Zorro
Zorro's JournalHannity's latest propaganda actually exposes Trump's epic failures
Sean Hannity’s latest effort to portray President Trump as a heroic and decisive leader throughout the coronavirus crisis belongs in a time capsule. It will aid future study of one of the most monumental and destructive leadership failures in modern times — and the extraordinary lengths to which Trump’s propagandists are going to rewrite it as a spectacular triumph.
Hannity’s strategy, of course, is Trump’s strategy. Trump has already telegraphed that, however extensive the eventual coronavirus damage in American deaths and economic carnage, Trump will take credit for having kept it to that supposed minimum.
This requires memory-holing Trump’s catastrophic refusal to take coronavirus seriously for weeks and weeks, and instead substituting a narrative in which he acted decisively throughout.
Hannity displayed what this will look like with his broadcast on Tuesday night. Hannity and Trump talked about Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China as if it were a singularly decisive move. (This is an absurd exaggeration, but put that aside for now.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/08/hannitys-latest-propaganda-actually-exposes-trumps-epic-failures/
Trump Overturns Presidential Limo While Touting Effectiveness Of PCP To Treat Coronavirus
WASHINGTON—Screaming about how great the drug works while beating on his chest, Donald Trump reportedly overturned a presidential limousine Tuesday while touting the effectiveness of PCP in treating coronavirus.
“Don’t listen to all the bulllshit—this stuff right here will make you fucking invincible against Covid!” said the commander in chief, who had angel dust all over his face and was covered in scratch marks as he ripped off all his clothes, dashed across the National Mall, and dived headfirst into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after dozens of Secret Service agents failed to restrain him.
“I’ve been awake for 172 hours, let’s try to see that fucking virus try to get me now! Grah! Why even worry about the virus? The real thing you gotta worry about is these scorpions crawling around inside your skull!”
At press time, Dr. Anthony Fauci respectfully pushed back against the president’s claims, saying that there had been no trial evidence indicating that phencyclidine was an effective means of treating Covid-19.
https://www.theonion.com/trump-overturns-presidential-limo-while-touting-effecti-1842733129
This could be a long fight. People should be told the truth.
This — that is, all the bad stuff happening right now, including lockdowns, layoffs and daily death tolls — could last awhile. Months, maybe years.
And Americans need to be better prepared for that possibility, because better-managed expectations are likely to produce better outcomes.
To be sure, the paths of the pandemic and the economy are rife with uncertainty. But data-driven models from professionals inside the administration and outside experts suggest that the twin crises could be deep and prolonged.
For instance, the White House coronavirus task force’s model projects that even with maximum social distancing measures, deaths will continue at least through June. President Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, among other public health experts, also expects a renewed outbreak in the fall.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-dont-need-happy-talk-better-managed-expectations-could-result-in-better-outcomes/2020/04/06/f35f96cc-7849-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html
Will Wisconsin Be the Last Stand for Bernie Sanders?
Senator Bernie Sanders began his live-stream presentation about the coronavirus on Saturday night as he begins nearly all of his events: by thanking the musicians who performed before he took the microphone.
“I want to thank Soccer Mommy for their great music,” he said, staring into the camera from his home in Burlington, Vt.
The next day, a senior adviser for his campaign tweeted that clip of Mr. Sanders with her own words of gratitude — and an impassioned plea: “I want to thank Bernie for staying in the race,” she wrote, adding the hashtag #StayInBernie.
Mr. Sanders is still in the Democratic presidential race for now, trailing badly in the delegate contest with just one primary looming on the distorted political calender: Wisconsin votes on Tuesday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-wisconsin.html
Will We Flunk Pandemic Economics?
Our government suffers from learned helplessness.
Just a month ago Donald Trump was still insisting that Covid-19 was a trivial issue, comparing it to the “common flu.” And he dismissed economic concerns; after all, during flu season, “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.”
But pandemics come at you fast. Since Trump’s blithe dismissal, something like 15 million Americans have lost their jobs — the economic implosion is happening so quickly that official statistics can’t keep up.
In our last economic crisis the economy shrank around 6 percent relative to its long-run trend, and the unemployment rate rose around five percentage points. At a guess, we’re now looking at a slump three to five times that deep.
And this plunge isn’t just quantitatively off the charts; it’s qualitatively different from anything we’ve seen before. Normal recessions happen when people choose to cut spending, with the unintended consequence of destroying jobs. So far this slump mainly reflects the deliberate, necessary shutdown of activities that increase the rate of infection.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/coronavirus-economy.html
Red States Are Exploiting Coronavirus to Ban Abortion
Last week, a 24-year-old woman living in Arlington, Texas, filed a court declaration describing what she’s gone through since the governor, Greg Abbott, used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to essentially ban abortions.
A college student studying to be a teacher, she’d lost her part-time waitressing job at around the same time she found out she was pregnant. She knew without question that she wanted an abortion, but even before Abbott signed the executive order that temporarily outlawed the procedure in the state, she had a hard time finding a clinic that could see her.
Eventually the woman, who opted to remain anonymous, was able to make an appointment in Fort Worth on March 20. Because of social distancing rules, she wasn’t able to bring her partner. According to her declaration, after signing in she had to wait for two hours in her car, while protesters waved their signs and screamed at her. Once inside, she decided to have a medication abortion, but because of Texas’s 24-hour waiting period, she couldn’t get the pills that day.
The next available appointment was on March 24. But before she could return, Abbott declared abortion a nonessential procedure that could not be performed during the coronavirus pandemic, ostensibly to save personal protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses. Frantic, the woman began calling clinics in nearby states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/abortion-covid.html
Trump vs. Biden on coronavirus: The timeline is utterly damning
We’re now learning that President Trump’s efforts to promote an anti-malarial drug for use against the coronavirus is causing internal administration tensions. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s own leading expert, privately challenged this optimism about hydroxychloroquine, and fittingly, Trump prevented Fauci from publicly reiterating this skepticism at Sunday’s briefing.
Only hours earlier, Joe Biden presented a striking contrast. On ABC’s “This Week,” Biden called on Trump to exercise the Defense Production Act to marshal the private sector to speed lifesaving equipment to hospitals, urged stricter social distancing and reiterated the need to “follow the science” and “listen to the experts.”
It’s now clear that this stark contrast could define the 2020 campaign. Democrats are unveiling new ads highlighting Trump’s serial failures to take the coronavirus seriously. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is urging surrogates to claim, laughably, that Trump is “leading the nation” in the “war against coronavirus,” and to cast the former vice president as “the opposition in that war.”
So let’s talk about who said what about coronavirus, and when they said it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/06/trump-versus-biden-coronavirus-timeline-is-utterly-damning/
A Florida county is reminding people to maintain a social distance of at least one alligator
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/us/social-distancing-florida-alligator-trnd/index.html
Has Anyone Found Trump's Soul? Anyone?
He’s not rising to the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s shriveling into nothingness.
Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? I can still hear him speaking of national grief and national pride. This was before all the awful judgment calls and fatal mistakes, and it doesn’t excuse them. But it mattered, because it reassured us that our country’s leader was navigating some of the same emotional currents that we were.
Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do. Freshest in my memory is how he fought back tears. He was hurting. He cared. And while we couldn’t bank on new laws to prevent the next massacre, we could at least hold on to that.
One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?
It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/trump-coronavirus-empathy.html
Wisconsin Republicans are exploiting the pandemic to grab power. It's a dangerous precedent.
Wisconsin Republicans have spent a decade eroding democracy in their state, entrenching their power against shifts in the popular will. With the help of former governor Scott Walker (R), GOP state lawmakers rammed through one of the most extreme gerrymanders the country has ever seen, assuring them a lock on the legislature. They imposed stringent voter ID laws intended to suppress Democratic votes. And when Tony Evers (D) won the governorship in 2018, the legislature voted to strip him of the power to, among other things, alter government benefit programs, before he could take the oath of office. Conservative judges largely blessed these power grabs.
Now Wisconsin Republicans are testing whether taking a hard line on voting rules during the coronavirus crisis might give them an even more pronounced — and even less legitimate — electoral advantage. The state is set to hold its primary on Tuesday, and Republicans have filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to shorten the deadline voters have to submit their absentee ballots. This is just one example of Wisconsin Republicans insisting on rules that make it difficult to vote during this public health emergency, using the crisis as cover to limit democratic participation.
If they successfully benefit from exploiting covid-19 this week, they will show Republicans everywhere that they can use the coronavirus for political gain. The credibility of November’s presidential vote is at stake.
Unlike other states that have moved their presidential primaries, Wisconsin has stuck to its April 7 Election Day. The election will decide not just who gets the state’s primary delegates but also the final makeup of the state Supreme Court and a variety of local offices. Among those on the ballot is an extremely conservative Supreme Court justice up for reelection.
This is the context in which the state GOP has rejected pleas to make it easier for those who do not want to show up to a crowded polling location to vote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/05/wisconsin-republicans-are-exploiting-pandemic-grab-power-its-dangerous-precedent/
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: America's Finest City
Current location: District 48
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 15,749
