It has regularly fallen to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top U.S. infectious disease expert, to correct Donald Trump's wild and incorrect briefings on coronavirus, making him the one source most of the American public depends on for accurate information.
Dr. Fauci testifies before Senate...
I say most because there are still those Trump double-digits who hang on the every word of Donald Dufus. These people have long since lost touch with reality along with the Oval Office lunatic, so are not included with the normal population. The normal population listens to Fauci, and as Sen. Chuck Schumer counseled the scientist before his hearing, "Let it rip," he did just that. Here it is verbatim...
"The risk is that reopening too soon, without widespread testing and contact tracing measures, will trigger outbreaks that governments may not be able to control.
"New hot spots could lead not only to unnecessary suffering and deaths but also set back attempts to revive local economies.
"Even though more than 100 potential vaccines are under development, “there’s no guarantee that the vaccine is actually going to be effective,” or worse could backfire and strengthen the virus."
"The 10 top areas recorded surges of 72.4 percent or greater over a seven-day period compared to the previous week, according to a set of tables produced for the task force by its data and analytics unit. They include Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; and — atop the list, with a 650 percent increase — Central City, Kentucky.
Since Fauci just testified this morning, Donald Trump has not had time to comment, nor has he had time to fire the doctor...yet.
Will Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 crisis eventually jaundice this country to the depths of the people beginning to ignore deaths from the virus as they have the deaths caused by gun violence?
A Brooklyn cemetery
That would mean then that coronavirus deaths share the same level of importance as when someone dies from being shot. Minimal. My reasoning is, right now people are shot every day but no one is doing a damn thing about it. Not the American public, not Congress, nor the dufus sitting in the White House. There have been 14,032 gun deaths since the start of 2020, 80,004 COVID-19 deaths since we first learned of the virus in early January.
Just recently on February 23, a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was killed in Georgia and it took 74 days before the state stepped in and applied justice. Former police officer Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, have been arrested and charged with murder...
"Will Day, 25, of Brunswick, who had known Arbery since first grade, said the revelations about law enforcement agencies refusing to act on arrestable evidence continued to vex him, even after the murder charges.
“If I had done something like that, if I had shot somebody, I’m pretty sure I would have my justice served to me the same day,” said Day, who is black. Since Arbery’s death he said he’s “just been staying in the house. It used to be enough just to stay out of trouble and keep your nose clean.”
"The coronavirus scenario I can’t stop thinking about is the one where we simply get used to all the dying."
Sound familiar. like what's going on today in gun violence? Here's a headline from the Oberlin (Ohio) Review: "American Apathy Perpetuates Gun Violence." Could not have been said better; I call these people the apathetics. Warzel continues...
"I first saw it on Twitter. 'Someone poke holes in this scenario,' a tweet from Eric Nelson, the editorial director of Broadside Books, read. 'We keep losing 1,000 to 2,000 a day to coronavirus. People get used to it. We get less vigilant as it very slowly spreads. By December we’re close to normal, but still losing 1,500 a day, and as we tick past 300,000 dead, most people aren’t concerned.'”
Watch Trump's foolish, illogical and laughable timeline on COVID-19 reaction...
When it comes to COVID 19, we know what the source of the problem is. It is solely in Donald Trump's lap, and my opinion of how many virus cases and deaths we can expect by December is grossly underestimated, as long as the White House maniac is in control. The question, of course, is, if we dump Trump in November, can we recover? Yes, coronavirus must stay on the front burner right now, but we mustn't ignore gun violence.
One immediate action that must be taken is to ban firearms from all COVID-19 demonstrations. Common sense would say to ban guns from any large gathering of individuals, except military and law enforcement. Folks, these gun nuts are carrying around assault rifles, regularly used to kill numerous people in mass murders. The slightest spark could set these double-digits off into a rage that would no doubt result in hundreds of deaths.
"We’ve gotten far too accustomed to the image of white protesters carrying paramilitary-level firearms in public spaces. The presence of guns — often really large guns — at protests has become alarmingly normalized. It is time to take stock of what that means."
She adds...
"Accepting and even expecting to see firearms at protest rallies means that we somehow embrace the threat of chaos and violence. While those who carry say they have no intention of using their weapons, the firepower alone creates a wordless threat, and something far more calamitous if even just one person discharges a round."
It would appear there might be hope today in the gun violence dilemma; the National Rifle Assn. is on the ropes and it looks like head gun nut, Wayne LaPierre, is going down with it. Over the years the NRA has been the one lobbying group most responsible for gun violence as they fight to put more guns on the street. But what we do about the coronavirus pandemic, well, that is currently dependent on one individual.
But we must not put the disease in the same discounted and neglected category as we have relegated gun violence.
Donald Trump was only in Arizona around three hours but was able to turn the state's governor, Doug Ducey, into a replica of himself. Ducey is now a clone of Donald Trump.
The clone is on
Doug Ducey has never been known to be a Rhodes Scholar, but, then, how much mental capacity does it take to sell ice cream in Arizona. However, the Oval Office lunatic just visited Phoenix, touring the Honeywell plant where they manufacture medical face masks for coronavirus. The douchebag did his standard suckup welcoming T-rump, following him around for the exposure, then he promptly did this...
"Arizona ended the work of a team of scientists who predicted that the peak of its outbreak had not yet arrived.
"The experts, from Arizona universities, were making models for the state, and had predicted that the peak could come on May 22 or later.
"But the state's health department stopped their work hours after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey announced some businesses can reopen this week, ABC 15 Arizona and the Arizona Republic reported.
"The state now says it will rely on other sources of information and on federal modelling."
Georgia...on everybody's mind...
Discharged but still vocal...
the modeling team, made up of at least 23 volunteer experts from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, had predicted in late April that peak of the outbreak in the state hasn't arrived yet — and could come on May 22 or later.
Just another stupid Republican governor that espouses we should let the people of the U.S. just hurry up and die? There are more as dumb or dumber. In early April "eight US governors decided against issuing statewide directives urging their residents to stay at home as the outbreak of the coronavirus escalates and spreads across the country, the last holdouts in the nation." Trump continued to refuse a nationwide closure, citing the Constitution as his reason.
Atlanta Mayor in rebuttal to Governor Kemp...
And "Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms pleads for residents to stay home, despite Governor Brian Kemp lifting shelter-in-place orders and reopening some nonessential businesses." Salon reports the Founding Fathers started this country with "no president, no federal judiciary and essentially no federal government." They subsequently decided to set up a stronger central government, but couldn't have visualized the nightmare that exists today.
Congress has relinquished its power over the years to the White House, in part because the president needs the ability to wage war, among other emergencies like an invasion or, say, a pandemic. It is interesting to note here that Donald Trump's free rein to address the COVID-19 crisis resulted in a colossal failure these Founding Fathers could never have imagined. He has not recovered from the initial ineptness, thus, the country's governors either follow suit or do their own thing.
11 times Donald Trump downplayed the coronavirus...
Salon continues...
"Donald Trump has been blustering about his "power" since he was elected, even fatuously declaring, 'I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.' More recently, he argued that he had "total authority" to make states withdraw their stay-at-home orders, before backing off."
Since the coronavirus crept up on our beaches and spread throughout our cities, "Trump has actually been impotent in every important way." Still, he has "been on TV almost every day blathering about what a great job he's doing." What he hasn't done, and by far the most important, is that he has not led the country in a time of dire crisis. On a daily basis Donald Trump comes off as a blundering idiot, which he definitely is.
Again, the "massively powerful tool" called the Defense Production Act is put forward, something he has already used "hundreds of thousands of times" as president. But instead, this is what the White House maniac did, he told state governors, "Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves." This resulted in...
"bidding wars and cloak-and-dagger black market purchases. He complained mightily that they weren't doing their jobs. But it was he who wasn't doing his."
"Way ahead on testing - Best in the world on testing...yeah, sure - Bullshit...
It is clear why Donald Trump doesn't want a nationally coordinated approach to the surge of COVID-19, more so a federally backed testing program for the virus. It will produce numbers that embarrass him, like the fact we are already averaging close to 2,000 deaths per day from the disease with no hope of improvement in sight. New cases are currently running around 25,000 daily, but a new model from Trump's White House predicts 200,000 per day by June.
This frightening figure is a result of the opening of the economy by T-rump and select governors around the country, and promises to produce a new daily death toll of at least 3,000. Trump's own model predicts that, based on reopening, plus relaxed restrictions on social distancing, it will put the status of the coronavirus pandemic right back to where it was mid-March. Since Trump has failed so miserably at any progress, he figures the relapse won't be that noticeable.
Here's Senator Chuck Schumer's take on the current situation...
“By muzzling science and the truth, it will only prolong this health and economic crisis. The president’s failure to accept the truth, and then his desire to hide it, is one of the chief reasons we are lagging behind so many other countries in beating this scourge.”
The United States looks disgraceful up against other countries of the world. You can check it in the WORLDOMETER report reflecting results from countries. Scroll down to the breakdown by country. It's more than frightening.
ADDITIONAL COMPARISON ANALYSIS: To begin, in just one week there were 151,581 new COVID-19 cases in the United States, 10, 929 new deaths. But it was only a few days ago that Donald Trump announced he would disband the coronavirus task force, since reconsidered. The Oval Office lunatic continues to boast about the great job he is doing to control the disease and how we are on the verge of turning the corner. Trump first knew of COVID-19 on January 8.
But Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block the release of "certain secret grand jury material from Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation."
Mueller Report locked up by Republicans
Donald Trump, the 45th person to sit in the White House as head of this country, was impeached by the U.S. House on December 18, 2019. On February 5, 2020, he was acquitted by a bunch of cowards in the Senate, led by lowlife Moscow Mitch McConnell, the one responsible for ages to come as the demon who put the freakshow back in the Oval Office, most recently leading us into a COVID-19 pandemic of colossal proportions. With little recovery in sight.
He was guilty in his first impeachment, and in my opinion is guilty today of ignoring the coronavirus threat in the beginning, calling it a hoax, then blaming it on Democrats. However, The Democratic House is focusing on the more likely material of "possible misconduct by the president." They're looking for obstruction of justice, which T-rump seems to have committed all the way back to James Comey's firing.
“This remains true today. The current pandemic notwithstanding, the Committee’s investigation is not ‘dormant.’ The Committee continues to exercise its investigative and oversight responsibilities; its staff are ready and able to review the requested grand jury materials as soon as they are provided by DOJ; and the Committee remains able to convene formal hearings to further its investigation.”
D.C. Circuit orders release of Mueller Report...
In its 2-1 opinion, the D.C. Circuit Court...
"said grand jury records are court records — not Justice Department records — and have historically been released to Congress in the course of impeachment investigations involving three federal judges and two presidents."
Here's more...
"The Committee has repeatedly stated that if the grand jury materials reveal new evidence of impeachable offenses, the Committee may recommend new articles of impeachment,” wrote Judge Judith Rogers, who was joined by Judge Thomas B. Griffith.
There is question over the authority of the House Judiciary Committee seeking the Mueller Report, but the House persists that its investigation is not yet over and needs this material to complete it. And finally, I'll leave you with this comment from the article...
"The United States is now officially a Russian Republic because of the treason of Trump, Flynn, Barr and McConnell. Treason most foul and injurious to this country is now the order of the day every day. The American dream is now a nightmare. The war against evil has been lost."
Talking to gun nuts is just as futile as trying to convince an anti-stay at home nut to protect himself or herself and others by observing the lockdown rules. I did a blog post recently on double-digits who fail to acknowledge the severity of a disease that is killing an average of 2,000 daily, just in the U.S. Their response is, "It's only a virus." This corresponds with the gun owner who will protect his weapons, and that is plural, over your right to survive from gun violence.
Here are the stark figures from Gabby Giffords site, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence: 100 Americans are Killed with Guns Every Day; 36,383 Americans Die from Gun Violence each Year; States with the Highest Gun Death Rates have the Weakest Gun Laws; Americans are 25 Times More Likely to Die from Gun Violence than Residents from Peer Nations; and 51% of suicides in the U.S. Involve a Firearm. There's more and it is pathetic.
Economist on what gun violence looks like in America...
And there is one organization that is always in the forefront to prop up gun violence, at least until recently, the National Rifle Assn. and its head gun nut Wayne LaPierre. pushing constantly for more guns on the streets to please its gun manufacturing supporters. Well, someone has pulled the shade down and the NRA is going down the drain...where it should be. A recent report shows their legal troubles alone have cost the group $100 million. And it's getting worse.
LaPierre was just reelected executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, just in time to see his gang...
"go from an electoral kingmaker to the edge of financial ruin. He and other NRA executives have urged laid-off employees to seek public assistance benefits. The nation's most prominent pro-gun lobby has lost tens of millions of dollars amid numerous legal woes and investigations that have exposed its questionable financial dealings."
Yet, it gets even better...
"Now, the longtime NRA leader hopes his lawyers can "keep him out of jail," according to previously unreported allegations in court documents in the group's legal battle against its longtime public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen."
Gun owner groups fight to replace NRA...
Life in this country couldn't be better with the complete eradication of the NRA and Wayne LaPierre in jail one year for each death he has caused from gun violence. And I don't think I am alone with this feeling. According to Gallup, 49% have an unfavorable opinion of the National Rifle Assn. But there is another side to the gun violence problem; that's countries who have the common sense to act when they see why it is happening.
The weapon of choice for shooting someone is now the assault rifle. There are around 17 million of these guns in the hands of private American gun owners, and have been used regularly in the execution of mass shootings. In this country so far this year there have been over one-hundred mass shooting, and, yes, the U.S. leads the world in this carnage. Canada, a gun-wise country, has decided to ban assault weapons.
Canada's Trudeau announces assault weapons ban...
The Canadians have regularly come forward to control the gun violence in their country which is the reason it has only a 0.61 death rate per 100,000 population when the U.S. has 4.46. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is quoted in the Washington Post...
"The Canadian government on Friday announced an immediate ban on some 1,500 makes and models of 'military-grade' assault weapons, including two models used by the gunman who killed 22 people last month in rural Nova Scotia during the country’s deadliest mass shooting."
Trudeau said...
“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time.”
He added...
“There is no use — and no place — for such weapons in Canada,” he said. While most firearms owners are responsible, he said, “you don’t need an AR-15 to bring down a deer.”
Canada sits just north of the United States but is millions of miles away when it comes to logical thinking about gun violence. Perhaps with the NRA's huge budget for propaganda gone, leading to its inability to bribe members of Congress with generous donations that have resulted in weak to no guns laws in this country to protect its citizens, well, one might hope for improvement. But many of the gun nuts in Washington will never abandon the 2nd Amendment.
Donald Trump waffles on gun violence...
A USA opinion piece calls attention to "Donald Trump’s vacillating response to repeated acts of carnage that occurred prior to the coronavirus pandemic"...
"In 2018, after meeting with survivors of the Parkland shooting, Trump vowed, 'We're going to be very strong on background checks.' However, days later, after conferring with his friends and financial supporters at the National Rifle Association, he walked back on that assurance."
There's more...
"The same Trump turnaround occurred in the wake of horrific mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton on successive days last August. The Tweeter-in-Chief typed, 'Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks.' A week later, Trump’s resolve wilted under pressure from the gun lobby, insisting, 'we have very strong background checks right now.'"
It will take a revolt of the people and a clearing of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans to fix this dilemma. But, there is no doubt the more serious problem today is COVID-19, although neither Congress nor the White House maniac seem to be doing anything about this either.
I have blogged on Donald Trump losing it in the past and these headlines seem to persist in the media, but the Oval Office lunatic still charges ahead. Blindly and stupidly, but still on the move.
Evidence of the frailty of Trump's reasoning...
My thoughts were to forge on with coverage that pushes T-rump to the edge, joining others out there doing the same, which has happened, but to no avail yet. Not sure what the prop is that keeps him going, but my best guess is that when you're the kind of idiot that doesn't realize the damage he is doing to his country, then you are beyond the normal breaking point and could skate along forever, Which is simply not acceptable.
Here is Alex Henderson's take in AlterNet: "The more journalists report that Trump is losing it, the more he loses it." Yeah, that's true, he loses it constantly, but somehow seems to get it back. At least enough to survive, which is what Trump is all about. Say and do those bizarre things on a daily basis, throw the USA into more chaos by the hour, but with his double-digit supporters as his cornerstone, he proceeds in numbing bliss.
Many mental health experts spoke out on Donald Trump mental instability two years ago...
Bess Levin in Vanity Fair says he is beginning to lose it over reports that he is losing it. Levin continues...
“Donald Trump has never been the picture of mental stability, but over the last few weeks, he’s appeared to crank up the crazy from about a 45 to a 337. From seemingly proposing intravenous Lysol as a coronavirus cure to claiming the United States is close to testing 5 million people a day for COVID-19 — a number so completely absurd that he might as well have said we’ll soon be running 8 billion tests a day — to reportedly threatening to sue his campaign manager over a dimming 2020 outlook, the president has well and truly lost whatever remaining shred of sanity he once had on reserve.”
These are all interesting observations, any one of which might have pushed the button to oblivious disconnection, but haven't. Are we doomed to suffer the wrath of the White House maniac through another four years of misery and ineptitude? If so, there are several of us who might want to leave this planet. Yes, I said the entire planet, because there is nowhere on this one to get away from this moron and it is necessary to go as far as possible.
CNN fact-checks Donald Trump's recent town hall for more lies...
LeTourneau's observation here focuses on Trump's lying, something which no other American president has ever been guilty of in the history of this country, and something which will become his legacy...
"Almost three and a half years into Trump’s presidency, it has become almost blasé to talk about his ubiquitous lies. According to the fact-checkers at the Washington Post, as of April 3rd, he has told 18,000 in 1,170 days, for an average of more than 15 per day. What is even more disturbing: He’s getting worse."
This is the guy who is supposed to be running this country, which, of course, he is not, lying to the American public fifteen times every day. Yet, there is still that demented crowd of followers out there who continue to worship at his feet. Her piece also a must read for the video she includes (scroll down) that illustrates how this schizoid can sit there with a sincere straight face and talk about the great way he has handled the coronavirus pandemic.
LeTourneau does a more recent count on the lies, five in less than two minutes. and lists them one-by-one. So we have someone at the helm of this country who is in a constant state of oblivion, probably not prone to fully go over the edge because there is absolutely no connection there with reality. Here's a quote on reality from Douglas H. Everett...
"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other."
For the anti-lockdown bunch looking strangely similar to anti-vaxxers, the word prudent, which you obviously don't understand, means: "wise or judicious in practical affairs." Something you aren't...but now at least know what it means.
One of the aberrant protesters
Bernie Sanders was instrumental in founding the Progressive Revolution, a good thing for this country, much of its ideology found in today's Democrats, even Joe Biden, who is running for president against Donald Trump. A revolution can have two purposes as the Bern explained. One is to overturn a government by force, or Bernie's way, which is to create a grass roots effort that results in a change of government ideology. The anti-vaxxers/anti-lockdown are neither.
The latter two groups consist of misguided families and individuals who are being led like a bunch of double-digits who cannot think for themselves, and choose to follow the crackpots in social media who espouse the philosophy that you can be super-human if you just listen to them, These disciples of the movement, 'Let's hurry up and die' have followed the instructions of one of these lunatics, a mother, and her child died.
Security guard family
To begin with, the number of those protesting is definitely smaller than those who have decided to follow the law and common sense. So, these wingnuts are definitely in the minority, as you might expect a group of morons would be. That said, there is a report of a security guard shot at a Dollar Store in Michigan, just because he prevented a customer entrance without a mask. What we don't need is for the gun nuts to get into the act now.
Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and public health
scientist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health said, "US anti-lockdown rallies could cause surge in Covid-19 cases." We have already seen COVID-19 cases increase in states that are reopening, and Aljazeera has just announced that the "US could see 3,000 daily deaths as economy reopens." The New York Times says Trump connected groups are behind the protesters...
"Among those fighting the orders are FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, which played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy."
Not an original thought in the whole let
Attorney General William Barr has even joined in, and NYT sees it as "a galvanizing cause for a vocal element of Mr. Trump’s base and others on the political right." But Business insider, in an opinion piece, thinks the protesters believe it is "the work of a tyrannical government out of control." The piece goes on to comment on the fact that there is some provocation here, especially when you have lost your job and cannot pay the bills.
But the protesters haven't had a free rein as those on the front line grow tired of the idiots who don't understand the meaning of meeting death every day in the coronavirus pandemic. In Colorado...
"health workers wearing scrubs and face masks stood in traffic to block oncoming protest caravans that called on officials to end statewide stay-at-home measures intended to slow the spread of coronavirus."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer talks sense to armed protesters...
It's hard to say, but should the U.S. government provide support for those unemployed workers due to COVID-19? Considering the fact that it is clearly Donald Trump's fault the pandemic has grown like it has, he should provide workers compensation from his own pocket. So, yeah, we know that won't happen, then, perhaps, Trump's minions should be planning for more stimulus money, and in the near future.
![Protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol to show their displeasure with the governor's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the coronavirus outbreak [Paul Sancya/AP Photo]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/4/15/d3a80d05a598422f961aa7df0bd9a23d_18.jpg)
