coronavirus had been created in a lab in North Carolina. Rion made a splash a one briefing for asking the president if the term Chinese food is “racist.”

Most of OAN’s questions during the outlet’s short-lived career as part of the coronavirus briefing rotation were roughly that absurd, so here’s a list remembering all of them, from least ridiculous to most:

In the last couple of days they’ve asked some questions obviously fed to them about narco-trafficking and Dr. Trump’s magic cure, hydroxychloroquine. Those were insane softballs, but these were the real doozies:

OAN tees up Trump to knock the press

OAN’s Jenn Pellegrino: “This morning the Washington Post ran a story suggesting that you delayed taking action on the virus in January and February. Dr. Fauci has indicated that your action in the Chinese travel ban helped America immensely. What do you say to The Washington Post?”

The President then went on to attack the press, singling out OAN, which he labeled “very fair.”

This softball question is mainly ridiculous due to its framing, which implied Trump did not downplay the virus prior to March. He absolutely did.

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” Trump claimed during a rally in New Hampshire on February 10th. It’s April, and the virus continues to spread across the world.

Need more proof? Here’s New York Time’s columnist David Leonhardt’s complete list of Trump’s attempts to downplay the coronavirus.

OAN asks about Trump’s ratings… twice

Pellegrino: “Mr. President, your approval ratings have been the highest they’ve ever been, as well as the ratings on your handling of the virus, yet there are some networks that are saying they’re debating whether or not to carry these briefings live. Do you think there’s a link between the two?”

Approval ratings are an odd thing to ask any president during a global pandemic, and as if the question wasn’t bad enough the first time, when Trump went back to Pellegrino for a second question, she essentially repeated herself:

“Earlier this afternoon you had tweeted that there are on average 8.5 million Americans tuned into these daily press briefings, yet there are some networks out there that… are concerned about taking these briefings. What do you say to these detractors?”

OAN compares coronavirus death rate to abortions

Rion: “2,405 Americans have died from coronavirus in the last 60 days, meanwhile you have 2,369 children who are killed by their mothers through elective abortions each day. That’s 16 and a half thousand children killed every week. Two states have suspended elective abortion to make more resources available for coronavirus cases, that’s Texas and Ohio. Do you agree with states who are placing coronavirus victims above elective abortions? And should more states be doing the same?”

This question was so wild that even Trump dodged it.

“I think what we’re doing, we’re trying to, as a group of governors — and that’s Republicans and Democrats — we’re just working together to solve this problem. What you’re mentioning has been going on for a long time and it’s a sad event, a lot of sad events in this country. But what we’re doing now is we’re working on the virus,” Trump responded.

First of all, a federal judge blocked Ohio’s attempt at banning nonessential surgeries during the coronavirus outbreak, something Rion should have considered before asking her question.

But more importantly, comparing coronavirus deaths to abortion rates in the United States is absurd.

OAN starts by asking about Chinese food, somehow gets crazier

Rion: “Do you consider the use of the term ‘Chinese food’ racist? Because it’s food that originates in China and has roots in China? And on that note. Major left-wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives, and they are claiming that you are racist for making these claims about Chinese virus. Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic state radicalism, Latin gangs and cartels. And they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team.”

The most ridiculous, and perhaps the most infamous, question asked by an OAN reporter. The question somehow managed to combine Chinese food, Communism, Latin gangs, and Islamic state radicalism. Honestly, a pretty impressive feat, so hats off to you, Chanel.

I’ve written about Rion before. She is a trip. (She’s the one who went to Ukraine with Giuliani during the impeachment trial to film a “documentary” and reported that she saw George Soros and the mafia at the airport. Or something.)

In normal times these people would be ridiculous. Showcasing them from the White House in the middle of an unprecedented crisis in order to fluff the president’s ego on television is incomprehensible.

I don’t want to hear any admonishment about “playing the blame game”

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

When we have this whiny, little twit for president:

As Nicolle Wallace pointed out on her show, he’s basically saying that when he was telling the nation that the federal government had the whole thing under control and that the number of patients would quickly go from only 15 down to zero, the governors should have been stockpiling ventilators and surgical masks.

The president of the United States is just a “back-up,” you see, kind of an assistant just there to give moral support and whatever little bit of help the federal government might be able to summon if each of the governors of the 50 states is unable to stop a viral epidemic from sweeping across the country in a matter of weeks. It’s not his job to bring the resources of the nation together in an emergency. His job is to wank to Fox News , brag-tweet and bitch-tweet and hold coronavirus rallies.

And meanwhile, his pet Governors DeSantis of Florida and Georgia didn’t complain. They just let the virus spread all over the place because Dear Leader made it quite clear that he thought this whole thing was a political attack designed to hurt him in the coming election.

This is the Commander-in-Chief all these Trumpers admire as the greatest leader the world has ever seen.

It doesn’t get any lower

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

Oh my God:

The government assigned additional security for Dr. Anthony Fauci in the face of growing threats and fawning admirers.

The infectious-diseases expert has become the face of the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, and he has also become a target for criticism from right-wing commentators and bloggers who want President Donald Trump to ease social distancing restrictions to restart the economy, reported the Washington Post.

Articles describing the 79-year-old Fauci as a “deep state” agent have gained tens of thousands of interactions on Facebook and were shared on pro-Trump group pages.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also grew concerned for Fauci’s safety after admirers approached the physician asking for autographs, and he decided to order a security detail.

Fauci, when asked about the security, referred questions to the HHS inspector general, who said the U.S. Marshals had assigned some agents to the physician, but Trump denied they were even needed.

“He doesn’t need security,” Trump said. “Everybody loves him.”

Again. Oh my God.

Foolish fellow Americans

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

That map above shows where people ignored the mitigation guidelines for weeks. It’s pretty stunning.

And this man should be removed from office for malfeasance. Immediately:

After resisting a statewide stay-at-home order for days, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) succumbed to the pressure and issued one on Wednesday. Part of the reason, he said, was that he had just learned some new information.

Kemp said he was “finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs.”

“Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours,” he said. He added that the state’s top doctor told him that “this is a game-changer.”

It may have been a game-changer, but it was a game-changer weeks or even months ago. That’s when health officials started emphasizing that asymptomatic people are transmitting the coronavirus. The idea that Kemp didn’t know this is striking. But he’s merely the latest top politician to indicate that he’s unfamiliar with the science even as he’s making life-or-death decisions for his constituents.

It’s unbelievable that he would attempt to excuse his irredemably bad judgment by admitting that he can’t even read the papers. But then he is a big Trump guy.

The Governors who refused to listen to the experts have bood on their hands. And it’s at least partly political. (It’s also that these people are, apparently, immoral and ignorant, which also explains their loyalty to Donald Trump.)

Kemp’s decision to shut down the state — and his unsettlingly late realization of a known fact about the virus — came on the same day that his neighbor to the south — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — also issued a shelter-in-place directive for his state.

DeSantis had faced heavy criticism for weeks for his unwillingness to take more charge of the situation; he deferred to local officials to make decisions about closures — which led to, among other things, scenes of spring breakers partying on Florida’s beaches even as the virus was beginning to rage across the country.

So, what changed DeSantis’ mind? “When you see the President up there and his demeanor the last couple of days, that’s not necessarily how he always is,” explained DeSantis on Wednesday.

Yes, really. The governor of Florida — a massively populated state with a huge elderly population — decided to, finally, issue a shelter-in-place order because he saw the President’s “demeanor” had changed this week. (Presumably, DeSantis watched Trump’s coronavirus press conference on Tuesday, when the President acknowledged the long-known reality that the death toll from coronavirus in the US was likely to be over 100,000.)

Kemp and DeSantis — and their decidedly questionable reasons for finally shutting down their states amid the coronavirus pandemic — are prime examples of what unquestioning adherence to the President produces, particularly when the President has been, until very recently, a fount of misinformation and underplaying of the threat posed by coronavirus.

“The fact that so many GOP big state governors — in TX, FL & GA — all tightened statewide restrictions immediately after Trump finally let his advisers frame the full risk from the WH podium underscores how much his earlier minimizing contributed to the critical delays in those states,” tweeted Ron Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a CNN contributor. (On Thursday morning, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined DeSantis and Kemp as his shelter-in-place order went into effect.)

This is fanatical Trumpism at its most lethal. They will follow him over the cliff no matter what. And as it always the case with these fanatical cults, they drag a bunch of innocent people with them.

Dr. Rudy makes another housecall

Published by digby on April 2, 2020

I think we have no choice but to assume that Rudy smells money:

Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, is urging the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track clinical trials of an experimental stem cell therapy in Covid-19 patients, prompting fears of political meddling in a scientific process meant to protect patients.

In recent days, Giuliani has used his Twitter account and podcast to tout the stem cell treatment being developed by a New Jersey biotech company, Celularity, despite scant evidence to date that its therapy will benefit Covid-19 patients.

The company is currently seeking permission to start a clinical trial for the treatment. Giuliani, for his part, has been critical of the FDA, accusing it of standing in the way of important treatments.

“The general reputation of the FDA — and I don’t mean to be critical at a time like this — but it is very slow,” Giuliani said in an interview on his podcast with Bob Hariri, Celularity’s founder and CEO. “I have represented pharma companies and it was my observation that they took forever in situations where people are dying. Come on, let’s go. Let’s move.”

Later on Twitter, Giuliani said Celularity’s therapy, CYNK-001, has “real potential” and “trials need to be EXPEDITED.” In a response to a tweet from one of his followers, Giuliani replied, “Let’s hope FDA can recognize that their cumbersome process designed to keep us safer, if it is not altered dramatically in times of great need, can result in unimaginable loss of human life.”

Experts fear his argument could resonate with Trump, who has not only made Giuliani a close confidant but has long expressed impatience with the FDA’s drug approval process. Giuliani could not be reached for comment.

“There is a real risk for any biomedical scientist or company to engage with someone like Giuliani, who is so intensely political,” said Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, Davis. “You could imagine Trump retweeting Giuliani about the stem cell treatment or even mentioning it verbally at a briefing. That could do a lot of harm.”

In an interview, Hariri said he had no intention of currying Trump’s favor or circumventing the FDA when he sat for a videotaped interview with Giuliani that was posted to his website on March 28.

“Rudy and I are old friends and he truly cares about what’s happening to New York City right now. He was simply curious about what we’re doing to help patients with Covid-19, and I didn’t think twice about his audience for his podcast,” said Hariri.

Uh huh. Sure.

Kelly Loeffler, that wealthy Senator from Georgia who insider traded, also revealed that she invested in medical supply companies after she got the private briefings about the impending pandemic.

I doubt these are the only “insiders” doing this. Trump is on the horn with his buddies all day long, blabbing everything from classified information to economic projections. I’m sure the smart one know exactly how to pump the idiot for the valuable information. And that’s if he’s not giving it to them for the purpose of making a bundle.

Intentional blindness kills

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 2, 2020

Somewhere, Charlton Heston is damning us all to hell.

Donald the Fabulist keeps trying to drive the message that “nobody” could have foreseen this virus coming into our heads with a ball peen hammer. COVID-19 “came out of nowhere,” he insists. Getting enough people to repeat that lie makes it true in some circles.

Yet, Business Insider chronicles multiple times the acting president “ignored multiple warnings about the prospect of a devastating pandemic that would overwhelm the country’s healthcare system” and did little to address it. History will judge him harshly. Probably more harshly than American voters who placed a pathological liar with no experience in government in charge of the world’s most powerful one.

Donald J. Trump will have less-prominent company:

https://twitter.com/andishehnouraee/status/1245513642319151110

Weeks after governors in over three dozen states issued stay-at-home orders, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced shelter-in-place orders Wednesday. Georgia’s will not go into effect until Friday and last only until April 13.

Amidst what amounts to a pandemic-driven national economic shutdown, there is good news and bad news. First, the bad.

Bloomberg Business reports:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested 100,000 body bags, known as Human Remains Pouches, through an interagency group that directed it to the Defense Department. The Pentagon is looking into buying more bags and will draw some initially from a stockpile of 50,000 it maintains, according to two people familiar with the request.

The Defense Logistics Agency’s Troop Support unit that typical supplies the green “pouches” to war zones has not made a formal order, but is planning for projections that as many as 200,000 Americans could die during the pandemic.

And no, it is not true no one could have foreseen this crisis coming. Days before Trump took office, an Obama administration team led incoming staffers through a pandemic response scenario as part of a set of legally required transition exercises.

Furthermore, the Pentagon was also preparing to meet a pandemic threat. The Nation has obtained its 103-page long pandemic response plan updated weeks ahead of Trump’s inauguration:

Titled “USNORTHCOM Branch Plan 3560: Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Disease Response,” the draft plan is marked “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY” and dated January 6, 2017. The plan was provided to The Nation by a Pentagon official who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. 

Denis Kaufman, who served as head of the Infectious Diseases and Countermeasures Division at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2014 to 2017, stressed that US intelligence had been well-aware of the dangers of coronaviruses for years. (Kaufman retired from his decades-long career in the military in December of 2017.) 

“The Intelligence Community has warned about the threat from highly pathogenic influenza viruses for two decades at least. They have warned about Coronaviruses for at least five years,” Kaufman explained in an interview. 

“There have been recent pronouncements that the coronavirus pandemic represents an intelligence failure…it’s letting people who ignored intelligence warnings off the hook.”

Those would include the acting president and his lackeys. Intentional blindness kills.

If there is good news, patients exposed to smaller doses of the virus get less-severe cases of the disease. “Not all exposures to the coronavirus may be the same,” Princeton professor of chemistry and genomics Joshua D. Rabinowitz and research fellow Caroline R. Bartman explain:

Virus experts know that viral dose affects illness severity. In the lab, mice receiving a low dose of virus clear it and recover, while the same virus at a higher dose kills them. Dose sensitivity has been observed for every common acute viral infection that has been studied in lab animals, including coronaviruses.

Humans also exhibit sensitivity to viral dose. Volunteers have allowed themselves to be exposed to low or high doses of relatively benign viruses causing colds or diarrhea. Those receiving the low doses have rarely developed visible signs of infection, while high doses have typically led to infections and more severe symptoms.

Walking through a corridor just occupied by an infected person is not as risky as sitting next to one on the train for an hour.

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson observes that the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projection of how many hospital beds would be needed in New York state on April 1 is much lower than the actual numbers on record.

The problem with projections is the actual numbers change by the hour. It may not look like good news for New York for very long and occupied beds are approaching the number available, whatever projections say. The virus killed over 1,000 Americans yesterday, “more than double that of two of America’s most deadly illnesses – lung cancer and the flu.”

Stay home and stay safe.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election 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.